4 ms·
> It's not like the Soviets where it was blatantly obvious that things are mismanaged. Do you mean blatantly obvious at the time and from outside? Could you pl
by emiliobumachar 9y ago
> It's not like the Soviets where it was blatantly obvious that things are mismanaged.
Do you mean blatantly obvious at the time and from outside? Could you please elaborate? I thought the USSR put up a good front, and fooled much of the West with regard to economic development (not freedom).
- adventured 9y agoThere were always people that left the USSR and came over to the West and told the truth about what conditions were really like there. People mostly chose to believe those stories or not, based on their own ideological bias. Hollywood put out several productions that proclaimed the USSR was a paradise. [1][2] US and European industrialists had gone over to the USSR pre-WW2 and helped them build out their industrial base. The Soviets had entirely failed at industrializing on their own. From those experiences, and people writing about them, it was fairly well known what general condition the USSR was actually in economically. Firm, reliable metrics however were largely unavailable throughout the Soviet era. The fooling of the West, regarding the Soviet's mighty materialism output, mostly fell apart by the 1960s (the facade lasted for ~30 years or so, and mostly only for people that were sympathetic to that ideology). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Star_(1943_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Star_(1943_film) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_Russia
- maxxxxx 9y agoPeople I have met who had lived in the USSR and East Germany knew exactly that things were far different from the official reality.