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I liked it - I felt it didn't really answer the question it seemed to set out with though. That is - there was a time when it looked like the USSR was genuinel

I liked it - I felt it didn't really answer the question it seemed to set out with though. That is - there was a time when it looked like the USSR was genuinely going to catch up with and surpass the USA, how did they manage this and where did it go wrong?

nradov 7y ago
The USSR was never actually catching up. With access to more accurate historical data we now know that much of their reported economic development was based on falsified official statistics.
- lyrr 7y ago
  Gonna need a source for that.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    https://tnsr.org/2018/02/assessing-soviet-economic-performance-cold-war/ https://tnsr.org/2018/02/assessing-soviet-economic-performan...
- hylaride 7y ago
  That's not entirely accurate. Between 1930-1970s (with some hiccups) the USSR was indeed "catching up", but this was because they were industrializing from almost nothing, plus rebuilding after the war. It was the stagnation in the 1970s where the centrally planned economy couldn't adapt to consumer goods, light industry, and technology where they fell further and further behind. Various incentive problems exasperated things. Things would have been much worse in the 70s if high oil prices didn't mask these underlying problems, allowing the USSR to obtain hard currency to import goods. Don't get me wrong, communism was bad. However, there were periods where it appeared to look superior. The quality of life in North Korea was "superior" to the south until the late 70s (much of this was backed by soviet subsidies, etc), but the optics still existed. There was a similar, though much more brief, period where east Germany had a faster growing economy than the west. There is a reason the Berlin wall was built in the 60s and not earlier.
  - frandroid 7y ago
    In industrial societies, we re-invested about 20% of our GDP into production capital; under Stalin, that percentage was closer to 40%. That diminished after he died, to improve people's quality of life, but at the expense of overall productivity improvement.
- _TwoFinger 7y ago
  They might have falsified the statistics in order to boost people's morale, but they were also very serious about actually progressing. Bulgaria was under USSR's wing when I was a kid, and I have first-hand experience about that. There was this thing called "kruzhoks", (a Russian word, diminutive of "circle", like in "circle of friends"), which were after-school interest-based clubs, mainly about technical stuff. Every other kid was a member of some kind of kruzhok. Back then I didn't realize that, but the state must have had some sort of "master plan" to prepare as many kids as possible for technical careers when they grow up. I also distinctly remember the exceptional quality of the textbooks (math, mechanics, electronics). The content was presented in a pedagogical order, with increasing difficulty, and carefully selected exercises that helped the concepts sink in. I used Russian textbooks from the 60's and 70's up until I graduated the university in 2005. (I'm a mechanical engineer, physics hasn't changed much since then, heh.) The typography was also excellent. When I first saw LaTeX output, the first thing that came to mind was Russian textbooks. I don't know how they did it back then.
rayiner 7y ago
Command economies don’t work. The USSR experienced growth initially because Russia was an economic backwater. That ran out of steam by the 1960s. The USSR never exceeded about 50% of US GDP, despite having a much larger population. The USSR did some amazing things, for example in space. That just proves that a command economy can divert investment to specific ends. The USSR narrowly beat the US in several space milestones. We were close behind-such that we beat the USSR to the moon when their space program stumbled. But at the same time we developed advances in electronics, medicine, chemicals, etc., that weren’t even on the USSR’s radar. And we were doing all that while dedicating far less of our economy to investment (versus consumption). Soviet industry was also breathtakingly inefficient. The USSR required five times as much energy to produce on unit of GNP than the US: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/3500/1/RR-91-07.pdf http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/3500/1/RR-91-07.pdf. The Soviet Union had massive oil and gas reserves. But using vastly more concrete, steel, and energy to produce less durable goods than the US wasn’t sustainable.
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  USSR event went as far as researching the use of psychic abilities for espionage. US only started researching PSI later, fearing USSR would get the edge on that; It's very interesting to read CIA papers about remote viewing experiments; Funny to see so much people think these things are pure fabrications, fantasy etc, but the US has been researching this stuff for decades. If they bothered to expend the resources to do that it means something;
- UncleSlacky 7y ago
  Command economies might work better now that we have the capability to transmit accurate market information in (near) real time.
  - amylene 7y ago
    My understanding is that it wasn’t the delays as much as the incentives to lie. Tech doesn’t fix what are essentially people problems.
  - gallegojaime 7y ago
p_l 7y ago
A significant issue was ossification of nomenklatura, essentially oligarchic rent-seeking across management. It was their backlash that stripped Khrushchev of power, as he pushed for reforms that endangered their power (I wouldn't call them "democratic" reforms but they included more power to common man and better feedback loops)

nradov 7y ago

The USSR was never actually catching up. With access to more accurate historical data we now know that much of their reported economic development was based on falsified official statistics.

lyrr 7y ago
Gonna need a source for that.
- rayiner 7y ago
  https://tnsr.org/2018/02/assessing-soviet-economic-performance-cold-war/ https://tnsr.org/2018/02/assessing-soviet-economic-performan...
hylaride 7y ago
That's not entirely accurate. Between 1930-1970s (with some hiccups) the USSR was indeed "catching up", but this was because they were industrializing from almost nothing, plus rebuilding after the war. It was the stagnation in the 1970s where the centrally planned economy couldn't adapt to consumer goods, light industry, and technology where they fell further and further behind. Various incentive problems exasperated things. Things would have been much worse in the 70s if high oil prices didn't mask these underlying problems, allowing the USSR to obtain hard currency to import goods. Don't get me wrong, communism was bad. However, there were periods where it appeared to look superior. The quality of life in North Korea was "superior" to the south until the late 70s (much of this was backed by soviet subsidies, etc), but the optics still existed. There was a similar, though much more brief, period where east Germany had a faster growing economy than the west. There is a reason the Berlin wall was built in the 60s and not earlier.
- frandroid 7y ago
  In industrial societies, we re-invested about 20% of our GDP into production capital; under Stalin, that percentage was closer to 40%. That diminished after he died, to improve people's quality of life, but at the expense of overall productivity improvement.
_TwoFinger 7y ago
They might have falsified the statistics in order to boost people's morale, but they were also very serious about actually progressing. Bulgaria was under USSR's wing when I was a kid, and I have first-hand experience about that. There was this thing called "kruzhoks", (a Russian word, diminutive of "circle", like in "circle of friends"), which were after-school interest-based clubs, mainly about technical stuff. Every other kid was a member of some kind of kruzhok. Back then I didn't realize that, but the state must have had some sort of "master plan" to prepare as many kids as possible for technical careers when they grow up. I also distinctly remember the exceptional quality of the textbooks (math, mechanics, electronics). The content was presented in a pedagogical order, with increasing difficulty, and carefully selected exercises that helped the concepts sink in. I used Russian textbooks from the 60's and 70's up until I graduated the university in 2005. (I'm a mechanical engineer, physics hasn't changed much since then, heh.) The typography was also excellent. When I first saw LaTeX output, the first thing that came to mind was Russian textbooks. I don't know how they did it back then.

rayiner 7y ago

Command economies don’t work. The USSR experienced growth initially because Russia was an economic backwater. That ran out of steam by the 1960s. The USSR never exceeded about 50% of US GDP, despite having a much larger population. The USSR did some amazing things, for example in space. That just proves that a command economy can divert investment to specific ends. The USSR narrowly beat the US in several space milestones. We were close behind-such that we beat the USSR to the moon when their space program stumbled. But at the same time we developed advances in electronics, medicine, chemicals, etc., that weren’t even on the USSR’s radar. And we were doing all that while dedicating far less of our economy to investment (versus consumption). Soviet industry was also breathtakingly inefficient. The USSR required five times as much energy to produce on unit of GNP than the US: http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/3500/1/RR-91-07.pdf http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/3500/1/RR-91-07.pdf. The Soviet Union had massive oil and gas reserves. But using vastly more concrete, steel, and energy to produce less durable goods than the US wasn’t sustainable.

rafaelvasco 7y ago
USSR event went as far as researching the use of psychic abilities for espionage. US only started researching PSI later, fearing USSR would get the edge on that; It's very interesting to read CIA papers about remote viewing experiments; Funny to see so much people think these things are pure fabrications, fantasy etc, but the US has been researching this stuff for decades. If they bothered to expend the resources to do that it means something;
UncleSlacky 7y ago
Command economies might work better now that we have the capability to transmit accurate market information in (near) real time.
- amylene 7y ago
  My understanding is that it wasn’t the delays as much as the incentives to lie. Tech doesn’t fix what are essentially people problems.
- gallegojaime 7y ago

p_l 7y ago

A significant issue was ossification of nomenklatura, essentially oligarchic rent-seeking across management. It was their backlash that stripped Khrushchev of power, as he pushed for reforms that endangered their power (I wouldn't call them "democratic" reforms but they included more power to common man and better feedback loops)