13 ms·
Not just perception - there was a very real conflict in the 19th century between traditional Russian values and western ideas such as nihilism and socialism. Do
by boxerab 5y ago
Not just perception - there was a very real conflict in the 19th century between traditional Russian values and western ideas such as nihilism and socialism. Dostoevsky was such an idealist in his youth, then turning his back on those movements after being imprisoned in hard labor camp. In his book Demons, he very much groks the dangers of these western ideas, which led to the disastrous 70 year reign of the Bolsheviks
- soperj 5y agoIf you take an objective look at the USSR from 1917 to 1990, while there was a lot of bad things, they also completely industrialized the country, literacy rates went from 28% to 99.7% (triple it in the first 15 years, by trying to teach everyone to read their native language first instead of Russian first). They were the first country to put a man in space. I'm not sure that it was all disastrous.
- 988747 5y agoYou must ask yourself a question here: did they accomplish all of that because of the socialism, or despite it?
- c-smile 5y agoIdea was good. Socialism works quite well at critical times. Just in case: pretty much each country, including US, handles COVID problem in typical socialistic state way.
- int_19h 5y agoFunny thing about Stalin's "socialism": he actually reverted high school to being a paid extra, not free and universal.
- 988747 5y agoSocialism is a perfect system. I mean: socialism is probably the system that God uses to rule his Angels in Heaven. It has only one tiny flaw: in order to work it requires the society to be perfect as well, and most importantly completely selfless. But for less than perfect societies capitalism works better, because it can turn people's flaws (i.e.: greed, ambition) for the common good.
- imtringued 5y agoYes, I agree. Consider the greatest flaw in capitalism: Greedy people want greedy money for greedy people. The problem with greedy money is that it turns everyone into a greedy person. Similar dynamics exist for housing. People clearly want a gold style asset that they can greedily hold onto. The problem is that this greed gets in the way of the utility of the asset. Money exists as a medium of exchange (i.e. a means to repay debt) and real estate exists to house people. It's funny how Bitcoin was created as a response to 2008 but all it merely did is replicate the flaws of conventional fiat currencies that lead to 2008 in a much shorter time span. All it shows is that the demand for greedy money is unstoppable.
- nemo44x 5y agoA planned economy is great when you have a few well defined tasks to really worry about. But you can't really become dynamic and resilient like a market economy can. So certain goals, like getting everyone to read or building a spaceship work reasonably well but it simply can't compete with a market economy in the longer run and dies a death of a thousand capitalist cuts eventually. The Chinese probably have it more right than the Soviets in that they manage a few big things and then let the market more or less self manage to a point so long as the CCP is getting their cut and gives their blessing.
- soperj 5y agoIf I hadn't asked myself this already, I wouldn't have posted it.
- User23 5y agoMost people with a regard for human life consider mass murder[1] on a scale hitherto unseen[2], which is really saying something given that the world had just seen WW2, to be disastrous. [1] Thus not including battlefield deaths of soldiers. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...
- tenfourwookie 5y agoStalin would sign pages and pages of names for execution before going off for a nice weekend at the dacha, just because, let's say for expediency. You cannot rationalize away the horrors of 20th century Russia, certainly not with these bullet points. So we killed 30 million people, but look! Sputnik!
- soperj 5y agoI wasn't trying to, but go on.
- nIHOPp6MQw0f5ut 5y agoThe west industrialized without gulags.
- sonthonax 5y ago‘The West’ industrialised with slave plantations and child labour.
- c-smile 5y agoOh, really? What about plantations? Who worked there? Sigh, under each stone of European squares you can find 1kg of gold that came from the "third world".
- nIHOPp6MQw0f5ut 5y agoI guess you're talking about America. There is a reason why the slave based economy of the South was much less developed than the North.
- krzyk 5y agoOK, so which West countries had plantations? Did Germany have them? Yeah, first ones in 1884 and lost all of them in 1914. And it was most industrialized country.
- soperj 5y agoUnification into the German Empire didn't happen until 1871. The parts that were industrialized were part of France. Germany itself didn't undergo a massive industrialization until a century after Britain.
- etc-hosts 5y agoThe West didn't have land hungry pre WW2 Germany next to it.
- krzyk 5y ago> The West didn't have land hungry pre WW2 Germany next to it. Not sure if this is sarcasm, but I'll assume it is not. France and Poland send their regards.
- shrubble 5y agoThe 60 million people killed during the Bokshevik reign are unavailable for comment, however.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- c-smile 5y agoThat's exaggeration of course. Many but not THAT many. Story from my step-grandfather: He was a village school director and teacher in Ukraine at times of 1932/33 famine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%931933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...). With students from senior classes he developed piece of farm land just to feed junior classes - make real breakfast at list for them. Each day he walked to school with knapsack - prepared for detention, as all agricultural surplus should go to collectors. All that was real, indeed. ... At WWII, he served as an artillery lieutenant, literally walked by foot from Voronezh/Russia to Berlin/Germany. They were crying "for the Motherland, for the Stalin" all way along. And that one was also real. Later he was a father of an academic and two doctors of science in USSR. History is really not that black and white.
- soperj 5y agoSeems completely objective.
- danielodievich 5y agoI barely overlapped with both of my great-grandfathers but fortunately one of them left his memoirs behind. in there it says that he ran away from home early and "during revolution was just a street hooligan breaking streetlamps for amusement". He did eventually complete engineering school and wound up designing and building ports and hydroelectric dams during all the heavy industrialization and the war. He said he was happy about that change that allowed him to become educated.
- krzyk 5y agoAnd also killed many people (more than WW2 alone), and basically created dark ages for unlucky countries that were "saved" by the soviets.
- boxerab 5y agoread Gulag Archipelago, then get back to me.
- soperj 5y agoI already have actually, finished it near the start of covid. It's a great set of books.
- CameronNemo 5y agoIs complete industrialization a positive?
- graeme 5y agoYou can’t look at those numbers without comparing to other societies. Raising literacy over that time period….is not especially rare? Nor was industrialization. You’re giving them credit for something basically every european country did in that timeframe. And many other countries besides. Not strictly saying you’re wrong. I haven’t done the comparative argument so it’s possible they did have a comparative advantage on either front. But you’d need to compare to other countries to have a meaningful claim.
- soperj 5y agoMost european countries were already industrialized by the 1920s. None of them had literacy rates that low, and not one of them made it to space.
- graeme 5y agoWhat about comparable countries then? Russia looks pretty similar to other country trends here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-rates https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-literacy-ra... In particular try Italy and Spain, countries with many peasants circa 1900. Virtually identical trajectories. The USSR, if around today, would have a population of 300 million. They were a superpower. Only large powers made it to space. It was certainly impressive, but also a natural result if you have a large portion of your economy devoted to military spending and missile research. The space program in both USA and USSR allowed for ICBM delivery of nuclear warheads, a crucial strategic goal.
- soperj 5y agoThey became a super power. The certainly weren't after WW1. Why didn't the Ottoman empire do this?
- krzyk 5y agoNot that impressive if you consider population and vast, really vast amounts of land that have gigantic natural resources and lack of any real power blocking them from the east. Basically with that base anyone could do it (I don't dispute that having a gun pointed at your and your family head wasn't mobilizing for scientists, but that's normal for authoritarian states).
- nine_k 5y agoWhy, socialism was fine with most Russians, that is, the peasants. Check out the obschina thing [1] which was the traditional structure of non-noble country living; it's full of communal and rather socialist institutions. The revolutionaries like the young Dostoevsky and a number of other Russian left intellectuals were quite westernized, and had the French revolution as an example, with its franternité, egalité et liberté. (Interestingly, not the American revolution which was hugely more successful but not leftist.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obshchina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obshchina
- jltsiren 5y agoBolshevism was a disaster, but the traditional Russian society that preceded it was not much better. The Russia that overthrew its Mongol overlords never managed to develop the social and cultural institutions required to form a stable and prosperous society. Novgorod had them, but it was one of the first victims of Muscovy. There was perhaps a chance in the 19th century, when Alexander II tried to turn Russia into a constitutional monarchy. The chance died when nihilists killed him and his son reversed the course. The same ideas that gave rise to social democracy in the West turned into Marxism-Leninism in Russia. One was a great success story, another was an equally great catastrophe.