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> the Soviet Union frankly ran out of money To be perfectly fair, this was at least partly the result of the immeasurably expensive clean up of Chernobyl. Est

by dijit 3y ago

> the Soviet Union frankly ran out of money To be perfectly fair, this was at least partly the result of the immeasurably expensive clean up of Chernobyl. Estimates vary but the most recent numbers put it at about $700 Billion.

badpun 3y ago
SU was economically unviable long before Chernobyl disaster. It was so mismanaged it had large-scale famines, for God's sake.
- allarm 3y ago
  I don’t think they had famines around 1986. Long before that - yes.
- p_l 3y ago
  Honestly, it would have had them either way. You can't change the shitshow that was Imperial Russia that easily, and tsarist legacy was hamstringing any reform (for example in the decision to continue the systems of secret police and prison camps - neither was Communist invention) However they did fuckup in many areas in the economy, something that was recognised internally at least by some - as seen by multiple attempts at reforms. Also, one can't discount the unbelievably favourable position of the USA at the end of WW2 when analysing this (in comparison, Soviets started with a worse position than many would believe, because Imperial Russia really wasn't well off)
  - dijit 3y ago
    A lot of people forget that the reason there even was an uprising was because the country was so poor and the upper class was seen as decadent and out of touch.
    - foobarian 3y ago
      Honestly they also seemed to have gotten really unlucky with their last tsar. Makes you wonder how things would have played out if they got someone exceptionally good instead of Nicholas II.
      - kwhitefoot 3y ago
        > how things would have played out if they got someone exceptionally good instead of Nicholas II. It's not just the man or woman at the top who make the country work. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great tried to modernize. But the nobility put up a lot of resistance or simply didn't turn up for committee meetings.
  - badpun 3y ago
    > Honestly, it would have had them either way. The pre-soviet famines were of natural causes - crop failures due to droughts etc. After soviets took over the country, these were still ocurring, but were dwarfed by man-made famines, caused by idiotic economic policies (mainly by forced collectivization, which decimated productivity).
    - Attrecomet 3y ago
      That certainly sounds like bs. The pre-soviet famines' causes were directly the repressive, backward, exploitative and simply evil system that existed and forced the peasants to starve so the nobility and select bourgeois upper class members co-opted into the system could live lives of decadence.
      - xhkkffbf 3y ago
        Yes. Read Timothy Snyder's _Bloodlands_ for a deeper understanding of just how the peasants were starved. Or watch the movie "Mr. Jones".
    - skinnymuch 3y ago
      Everything is man made when it’s “them” (communists). And just part of society and natural when things happen in America’s capitalism. The US doesn’t even have universal health care. I don’t know the exact death figures, but it’s not pretty. All deaths that could be prevented from some basic collectivist attitude. Instead of forced individualism.
  - throwaway6734 3y ago
    The soviets were instrumental in starting WW2. They have no one to blame but themselves
    - xhkkffbf 3y ago
      Seth McMeekin's book, _Stalin's War_, is a great way to understand just how they did it. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/06/stalins-war-by-sean-mcmeekin-review-a-revisionist-take-on-the-second-world-war https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/06/stalins-war-by...
    - p_l 3y ago
      Oh, I'm not claiming they didn't. It's just that usually in such comparisons you get to see USA, and USA was an extreme outlier that makes comparison useless in my opinion.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Only way back, when the US had the "Great Depression" and millions of starving people as well. And in the USSRs case, it was from an ecomony that had just had gotten into large scale industrial production, after having been way behind under the Czars, and after a major war, a revolution, and several years of civil war. If anything, they did better than expected. Even more so given that they had an inexperienced government, external pressure from unfriendly western countries, and had to prepare for future wars that were already breeding (and luckily the did it just in time for WWII).
  - bitcurious 3y ago
    > Only way back, when the US had the "Great Depression" and millions of starving people as well. The US had millions of hungry people. At the peak of the Great Depression, deaths from starvation peaked at a (still terrible) ~110k. Under Soviet rule, an order of magnitude more, actually millions, perished unnecessarily from hunger just in Ukraine. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/chapter/the-depths-of-the-great-depression/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/...
    - coldtea 3y ago
      In much worse conditions, with much worse winters, and from a much worse starting point, in a much more under-industrialized society.
- skinnymuch 3y ago
  the US and a lot of the capitalist world had the Great Depression and more. Are those “natural”? The country is forcing a recession now and causing poorer people to get squeezed dry.
sien 3y ago
Wikipedia puts it at $US 68Bn The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion roubles—roughly US $68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
- dijit 3y ago
  I'm not sure specifically what is included in that number you cited; but $700B comes from here: https://globalhealth.usc.edu/2016/05/24/the-financial-costs-of-the-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant-disaster-a-review-of-the-literature/ https://globalhealth.usc.edu/2016/05/24/the-financial-costs-...
- ecopoesis 3y ago
  $68 billion is a lot, but it also only three Big Digs ($22 billion). If Chernobyl killed the Soviet economy it was because it was in already terrible shape.
  - FreshStart 3y ago
    So jets were under the resource curse after the 70s.iran- Iraq war and resulting oil surplus killed them.

by dijit 3y ago

badpun 3y ago

SU was economically unviable long before Chernobyl disaster. It was so mismanaged it had large-scale famines, for God's sake.

allarm 3y ago
I don’t think they had famines around 1986. Long before that - yes.
p_l 3y ago
Honestly, it would have had them either way. You can't change the shitshow that was Imperial Russia that easily, and tsarist legacy was hamstringing any reform (for example in the decision to continue the systems of secret police and prison camps - neither was Communist invention) However they did fuckup in many areas in the economy, something that was recognised internally at least by some - as seen by multiple attempts at reforms. Also, one can't discount the unbelievably favourable position of the USA at the end of WW2 when analysing this (in comparison, Soviets started with a worse position than many would believe, because Imperial Russia really wasn't well off)
- dijit 3y ago
  A lot of people forget that the reason there even was an uprising was because the country was so poor and the upper class was seen as decadent and out of touch.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Honestly they also seemed to have gotten really unlucky with their last tsar. Makes you wonder how things would have played out if they got someone exceptionally good instead of Nicholas II.
    - kwhitefoot 3y ago
      > how things would have played out if they got someone exceptionally good instead of Nicholas II. It's not just the man or woman at the top who make the country work. Peter the Great and Catherine the Great tried to modernize. But the nobility put up a lot of resistance or simply didn't turn up for committee meetings.
- badpun 3y ago
  > Honestly, it would have had them either way. The pre-soviet famines were of natural causes - crop failures due to droughts etc. After soviets took over the country, these were still ocurring, but were dwarfed by man-made famines, caused by idiotic economic policies (mainly by forced collectivization, which decimated productivity).
  - Attrecomet 3y ago
    That certainly sounds like bs. The pre-soviet famines' causes were directly the repressive, backward, exploitative and simply evil system that existed and forced the peasants to starve so the nobility and select bourgeois upper class members co-opted into the system could live lives of decadence.
    - xhkkffbf 3y ago
      Yes. Read Timothy Snyder's _Bloodlands_ for a deeper understanding of just how the peasants were starved. Or watch the movie "Mr. Jones".
  - skinnymuch 3y ago
    Everything is man made when it’s “them” (communists). And just part of society and natural when things happen in America’s capitalism. The US doesn’t even have universal health care. I don’t know the exact death figures, but it’s not pretty. All deaths that could be prevented from some basic collectivist attitude. Instead of forced individualism.
- throwaway6734 3y ago
  The soviets were instrumental in starting WW2. They have no one to blame but themselves
  - xhkkffbf 3y ago
    Seth McMeekin's book, _Stalin's War_, is a great way to understand just how they did it. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/06/stalins-war-by-sean-mcmeekin-review-a-revisionist-take-on-the-second-world-war https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/06/stalins-war-by...
  - p_l 3y ago
    Oh, I'm not claiming they didn't. It's just that usually in such comparisons you get to see USA, and USA was an extreme outlier that makes comparison useless in my opinion.
coldtea 3y ago
Only way back, when the US had the "Great Depression" and millions of starving people as well. And in the USSRs case, it was from an ecomony that had just had gotten into large scale industrial production, after having been way behind under the Czars, and after a major war, a revolution, and several years of civil war. If anything, they did better than expected. Even more so given that they had an inexperienced government, external pressure from unfriendly western countries, and had to prepare for future wars that were already breeding (and luckily the did it just in time for WWII).
- bitcurious 3y ago
  > Only way back, when the US had the "Great Depression" and millions of starving people as well. The US had millions of hungry people. At the peak of the Great Depression, deaths from starvation peaked at a (still terrible) ~110k. Under Soviet rule, an order of magnitude more, actually millions, perished unnecessarily from hunger just in Ukraine. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/chapter/the-depths-of-the-great-depression/ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-ushistory2os2xmaster/...
  - coldtea 3y ago
    In much worse conditions, with much worse winters, and from a much worse starting point, in a much more under-industrialized society.
skinnymuch 3y ago
the US and a lot of the capitalist world had the Great Depression and more. Are those “natural”? The country is forcing a recession now and causing poorer people to get squeezed dry.

sien 3y ago

Wikipedia puts it at $US 68Bn The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion roubles—roughly US $68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

dijit 3y ago
I'm not sure specifically what is included in that number you cited; but $700B comes from here: https://globalhealth.usc.edu/2016/05/24/the-financial-costs-of-the-chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant-disaster-a-review-of-the-literature/ https://globalhealth.usc.edu/2016/05/24/the-financial-costs-...
ecopoesis 3y ago
$68 billion is a lot, but it also only three Big Digs ($22 billion). If Chernobyl killed the Soviet economy it was because it was in already terrible shape.
- FreshStart 3y ago
  So jets were under the resource curse after the 70s.iran- Iraq war and resulting oil surplus killed them.