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The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy. By the time they realized the rot,it was too late and the Sov

The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy. By the time they realized the rot,it was too late and the Soviet Union could not be saved . Had the leaders reintroduced NEP after Stalin's death in the early 50s ,the Soviet Union would still be around with a GDP of 10 or 15 trillion dollars . China is a Soviet Union with NEP

lukan 2y ago
A collapse that goes on for 60 years and includes and survives a massive invasion of the own land with over 20 million dead .. is a different definition of collapse than I would use.
roenxi 2y ago
[flagged]
- andrepd 2y ago
  Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of whether a country is prosperous in 2024 is whether it was prosperous in 1724. It's also easy to forget that Russia was quasi-medieval almost up to the 20th century.
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".
  - roenxi 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - ziggyzecat 2y ago
    Singapore
    - hatenberg 2y ago
      Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage. - The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc. - 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free” I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits
    - orwin 2y ago
      Singapore is like the 5th most communist country in the world.
  - xenospn 2y ago
    Singapore? Korea? Israel? Norway?
    - andrepd 2y ago
      Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
      - xenospn 2y ago
        Literally every country has a “very particular situation”.
  - mopsi 2y ago
    > Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe. Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players. It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while. If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table. The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Liberal free market capitalism is far from easy. Russia tried it in the 90s, but it failed catastrophically. They just could not make it work in the situation they were, with the people and institutions they had.
  - RandomLensman 2y ago
    I think there was also a lot of misunderstanding in the West how things could go. Having easily accessible strong rights systems outside of Russia but a weak one inside combined certainly in expected ways - derailing ideas of how these things would form inside Russia as a necessity.
  - ziggyzecat 2y ago
    They killed the very people who would have made it work a few decades earlier. However motivated ...
- johnchristopher 2y ago
  > Yes and no. What a country needs to do to be prosperous is fairly easy - liberal, free market capitalism. No other system has come close to that. That's not enough. You also need to be at war with other countries, win those wars and impose war reparations so high the losing party is obliged to grant you control of its tariff and industries to repay an ever increasing and eternal debt. "It wasn't fair they didn't want to buy our opium".
  - roenxi 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - somat 2y ago
      Please note that during the last big war, your much vaunted capitalist economy. was turned into a planed economy. This was done in order to focus it into a war winning machine. However, I do agree that in general the most good is done for the most people by application of the the free market.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
medo-bear 2y ago
Partly true. Stalinist planned economy (aka Socialism in One Country: as opposed to waiting for world revolution) excelled in macro matters, and was particularly vital to the Soviet war effort and post war rebuilding. However Soviets could never really solve micro matters, like empty supermarket shelves. Gorbachov reforms nominally tried to solve these problems. China is a Soviet Union with NEP minus exporting world revolution.
feedforward 2y ago
> The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy. What? The Soviet economy grew like crazy under Stalin, and he even pushed the Germans back to Berlin. Workers from depression racked Western Europe moved to Russia for work in the 1930s. It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink. My understanding was that the Soviet economy actually boomed from the mid 50s to the late 60s (Khruschev's tenure from 1953-1964) -- but that once Brezhnev took over, that's when it started hitting the brakes.
- vkou 2y ago
  The economy didn't sink under Khruschev. It just grew slower than capitalist nations (and public expectations of growth of QOL). Over the decades, this difference in growth compounded, until you hit Brezhnev where growth in friction, inefficiency, and corruption exceeded growth in productivity. And then you had a lot of, uh, degrowth with Yeltsin's shock therapy.

lukan 2y ago

A collapse that goes on for 60 years and includes and survives a massive invasion of the own land with over 20 million dead .. is a different definition of collapse than I would use.

roenxi 2y ago

[flagged]

andrepd 2y ago
Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of whether a country is prosperous in 2024 is whether it was prosperous in 1724. It's also easy to forget that Russia was quasi-medieval almost up to the 20th century.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".
- roenxi 2y ago
  [flagged]
- ziggyzecat 2y ago
  Singapore
  - hatenberg 2y ago
    Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage. - The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc. - 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free” I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits
  - orwin 2y ago
    Singapore is like the 5th most communist country in the world.
- xenospn 2y ago
  Singapore? Korea? Israel? Norway?
  - andrepd 2y ago
    Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
    - xenospn 2y ago
      Literally every country has a “very particular situation”.
- mopsi 2y ago
  > Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe. Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players. It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while. If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table. The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.
jltsiren 2y ago
Liberal free market capitalism is far from easy. Russia tried it in the 90s, but it failed catastrophically. They just could not make it work in the situation they were, with the people and institutions they had.
- RandomLensman 2y ago
  I think there was also a lot of misunderstanding in the West how things could go. Having easily accessible strong rights systems outside of Russia but a weak one inside combined certainly in expected ways - derailing ideas of how these things would form inside Russia as a necessity.
- ziggyzecat 2y ago
  They killed the very people who would have made it work a few decades earlier. However motivated ...
johnchristopher 2y ago
> Yes and no. What a country needs to do to be prosperous is fairly easy - liberal, free market capitalism. No other system has come close to that. That's not enough. You also need to be at war with other countries, win those wars and impose war reparations so high the losing party is obliged to grant you control of its tariff and industries to repay an ever increasing and eternal debt. "It wasn't fair they didn't want to buy our opium".
- roenxi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - somat 2y ago
    Please note that during the last big war, your much vaunted capitalist economy. was turned into a planed economy. This was done in order to focus it into a war winning machine. However, I do agree that in general the most good is done for the most people by application of the the free market.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

medo-bear 2y ago

Partly true. Stalinist planned economy (aka Socialism in One Country: as opposed to waiting for world revolution) excelled in macro matters, and was particularly vital to the Soviet war effort and post war rebuilding. However Soviets could never really solve micro matters, like empty supermarket shelves. Gorbachov reforms nominally tried to solve these problems. China is a Soviet Union with NEP minus exporting world revolution.

feedforward 2y ago

> The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy. What? The Soviet economy grew like crazy under Stalin, and he even pushed the Germans back to Berlin. Workers from depression racked Western Europe moved to Russia for work in the 1930s. It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink.

aguaviva 2y ago
It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink. My understanding was that the Soviet economy actually boomed from the mid 50s to the late 60s (Khruschev's tenure from 1953-1964) -- but that once Brezhnev took over, that's when it started hitting the brakes.
vkou 2y ago
The economy didn't sink under Khruschev. It just grew slower than capitalist nations (and public expectations of growth of QOL). Over the decades, this difference in growth compounded, until you hit Brezhnev where growth in friction, inefficiency, and corruption exceeded growth in productivity. And then you had a lot of, uh, degrowth with Yeltsin's shock therapy.