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I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did p

I think this must be a very stupid question, but I’ll ask it anyway. I always thought the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population wise, and really did punch above their weight. But Soviet Union census of 1970 lists 241,720,134 people, while the US census of 1970 lists 203,392,031 people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Soviet_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_United_States_census Is this statistic somehow not representative? If so, what’s up with that? If not, is the belief that the Soviet Union was smaller than the US population widespread and wrong? If it is widespread and wrong, where’s it come from? (Although, I must admit the possibility that it isn’t widespread, and was just unusually wrong. In which case the answer is just that I’m unusually bad at geopolitics, which would not be surprising at all).

aklemm 2y ago
Probably just conflating Soviet Union with Russia, which does have a smaller population. The Soviet Union encompassed so many more countries.
dankwizard 2y ago
I don't think anybody except you thought it was smaller. Why are you suggesting theres a widespread misconception instead of the more likely alternative - you made a mistake?
- johnfn 2y ago
  The article strongly implies this. > These days, the same scenes are dominated by Chinese and Indian kids. But China and India have large populations — the Russians were punching way about their weight, demographically speaking.
  - qup 2y ago
    Also > Well, with the Soviets it all went in the opposite direction: they had a smaller population, a worse starting industrial base, a lower GDP, and a vastly less efficient economic system. How, then, did they maintain military and technological parity1 with the United States for so long?
    - LarsDu88 2y ago
      The truth is, the Soviet bloc consistently made lower quality stuff or had much poorer training. There's are a persistent set of myths that both the Soviets and the western arms manufacturers like to perpetuate. The t-34 tank was the greatest tank ever (sometimes had 10:1 losses offset by 14:1 manufacturing) The ak-47 is the best due to is reliability (poor tolerances made it both reliable and astoundingly inaccurate) Soviet/russian tanks have not come out on top in any conflict for the past 50 years. On the battlefields of Ukraine, the t72 has been infamous for its design flaws wherein even mild penetration to the gun autoloader housed in the turret ring often leads to catastrophic explosions instantly killing all the crew inside. In Israel's fights against Syria, syrian Soviet tanks had a critical design flaw wherein they were not able to shoot downward at an angle, effectively making them sitting ducks. The last time Soviet jets had parity with the west was when both sides were copying the same German jet fighter designs appropriated from Focke-wulf at the end of world War 2. Repeatedly in actual combat situations, the soviet equipment fares poorly... In Israel, Iraq, and Ukraine. Perhaps the only conflicts Soviet equipment has been used effectively is when Iraq deployed its mostly Soviet weapons against Irans mostly American weapons and even that's arguable considering the United States backed Saddam (and later obliterated his army with more modern western technology)
      - throw_pm23 2y ago
        Even Napoleon's weapons were vastly superior to the Russian ones at the time... oh, wait :)
        dan-robertson 2y ago
        I don’t think the napoleonic wars are a very good comparison as they happened 100 years before the Russian revolution. You do see some parallels to later wars – the Russians being technologically inferior, or getting Poland after a war, for example. If you look at overall deaths, the French side suffered half as many as their opposition, and more Russians died than people from any other country opposing Napoleon. This still ended up being much less extreme than in WWII where I guess the one sentence summary is that, in Europe, most belligerents were spending enormous amounts of money on weapons and technology whereas the Soviet Union suffered enormous military and civilian casualties to achieve victory.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I did cover that option. Although, the thing that brought it to mind is the fact that the author made the same mistake.
cbsmith 2y ago
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1949-04-01/russian-population-enigma https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1...
llm_trw 2y ago
The OP is wrong. The USSR had a larger population than the US by around 20% from 1950 to 1990: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf Chances are he's only counting the population of Russia proper, which would be a bit like only counting the US East Coast population.
- wwilson 2y ago
  My guess is rather that he's conflating the US with US + Western Europe.
  - ccppurcell 2y ago
    And then you can make the appropriately similar conflation of USSR with Warsaw pact countries.
girvo 2y ago
To be fair, the US and Western Europe were a somewhat combined bloc wrt. trade and being allies. So in that respect the combined USSRs population is smaller? But purely US v USSR, the latter has always had more people
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  The SU and Eastern Europe countries were also such a 'combined block' though (both for trade via COMECON and militarily via the TFCMA (aka 'Warsaw Pact'). Although AFAIK Western Europe had a much higher population than the Eastern European socialist countries. But in general, the education and health care systems were usually the 'flag ships' with easy and free access for the 'working class' (which also means extreme discimination against anybody else though).
  - cassepipe 2y ago
    I had never heard of a discrimination issue regarding soviet and affiliated healthcare systems. Care to elaborate ?
    - flohofwoe 2y ago
      Not in healthcare but in education. For instance a friend of mine wasn't allowed to study at university because his parents were active in the church, and that was just one reason to land on the blacklist, basically if you weren't a "good socialist citizen" (which basically means: do as you're told and keep your mouth shut) you could kiss goodbye to any sort of career beyond a shitty factory job (this was in East Germany). But yeah, if you arrived at the emergency station with a heart attack they didn't ask for your party membership book before treating you, so that's at least something.
      - cassepipe 2y ago
        Interesting ! Thanks for the explanation

aklemm 2y ago

Probably just conflating Soviet Union with Russia, which does have a smaller population. The Soviet Union encompassed so many more countries.

dankwizard 2y ago

I don't think anybody except you thought it was smaller. Why are you suggesting theres a widespread misconception instead of the more likely alternative - you made a mistake?

johnfn 2y ago
The article strongly implies this. > These days, the same scenes are dominated by Chinese and Indian kids. But China and India have large populations — the Russians were punching way about their weight, demographically speaking.
- qup 2y ago
  Also > Well, with the Soviets it all went in the opposite direction: they had a smaller population, a worse starting industrial base, a lower GDP, and a vastly less efficient economic system. How, then, did they maintain military and technological parity1 with the United States for so long?
  - LarsDu88 2y ago
    The truth is, the Soviet bloc consistently made lower quality stuff or had much poorer training. There's are a persistent set of myths that both the Soviets and the western arms manufacturers like to perpetuate. The t-34 tank was the greatest tank ever (sometimes had 10:1 losses offset by 14:1 manufacturing) The ak-47 is the best due to is reliability (poor tolerances made it both reliable and astoundingly inaccurate) Soviet/russian tanks have not come out on top in any conflict for the past 50 years. On the battlefields of Ukraine, the t72 has been infamous for its design flaws wherein even mild penetration to the gun autoloader housed in the turret ring often leads to catastrophic explosions instantly killing all the crew inside. In Israel's fights against Syria, syrian Soviet tanks had a critical design flaw wherein they were not able to shoot downward at an angle, effectively making them sitting ducks. The last time Soviet jets had parity with the west was when both sides were copying the same German jet fighter designs appropriated from Focke-wulf at the end of world War 2. Repeatedly in actual combat situations, the soviet equipment fares poorly... In Israel, Iraq, and Ukraine. Perhaps the only conflicts Soviet equipment has been used effectively is when Iraq deployed its mostly Soviet weapons against Irans mostly American weapons and even that's arguable considering the United States backed Saddam (and later obliterated his army with more modern western technology)
    - throw_pm23 2y ago
      Even Napoleon's weapons were vastly superior to the Russian ones at the time... oh, wait :)
      - dan-robertson 2y ago
        I don’t think the napoleonic wars are a very good comparison as they happened 100 years before the Russian revolution. You do see some parallels to later wars – the Russians being technologically inferior, or getting Poland after a war, for example. If you look at overall deaths, the French side suffered half as many as their opposition, and more Russians died than people from any other country opposing Napoleon. This still ended up being much less extreme than in WWII where I guess the one sentence summary is that, in Europe, most belligerents were spending enormous amounts of money on weapons and technology whereas the Soviet Union suffered enormous military and civilian casualties to achieve victory.
bee_rider 2y ago
I did cover that option. Although, the thing that brought it to mind is the fact that the author made the same mistake.

cbsmith 2y ago

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1949-04-01/russian-population-enigma https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/1...

llm_trw 2y ago

The OP is wrong. The USSR had a larger population than the US by around 20% from 1950 to 1990: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000380594.pdf Chances are he's only counting the population of Russia proper, which would be a bit like only counting the US East Coast population.

wwilson 2y ago
My guess is rather that he's conflating the US with US + Western Europe.
- ccppurcell 2y ago
  And then you can make the appropriately similar conflation of USSR with Warsaw pact countries.

girvo 2y ago

To be fair, the US and Western Europe were a somewhat combined bloc wrt. trade and being allies. So in that respect the combined USSRs population is smaller? But purely US v USSR, the latter has always had more people

flohofwoe 2y ago
The SU and Eastern Europe countries were also such a 'combined block' though (both for trade via COMECON and militarily via the TFCMA (aka 'Warsaw Pact'). Although AFAIK Western Europe had a much higher population than the Eastern European socialist countries. But in general, the education and health care systems were usually the 'flag ships' with easy and free access for the 'working class' (which also means extreme discimination against anybody else though).
- cassepipe 2y ago
  I had never heard of a discrimination issue regarding soviet and affiliated healthcare systems. Care to elaborate ?
  - flohofwoe 2y ago
    Not in healthcare but in education. For instance a friend of mine wasn't allowed to study at university because his parents were active in the church, and that was just one reason to land on the blacklist, basically if you weren't a "good socialist citizen" (which basically means: do as you're told and keep your mouth shut) you could kiss goodbye to any sort of career beyond a shitty factory job (this was in East Germany). But yeah, if you arrived at the emergency station with a heart attack they didn't ask for your party membership book before treating you, so that's at least something.
    - cassepipe 2y ago
      Interesting ! Thanks for the explanation