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To me the shocking thing about the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (both at the time and in hindsight) was that it was nearly bloodless, with events in Yugoslavia
by idlewords 2y ago
To me the shocking thing about the collapse of the Eastern Bloc (both at the time and in hindsight) was that it was nearly bloodless, with events in Yugoslavia and Romania showing what easily might have been the outcome everywhere. Once it became clear that Gorbachev would not send tanks to reinforce fraternal bonds with the various people's republics, the wheels came off rapidly. But it would be hard to overstate the level of surprise in the region, where memories of 1956 (the invasion of Hungary), 1968 (Czechoslovakia), and 1981 (Poland [1]) were very much top of mind. It was simply expected that attempting to break with Moscow would result in a military crackdown.
I think subsequent events have proven that Soviet Russia had the capacity to retain at least some of its empire by force, especially if they coupled that with a de facto return to a market economy, the course that worked so well in China. But to his credit Gorbachev decided not to send in troops, and the coup that resulted was too ineptly planned to stick. Gorbachev was a complicated man, certainly no saint, but the decision to let the Soviet empire go merits him a statue or two.
[1] The Solidarity movement in Poland in 1981 was suppressed by the Polish army without foreign involvement, but the military junta all but said that the alternative was a Soviet invasion. Whether or not this is true is actively debated in Polish historiography, but was universally believed at the time.
- chii 2y ago> but the decision to let the Soviet empire go merits him a statue or two. not to people like putin, who claim that the dissolution is the greatest mistake in russian empire's history.
- mike_hearn 2y agoNot exactly his position. He's repeated an aphorism that says: "Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains" https://aforisimo.ru/30185.html https://aforisimo.ru/30185.html Unwinding a communist system is incredibly difficult and always yields a collapse in living standards, although temporary. Less extreme forms of it are often called "shock therapy" for this reason, but Russia's transition was handled especially badly and was especially extreme as the dissolution of the USSR wasn't a planned event. If you look at opinion polls, a significant fraction of the Russian population does wish for a return to the Soviet system. You will also find some nostalgia in the former DDR. This isn't because they thought it was a perfect or good system, but the memory of the collapse and return to market competition is painful, and of course some of them are naturally left leaning anyway and liked a world where there was no competitive pressures.
- tim333 2y agoThe empire and communism are two different things. Putin seems keen on restoring the Russian empire but not on communism.
- chii 2y agoYep, because communism is just an excuse to obtain authoritarianism (and get a dictatorship). He's already got that.
- foobarian 2y agoYugoslav nostalgia is very popular as well, so much it has a name: yugonostalgia. The movie Underground[1] by acclaimed director Emir Kusturica is a fabulous study of this phenomenon and a fantastic movie on its own. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114787/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114787/
- DrScientist 2y agoIndeed it's always amusing that whenever the Western media talks about Russian political opposition to Putin they almost never mention the Communist party despite it's consistently strong polling. Back to Putin - I see him as harking back to pre-communist Russian empire days, rather than the Soviet Union per se. So he is in the same camp as people in the UK who are nostalgic about the British empire.
- The_Colonel 2y ago> especially if they coupled that with a de facto return to a market economy, the course that worked so well in China I think it would be much harder to do in the Soviet Union - it was much more ideologically committed to communism than China, such a pivot would probably not happen without major political turbulence.
- idlewords 2y agoI don't think this is true; it would be hard to compare China with the USSR in 1979 and come away with the impression that the latter was the more ideologically committed country. The PRC at the time was only three years out of the Cultural Revolution and Deng had to tread very carefully to avoid being ousted by powerful left factions in the party that had no counterpart in the Brezhnev-era Soviet Union.
- velik_m 2y agoIt was not bloodless and Gorbachev did send tanks and army into breakaway republics [1][2][3], the soviet union was simply too weak to do anything to stop the movements to break away from Russia. Russia even lost the war with Chechnya in early 90s, which shows just how weak they were. It wasn't until the west helped rebuild Russian economy (mostly based on fossil fuels) that they were able to revive their imperialistic ways under Putin. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events#January_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events#January_13 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barricades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barricades