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"Of course, the Soviet economy is not widely held up as a model of success." I agree with you. The country went from a civil war and foreign invasion (includi
by CleanedStar 14y ago
"Of course, the Soviet economy is not widely held up as a model of success."
I agree with you. The country went from a civil war and foreign invasion (including by the US, something I'm sure 99% of Americans don't even know) and then 25 years later were invaded by an alliance of Germany, Finland, Italy, Hungary and other countries. Followed by a Cold War against a nuclear armed opponent and its western European allies.
Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Massive steel factories were erected in places such as Magnitogorsk, and factories building tractors to send to industrialize agriculture. The US said Russia stole all technology from the US - until Russia launched Sputnik. You can't blame the adversary for stealing IP when they're doing things you can't do.
China also was a rural backwater, dominated by Europeans and Japanese until the 20th century. Under the leadership of the politburo of the communist party, its economy has been growing 10% a year since the early 1980s. People say that is unsustainable, but they've been saying that since the late 1980s. I'm sure their growth will slow down eventually, but they're already the second largest economy in the world by GDP. Of course, the politburo is not as left wing as it was during the height of the Cultural Revolution.
The USSR economy did stagnate when Stalin died, and people like Molotov were sidelined. Capital spending decreased, policies like detente were enacted, and the economy stagnated. The economy did very well before this change in policy though. American and European workers and firms went to the USSR in the 1920s because there was work and contracts in their growing economy, while the US economy went off the hinges. Kind of like the current US unemployment rate which is higher than anything since the mid-1980s.
- nine_k 14y agoA former Soviet citizen here. > Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Oh yes. The US and Europe credited the Soviet Union well, and the Soviet Union paid in gold. At the same time, Soviet authorities robbed its own people, partly by putting hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps, partly by just taking away their possessions. The great hunger of 1935, with massive human casualties, has happened because grain was expropriated from peasants to be sold for gold, and the gold was spent to build massive steel factories and weaponry plants, using American and German expertise. With regard to shooting people dead, USSR was not shy of action at all. Massive death sentences in 1935-1939 witch hunt campaign plus cruel oppression of several riots against expropriations and hunger account for hundreds of thousands of deaths. (If you can't look this up in Wikipedia yourself, I'll gladly help you.) Trust me, this is not a model of growth you'd enjoy. Regarding gamification — yes, that was one of brighter ideas. Too bad that real competition was often replaced by a fake that made bosses happy, using massive falsification of results. You want a competition between producers? Have you tried the so-called 'market'?
- oddx 14y agoMay be it was no best model, but about "hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps"- it was about 1 million people in GULAG before second world war (0.59% of 170 millions population). For modern USA incarceration rate is 0.74%. Are you sure it's better model? > You want a competition between producers? Have you tried the so-called 'market'? Market is nice when you have many producers. But as soon as company became 'too big to fail' competition disappearing.
- nine_k 14y agoI'm definitely unhappy with the US incarceration levels. I still think that cutting wood or digging ore in Siberia (see e.g. the weather in the fine city of Norilsk) is noticeably more cruel than serving time in a US prison. A quick googling allows me to assume that forced labor as a punishment has not been used in the US since 1940s, except for rare cases in the military. I very much hope the the US government, however crooked it might be, is not considering high incarceration level as an engine of economic growth.
- oddx 14y agoYes, United States stopped using penal labor at twentieth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labour#United_States). Soviet Union at fifties. I think 30 years lag is not soo bad considering level of social-economic development of USSR and USA.
- moxie 14y agoPenal labor is extremely prevalent in the US, and if anything, is growing (over 1 million US prisoners today are engaged in penal labor). It might not be "punative" penal labor, which takes it out of the category of "forced labor." But US prisoners do labor in private prisons for private companies, with the sole remuneration of reducing time from their sentences.
- pyre 14y agoI think that a couple of states in the US southeast still make use of chain gangs and labor.
- alive-or-not 14y agoInteresting points. My (limited) understanding is that Sputnik was launched by a rocket designed in Nazi Germany and copied with minimal modifications. I'd say the outsourcing craze we see in the recent years is very similar to the transfer of factories and technologies to USSR and Germany in the period 1929-1939.
- huhtenberg 14y agoYep, your understanding of Soviet space history is pretty limited. That part you got right.
- alive-or-not 14y agoCare to correct me than? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_%28missile%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_%28missile%29 R-1 was the Russian name for the German V-2, Sputnik was launched by R-7.
- jiggy2011 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1
- oddx 14y agoV-2 is progenitor of all modern rockets, but it's difficult to call it "minimal modifications": compare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fus%C3%A9e_V2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fus%C3%A9e_V2.jpg ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:V-2_rocket_diagram_%28with_English_labels%29.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:V-2_rocket_diagram_%28with... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R-7_%287A%29_misil.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:R-7_%287A%29_misil.svg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sputnik_8K71PS_grey.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sputnik_8K71PS_grey.svg
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- omonra 14y agoLies. Don't see the point to argue, just couldn't let someone lie through their teeth without calling them on it. But if anybody wants to understand that Stalin's USSR was pretty much a mirror image of Nazi Germany (they were evil to same degree - Stalin actually pulled genocide on Ukrainians before Hitler did it to the Jews), please make sure to read this book: http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stalin/dp/0465031471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362273929&sr=8-1&keywords=bloodlands+stalin http://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Europe-Between-Hitler-Stali...