Ah yes, the brave Stalinists, starving Ukraine to death. The heroes of their time.
So much for that point. But yes the economy did grow pretty well until the late 70s. A good part of that was the recovery from WW2 and the Soviets gaining a lot of resources from countries further west. The other big part was that the Soviets profited from the oil crisis due to the OPEC oil embargo.
As for the 70% referendum to keep the Soviet Union. That was for the New Union Treaty, which would have given the Republics a lot more power, but a common foreign policy and military. Everything else would be handled by the individual republics. The bloody coupe was done by hardline Communists, which wanted to prevent that new treaty.
However the Russian and most former USSR economies really did have a bad time. A lot of companies collapsed and trade barriers were created. It was really a bad time for Russia.
who woulda thunk imperialism is profitable
(also all nations had this surge between the 70s-80s, not just the Soviets)
And ‘fastest growing’ always seems to mean ‘up from abject poverty, to roughly modern expectations.’ A massive improvement! But they didn’t rocket past everyone else. Only their first derivative was exceptional.
And outside of monolithic projects like literal rockets, the real seize-the-future stuff was held back by bureaucracy and racist bickering. Early Soviet computers were a matter of which nations were allowed to design and construct them. Competition? Exploration? Nyet, entire industry will be decided by office politics. When they later got their hands on West German microchips, machines like the CM1910 tried to use all of them at once.
The real innovation was in cottage-industry efforts, like jumped-up Sinclair clones and samizdat home publishing, where individuals had the means to produce things. Which I assume the Soviet state wholly supported and encouraged.
“Former USSR”, lying imperialist bastards.
It’s so bizarre that tankies are against Ukrainian sovereignty. Even stranger that they’re supportive of the Russian oligarchy
Not really. The oligarchs have direct ties. As in a direct line back to Stalin through the system. The same thing is happening in China right now as well.
What would be bizarre would be for Leninists and tankies to express a wholly consistent viewpoint. Tankies are okay with anything as long as it’s their flavor of it. In that circumstance, they will celebrate atrocities as bad or worse than anything that the West has done.
that sounds hella interesting. can you go into more detail about those direct lines?
When the Soviet Union fell, these oligarchs didn’t arise from nothing organically. How do you divide up all the assets technically owned by the people. That were really owned by the party when the party is disbanding? The answer, unsurprisingly, is to give the assets to yourself.
They were no longer the party establishment who had failed the people and led them into stagnation. These were exciting new capitalist. Who would lead Russia into their shiny new capitalist future. Certainly not leading them into a quagmire grinding up young Russian men. Trying to reclaim past Soviet glory. (Literally what they’re trying to do in Ukraine.) The power never changed hands. Just names slightly.
Literally one of the better, more accurate description of modern tankies. Are eastern liberals living in the west. Doing for free what actual Russians would only do to get paid.
Heh, it also had been an exceptionally slow developing system for a couple of centuries.
And when it almost catches the others, that’s days of jubilation. Heh :)
Which “most devastating invasion” are they even speaking about? WW2 showed no significant growth of china’s economy.
The nazi invasion of Russia killed millions of men; whether that’s the most devastating I don’t know, but I believe Russia had the largest casualties in the war.
At least that’s what I think they’re talking about idk.
Ah yes the comment was about the USSR, the picture was about China, that’s why I got confused. Though that now props the question whether they deliberately ignored the fact that the territory of the USSR grew past its 1930s borders in the aftermath of the war or not.
Also the “entire might of capitalism”? The USSR might have been fighting the entire might of fascism but got quite substantial help from a large part of the capitalist might
No kidding on the help from capitalism. It’s some ridiculously large number that the USA poured in to keep them fighting.
