[wraith261]

I would blame Gorbachev's reforms
Gorbachev HAD to reform because the country was in such dire straits. His reforms were too little too late though. Nevertheless if you want to blame the collapse of the Soviet Union on a few years of Gorbachev reforms and not the decades of Socialism that proceeded it then that's your little deflection tactic.

.

[Dave]

Gorbachev's reforms also resulted in the Soviet economy heading into a permanent tailspin. While obviously the Soviet economy wasn't as competitive as a Western economy (the Soviets reached two thirds of US industrial production by the late 1960s and then stopped catching up), it was more than capable of producing for all the needs of the Soviet people (consumer goods) and the Soviet state (defense). The big flaw in the Soviet economy was its inability to produce enough food to feed its people in its late years.

Soviet leadership was unwilling to turn to rationing, so they traded for food, primarily oil. When world oil prices declined (thanks to the North Sea, Prudhoe Bay, Midland boom, and Saudi Arabia kicking open the spigots), the Soviets had to borrow money to pay for food imports. One proposed solution to the food problem was to reverse the flow of Siberian rivers to irrigate tens of millions of acres of new farmland, but this plan was shelved due to the cost of keeping up with the arms race. Had Soviet leadership been willing to steel themselves just a little, the system could have easily been saved. The fact that they did not and instead destroyed the country is something which requires explanation, conventional theories are lacking.

[wraith261]

Dave, there's various notions on why the USSR failed. Your explanation is as valid as any. However for some people to try and blame it on a few years of Gorbachev reforms (as Ingliz did) and not the decades of Socialism that caused the country to desperately need those economic reforms is ridiculous.


.

[Dave]

Decades of socialism causing the country to desperately need economic reforms implies that socialism degraded the USSR from a previously higher economic state to a lower one, when the reverse is true. The USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years (ie after Gorbachev's reforms). This wasn't just growth for the party or the military either, the average Soviet citizen had a continuously increasing standard of living which featured richer diets (more meat and dairy), color televisions, central heat, and even private automobiles. What problems do you think there were in the Soviet economy in 1985 that desperately required reform?

[Ideational Ontarian]

It's really too bad the Soviets weren't successful in Afghanistan.

[wraith261]

The USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years (ie after Gorbachev's reforms).
Do you have a source on that? Why were reforms even needed if everything was so wonderful?

Perhaps the worst part of Brezhnev's legacy was that the Soviet Union continued to slide into poverty after his death because of the inability of the Communist Party leadership to accept reform. Would the USSR have survived if reform of the crumbling system had been attempted earlier? No-one will ever know. But it is not stretching a point to say that the roots of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 can be traced back to the stagnation over which Brezhnev presided.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2438187.stm



What problems do you think there were in the Soviet economy in 1985 that desperately required reform?
It wasn't ME who thought they desperately required reforms it was their own government after enduring many years of the Brezhnev stagnation.

Brezhnev’s unceasing buildup of his defense and aerospace industries left other sectors of the economy increasingly deprived of funds. Soviet agriculture, consumer-goods industries, and health-care services declined throughout the 1970s and early ’80s as a consequence, resulting in shortages and declining standards of living.

Encyclopedia Brittanica http://tinyurl.com/43fado


.

[pikachu]

Do you have a source on that?

CIA reports.

As in the case of Aslund's comments, the disagreement was not over all the dismal things "we knew were going on,'' the divergence was over whether ``those things'' were possible in an economy that was growing at an average of nearly 2 percent a year. The CIA argued that this was possible because GNP merely measured gross output without regard to use, quality, or contribution to welfare; it included, for example, the military production and raw quantities of wasteful output. (US calculations of its own GNP as an indication of the public welfare recently have come in for similar criticism.) Others, such as Meyer, found the numbers ``counterintuitive"-inconsistent with what they saw-and looked for lower numbers they believed were more compatible with the dismal conditions that everyone agreed existed.

[wraith261]

The 2% growth was just an ESTIMATE by the CIA at that time. You didn't read the entire article.

http://tinyurl.com/5x6rdz

One of CIA's more vociferous critics, Anders Aslund, referring to the fact that CIA estimated the USSR's average annual GNP growth during the 1980-85 time frame to be nearly 2 percent, said that,`If the CIA assessments had been reasonably accurate the Soviet economy would be a maturing industrialized economy . . . there would be little need for economic reform; Gorbachev's urgency would be incomprehensible; and most internal criticism in the USSR would be unfounded.'

The differences on this issue `do not appear to be over whether the Soviet economy was in a dismal state, but over which quantitative GNP calculation was an accurate depiction of the situation on the ground.' The Soviet economy portrayed in the CIA products described above, however, hardly qualifies as a ``maturing industrialized economy.'' On the contrary, those products-over many years-consistently described the Soviet economy as, for example, `primitive, grossly unbalanced, and in massive disequilibrium'' with a consumer economy that is `fourth class'

Everything I had been able to learn about the Soviet economy, including visiting the place, told me it couldn't be growing at the rate the CIA said it was. . . It simply couldn't be true. I know what an economy looks like when it's growing three percent a year, and that isn't what it looks like. You cannot have food shortages growing worse, production shortages growing worse, bottlenecks-all those things we knew were going on-and still have an economy growing at the rate the agency said it was-which the U.S. was barely doing at that point. . . .It couldn't be true.


.

[ingliz]

USSR GDP by Year

The figures show continuous growth!

[pikachu]

The 2% growth was just an estimate by the CIA at that time. You didn't read the entire article.

What the fuck? Straighten up your head dude. You asked for a source on Soviet GDP growth, I gave you exactly that. Your own intelligence agency estimated it that way. By the way, every GDP calculation is an estimate. The article contains quotations of CIA critics and CIA response to them, that has nothing to do with me.

CIA confirms and affirms in its analysis that USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years.

Seriously, it pisses me off when someone blatantly tells me that I didn't read the article that I myself had linked to.

[wraith261]

What the fuck? Straighten up your head dude. You asked for a source on Soviet GDP growth, I gave you exactly that.
No you cherrypicked one single line out of an article which overall was making the case of how dire their economy was doing. What, you didn't think I'd read the whole article??

Your own intelligence agency estimated it that way.
And the CIA has been known to be wrong in their estimations. WMDs anyone? And the article that YOU posted was basically making the case that the estimate was wrong.

CIA confirms and affirms in its analysis that USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years
Let's just assume they did have meager economic growth. That isn't even the point anyway. The point is (and I've sourced this three times, including your own provided source) is that there were major problems within the economy; from food shortages, production shortages and a decline in agriculture, industries and health care services. I'll ask again, why do you think they had to reform the economy if everything was so wonderful?


.

[Dave]

The BBC article you presented simply stated that the "Soviet Union continued to slide into poverty." Does this mean the USSR was richer in 1964 than it was in 1982? Was the Russian Empire richer? It is a common platitude to say that socialism caused the continuous decay of the Soviet Union, but that doesn't make any sense. How could they have sustained themselves as a superpower and continuously provided a better standard of living if they were declining, or even stagnating for that matter?

I certainly don't think "everything was so wonderful" in 1985. I think you and I would agree, for instance, that the US economy has, all in all, performed well throughout its history and even in recent times has delivered reasonable economic growth. But yet I'm sure you think not everything in the US economy is "so wonderful" and that reform could be good.

As to the Encyclopedia Britannica article, heavy commitment to defense was certainly a serious problem in the USSR, but do you really think that it was destroying other sectors of the economy? Isn't defense spending itself dependent on the size of the overall economy? The Soviets calculated their military budget in a strange way so it's impossible to know how large it is (suffice to say it was large enough to compete with the USA despite being based off a smaller economy). Likely it did increase in relative terms during Brezhnev's time, because Khruschev explicitly reduced funds in order to produce more consumer goods. However, the average Soviet citizen was much better off in 1982 (when Brezhnev died) than 1964 (when he took office). Richard Nixon, no friend of communism, was greatly impressed at how much the Soviet standard of living had improved from his visit to the Kremlin in 1969 compared to his visit in 1959.

As for figures, I'd be happy to present some. Please excuse these figures coming from socialist-friendly or outright communist sources, but they are sourced from the Soviet archives. Some figures contained are from the CIA at any rate. Most of the figures are from Japan's Hokkaido University (Slavic Research Library).

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/go ... /index.htm

Soviet Economic Growth, 1941-1989

This link details a variety of both Soviet and Western economic growth metrics. Note that growth was sustained and continuous (excepting the war years, understandably).

Food Consumption, 1960-1986

Note the continuously increasing consumption of meat and dairy, which are high value agricultural products that require more resources to produce. Note also how vegetable and fruit consumption kept increasing, both of which required quick times to market and good refrigeration.

http://www.usm.maine.edu/eco/joe/works/Soviet.html
The above link is an academic paper by an American economist around the time that socialism collapsed, answering some of the myths of Soviet agriculture. You may find this interesting.

[ur=http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/economics/statistics/ind-out.htm]Soviet Industrial Output, 1940-1985[/url]

This link shows the Soviet output of many industrial products and commodities. Notice the continuous increase of almost all categories, although in the 1970s the rate of growth noticeably slows (and indeed, by the late 1960s the USSR stopped catching up with the USA). You'll note that consumer goods production also increases. It's interesting to see that even industrial robots were being produced in the USSR.

As for the charge that healthcare got worse, I honestly know little about the subject. I do know that in the 1970s smoking became much more popular in the USSR, and of course Russians have a chronic alcohol problem. By the late 1970s smoking, including smoking by pregnant mothers, became more prevalent in the USSR than almost any other country in the world. I believe life expectancy declined during this time.

To get a simple representation of the increase of prosperity for ordinary Soviet people, look at these figures (Narkhoz):

Meat Consumption per Capita
1965: 38kg
1970: 47.5kg
1975: 56.1kg
1980: 57.6kg
1985: 61.7kg

Refrigerators per 100 Families
1965: 11
1970: 32
1975: 61
1980: 86
1985: 91

TV Sets per 100 Families
1965: 24
1970: 41
1975: 74
1980: 85
1985: 97

Number of Telephones
1965: 6.4 million
1970: 10.1 million
1975: 17.2 million
1980: 23.7 million
1985: 31.1 million

I hope that helps, Wraith. All of this points to an economy with continuously increasing production and a better standard of living for all those partaking in it. I am no socialist and I will defend capitalism to the death, but the conventional narrative on the Soviet economy is seriously flawed. The Soviets became a superpower and sustained a serious challenge to the West for many decades, and they did not do this on the basis of a primitive economy, even if there is no question that our economic system is superior.

[wraith261]

The BBC article you presented simply stated that the "Soviet Union continued to slide into poverty." Does this mean the USSR was richer in 1964 than it was in 1982?

Yes, I imagine it was "richer" in 1964 (whatever that means in a communist system.) What difference does it make, the point is the country was having economic troubles and sliding into poverty; hence the reason why the SOVIET GOVERNMENT decided on reforms.

It is a common platitude to say that socialism caused the continuous decay of the Soviet Union, but that doesn't make any sense.

Really we can't blame a country's ecomomic system for the collapse of that country's economy....interesting.

How could they have sustained themselves as a superpower and continuously provided a better standard of living if they were declining, or even stagnating for that matter?

The USSR was a MILITARY superpower; they were diverting all their funds into their military and the space race. The Soviet Union was NEVER an economic superpower and they weren't providing a better standard of living they were sinking into poverty. There's talk even today that Russia has no business even being in the G8.

As to the Encyclopedia Britannica article, heavy commitment to defense was certainly a serious problem in the USSR, but do you really think that it was destroying other sectors of the economy?

According the BBC the country was sliding into poverty and Encyclopedia Britannica stated that too much money was being diverted to the military. Either one of those sources is FAR better than http://www.marxists.org/ which I'm stunned that you even expect me to take seriously?? Though I'm sure Ingliz and his crew will lap it up.

[Dave]

Yes, I imagine it was "richer" in 1964 (whatever that means in a communist system.) What difference does it make, the point is the country was having economic troubles and sliding into poverty; hence the reason why the SOVIET GOVERNMENT decided on reforms.

Use our capitalist metrics for richer. The Soviets were producing more and the average Soviet was consuming more. Is that not an increase in production and wealth?

There is no question the Soviets were having serious troubles in 1985. Poverty was not one of them. You have been unable to provide any figures showing poverty, whereas I have provided figures of actual production and consumption.

The problems they were facing were an increasing inability to pay for imports (notably grain), which was due to the decline in oil prices and that Soviet industrial products were of lower quality than Western ones and therefore could not be exported. Other problems included consistent supply bottlenecks throughout the entire economy, including at the retail level (hence the famous shortage economy and people standing in line for hours to buy toilet paper).

Really we can't blame a country's ecomomic system for the collapse of that country's economy....interesting.

The data do not show a collapse of the Soviet Union's economy until the very end of the 1980s. Gorbachev disbanded GOSPLAN (the central planning agency) and allowed small businesses to complete with state (oops, people's!) enterprises, causing all coordination to go into chaos. The economy then shrank 25% from 1989 to the end of 1991.

The USSR was a MILITARY superpower; they were diverting all their funds into their military and the space race. The Soviet Union was NEVER an economic superpower and there's talk even today that Russia has no business even being in the G8.

Military superpower requires a certain degree of economic power. It requires certain sophistication to produce sophisticated military systems like nuclear submarines, supersonic bomber aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles, aircraft carriers, etc. Just for the record, the Soviet Union was an economic and industrial giant. While no one doubts that the quality of their goods was inferior, in 1980 the Soviets were responsible for 20% of global industrial production and their industrial production was 66% of the US figure. The CIA was more generous, estimating their economy at 60% of the US economy (this figure is more generous because the Soviet service sector was much smaller).

Talk of kicking today's Russia out of the G8 is entirely political in nature, and you know it.

According the BBC the country was sliding into poverty and Encyclopedia Britannica stated that too much money was being diverted to the military. Either one of those sources is FAR better than http://www.marxists.org/ which I'm stunned that you even expect me to take seriously?? Though I'm sure Ingliz and his crew will lap it up.

Your BBC article and Encyclopedia Britannica article provided no figures. My sources did. Additionally, while I agree that marxists.org appears questionable as hell, the data referenced there come from a reputable Japanese university, the CIA (not in any of the figures I linked, by the way), and the Russian State Economical University. Did you even click on any of the links?

[pikachu]

CIA confirms and affirms in its analysis that USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years

That is the fucking point because that is what you were asking for in that particular sentence which I've replied to.

Jesus christ how difficult can this be, you asked for a source on Soviet economic growth, I gave you just that. Ok thanks bye, go troll someone else.

[ingliz]

Wraith:

Every damn number we post shows continuous sustained growth in GDP, even your own government figures. I can, if you insist, post opinion poll data showing that ordinary Soviet citizens believe Brezhnev's rule was the best of times in the USSR, and far better than the New Russia. Why would they say that if times were so hard? Opinion on the ground backs up the figures - Why not just admit you are wrong.

[Dave]

Also Wraith, if you want to play the attack the messenger (as you did with my sources) rather than the message game, Anders Ã…slund is not exactly a squeaky clean source to criticize the CIA. Ã…slund was one of the architects of the so-called "Shock Therapy" policy in the Russian Federation, which resulted in the economy contracting 80% by 1998 from late Soviet times. Despite this, Ã…slund has repeatedly defended his work and even wrote books talking about how positive his work had been during the depth of the crisis.

[wraith261]

The Soviets were producing more and the average Soviet was consuming more. Is that not an increase in production and wealth?

Yes according to www.marxists.org. Not according to the BBC or Encyclopedia Britannica which said the country was sliding into poverty.

There is no question the Soviets were having serious troubles in 1985.

Then why did you say... "the average Soviet citizen had a continuously increasing standard of living which featured richer diets, color televisions, central heat, and even private automobiles. What problems do you think there were in the Soviet economy in 1985 that desperately required reform?" You were making the case of how wonderful everything was and asking me what reforms were necessary. Now you're suddenly saying they had serious economic troubles in 1985. Which is it?

You have been unable to provide any figures showing poverty, whereas I have provided figures of actual production and consumption.

So you acknowledge that the USSR was having serious economic troubles that caused the government to launch reforms....but you don't believe there was any poverty. I provided three sources that stated the country had serious economic problems and was sliding into poverty. You provided countered it by providing a Marxist web blog.

Military superpower requires a certain degree of economic power.

North Korea's military is the 5th biggest in the world. Are you going to claim that the people in North Korea have a high standard of living?

Just for the record, the Soviet Union was an economic and industrial giant.

The Soviet Union was never an economic giant. They were a military giant and that's it.

Your BBC article and Encyclopedia Britannica article provided no figures. My sources did.

Your source is a laughable Marxist web blog.

Also Wraith, if you want to play the attack the messenger (as you did with my sources) rather than the message game, Anders Ã…slund is not exactly a squeaky clean source

Even if you lose him I still got the BBC and Brittanica and the fact that the Soviet government did push for economic reforms and that their country did economically collapse. None of which supports this science fiction claim that all was well.

CIA confirms and affirms in its analysis that USSR had continuous economic growth until its final years
That is the fucking point

Again your article only was an estimate and most of the article was making the case of how conditions for the average Soviet citizen didn't remotely reflect that.

Jesus christ how difficult can this be, you asked for a source on Soviet economic growth, I gave you just that.

No you took one sentence and ignored the rest of the article. Good tactic and a nice try.

Every damn number we post shows continuous sustained growth in GDP, even your own government figures.

And every source I've shown says the country was sliding into poverty and in dire straits.

I can, if you insist, post opinion poll data showing that ordinary Soviet citizens believe Brezhnev's rule was the best of times in the USSR,

Post the source and when the poll was taken.

Why would they say that if times were so hard? Opinion on the ground backs up the figures - Why not just admit you are wrong.

If I was wrong the country wouldn't have been sliding into poverty and they wouldn't have needed to enact reforms and the country wouldn't have collapsed. An opinion poll won't change those facts no matter how you try to artfully dodge.

[ingliz]

http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/view ... 51#1626451

Posted by me in another thread

[Dave]

Yes according to www.marxists.org.

[...]

You provided countered it by providing a Marxist web blog.

[...]

Your source is a laughable Marxist web blog.

Why do you persist in this? Marxists.org is not a blog, it is a collection of academic material relating to Marxism and socialism. As such, it is a convenient source for amateurs interested in Soviet history who do not have access to research libraries. The figures aggregated there are from Japan's Hokkaido University, Russia's State Economical University, and the CIA. Two internationally recognized universities from advanced nations and the world's premier intelligence agency. What source would you like?

Not according to the BBC or Encyclopedia Britannica which said the country was sliding into poverty.

Neither of which provided any figures showing any poverty.

Then why did you say... "the average Soviet citizen had a continuously increasing standard of living which featured richer diets, color televisions, central heat, and even private automobiles. What problems do you think there were in the Soviet economy in 1985 that desperately required reform?" You were making the case of how wonderful everything was and asking me what reforms were necessary. Now you're suddenly saying they had serious economic troubles in 1985. Which is it?

Do you acknowledge that it is possible to have significant economic problems despite material prosperity? Or that future prosperity could be endangered by underlying economic problems? The USSR was a (relatively) prosperous country with significant underlying economic problems which needed to be addressed if the country was to maintain both a high standard of living and superpower status. I'm not even sure you know what economic problems it had. I've touched upon them, but it seems like you hardly read my posts and blindly fixate on points you hope you can rebut. You and I are primarily ideological allies (at least compared to ingliz) so I'm not sure why you would do this.

So you acknowledge that the USSR was having serious economic troubles that caused the government to launch reforms....but you don't believe there was any poverty. Eh? I provided three sources that stated the country had serious economic problems and was sliding into poverty.

All figures I've seen, including ones I've posted, show that in 1985 the average Soviet citizen had more and better food than ever before and more consumer goods than ever before. Employment in the USSR was guaranteed (people who refused to work were thrown in prison) and social benefits were universal. Poverty did not exist, and living standards had been improving.

However, the Soviets, as I've said earlier, had severe supply bottlenecks through their entire economy. For complex reasons, it was extremely difficult for enterprises to guarantee orderly deliveries of raw materials needed for production. This resulted in hoarding, black marketeering, and poor craftsmanship. The problem was accelerating. The problem also showed up at the retail level, with random shortages of basic consumer goods as well as huge random surpluses. This arose from the complexity of the planning process, ill-advised reforms in earlier decades (attempts to disaggregate planning and introduce accounting profit), and bureaucratic opposition to computerizing the planning process. These were very serious problems.

The other major problem was that the USSR had to import food to feed its urban population. Only 10% of the land in the USSR was arable, and much of that marginal. As the Soviet population continued to grow and living standards continued to increase, it became necessary to import grain from capitalist countries (primarily the USA, but also Canada, Australia, Argentina, etc.). The supply bottlenecks discussed earlier also resulted in grain failing to ever make it to market, tractors or trucks being without parts (so grain couldn't be harvested or delivered from time to time), etc. The Soviets had to export goods in order to import this food. Their good of choice was oil. Increasing oil consumption with in the Soviet bloc and stagnating oil production meant there was less oil to export, and the 1980s were a time of falling oil prices. Eventually the Soviets had to turn to Western commercial banks and borrow money in order to pay for grain imports. Obviously, this was a very serious problem for a superpower.

Another problem in the Soviet Union, and not a new one, was the inability to innovate. The socialist system could not provide the same quality of incentives as a capitalist one, and the Soviets were dependent on buying foreign technology, despite their world-class scientific establishment. The USA led efforts to restrict the export of technology to the Soviets, so the Soviets had to steal technology as much as possible. This was another serious problem (less serious than the others since there is no reason they couldn't simply continue stealing Western technology).

North Korea's military is the 5th biggest in the world. Are you going to claim that the people in North Korea have a high standard of living?

North Korea's military is also furnished with dilapidated and decades old weapons systems. Its military is actually quite impressive--many of its soldiers are in fact malnourished. The Soviets were constantly designing and delivering new advanced weapons systems and maintained the world's largest military in human and material terms.

The Soviet Union was never an economic giant. They were a military giant and that's it.

It is impossible to be a military giant without the economic means to produce large quantities of highly sophisticated military hardware. This requires railways, a national electricity grid, highways, steelmaking, machine tools, chemicals plants, semiconductors, and all the other elements of a modern industrial economy. How do you suppose the Soviets could've produced something like the Tu-160 Blackjack without an advanced underlying economy? And it's not like they had some bizarre industrialized economy which only produced military goods. The same factories which produced military aircraft also produced civilian aircraft, many of which are still carrying passengers and cargo.

Even if you lose him I still got the BBC and Brittanica and the fact that the Soviet government did push for economic reforms and that their country did economically collapse. None of which supports this science fiction claim that all was well.

Again, your BBC and Britannica sources have no figures at all. None. If someone posted an authoritative source saying the USA was sliding into poverty, wouldn't you ask for figures? The data do not show economic collapse until the very end of the USSR, and I have not once stated that all was well in the USSR in 1985.