this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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It was complicated. Kruschev, and later Gorbachev's reforms really weakened the Socialist system because they didn't properly retain strong control of the larger firms and heavy industry (a lesson the CPC took to heart), however the CIA and really the US absolutely worked tirelessly to weaken it. The Soviets also had to spend a much larger portion of their production on the millitary in order to keep parity with the US, meaning that development rates began to slow.
The US played a part, I outright stated that it was a complicated situation made more complicated by having the world's largest Empire, the US, permanently hostile and putting nukes on their doorstep.
The reforms didn't just allow for "political dissent," they worked against the Socialist system, that was based on central planning. Rather than running in a more efficient manner, it ran against itself.
Further, nobody says the Soviet Union was a "worker's paradise." It had tremendous strides for workers, but it wasn't perfect by any means.
The Soviet Union wasn't a dictatorship. Read Soviet Democracy. It lasted as long as it did because it had tremendous GDP growth while lowering wealth disparity, free and high quality education and healthcare, doubled health expectancies, full employment, and over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%.
Read Blackshirts and Reds.
Stalin:
Exactly, and this didn't last for 14 years, but nearly the entire 20th century, and is succeeded by other AES countries like the PRC.
Not at all, plus they are succeeded, like I said, by other AES states like the PRC.
The PRC is Socialist, and is continuing the application of Marxism-Leninism as they overtake everyone else. As for the Soviet Union, it lasted long enough to prove Socialism works, ans managed to assist with national liberation movements worldwide.
In a way, yes, the US Empire is the current world hegemon, but it really succeeds the UK. Either way, the length of a system doesn't determine its effectiveness, moreover the PRC is showing no signs of collapse.
Bit of a non-sequitor, I could bring up Kent State and use that to say the US isn't a democracy. The US has a far worse track record than the Soviets.
Numerous mass killings and/or genocides in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, East Timor, Cambodia, and much, much more.
Can't really call a civil war against Tsarists and fascists "killing their own civilians." Moreover, the US bombed Cambodia more than any other country on the planet. Pol Pot wasn't a Communist, but he was stopped by the Vietnamese Communists.
No, that isn't what dissent is, it was a fundamental liberalization of the economy that favored private property over public.
Secondly, they absolutely chose their leaders.
Finally, you say life expectancy, literacy rates, and worker rights "don't matter?" That strong, sustained economic growth doesn't matter? You must be trolling.
As for distrusting the sources, you can look into them yourselves, they are well-respected.
Glasnost allowed for liberalism to expand as an ideology, sure, alongside other reforms that weakened the economy and erased its foundations. You can't cherry-pick the reforms to make it seem like the system worked poorly and only was dissolved because the "people had a choice." In fact, most post-Soviet citizens regret the fall of Socialism and prefer it over Capitalism.
Read Soviet Democracy.
We were debating a great many things, one of which being the economy and the well-being of the people, because that helps explain why it was democratic.
Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is quite literally used as a reference on the Wikipedia article for Soviet Democracy. You are incapable of being honest or looking at facts that disprove you because you care more about appearing morally righteous than being correct.
Liberals usually weren't shot even pre-Glasnost unless they were terrorist cells, like the White Army or Nazi sympathizers.
The reforms did weaken the economy. This is factual. The Soviet Union was one of the fastest growing and most impressive economies of the 20th century, this slowed with reforms.
Read Robert Conquest? Seriously? The crank that made wild estimates before the opening of the Soviet Archives disproved him, whose coworkers denounced their own work with him on the Black Book of Communism, which included Nazis killed by the Soviets in the "death toll of Communism?* That's your trump card, a long-debunked anticommunist myth from the Red Scare no historian, even anticommunist historians, supports these days? The Black Book has long been debunked as false.
It didn't declare Pat Sloan the only source of truth, but included it as a respected resource. It isn't only Communists that reference Pat Sloans works, but liberals as well.
Considering you unironically recommend propagandist Robert Conquest as a source that even liberals disagree with, you're only proving me right.
You have no data, lmao. You just make assertions.
The people of the USSR voted to dissolve it after liberal reforms had slowed the economy, and political instability in the government had eroded faith in the system. Most people regret that choice and wish it retained.
Here's yet another debunk of the Black Book. Every time you repeat this conspiracy theory nonsense that was debunked without a shadow of a doubt after the anticommunists opened the Soviet Archives and revealed the real figures that were far below the numbers Conquest pulled out of his ass, you prove me correct.
Seriously, you have nothing other than a propagandist and you double down.
Glasnost occured for a reason, yes. It also hurt the economy. Democracy doesn't mean "everything is perfect, actually, and what people vote for is perfect too."
Widespread and consistent polling data showing that most people believed Socialism was a better system than Capitalism proves quite a lot.
The famine in the 1930s was real, the racial motivations were likely not. Calling me "scum" for calling out your acceptance of debunked propagandists like Robert Conquest when you can't actually contest the facts doesn't make you correct.
You are being presented with sources for the claims disproving you, but your anticommunism is clearly more important to you than engaging with actual rvidence.
No investigation, no right to speak.
Healthcare? Doesn't matter.
Education? Literacy? Reading is how the communist get you, remain illiterate.
Full employment? You don't need to feed your family.
Life expectancy? Why prolong the suffering?
Declassified CIA report:
A lot of the cold war propaganda about the USSR turned out to be bullshit, now that US & Soviet archives have been released, as contemporary Western academic historians will tell you, like Domenico Losurdo and Grover Furr.
The Soviet Union was, if not a traditional dictatorship, absolutely a totalitarian autocracy. Stalin was a brutal dictator and his successors were chosen by the communist party. Elections in the USSR were for show.
Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people. The USSR's implementation of communism was so bad, it's become cliche.
"Life was miserable almost from the start of the Bolshevik revolution for most people", said the romanovs.
So bad that after the fall of the Soviet Union, its former republics all had an immediate, sustained downturn in their quality of life, and a corresponding uptick in mortality.
Allow me to repeat myself:
Yep. Democracy doesn't mean "choose between parties," it's about the actual impact you can have on policy. More people in China feel that they have a voice in politics than people in the US, despite the US having 2 parties.
Choosing between parties is arguably less democratic because in many countries with such a system, like the USA, you basically just have corporations/corporate media choosing the candidates, so your "choice" is between corporate candidates, so corporations always win. There is no option to reject the nominee entirely, while in China's system you can reject the nominee. you can just straight up veto candidates.
Westerners often also look at the very end of the process and ignore everything leading up to it. They will say "there's only one candidate on the ballot!" as proof it's undemocratic (even though this happens all the time in the US too...). But this ignores the entire democratic process leading up to how the candidate gets on the ballot in the first place. In Cuba for example, candidates getting on the ballot is a two-year long process resulting from local elections and meetings with mass organizations, but they ignore this entire process and just focus on the final election at the very end.
100% agreed, excellent comment.
You can feel free to read the sources I listed, rather than posting unsourced anecdotes as "gotchas." Further, the ability of the party to purge Nazis ended up being important.
People like you should be forced to live under conditions like Tsarist Russia.