I don’t point this out in defense of any country or government over the other, but because I feel like this is a very important piece of history that has been intentionally or unintentionally buried/ignored even though it’s extremely relevant to current events in 2025. (As an aside, in the big debate between Capitalism vs. Communism, I choose neither. I think it’s kind of brain washy/cultish to try and make people believe they have to “pick a team,” or that either system was without plenty of flaws that could be/were/are exploited by corrupt individuals within the U.S.S.R./modern day Russia and the U.S.A.)
In the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the original co-founders of the Heritage Foundation frequently travelled back and forth between the United States to Moscow and Eastern Europe.
Paul Weyrich, the American conservative who essentially birthed Project 2025 and is famously quoted as saying “I don’t want everyone to vote,” founded the Free Congress Foundation (FCF) after creating the Heritage Foundation in the 70s. During the 80s, Weyrich began sneaking computers and other electronics to Soviet dissidents while traveling all over the country and teaching soviet politicians all about American “democracy.”
When the Union collapsed, he and several other members of Heritage were ready to fill the power vacuum and helped establish the first go between for U.S. and Russian capitalist businesses.
“You capture the Soviet Union --I’m going to capture the states.”-Thomas Roe, Heritage Foundation board member and founder of the State Policy Network to fellow Heritage Foundation board member Robert Krieble.
In 1989, the Krieble Institute was created “to promote democracy and economic freedom in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.”
1989: A Republican in Moscow (WaPo article about Weyrich holding mock elections)
PBS Documentary about Weyrich and Krieble involvement in Collapse of USSR Playing For Power (2012)
Has a single country that had the choice ever opted to stay with Russia? Genuine question.
transinistria and belarus sorta.
Hasn’t this also been the reason behind fighting in Georgia?
None of the elections Russia has hosted in breakaway states were anything close to an open election, the result was decided before the election day was set.
Also Mongolia (sort of, the leadership wanted annexation iirc)
The preservation of the soviet union was boycotted by some but not all of the soviet republics and those that did vote voted to stay.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 66% of Armenians thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful
In a 2016 survey, 69% of Azerbaijanis believed life was better under the USSR.
In a 2016 survey, it increased to 53% of Belarusians saying life was better under the USSR
Another Pew survey, also in 2017, showed that 43% of Georgians thought the dissolution was a good thing, compared to 42% who thought it was a bad thing.
In a 2016 survey, around 60% of Kazakhs above the age of 35 believed life was better under the USSR.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 61% of Kyrgyz thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 16% who thought it was beneficial.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 42% of Moldovans thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 26% who thought it was beneficial.[7] Regret about dissolution later increased to 70% according to a 2017 Pew survey, with only 18% saying the dissolution was a good thing.
Levada polling since the mid-1990s on the preferred political and economic system of Russians also shows nostalgia for the Soviet Union, with the most recent polling in 2021 showing 49% preferring the Soviet political system, compared to 18% preferring the current system, and 16% preferring Western democracy, as well as 62% saying they preferred a system of economic planning compared to 24% preferring a market capitalist economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union
Further, let’s look at the actual referendum:
Do you consider it necessary to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?
Yes - 77.8%
About the referendum: wow, POS politicians.
So anyone from cali wanna defect the entire state from the US? Maybe we can convince Puerto Rico to come with us?
“Freedom”
Becomes wage slavecongrats
Funny how 76 percent voting to keep the soviet union in tact wasn’t enough to stop Yeltsin from dissolving it. Its almost like it was purely performative and the will of the people didn’t actually matter. Almost like Yeltsin was compromised by capitalism.
This is wrong in so many levels.
First of all the vote wasn’t for the whole Union because there were countries that outright rejected the idea of the union and never voted in the first place. 76% is only of the number people who voted actually voted, that’s not indicative of the whole union.
And secondly the vote was for a reformed Union, not a continuation of the existing union. If the course of events had continued in the reformation of the union the union we know in the history books still would’ve ceased to exist.
And finally, with this not being a fact but generally accepted in the academia, people voted for stability not for the union. When it became apparent there won’t be any stability people decided to fend for themselves. By the time Yeltsin dissolved the union it was already on its death bed.
It’s also why none of the countries stayed socialist, because soviet socialism was a failure and instead of taking the time to figure out what a functional socialism would look like countries went with what seemingly worked, capitalism. Stability was more important than staying socialist, especially when the only empirical evidence of socialism was ultimately a failure.
calling soviet socialism failure is crazy. You know that it made semi feudal russia and other soviet countries and turned them into global superpower? More women rights, no homelessness, food on everyones table (except famines in early years), free education, free healthcare, rapid industrialization and much more.
Truth is, soviet union broke due to 3 decades of revisionism they went into after death of stalin and the uncontrolled bureaucracy. Soviet socialism was a big success and improved lives of people massively.
Almost all former soviet countries are worse off in multiple indicators today than they were in soviet.
Wasn’t Chernobyl the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed and wasn’t Chernobyl due to mismanagement because of wrong incentives (they had to achieve certain runtime numbers so they performed a critical test at night) one could argue were because of the Soviet socialism system?
The book Socialism Betrayed is an excellent book if you want to understand the reasons for the collapse of the USSR (Chernobyl was not a major factor, but I wouldn’t say it had zero impact). Or, if you would prefer to read a book not written by Marxists, Revolution From Above would fit that and IIRC the authors of the later largely come to the same conclusions as the former.
Much like the collapse of the Roman Empire, it’s a very complex topic that isn’t easily boiled down into simple answers.
Nope, chernobyl was a disaster but I wont call it being the reason of collapse of SU. It may have been a catalyst for sure but SU was already struggling with slow growth in its last 2-3 decades. This myth was propagated by gorbachev who was an incompetent AH.
Slower growth was a problem from circa 1975 to 1985. By the mid-80s, the Soviet economy had problems but none of them were catastrophic (and tbf, consider how various capitalist economies right now have very serious issues but those economies are not collapsing). That was the view of Western intelligence agencies in the mid 80s btw - that there were problems but that everything was more or less fine.
A former unnamed CIA director once told historian Eric Hobsbawm that had Andropov lived another 15 years, the USSR would still be around today. I do think as late as the Andropov era, the leadership in the USSR had a good understanding of their problems and were starting to put the country on a better path. Then Andropov died and a lot of the changes made by Gorbachev and the leaders around him really threw a bunch of spanners into the works.
If communism is so great why did east germany and north korea need to build giant walls to prevent people from leaving?
I don’t know much about East Germany, but people do leave North Korea. There’s like 100,000 North Koreans abroad at any given time. It’s UN sanctions that prevent countries from employing North Koreans so they usually only wind up in China or Russia.
The “wall” shit is the demilitarised zone which is the space between two countries technically still at war.
If communism is so bad and crumbles on its own, why did USA went on cold war with a country far more war torn and backward than them? why USA always tried to overthrow communist govt? why USA assasinated allende (who was a democratically elected marxist leader) and established pinochet (who was a authoritarian fascist dictator) in chile? why did USA embargo Cuba? Why did France assassinate thomas sankara? Why did USA bomb vietnam? If communism is so bad, just let it crumble on its own? But no worlds biggest powers will try everything they can to break revolution, ofcourse they will succeed but our time will come. Dw
I am no expert but isn’t it enough that the Sowiet Union was the next biggest superpower and they were in war mostly because they were afraid of each other and/or each one wanted to be the only superpower regardless of the economic system?
And even if it was about the economic system. One system can be much better than the other without the worse one automatically crumble on its own. Also both systems work best when they are the only system everyone is participating in.
What? It was absolutely about the economic system. Churchill and the Dulles brothers and like every important political figure in the west didn’t just dislike Russia as a superpower, they outright stated at every point that it was the economic ideology of communism they hated. Why in the world would they do things like invading Vietnam (who wanted to work with the US and considered them allies) or funding terrorism in Indonesia while they were ACTIVELY allied? They were very open about this. Where are you getting the basis of your opinions from exactly?
The United states, and most of Western europe, were fucking with the Soviet Union long before it became a superpower. Technically they were fucking with it before they even became the Soviet Union. During the Civil War while the whites and the reds were still fighting the United States and other countries were putting their fingers on the scales trying to help the whites.
Also both systems work best when they are the only system everyone is participating in.
Not true. Capitalism without a mix of socialism is complete disaster.
Social safety nets under capitalism isn’t socialist. That’s just capitalists throwing a few crumbs to people so they don’t revolt.
Truth is only capitalism had a chance to prove its worth without real external threats, and failed miserably.
Edit: I meant it failed for the people. It actually did wonders for the ones who imposed it.
Because they were satellite states of Russia. In the same vein, the capitalist satellite states (much of Africa, the Arab world, and South Asia) faired FAR worse injustices under capitalism.
No no you have it backwards. The wall was to stop the capitalists getting in.
In Soviet Russia, wall builds you.
If the will of the people didn’t matter, was it ever communism?
The vote for the dissolution of the USSR that voted not to dissolve but they dissolved it anyway? No, that part of the history of the soviet union was not communism. Nobody here is arguing that it was.
At what point did the will of the people shift from mattering to not mattering?
I’m not interested in entering into bad faith discussions with you.
I don’t understand the bad faith part. Obviously the Soviet Union decided at some point to ignore the will of the people, when did that start?
My original comment was talking specifically about that vote and what happened with Yeltsin SPECIFICALLY as being the instance where they were ignoring the will people. I’m not entirely sure how you can in good faith try and misconstrue that into a situation where I need to tell you when the point the soviet union stopped listening to the people therein, when its also a really complex situation that requires a century’s worth of explanation.
Acktschually, that was the CIA’s fault … !!
