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.
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.