Could the USSR work well enought on its orthodox form to be a pleasant place in modern day?

The USSR was already economically done for after WW2.
These type of statements are the reason this discussion shouldn't belong on this forum. People are just using this thread to type "communism bad" in various different phrases, ignoring the history of the USSR and it's very real economic growth.

I mean, if you think that the USSR didn't grow between 1917 and 1991 (as someone said in here) you really just deny reality. We can discuss how the USSR can be saved, we can discuss how it collapses earlier or doesn't even become reality. But telelogy is really tiresome.
 
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In 1989 the Soviet Union's GDP amounted to 2.5 Trillion US Dollars. GDP per Capita amounted to 8.700 US Dollars.

In 2013 the countries of the former Soviet Union had a combined GDP of 2.75 Trillion US Dollars. GDP per Capita amounted to 9.503 US Dollars.

Between 1980 and 1985 the USSR's annual average GDP growth amounted to 2.0%. The failure to embrace a model of intensive economic growth, high military spending, bad harvests, declining oil prices, and the war in Afghanistan can be blamed for the relatively low rate of growth during the early 1980s, as compared to the 1970s. It can be presumed that the rate of growth would've increased once again during the 1990s, following the innevitable end of the arms race, better harvests, higher oil prices and the eventual ending of the war in Afghanistan.

However, for the sake of argument, let's say that the annual average GDP growth of 2.0% continues untill 2013. Let's assume that the annual average population growth rates of the early 1980s remain stable aswell (0.8%). The total population im 1985 amounted to 277.8 Million). By 2013, the Soviet Union's GDP would have increased by 56%, compared to 1985 (it amounted to 2.2 Trillion US Dollars during that year). If we stick with these estimates, the hypothetical GDP of the USSR in 2013 would have amounted to 3.4 Trillion US Dollars. The hypothetical population in 2013 would have amounted to 340.0 Million. The USSR's hypothetical GDP per Capita would have amounted to exactly 10.000 US Dollars (3.4 Trillion ÷ 340 Million = 10.000).

To conclude:

In 2013 in OTL, the total population of the FSU amounted to 289.37 Million. GDP per Capita amounted to 8.700 US Dollars.

In 2013 (using this quite pessimistic model), the population of the USSR would have amounted to 340 Million. GDP per Capita would have amounted to 10.000 US Dollars.

Therefore, IMO it can be concluded that living standarts would've been significantly higher in such a scenario, especially if we consider a less pessimistic developement than I used in the model above.

As for your claim that any socialist country will allways have a high military spending, well, that's absolute nonsense. The historical socialist countries had high military spendings because they were literally under threath at any point of their existence.

Again, I'm not arguing that Russia and the ex-Soviet Republics haven't had a very rough time, just against the idea that the USSR hanging on would in any way make the situation better. However, your statistics for the USSR are way too high. You're using the estimates from the CIA world Facebook 1991 (or at least ones that very closely match it). As @ObssesedNuker says, those are way, way too high. A delegation of Soviet economists to the U.S. in 1990 said that the real value of their economy was about 14-28% of the U.S. economy at the time, which would be somewhere in between 700B and 1.4T dollars. It's been established that productivity growth in the 80s was actually negative, and when you consider the decline of oil prices, lack of productivity growth, and their habitual overstatement of figures, their real growth was almost certainly basically zero or negative.

Higher oil prices? In the 1990s? Do you know what the global commodities market was like for that entire decade? This is the inflation adjusted price of oil the last 70 years or so:

Inflation-Adjusted-Crude-Oil-Price-Feb-2020b.png


The OTL oil prices broke the Soviet economy on the wheel, and they ended up at less than half of where they were in the 1980s until 1999. The systemic factors that caused the price slump would not be going away IATL. This absolutely destroyed the economies of the former USSR IOTL, without IMF/U.S./European/World Bank aid and the horribly inefficient Soviet economy I can't even imagine how bad it would have been. They were in for the exact same experience Russia actually had times about 100. The famines would have rivaled the 1930s.

Uh-huh. Who exactly was threatening to invade the USSR after WWII, or to do it to North Korea in the 50s (the U.S. literally refused to sell any tanks or anti-tank guns to the ROK Army to show we had no aggressive intentions and they repaid us by invading), or to do it to China after they had nukes, or...? None of the big Communist states had any cause to fear invasion after they got WMDs.

Communism, at least as the basis of a ruling government, is an EXTREMELY violent ideology. Always has been. The massive militaries that the likes of the USSR put all their resources into developing were offensive weapons, not defensive ones. The lack of any major defensive fortifications in East Germany, or in North Korea today, prove that. They damn well knew that the only invading force that was ever going to cross the Inner-German Border in any scenario would be going east to west, not west to east.
 
Something you still haven't proved, merely claimed.
By definition they are guesswork. Something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. There is no way of knowing that outside of knowing by magic what price it would have been to clear the market. If you don't know that you don't know what it is worth. Since the price was set by the state in regardless of market conditions you had prices that were too low(mostly) or too high and thus nonsensical.

What you had in the USSR was highly repressed inflation due to massive shortages. Once prices were being set to market clearing prices they soared(when priced in rubles). This meant that rubles that people had in their bank accounts weren't really worth as much as they thought. It does you no good for the official price of ham being 10 cents a pound if there is little or no ham actually being sold at that price. This means when priced in dollars they dropped in price because the ruble was actually worth so little.
 
I could see it surviving with its orthodox ways if it doubled down on its authoritarianism, but becoming a pleasant place? Nah, the centrally planned economy, excessive focus on heavy industry, lack of accountability and inevitable ecological disasters (the draining of the Aral Sea, for example) would prevent that.​
 
By definition they are guesswork.
No. Not until you prove conclusively that economic feedback can only be obtained through pure price values, something which economists have explicitly acknowledged is not the case. That not only means it is not guesswork, but also makes your entire appeal to it a massive red-herring. Until you understand that, this conversation will continue to go nowhere and your claims will continue to be about as evidence free as young earth creationism.

Again, I'm not arguing that Russia and the ex-Soviet Republics haven't had a very rough time, just against the idea that the USSR hanging on would in any way make the situation better. However, your statistics for the USSR are way too high. You're using the estimates from the CIA world Facebook 1991 (or at least ones that very closely match it). As @ObssesedNuker says, those are way, way too high. A delegation of Soviet economists to the U.S. in 1990 said that the real value of their economy was about 14-28% of the U.S. economy at the time, which would be somewhere in between 700B and 1.4T dollars. It's been established that productivity growth in the 80s was actually negative, and when you consider the decline of oil prices, lack of productivity growth, and their habitual overstatement of figures, their real growth was almost certainly basically zero or negative.

It's worth noting that even with their own overestimates, the CIA was able to accurately identify a lot of the issues afflicting the Soviet economy from roughly the late-60s onward and by the 1980s they had come to the conclusion that something would have to give. The biggest overestimates (along with the more overblown fears of the USSR economy overtaking the American one) really date from the late-50s, when the Soviet economy managed to make it's biggest growth strides and those strides managed to hide it's defects.
 
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I think some people seem to misunderstand some basic elements of Marxist theory, and the USSR's - extremely flawed - economic system. If we're talking orthodox as in an actually functioning marxist system, then it's basically up in the air if the USSR would be a good place to live, but the USSR as it existed was a dysfunctional mess that compromised extremely often on its own ideals, trying to be pragmatic but ultimately failing.

The USSR, as others have noted, was a better place to live in then, say, Yeltsin's Russia, and Russia never really got back to the quality of life under the late Soviet Union until the 2010's from my understanding, but the USSR had long since stopped being a salvageable system by the time it collapsed. Ignoring the fact that it was trying to fight an ideological struggle, facing attempts by its opposition to undermine the system, and just general bad luck, the USSR was extremely poorly ran and incredibly corrupt. The failure to successfully implement Democratic Centralism and actively fight corruption meant the entire state was essentially at the mercy of the bureaucrats. If the Soviet Union had actually been able to successfully implement Marxist thought would it be a nice place to live?

Yes, but that was never going to happen. The conditions of 20th century Russia were very difficult to work with in regards to implementing Marxism, and despite the USSR's claims it had become socialist, the USSR never really did achieve socialism at all. A massive, bloated, state capitalist system, the USSR just couldn't really function the way it was ideally supposed to. Even if it doubled down on the authoritarianism, it was going to collapse - nothing could have changed that except for massive sweeping reforms being done decades earlier, or even just avoiding the situation of the USSR's economic mismanagement in the first place.

This is the first post I've made here in a long time, it's nice to be back!
 
Communism, at least as the basis of a ruling government, is an EXTREMELY violent ideology. Always has been. The massive militaries that the likes of the USSR put all their resources into developing were offensive weapons, not defensive ones. The lack of any major defensive fortifications in East Germany, or in North Korea today, prove that. They damn well knew that the only invading force that was ever going to cross the Inner-German Border in any scenario would be going east to west, not west to east.
While I generally agree with your points, this is a bad argument. Of course they didn't build Maginot Lines, but that's because those didn't work and were clearly obsolete in the face of air power and nuclear weapons. The only way to effectively defend in the post-World War II era was to have a powerful military, which is exactly what the Soviets built--and it's exactly what the U.S. and other NATO allies built, too. This argument could be just as easily used to "prove" that the U.S. and its allies were the aggressors. Overall, both countries were motivated by the same mixture of fear and greed that motivates most large empires--fear that they might be invaded, greed that they might have an opportunity to conquer themselves.
 
These type of statements are the reason this discussion shouldn't belong on this forum. People are just using this thread to type "communism bad" in various different phrases, ignoring the history of the USSR and it's very real economic growth.

I mean, if you think that the USSR didn't grow between 1917 and 1991 (as someone said in here) you really just deny reality. We can discuss how the USSR can be saved, we can discuss how it collapses earlier or doesn't even become reality. But telelogy is really tiresome.
That clearly isn't what I meant, and it's blatantly obvious if you quote the entire post.

My post was entirely about how WW2 set up disadvantages and crippled the Soviet state in certain ways that made it impossible for them to catch up to the west on a per Capita or overall GDP basis.

Nice try at manipulating and cherry picking what I said though.
 
That clearly isn't what I meant, and it's blatantly obvious if you quote the entire post.

My post was entirely about how WW2 set up disadvantages and crippled the Soviet state in certain ways that made it impossible for them to catch up to the west on a per Capita or overall GDP basis.

Nice try at manipulating and cherry picking what I said though.
I mean, Stalin's industrializations are what allowed the USSR to even get as far as it did - despite the loss of life and unfortunate repression that accompanied it - economically the USSR just wasn't really built to function in a way that would allow it to overtake the USA GDP wise - ideally it would be built to maximize progress towards The Revolution (TM).

Edit: To clarify, what I'm saying is WW2 did set up disadvantages sure, but the USSR was still facing an impossible task - it's a miracle and a testament to the stubbornness of humanity that they even got close to reaching the west.
 
I would agree that WW2 had a huge impact on the post-WW2 Soviet economy, but I wouldn't say the entire Soviet economy was doomed as a result of WW2. The only sector that I truly think was doomed post-WW2 was agriculture just because of how truly awful that sector's history was up to that point (and it didn't help that Kruschev, one of the Soviet Union's best hopes for post-WW2 reform, was pretty terrible as far as agriculture goes).
 
No. Not until you prove conclusively that economic feedback can only be obtained through pure price values, something which economists have explicitly acknowledged is not the case. That not only means it is not guesswork, but also makes your entire appeal to it a massive red-herring. Until you understand that, this conversation will continue to go nowhere and your claims will continue to be about as evidence free as young earth creationism.
They also come up with nonsense like this HDI which is pretty arbitrary. You could weight any one of the three variables and have a good argument. Education and income don't help you when you are dead so let's weight that at 1.2. Education is the most important because knowledge can improve the future so let's weight that at 1.2. No, income is the most important one as life isn't worth living if you are broke. Maybe housing should be added in, maybe public transportation should be added in, maybe automobiles owned should be added in.

It is described as "The index is based on the human development approach, developed by Mahbub ul Haq, often framed in terms of whether people are able to "be" and "do" desirable things in life." There are no two people who are going to agree to what or what is not desirable and how much they are. It is a subjective opinion and thus completely arbitrary.
 
I would agree that WW2 had a huge impact on the post-WW2 Soviet economy, but I wouldn't say the entire Soviet economy was doomed as a result of WW2. The only sector that I truly think was doomed post-WW2 was agriculture just because of how truly awful that sector's history was up to that point (and it didn't help that Kruschev, one of the Soviet Union's best hopes for post-WW2 reform, was pretty terrible as far as agriculture goes).
It might not have doome them terminally, but it did set up two things which massively weaken even Post-USSR states to this day:

1. Made them have to spend their "Post-War Boom" rebuilding instead of advancing, which let the West skyrocket an already large per capita gap

2. Set up the modern demographic disaster which afflicted the late-USSR and the Post-USSR countries of today. Despite the USSR's supposedly endless supply of manpower, you can't suffer the tens of millions of casualties they did from 1919-1945, combine that with an Eastern European drinking culture and then expect to have a good demographic future.
 
@Lillith @ObssesedNuker and others, here a question:

I saw on this Brazilian neoliberal page that the USSR growth until the 1960s wasn't really only growth, and most of the data show numbers from the post war reconstruction, thus as soon the damage was repaired the growth fell behind third world levels, is that true or not?
 
No. Not until you prove conclusively that economic feedback can only be obtained through pure price values, something which economists have explicitly acknowledged is not the case. That not only means it is not guesswork, but also makes your entire appeal to it a massive red-herring. Until you understand that, this conversation will continue to go nowhere and your claims will continue to be about as evidence free as young earth creationism.



It's worth noting that even with their own overestimates, the CIA was able to accurately identify a lot of the issues afflicting the Soviet economy from roughly the late-60s onward and by the 1980s they had come to the conclusion that something would have to give. The biggest overestimates (along with the more overblown fears of the USSR economy overtaking the American one) really date from the late-50s, when the Soviet economy managed to make it's biggest growth strides and those strides managed to hide it's defects.

That is true, but they were still grossly overestimating the actual economy at every point. IIRC, one of the big issues (though far from the only one) was that they were measuring the ruble value of a lot of salaries and products, but not what could actually be bought with it because of shortages and rationing. In fairness, Soviet shortages were so random that would have been close to impossible. The difference between certificate and regular rubles also threw things off. Basically, they grossly overestimated what the actual realistic purchasing power of a ruble was.

While I generally agree with your points, this is a bad argument. Of course they didn't build Maginot Lines, but that's because those didn't work and were clearly obsolete in the face of air power and nuclear weapons. The only way to effectively defend in the post-World War II era was to have a powerful military, which is exactly what the Soviets built--and it's exactly what the U.S. and other NATO allies built, too. This argument could be just as easily used to "prove" that the U.S. and its allies were the aggressors. Overall, both countries were motivated by the same mixture of fear and greed that motivates most large empires--fear that they might be invaded, greed that they might have an opportunity to conquer themselves.

I disagree completely. It's a popular misconception that the Maginot Line and fixed fortifications in general didn't work in World War Two, and actual military professionals understood that. The Maginot Line didn't work because the politicians weren't willing to extend it all the way to the North Sea, so the Germans literally just went around it. If they had been forced to attack directly into the teeth of the defensive line, they would have gotten absolutely wrecked. There are many cases in WWII where fixed lines of fortifications were successful...the Mannerheim Line, the German belts across the Italian Peninsula were successful at stalemating the allies until the very end of the war, etc. If Stalin hadn't idiotically dismantled the Molotov Line, there is zero doubt that Barbarossa would have gone very differently. They've also been successful since WWII; the Iraqis were able to successfully use them to block the Iranian efforts to cut off the Shatt al-Arab, the South Koreans have quite rightly built fortified defensive lines in depth across the peninsula, etc.

Like any other tactic, it's subject to the realities of geography and terrain, but if the Soviets had ever seriously worried about an offensive invasion by NATO, they would have at the very least fortified Czechoslovakia, which is quite mountainous and thus excellent for it, as well as the Oder and the areas in front of it. East Germany has a ton of fairly large lakes with swampy ground in between them, which is ideal for fixed defenses. The fact that they never did that speaks volumes about their intentions. If you build a 25,000 tank army with tons of paratrooper and marine divisions, forward deploy all of their logistics in stockpiles close to the border where they might be vulnerable to a surprise attack, and put no resources into defenses, then what you're creating is an offensive weapon, not a defensive one.

I mean, Stalin's industrializations are what allowed the USSR to even get as far as it did - despite the loss of life and unfortunate repression that accompanied it - economically the USSR just wasn't really built to function in a way that would allow it to overtake the USA GDP wise - ideally it would be built to maximize progress towards The Revolution (TM).

Edit: To clarify, what I'm saying is WW2 did set up disadvantages sure, but the USSR was still facing an impossible task - it's a miracle and a testament to the stubbornness of humanity that they even got close to reaching the west.

They never really got close. Also, just to be clear, Russia would have industrialized much quicker and better in every way, including with regards to its military-industrial complex, without Communism. I'm not completely sure that's what you're saying, but a myth one sometimes hears is that the USSR/Russia would have been fucked in WWII if Stalin hadn't beefed up the heavy industry like crazy. That's not true.

I would agree that WW2 had a huge impact on the post-WW2 Soviet economy, but I wouldn't say the entire Soviet economy was doomed as a result of WW2. The only sector that I truly think was doomed post-WW2 was agriculture just because of how truly awful that sector's history was up to that point (and it didn't help that Kruschev, one of the Soviet Union's best hopes for post-WW2 reform, was pretty terrible as far as agriculture goes).

I actually disagree with that, agriculture is one of the few areas of the Soviet economy that might have been savable. What they needed to do was expand the private plots, which IOTL were 3% of the land but provided 25% of the output. Even North Korea has managed to do that IOTL. If they had done it, the USSR might have been able to stay together with 1970s level standards of living, but I don't think that qualifies as a pleasant place.
 
I saw on this Brazilian neoliberal page that the USSR growth until the 1960s wasn't really only growth, and most of the data show numbers from the post war reconstruction, thus as soon the damage was repaired the growth fell behind third world levels, is that true or not?
Largely not. The large-scale consensus, Soviet industrial output, GDP, GDP-per-head, and GNP had returned to pre-war levels by 1948. Soviet agriculture production had returned to pre-war levels by the early-50s. And the last economic damage, in the service sector, had been repaired by 1955. Of course, in some ways (such as demographically) the USSR never really recovered by WW2 and this had it's own distorting effect on it's economy, but to pretend that the USSR didn't grow at all from the pre-war level is downright farcical.

I disagree completely. It's a popular misconception that the Maginot Line and fixed fortifications in general didn't work in World War Two, and actual military professionals understood that. The Maginot Line didn't work because the politicians weren't willing to extend it all the way to the North Sea, so the Germans literally just went around it. If they had been forced to attack directly into the teeth of the defensive line, they would have gotten absolutely wrecked. There are many cases in WWII where fixed lines of fortifications were successful...the Mannerheim Line, the German belts across the Italian Peninsula were successful at stalemating the allies until the very end of the war, etc.
No, that's completely bogus. The Maginot Line was a huge waste that came at the expense of the rest of the French Army and extending it to the coast would have diverted so many resources as to leave the French army so weak that the Germans would have wrecked their face, line or no. The experience in WW2 showed that fixed fortifications by themselves are worthless. They need a large effective army to back them up. Of your examples, the Mannerheim line didn't exist in WW2 (that was WW1) and the German defense across the Italian peninsula were ad-hoc affairs relying mostly on field fortifications and terrain without the massive investment of fortress-like fixed fortifications akin to the Maginot Line and even there they were consistently (if slowly) pushed back. While there are examples of positions relying on fixed fortification holding out in WWII, those defenses usually relied on the attacker being at the end of their rope. Without that, the norm was for defenders to delay the attacker for a bit and then be defeated, usually taking heavier losses in the process as the attacker battered them down with firepower.

Even had the Germans attacked the Maginot IOTL head on, they probably would have punched through it and overrun the French frontier before exhausting themselves and bogging themselves against the increasing numbers of deploying French reserves on a rather narrow front over difficult terrain. It would still be a victory for them, just not the "knock France out in one-blow" victory that they needed.

The most successful defenses in WW2 were those which relied on aggressive maneuver by mobile forces supported by (and not the other way around) counter-penetration forces operating from quickly set-up field fortifications enhanced with obstacles like mines. Which is precisely the sort of defense the Soviets planned to mount in the eventuality they were ever attacked first.

What's more, the disposition of Soviet forces throughout the Cold War was actually much better suited to such a defense then their enemies. Soviet armies were echeloned in depth, actually gave them much greater defense-in-depth then that which existed on the NATO side of the border. NATO's commitment to forward defense makes little military sense unless they were to take the offensive and this formed much of the basis for Soviet justifications of fears of a sudden NATO surprise offensive. Not to say that the Soviets were in the right or anything, but to try and argue the Soviets perceived no threat from the West is boulder-dash, even before we factor in that they were at a disadvantage in the nuclear angle for the first half of the Cold War. The Cold War was very much a case of both sides having genuine mutual fears of the other, even if those fears do not necessarily justify their subsequent actions.
 
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There could have been great choices made for Soviet agriculture post-WW2. Nobody who had those ideas would have made it into the halls of power. The best you could get were well-intentioned idiots like Kruschev.
 
You're the first one to bring up HDI....

My point is that economics is a soft science and some of the statistics are subjective and thus questionable. A lot of Soviet statistics is very soft indeed since it is damn difficult to price what they made correctly. A lot of it was just crap.

Capitalist countries aren't immune to this. A big reason for the housing crash is that a lot of the CDOs were hard to price. Slicing up loans into tranches made no sense and should have been illegal. That is not even talking about the market distortions caused by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA and the mortgage deduction.
 
You're insisting on prices as the only useful economic signal while simultaneously dismissing the entire field of economics. That is a wholly nonsensical viewpoint to have and it is completely pointless to discuss anything you have to say here.
 
I'm thinking you would have needed the big shots giving up power, a lot of it. Especially in agriculture, then maybe stock companies formed, with % in hands of the Party, Pensions,Workers and then investors, with these companies in charge of energy,transport...,do something about property rights, which would open up construction. Again big shots giving up power, in the 90s the resources of the Soviet state were stolen by the insiders, screwing the elderly and the unconnected.
 
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