A more economically sound Soviet Union survives.

Khruschev however utterly sucked when it came to agricultural reform. He basically had the anti-Midas touch. This caused the Soviet Union no end of problems.



I still think the best post-Stalinist was Beria (serial date-rape issues notwithstanding).

If I do recall correctly, Kruschev had a corn fetish, and attempted to plant it in Siberia.
 
Well, indeed Gorbachev's plan circa 1990 was to have the Soviet Union reform and become a Scandinavian-styled western state. In the late 80s it was too late for this to happen, but with more spaced-in-between reforms in the 50s, I think it would be a huge success.
The economic catastrophes of the 1980s in the West in TTL might even provoke a sympathy for more regulated economies, like in the 30s.
 
The USSR could do this much easier if it finds a means to win WWII shorter and more simply against Nazism, with much more limited invasion of Soviet territory and a correspondingly more rapid and more cheaply-achieved victory for Soviet arms. Post-1945 there are too many problems for the Soviet state for it to change any of them efficiently.

Well it is kind of a paradox with the Great Fatherland War, for the SU. Eventhough it resulted in massive destruction in human and economic terms, it also elevated the SU onto the scene as a Great power, indeed a super power. Ofcourse if the SU had beaten Germany in 1942 and "liberated" all of Germany, it might be a better course, but for that to happen we might need some ASB.


I made a rough draft following WW II as IOTL which included the following measures (perhaps with Beria in the lead)....in a hope to leave ASB territory:
  1. Instead of conducting political reforms, the Soviet Union adopts capitalistic measures, similar to what is going on in China today. Letting private ownership of business be allowed, which should result in more economic growth, and should put a damper on the political unrest which occured in OTL.
  2. Defreezing of the Cold War. The Soviet Union revises its' aggresive foreign policy, and focuses on econimic development and cooperation with the West, in order to improve living conditions for its' citizens. This should result in increased trade between East and West and a rise in GDP.
  3. A "cheaper" Red Army. As a consequence of the above mentioned, Russian can spend much less than the estimated 17 % of the GDP on military spending, freeing ressources to invest in other areas.
  4. Raw materials. The Soviet Union had enormous natural ressources in oil, natural gas, coal, iron, minerals etc. Using some of the ressources freed by the above mentioned, investments are dramatically increased in the extraction of these natural ressources furthermore supporting the Soviet economy.
Following the debate so far most would agree this could be possible, IF a pragmatic leader like apparently Beria could assume power, following WWII.
 
Well it is kind of a paradox with the Great Fatherland War, for the SU. Eventhough it resulted in massive destruction in human and economic terms, it also elevated the SU onto the scene as a Great power, indeed a super power. Ofcourse if the SU had beaten Germany in 1942 and "liberated" all of Germany, it might be a better course, but for that to happen we might need some ASB.


I made a rough draft following WW II as IOTL which included the following measures (perhaps with Beria in the lead)....in a hope to leave ASB territory:
  1. Instead of conducting political reforms, the Soviet Union adopts capitalistic measures, similar to what is going on in China today. Letting private ownership of business be allowed, which should result in more economic growth, and should put a damper on the political unrest which occured in OTL.
  2. Defreezing of the Cold War. The Soviet Union revises its' aggresive foreign policy, and focuses on econimic development and cooperation with the West, in order to improve living conditions for its' citizens. This should result in increased trade between East and West and a rise in GDP.
  3. A "cheaper" Red Army. As a consequence of the above mentioned, Russian can spend much less than the estimated 17 % of the GDP on military spending, freeing ressources to invest in other areas.
  4. Raw materials. The Soviet Union had enormous natural ressources in oil, natural gas, coal, iron, minerals etc. Using some of the ressources freed by the above mentioned, investments are dramatically increased in the extraction of these natural ressources furthermore supporting the Soviet economy.
Following the debate so far most would agree this could be possible, IF a pragmatic leader like apparently Beria could assume power, following WWII.

It can't beat Germany in 1942, but by 1944, on the other hand, a Soviet destruction of Army Group Center in 1942's early winter, complete with all the German panzers devoted to that Army Group secures both Soviet victory and a pretty minimal German occupation of Soviet soil. The interesting question is what the USSR does when it's got a chance to intervene in the Asian War months before nukes are relevant and possibly before US troops are even in the Philippines and firebombing Japan's cities to rubble.

That keeps the USSR a superpower and gives it an Asian Empire, including a GMD proxy, to match its European one. It also pretty much reveals the Western democracies as militarily useless to the outcome of the war, which creates problems for the ATL Cold War. If the Soviet Union is able to wipe the floor with both Germany *and* Japan with pretty much nobody else doing much of anything in army group v. army group war, how's the West going to say "We assure you that democracy really *is* better than communism?".
 
Corn can't grow in USSR? :confused: the ex 'Turkestan' area, Ukrayne and Georgia seems fine for me for corn culture... Lack of water for the earlier, but...
 
Corn can't grow in USSR? :confused: the ex 'Turkestan' area, Ukrayne and Georgia seems fine for me for corn culture... Lack of water for the earlier, but...

Khrushchev had them plant it everywhere, not just in suitable locations, and he had them do it without adequate fertilizers and insecticides.

That keeps the USSR a superpower and gives it an Asian Empire, including a GMD proxy, to match its European one. It also pretty much reveals the Western democracies as militarily useless to the outcome of the war, which creates problems for the ATL Cold War. If the Soviet Union is able to wipe the floor with both Germany *and* Japan with pretty much nobody else doing much of anything in army group v. army group war, how's the West going to say "We assure you that democracy really *is* better than communism?".

But if communism is going so well - if the USSR has just torn through Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire on the Asian mainland - is there going to be the impetus for reform, or for making nice to the West? Wouldn't the leadership basically figure that what they've been doing is working just fine?

Also, I don't have it any more, but I had a book that claimed the Eastern European states were ultimately a greater liability, economically speaking, than an asset. Not only did they have to be garrisoned, the USSR provided them with raw materials, particularly energy, at prices well below the "real" price, enough to more than wipe out the initial gains from looting machinery. I'm sure the accounting is pretty questionable - how do you determine a fair market price without a market? But a bigger European and Asian Empire may lead to a USSR that's badly overextended.
 
But if communism is going so well - if the USSR has just torn through Nazi Germany and the Japanese empire on the Asian mainland - is there going to be the impetus for reform, or for making nice to the West? Wouldn't the leadership basically figure that what they've been doing is working just fine?

Also, I don't have it any more, but I had a book that claimed the Eastern European states were ultimately a greater liability, economically speaking, than an asset. Not only did they have to be garrisoned, the USSR provided them with raw materials, particularly energy, at prices well below the "real" price, enough to more than wipe out the initial gains from looting machinery. I'm sure the accounting is pretty questionable - how do you determine a fair market price without a market? But a bigger European and Asian Empire may lead to a USSR that's badly overextended.

Well, yes. But with much less devastation in the USSR itself, there's also a bigger base to build off of. It won't collapse in 1989 and is more lilely to endure to today.
 
Instead of conducting political reforms, the Soviet Union adopts capitalistic measures, similar to what is going on in China today. Letting private ownership of business be allowed, which should result in more economic growth, and should put a damper on the political unrest which occured in OTL.

The Soviet elite is incapable of doing this while remaining the Soviet Union. The welfare state bargain, a feature of the aggressive Fordist production system in the Soviet Union, was a fundamental aspect of the elite's self-image and its relationship with the Soviet working class. You mean "capitalist measures" at the macro economic level. A the firm and consumer society level the Soviet Union was as capitalist as the West in this period.

Defreezing of the Cold War. The Soviet Union revises its' aggresive foreign policy, and focuses on econimic development and cooperation with the West, in order to improve living conditions for its' citizens. This should result in increased trade between East and West and a rise in GDP.

What aggressive foreign policy?

A "cheaper" Red Army. As a consequence of the above mentioned, Russian can spend much less than the estimated 17 % of the GDP on military spending, freeing ressources to invest in other areas.

This occurred in the 1960s. Khrushchev was ousted from power due to this.

Raw materials. The Soviet Union had enormous natural ressources in oil, natural gas, coal, iron, minerals etc. Using some of the ressources freed by the above mentioned, investments are dramatically increased in the extraction of these natural ressources furthermore supporting the Soviet economy.

This occurred in the 1970s. It did nothing to halt the slide towards low growth of the Soviet Union's central European allies. It also did nothing to halt the slide towards low productivity in Soviet manufacturing.

could a Soviet Union which pursues the road China does today, but much earlier, survive as a unified State up till today?

No. Because the version of Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968 which swept a Soviet Union that simultaneously smashed the welfare state, the manufacturing base by going resource exporting, the military clique, and accepted the right of the US to attack the "buffer" between Western Europe and Moscow would not have been the soviet union. Socialist, yes? But with workers control and factory based democracy, with a party that listens rather than commands. Hardly the Soviet Union now is it?

Is there an agreement that we must have a weekly thread on Soviet political economy, and that it discuss the impossible Chinese style capitalist roading every time?

In 1983 China had a miniscule industrial proletariat which was thoroughly smashed in 1989. 1989 also got rid of an internal line within the party and intelligentsia against capitalist roading. And, of course, China's nomenklatura never had a social democratic welfare state agreement with a large industrial working class.

China and the Soviet Union had fundamentally different political economic bases.

yours,
Sam R.
 
Need Russian Input

We seem to have selected Beria as our man for top-down political reform to make a less-socialist paradise happen.

IMNSHO top-down economic and political reform campaigns were attempted twice IOTL with Khrushchev and Gorbachev and failed miserably for different reasons.

I subscribe to a view that any group of people can learn and do anything competently, but the USSR had a slew of fundamental issues that compromised its ability to compete.
For one, thing, you need information exchange to be relatively free for meaningful feedback and THAT was hardly ever a functional aspect of Soviet society.
Part of that problem is that prices were a matter of official fiat, not affected by economic reality. Having the ruble being a convertible (and freely traded) currency would’ve made things a lot easier.
Let’s say Beria institutes a glasnost policy after WW2 that frees up Soviet access to the rest of the world and sponsors a Meiji-level fostering of expertise in foreign markets, technologies, and politics.
The fruits of that policy would take a long time to make themselves known, given the essentially feudal nature of Soviet industry with all kinds of vested interests in the status quo from the 1930’s-1950’s made adapting to the faster pace of technological change very problematic after WW2. Since Soviet industry was not answerable to anyone outside the Politburo, the ideas of marketing abroad, quality control, and floor-up innovation that the Japanese and others embraced in the modern era were alien concepts. Imagine Walter J Deming a Hero of Socialist Industry!
The funny thing about that is that you have to make it worthwhile for Soviets to come back and foreigners to set up shop in the Soviet Union and allow a culture of entrepreneurship to get and stay going from the bottom up by embracing intellectual property rights, education abroad, rule of law in commerce, individual initiative, and funding said ventures. I could see a Beria or Khrushchev attempt to get EEC/EFTA associate membership for the USSR (and even try their trick of various SSRs and Pact “allies” bidding for entry as well to increase their voting power) in the 1960’s under this scheme.
Gosplan would evolve into MITI and essentially a mixture of economic intelligence unit, R&D funding clearinghouse, chamber of commerce, export-import bank, and SBA to make it easier for Soviet business to compete in the international arena. The Politburo would evolve into a Duma that allows for representative parties and coalition politics to emerge in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
A look at the Asian tigers (Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan) is informative as to how authoritarian regimes can embrace economic modernity without significant political change for decades, though the watershed of the 1990’s where nobody felt externally threatened by Communism anymore allowed for political liberalization as well.
The beauty and terror of guided industrial and commercial development is that usually the selected technologies and markets targeted evolve too damned fast for a detailed plan to be executed as planned initially.
Japan’s a cautionary tale as far as that goes. Could the Soviets have succeeded as well and made the same mistakes? Who knows?
Still, it seems as if the Soviets could have done darned near anything else from 1950-1990 by doing some to all of the above tactics to be more economically viable.
If the USSR were more economically viable, it would be politically unrecognizable by the 1980’s. IDK if the various ethnicities could play nicer together, but I could definitely see pushes for a lot more local control of education, environmental affairs, and so forth.
 
Top