How could Gorbachev's reforms meant to save the USSR have been successful?

[prani]

Even the 1985-87 reforms were failures:

Uskorenie - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

but hey at least he didn't screw around with anything truly important in those 2 years

2 years is enough to determine an economic program was a success? If I remember correctly, there was dispute with the politburo and CC of CPSU about what to do about price reforms, one group called for introduction of Market forces to determine price, even here you had fools, for a lack of better word, who thought only some elements of markets would be enough the rest has to be prohibited or regulated which the conservatives or the technocrats within the gosplan or gosbank or other state committees on economic management, found to be stupid, they stood for cost accounting based principles basically no goods can be sold below the cost of production basically going back to 1965 but the State will not be a rent seeker as was the case in 1965 reforms here the state gets a portion of profits. That's it.

As for acceleration, it was half hearted, the important element of acceleration program was price reforms, Gorby and Nikolai kept having arguments over how to do it and never got around to do it and Gorby did the stupid thing of giving enterprises "total economic freedom" while being obligated to follow the directives of the 5 year plan, Andropov's sought to reform the gosplan, ministries and enterprise simultaneously and go for indicative plans after doing price reforms.

Anyone who reads the literature from 1983-1987 would know how stupid Gorby and Nikolai were when it came to economics.

 

[RousseauX]

2 years is enough to determine an economic program was a success?

The Soviets themselves acknowledged that it failed:

The politics of mere "acceleration" eventually failed, which was de facto admitted at the June 1987 Party Plenum, and the uskorenie slogan was phased out in favor of the more ambitious perestroika (restructuring of the whole economy).

 

[prani]

The Soviets themselves acknowledged that it failed:

Don't you see the contradictions? They spent 200 billion rubles in 3 years, mind you SU ruble was worth as much as pound sterling back then, without the necessary price reforms because they couldn't agree on how to do it and went ahead with more radical reform? Without addressing the fundamental economic issues?

What happened in reality during acceleration program was that the Soviet state spent billions on purchasing equipment and machinery from the west to re tool and re equip those sectors of the economy that produced capital goods and chemicals, which did result in modest gains in productivity but it didn't reach the stage where the supply chain had absorbed these new tech, that needed a decade or more. Further they spent billions at the time of drought or extreme weather situation which made basic commodities hard to come by, and all those billions spent on capital goods was formerly used to buy consumer goods from the eastern bloc countries, like it as a badly implemented program and perestroika and glasnost was the last thing you needed.

 

[Space Dreamer]

Why did the soviet lack so much of confidence in their equipement ?
I’ve heard that they have pretty good equipment ( at least in computing ).

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Why did the soviet lack so much of confidence in their equipement ?
I’ve heard that they have pretty good equipment ( at least in computing ).

Most of the efficient things were destined to the military and the rest of their machinery was catastrophic, which meant they had to buy it from the West which was a slight problem when you are running out of cash.

 

[Sasza]

I’ve heard that they have pretty good equipment ( at least in computing ).

It is enough to read the reports of the Iraqi army, which asked for purchases of T-72 and T-55 from countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, but not the USSR.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

It is enough to read the reports of the Iraqi army, which asked for purchases of T-72 and T-55 from countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, but not the USSR.

Iraq had a lot of Soviet military equipment so I don't think this is a good example

 

[Sasza]

Iraq had a lot of Soviet military equipment so I don't think this is a good example

This is a good example. If the difference between the T-72 from the USSR and the one from Poland. It was so significant that the officers recommended purchasing a second one.This shows the quality of workmanship

 

[Crueldwarf]

Yeah, indeed. Soviet T-72s were in general quite superior to Polish ones. So Saddam was going for the cheaper option.

 

[Dain]

Why did the soviet lack so much of confidence in their equipement ?
I’ve heard that they have pretty good equipment ( at least in computing ).

Computing was a prestige issue for the Soviets (and the GDR), but they had a problem with economies of scale - turning their R&D prototypes into mass producible products. Doesn't really matter if your transistor is theoretically just as capable as the equivalent US product if you are only producing a couple thousand of them a year while the West is cranking out tens of millions much more cheaply.

In the end it all circles back to the inability of the socialist command economy to be competitive. Political demands were always placed way ahead of productivity in all decision making (and profitability often getting ignored completely). Socialist businesses simply employed more people to build fewer products with worse quality than capitalist corporations, all while often operating at a state-mandated loss that made them unable to modernize or even conduct desperately needed maintenance.

There were also persistent ideological reasons on top of the crippling economic ones - Soviet ministers just did not see computers as something that should be allowed to be private and personal, so their planning remained stubbornly opposed to the spread of the PC. Ironically one of the reasons for their severe productivity problems was the resistance to the adoption of computers for businesses (which would have put people out of work - thus it could not be allowed).

There was supposedly a brief golden age of indigenous computing hardware but the desire to keep up with the West actually prompted the East block to repeatedly go through a vicious cycle of abandoning their existing development in favor of stealing and then duplicating the latest Western tech, inefficiently wasting time and resources on reverse engineering only to then end up with a barely compatible copy that had already become obsolete.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

This is a good example. If the difference between the T-72 from the USSR and the one from Poland. It was so significant that the officers recommended purchasing a second one.This shows the quality of workmanship

Buying from Soviet allies wasn't an exception, IIRC Nasser bought arms from Czechoslovakia in 1956 certainly not because they were better than the Soviet ones

 

[The Banker]

Do you know any realistic rival(s) to Gorbachev ?

I requote this because I also want answer to this
please someone

 

[Band in China]

2 years is enough to determine an economic program was a success? If I remember correctly, there was dispute with the politburo and CC of CPSU about what to do about price reforms, one group called for introduction of Market forces to determine price, even here you had fools, for a lack of better word, who thought only some elements of markets would be enough the rest has to be prohibited or regulated which the conservatives or the technocrats within the gosplan or gosbank or other state committees on economic management, found to be stupid, they stood for cost accounting based principles basically no goods can be sold below the cost of production basically going back to 1965 but the State will not be a rent seeker as was the case in 1965 reforms here the state gets a portion of profits. That's it.

As for acceleration, it was half hearted, the important element of acceleration program was price reforms, Gorby and Nikolai kept having arguments over how to do it and never got around to do it and Gorby did the stupid thing of giving enterprises "total economic freedom" while being obligated to follow the directives of the 5 year plan, Andropov's sought to reform the gosplan, ministries and enterprise simultaneously and go for indicative plans after doing price reforms.

Anyone who reads the literature from 1983-1987 would know how stupid Gorby and Nikolai were when it came to economics.

Fascinating, do you have recommendations on where one could learn more?

 

[prani]

Fascinating, do you have recommendations on where one could learn more?

Oh gosh! I learnt this on YouTube, when you search hard enough you find old lectures given by European professors who visit American University both during the existence of the Soviet union and thereafter, plus Wikipedia reference like it's really a mix of lectures, podcasts and Wikipedia reference, don't trust wiki but go through the sources......and ofcourse post Soviet Russian documentary, before Putin destroyed it from 2014 onwards.

As for the price reforms during perestroika era, you need to read newspaper and books from that era that talks in volumes about that problem and how best to go about it,it was also a issue till 93 when Russian government decided to implement shock therepy and do away with all forms of price control as the Ruble was made float freely, I mean the lack of decision on prices during late Soviet era was the reason why post Soviet Russian federation took such drastic actions.

https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9789264134683/ch009.xml

Heck even the IMF has started to release data from 1991

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Both. IOTL they tried to join the USSR (as did Mongolia) and also it helps keep the Black Sea under Soviet influence. so I figured it would require less upkeep than restive places like Poland and Romania.

I mean Romania was under Ceausescu, he certainly wouldn't be "restive" in the way other would be.

If you remove Glasnost, the only thing that would change is the publicity of the political debate inside the communist party. It will still happen and the same people will still take power just without attendant circus.

You mean the communist party who blindly followed Gorbachev's words almost until the very end? The CPSU was Gorbachev's, there's no debate about how Gorbachev should do differently until they coup him and at that point the Union was already doomed.

It is what people do not understand about USSR political system. They think about it in terms of dictatorship, but it wasn't a dictatorship.

Up until Gorbachev liberalized things, it 100% was a dictatorship.

I requote this because I also want answer to this
please someone

Don't know, Gorbachev arrived in power promising reform, Chernenko's short lived tenure only increasing the will for reform. Best way to remove Gorbachev is Andropov never meeting him, and some obscure character IOTL will take over.

 

[Crueldwarf]

USSR lacked a dictator since Stalin's death. So it was only a dictatorship in a sense when the word is used to call out anything that is 'not Western liberal democracy' which is kinda meaningless use of the word.

 

[Popcorn]

How will Soviet citizens react when knowledge of the full contents of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact becomes widespread?

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

USSR lacked a dictator since Stalin's death. So it was only a dictatorship in a sense when the word is used to call out anything that is 'not Western liberal democracy' which is kinda meaningless use of the word.

Khrushchev, Brezhnev in its later years and Andropov have something to say to you. I also forgot Chernenko and the fact that before his reforms Gorbachev was one.
Stalin was far from being the only dictator in the Soviet Union's history.

 

[Crueldwarf]

How will Soviet citizens react when knowledge of the full contents of the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact becomes widespread?

In the same way they reacted OTL. No one really gave a fuck.

Khrushchev, Brezhnev in its later years and Andropov have something to say to you. I also forgot Chernenko and the fact that before his reforms Gorbachev was one.
Stalin was far from being the only dictator in the Soviet Union's history.

Not a single person on this list was a dictator. They all were in power solely because Party consensus.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Not a single person on this list was a dictator. They all were in power solely because Party consensus.

They were dictators, do you consider Mao a dictator? Yes, yet he was sidelined after the Great Leap "Forward". Dictators have a lot of power accumulated in their hands but ultimately they still depend on having a powerbase to remain in power. Khrushchev was by all means a dictator, but was ultimately sidelined due to his bad handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, towards the end of his tenure Brezhnev managed to sidelined his opponents, so he had most powers concentrated upon himself, Andropov was a dictator and had most powers in his hands, just as did Chernenko and Gorbachev (at the beginning).
The fact that they accumulated less power than Stalin doesn't make them any less dictators; Stalin himself still had to rely on Party Consensus* to remain in power.

*Otherwise you will be shot, but if most of his inner circle was to suddenly betray him he would still fall from power just as other did.