Reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union

Excuse me? The History Department of my (average) university is any thing but.

I think fasquadron means Marxist in the sense that most historians see history as being primarily driven by material forces as opposed to the Great Man Theory- you don't have to be a communist to do that.
 

Remark

Banned
I think fasquadron means Marxist in the sense that most historians see history as being primarily driven by material forces as opposed to the Great Man Theory- you don't have to be a communist to do that.
No, Marxism with its determinism and unfalsifiablility is not the best way to characterize history and historiography as it is practiced.
 
Excuse me? The History Department of my (average) university is any thing but.

So they don't think that economics is an important factor in how history unfolded?

That said, I don't think it's accurate to say he was considered a nut job by most contemporary Marxists, even the ones who criticized him like Luxemburg.

Yes, that's true, I overstated the case. His ideas about vangardism weren't popular though.

fasquardon
 
So they don't think that economics is an important factor in how history unfolded?


fasquardon
I guess they may well think that economics is one of the important factors. Along with culture (including beliefs), institutional structures and individuals decisions, which will be influenced by all three "forces".

Just that economics is not the sole factor or always the dominant one. (In some instances, like the eventual outcome of WW2, it may be of course.)
 

iVC

Donor
Do you have any source of that?

Maybe our good colleague @fasquardon was talking about democratic centralism?
The initial idea of democratic centralism was that you may quarrel and rebel while there still is the discussion, but after decision was finally adopted you must obey and support it.
'I may obstruct the decision while we didn't vote yet, but after the votes were counted I must forgot my objections to keep the unity'.
 
Last edited:

Remark

Banned
So they don't think that economics is an important factor in how history unfolded?



Yes, that's true, I overstated the case. His ideas about vangardism weren't popular though.

fasquardon
They do not think it trumps everything, or that it rigidly progresses from feudal to capital to socialism. Marx wasn't the only one who studied economics as it related to history.
 
To me, I distill it down to a failed ideology, failed command economy, and largely an extractive economy at that, plus periodic rule by terror for many years, resulting in the average Soviet citizen eventually no longer buying what the Kremlin was selling.
to which I would add 'lots of people who didn't want to belong to the USSR in the first place'... the USSR included a lot of peripheral areas that had been taken by conquest and never truly assimilated... a good economy for all might have papered over that, but when you don't have that...
 

iVC

Donor
the USSR included a lot of peripheral areas that had been taken by conquest and never truly assimilated...

Asian republics never truly wanted to split off, they just reluctantly accepted their new fate when the Big Three actually dissolved The Old Union™. Asian republics leadership surely knew about their fate in cause of Union dissolving. This would be just instant jump into the XIX century. Their economics were going to crush and burn due to lack of former resource and tech ties. Their own production was lacklustre and mostly undesirable for foreign trade (without additional tweaking and adaptation which usually took place in RSFSR, Ukraine or somewhere else in the europian part of the USSR). Their population was already rioting and messing up with border disputes.

1991 referendum showed up that not everyone wanted their common house just to disintegrate. More economic and political freedom - yes, but not the demolition of entire building. Without August Coup occuring, Ukraine may never actually split off completely. Shock and disbelief after August Coup along with total discreditation of Moscow centre was the main thing which allowed to dismantle soviet authorities smoothly and quickly.
 
Asian republics never truly wanted to split off, they just reluctantly accepted their new fate when the Big Three actually dissolved The Old Union™. Asian republics leadership surely knew about their fate in cause of Union dissolving. This would be just instant jump into the XIX century. Their economics were going to crush and burn due to lack of former resource and tech ties. Their own production was lacklustre and mostly undesirable for foreign trade (without additional tweaking and adaptation which usually took place in RSFSR, Ukraine or somewhere else in the europian part of the USSR). Their population was already rioting and messing up with border disputes.

1991 referendum showed up that not everyone wanted their common house just to disintegrate. More economic and political freedom - yes, but not the demolition of entire building. Without August Coup occuring, Ukraine may never actually split off completely. Shock and disbelief after August Coup along with total discreditation of Moscow centre was the main thing which allowed to dismantle soviet authorities smoothly and quickly.
Georgia voted 98% in favor of independence in 1991, after the Russians ruthlessly crushed 1989 uprising against Soviet rule. I don't know whether you included countries in the Caucasus in "Asian republics", but if you did then you're wrong about it. It is a common misconception that people there wanted to remain in the union like the Central Asian countries. Also Armenia voted 99% and Azerbaijan voted 95% in favor of independence.
 

iVC

Donor
I don't know whether you included countries in the Caucasus in "Asian republics"

1. Surely not, Transcaucasian republics are not the Central Asian ones.
2. I'm curious about the values you've cited here. There was no referendum held in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova along with the Baltic States due to their split-off tendency. Azerbaijan, however, participated in the 17th March 1991 referendum and 95% of voters declared to be interested in 'nessessarity to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, which will fully guarantee the rights and freedoms of all nationalities'. There were no additional referendums held in Azerbaijan thereafter, the independence in November 1991was declared by decision of Republic's Supreme Soviet (which was already after the coup attempt took place, ruining the idea of a new union treaty).
 
1. Surely not, Transcaucasian republics are not the Central Asian ones.
2. I'm curious about the values you've cited here. There was no referendum held in Armenia, Georgia and Moldova along with the Baltic States due to their split-off tendency. Azerbaijan, however, participated in the 17th March 1991 referendum and 95% of voters declared to be interested in 'nessessarity to preserve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, which will fully guarantee the rights and freedoms of all nationalities'. There were no additional referendums held in Azerbaijan thereafter, the independence in November 1991was declared by decision of Republic's Supreme Soviet (which was already after the coup attempt took place, ruining the idea of a new union treaty).
Here's the Georgian referendum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_independence_referendum,_1991
Armenian one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_independence_referendum,_1991
Azerbaijani one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azerbaijani_independence_referendum,_1991

Azerbaijanis and Armenians wanted and did keep an alliance with Russia (Commonwealth of Independent Nations), so did Georgia, until 2008. But that is by no means even remotely close to the Soviet Union degree of integration.
 

iVC

Donor
Azerbaijanis and Armenians wanted and did keep an alliance with Russia (Commonwealth of Independent Nations), so did Georgia, until 2008. But that is by no means even remotely close to the Soviet Union degree of integration.

December referendum in Azerbaijan was held 3 days after the actual dissolvement of USSR and 20 days after the Belavezha Accords. So it was a post-mortem referendum.
Both Georgia and Armenia didn't participate in the 17th March referendum so I cannot speak of them.
But Azerbaijan did participated and in the springtime the population still declared their loyalty.

The end-of-year situation was quite different. Year of 1991 contained russian declaration of independence, Yeltsin-Gorbachev struggle, coup attempt and the paralysis of central government. Surely in the dead end republics decided to split off from the unstable Moscow, but this took place after the Belavezha accords when situation became obvious.

On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum 76.4 percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as Checheno-Ingushetia (an autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union.

On June 12, 1991, Boris Yeltsin won 57 percent of the popular vote in the democratic elections, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16 percent of the vote. Following Yeltsin's election as president, Russia declared itself independent.

Faced with growing separatism, Gorbachev sought to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. On August 20, 1991, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a New Union Treaty that would have converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy and military. It was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic advantages of a common market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continued Communist Party control over economic and social life.

On August 19, 1991, Gorbachev's vice president, Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov and other senior officials acted to prevent the union treaty from being signed by forming the "General Committee on the State Emergency".

The Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed in the last quarter of 1991. Between August and December, 10 republics declared their independence, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of September, Gorbachev no longer had the authority to influence events outside of Moscow. He was challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin.

On December 8, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus secretly met in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and announced formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a looser association to take its place.

Doubts remained over whether the Belavezha Accords had legally dissolved the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only three republics. However, on December 21, 1991, representatives of 11 of the 12 remaining republics – all except Georgia – signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dissolution of the Union and formally established the CIS.
 
Last edited:
I know this is not an alternate history question, but I ask out of curiosity.

So what were the underlying causes of economic weakness of Communist countries like Soviet Union and East-Germany?

USA lost a pretty expensive and drawn out conflict in Vietnam, but managed to gracefully withdraw, whereas the Soviet-Afghan war crippled the Soviet Union. Why?

The Soviet economy was MUCH weaker than that of the United States was even at the worst of the Great Depression. The USSR "fought" the entire Cold War on the defensive, irrecoverably wounded by the monstruous human losses it had suffered under Stalin and, even worse, because of Nazi aggression, besieged and painfully conscious, at least in its higher echelons, of its disadvantages, contrary to what Khruschev may boast. Possibly the brief window of opportunity after the American defeat in Indochina deluded Brezhnev into views of grandeur, and the Afghan faux pas began the undoing. It wasn't however the war in Afghanistan that brought down the Soviet Union: it was a system that evidently didn't work, sinking each day in corruption, mafia and alcoholism.
 

iVC

Donor
Possibly the brief window of opportunity after the American defeat in Indochina deluded Brezhnev into views of grandeur

That's true. Former Brezhnev's friend and USSR Secretary of State for Health Eugene Chazov once wrote in his book 'Health and Power' (where he described many circumstances concerning the health of the Soviet leaders and of some leaders of the Soviet satellites) about this.

In a nutshell: Soviet leadership was discouraged and dampened by Reaganomics and Thatcherism. Soviets were honestly expecting civil unrest in the western countries after their respective governments switched to reducing the government spendings, free market policies and phased out the prices and wages control. Soviets thought these actions would surely undermine the social unity between western elites and their populations.

When reaganomic began to bloom and bear fruits along with Thatcher succesfully consolidating power, Soviets became... puzzled.
 
No, Marxism with its determinism and unfalsifiablility is not the best way to characterize history and historiography as it is practiced.

There's a big difference between Marxist political ideology and Marxist historiography and social theory. The former has the determinism and teleology (which is why I'm not a Marxist) while the latter argues history is a product of social forces, material factors and institutions based on those circumstances rather than the actions of a handful of geniuses (Great Man Theory) or free floating discourse bumping into itself (postmodernism).
 
Top