WI: A socially liberal USSR

Be careful with your terms, lest you create an impression opposite the one you meant to create. If I chose, I could, for example, interpret your comment to mean that Russia's economy, such as it was, was based almost entirely on agricultural export with the few, widely scattered, industrial enterprises dependent largely on State and foreign support (the latter made available via loans that were never intended by donors or donees to be paid back), that its politics were hopelessly reactionary, that its population was deliberately undereducated and consciously enchained in outmoded social structures long after their supposed dissolution.

Oh wait...

Which pretty much describes your typical low income country these days.

Faeelin said:
Eh. This isn't true, however; America's economy was the largest and most modern on the planet in 1914.

What isn't true?
 
Which pretty much describes your typical low income country these days.
My critique of your imprecise speech still applies. Either you completely understood my point and are choosing to communicate the fact that you understood me in a totally deadpan manner, or you did not understand my point and you are unwittingly displaying your ignorance in an ironic manner. I don't know which of these scenarios is the case.

On the other hand, you could simply be playing mind games with me, and laughing your arse off at my speculations and pretensions.

Perhaps you're doing all three.
 
My critique of your imprecise speech still applies. Either you completely understood my point and are choosing to communicate the fact that you understood me in a totally deadpan manner, or you did not understand my point and you are unwittingly displaying your ignorance in an ironic manner. I don't know which of these scenarios is the case.

On the other hand, you could simply be playing mind games with me, and laughing your arse off at my speculations and pretensions.

Perhaps you're doing all three.

All four, in fact.
 
What isn't true?

You claimed the German economy was more more advanced; I was just pointing out this wasn't so.

Anyway, what people ignore in the idea of Russia on the verge of an industrial takeoff is that a lot of its ecoomic growth was driven by the rise in commodity prices for wheat. Which, umm, plummeted after 1918, due to global overproduction, triggering economic cirses across the planet.

Though I think Farm to Factory:Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution overstates its points at times, it does make a good point that Russia wasn't poised for an industrial takeoff any time soon.
 
Lets say Khruschev gets more and more liberal, and stays in power, by the late 60s civil unions for gay couples are allowed, marijuana is legalised, but strictly controlled, prostitution is legalised and controls on art and culture are relaxed, how would the USSR progress?

Socialism legalizing prostitution?

Really, can it get more anti-socialist then that?
 
Yeah, pretty much and I've been to Estonia and the way they treat Russians living there is utterly disgusting. I've heard bad things about Latvia too. (Lithuania is ok thougth)

Honestly if those puffed up little fascist states, want to behave like that, they should be booted out of theEU/NATO. Then if Russia annexies ther ass it'd be a case of good riddance to bad rubbish.



Lithuania was able to grant all residents immediate citizenship because, unlike Latvia and Estonia, Moscow hadn't stuffed the country full of colonists and military personnel in order to Russify the population. It's over 80% Lithuanian.

If China (thanks to an alliance with Nazi Germany!) occupied Russia for 45 years, shipped 10% of the population to slave labor camps, and then shoved 100 million Chinese in to keep the place "loyal", I can imagine that Russia, if granted independence again, wouldn't hurry to make Chinese its second official language. And there would be Chinese complaining about Russian "fascism", encouraged by circles in Beijing who couldn't handle the fact that nobody in the occupied territories wanted to be in their empire. ("Someday the Russians will come crawling back to us on their hands and knees!")

One test for whether a country is "fascist": do the fearless leader's political critics get murdered, one after another? And then the police-- whoops!-- fail utterly to find the culprits? That's not Latvia and Estonia; try a little bit farther east.
 
In many wars there have been soldiers' brothels set up, not by entrepreneurs, but to have the inevitable activity take place where it can be regulated and controlled with an eye to disease prevention, etc..

It's not so much capitalist vs. collectivist economics as
whether the women who might be prostitutes are seen as victims of exploitation or as autonomous "sex workers".
 
Socialism legalizing prostitution?

Really, can it get more anti-socialist then that?

Well, it depends. For instance in the West, social democrats/democratic socialists (I know this is vastly different to communism, and as a social democrat myself I hate it when people conflate the two, but I'm just using this as a example of the whole left-wing spectrum) were generally anti-prostitution in the first half of the 20th century, associating it with exploitation of women due to poverty. However, in from the 1960's onwards, left-wing parties have generally led the push to decriminalise prostitution on a harm minimisation basis.

I think it is not totally impossible for a similar thing to occur in the USSR, provided the brothels are state-owned. I suppose, rightly or wrongly, it could be argued by the Soviets that state ownership eliminates the exploitation of prostitution, as the revenue goes back to the public good (in theory at least).
 
One test for whether a country is "fascist": do the fearless leader's political critics get murdered, one after another? And then the police-- whoops!-- fail utterly to find the culprits? That's not Latvia and Estonia; try a little bit farther east.

Quite so. Let us look at some interesting data points.

Freedom House, Political Freedom Index 2008:

Estonia: 1.0 ("Free")
Latvia: 1.5 ("Free")

Russia: 5.5 ("Not Free")

Reporters Without Borders, World Press Freedom Index 2005:

Estonia: 1.5 (11th)
Latvia: 2.5 (16th)

Russia: 48,67 (138th)

Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2008:

Estonia: 6,6 (27th)
Latvia: 5,0 (52nd)

Russia: 2,1 (147th)
 
Last edited:
Top