The passing standards weren't very impressive then for manufactured goods.
But the agricultural produce was amazing.
WI: USSR artificially improves its living conditions to become a "USA of the East"
The passing standards weren't very impressive then for manufactured goods.
But the agricultural produce was amazing.
Within Comecon, they transferred oil and gas at below market prices. I'm kicking myself because I think I just donated the book I was reading about this in to the library, but Wiki says this was done to reward East Bloc countries for being good little satellites, and that raw materials were usually under-priced in the Comecon system, relative to the manufactured goods the Soviets got back for them.
Bulgaria even got in trouble at one point re-selling the oil to the West at world market rates and pocketing the difference.
Perhaps Stalin swallows his enormous pride and ego and accepts Marshall Aid from the US in order to rebuild? Aside from that, I think the only way for the USSR to have a higher standard of living is if they can hold off Barbarossa before it can cause too much damage to it's industrial and agricultural core.
The USSR had to allow its satellites a relatively high standard of living. After all, periodically it had to forcibly assert its hegemony over the region.
Actually, Bulgaria had quite higher standards of living that the Soviet Union. This can be seen, for example, in how many Russians immigrated to Bulgaria by marrying Bulgarian students. Add to this how most people in Bulgaria owned their homes, unlikely the Soviet Union, where many lived into communal housed even in the 80s and it makes no sense to claim that the Soviet Union was better of. Romania is the only exception and that was mainly due to Ceaucesku's (successful) attempt to pay of the national debt.
What you describe happened here in the early 90s. But a shop being empty due to lack of supply? Sorry, I don't think I can believe this.
If the Soviets had used their command economy methods to produce abundant consumer goods of reasonable quality after the war they probably could have done it, just as they used the same methods to build the tanks and planes that defeated Hitler on the Eastern front. But this would have meant not maintaining a huge army and not putting giant resources into missiles etc. in the decades following the war. They couldn't do both. And the west was not going to cut back on the arms race (which was much easier for its more advanced economies to maintain) unless the Soviets withdrew from Eastern Europe and agreed to mutually verifiable inspections. But the Soviets were worried about German revanchism and a U.S. first strike and could not agree to this.
The Cold War might have been avoided if the Soviets had agreed to a kind of Finlandization--with the difference being that Soviets troops would be stationed in non-communist eastern European countries bordering Germany for a number of years. To do all this, the ideology and authoritarian structure of the Soviet communist party would have needed to be changed so that the Soviet Union ceased to be a brutal totalitarian country. Once you have the POD for that, then a consumer economy in the USSR becomes possible.
The Cold War might have been avoided if the Soviets had agreed to a kind of Finlandization--with the difference being that Soviets troops would be stationed in non-communist eastern European countries bordering Germany for a number of years. To do all this, the ideology and authoritarian structure of the Soviet communist party would have needed to be changed so that the Soviet Union ceased to be a brutal totalitarian country. Once you have the POD for that, then a consumer economy in the USSR becomes possible.
Alex99232
I was in Burgas this summer and in various small shops (especially those in the Moyat Magazin chain) I was confronted with many empty shelves. I remember looking for bottled water, finding about 3 bottles, buying them all, and the whole shop continued to become more and more empty, until about 6 days later, some supplies came, but not many. The last time I saw something like this in Hungary was in 1994.
Well, as quick googling is showing, French business Moyat opened this yer its 1000nd location in Bulgaria. Could be bad management or somebody just bought huge stacks of their supplies, their electricity was down so they had to throw a lot of stuff out. As far as i know, people going there, or Bulgarians living abroad are saying, if you got money, you can buy whatever you want.
Don't take me wrong, I believe what did you see there.
Look after Sandy was closing, all stores in NJ and metropolitan area NY were sold of water and non perishable food. What does it mean? Waw, in US it is like in communist Eastern Europe. They have no food in stores. And, o my God, you have to wait 2-3 hours in lines for gas. But I am getting curious. I have Bulgarian guy coming irregular to my work place and last year he was there for vacation,. If i will not forget, I will ask him what does he think is going on.
In Hungary, if you saw empty shelves in 1994 - well... i dunno, you were in the wrong place or you remember it wrong. (The only occasion when i encountered empty shelves in the 90s were during the taxi blocade - only the most needed supplies got trough and people gone shopping rampage).
However, pre-90 i remember both the Süd City Center (at that time, that was quite impressive for us) and various SU shops (another rather impressive encounter - or may i call it shocking?).
RousseauX
Donor
Running consumer economies over the period of decades is actually far more difficult than running a war economy over the course of 4-5 years. The Soviet economy is, for multiple reasons, fundamentally inefficient at doing the former.
Alternatively, have the Soviets scrape the idea of conventional warfare with the west altogether, keep enough of an army to clamp down on dissent in the East Bloc, and use nuclear deterrence to keep the west from invading the Warsaw Pact.
Please, please, leave Csepel alone... before its closure, Weiss Manfred would not get lost in it. Hell, here in Miskolc i saw machines in the shop dated before the war. The first one. Same goes for Csepel - or Győr.
Of course, I'm not accusing you of not saying the truth, it's just that I'm skeptical of this being due to any inherent economic condition. This (private) chain wouldn't have hundreds of shops if it couldn't stock them. I would say the problem is far too often is that the shelves are too full - as in too few can afford to buy the goods.
I live in Bulgaria (but in Sofia) and I can assure you that such cases are an exception. That doesn't mean that Alex wasn't right to a large extent when writing about decline and unemployment. In fact, I would say that huge segments of the population are worse off than during communist rule.
Well I see that too in Slovakia and especially now older people (in their 60-ties now) got it hardest to find new jobs, so they remember communist era as the better. Well they were lines on bananas and oranges, but no lines now means nothing if one can't afford to buy the stuff.
That which made America: Manifest Destiny
At the outset, Soviet Communism very much had the revolutionary 'new age thinking' that was shared with the American forfathers who set out to expand across the American continant and reclaim it from the fronteer.
If during the early years of the Soviet era a simmilar school of thought developed based on the virtue of the Russian and Slavic peoples, the mission to spread socalist ideology and the destiny under science and secularism to make this so.
At its heart, the Soviet Union needs industrilisation and for Lenin to tone down his Anti-Etentent rhetoric, for it to become the USA of the East.
Critically, Lenin in the early years promoted anti-western (British and French) thinking, as they were seen as the 'Imperialist powers', and he feared Russia would return to imperialist ways rather than stay true to the revolution. Of course in doing so, he alienates Russia from Europe.
Still worse, in the early days of the Soviet Union 'War Communism' did a lot to disatisfy the rural populace and created internal problems. This internal problem in part led to more repressive actions on behalf of the communist leaders and with poor foriegn relations did not enamour the Soviet Union with the rest of the world.
Still all, was not lost, and in the early/mid 1920s if the New Economic Policy of Market Socalism greatly improved economic growth and productivity....and would have continued.
Unfortunatly with Lenin dying then dead, Stalin took power within the party and renounced Market Socalism in favour of greater collectivisation and 'Communism within a single state', thus preventing a market economy simmilar to modern day China's forming, as well as taking on a brutal nationalistic ideology that made the Soviet Union the 'bugbear of Europe' and so led to increasing isolation of Russia from the global community.
If instead the NEP had been allowed to prosper, Stalin sidelined or removed in favour of Trotsky and other left-wing radicals, rather than statists the Soviet Union could have very well have been like the United States of America or Modern China, a strong market economy based on cooperative ownship of company and company property/profits, rather than of state ownership and collectivism that held back market forces and prevented the generation of wealth.
At the outset, Soviet Communism very much had the revolutionary 'new age thinking' that was shared with the American forfathers who set out to expand across the American continant and reclaim it from the fronteer.
If during the early years of the Soviet era a simmilar school of thought developed based on the virtue of the Russian and Slavic peoples, the mission to spread socalist ideology and the destiny under science and secularism to make this so.
At its heart, the Soviet Union needs industrilisation and for Lenin to tone down his Anti-Etentent rhetoric, for it to become the USA of the East.
Critically, Lenin in the early years promoted anti-western (British and French) thinking, as they were seen as the 'Imperialist powers', and he feared Russia would return to imperialist ways rather than stay true to the revolution. Of course in doing so, he alienates Russia from Europe.
Still worse, in the early days of the Soviet Union 'War Communism' did a lot to disatisfy the rural populace and created internal problems. This internal problem in part led to more repressive actions on behalf of the communist leaders and with poor foriegn relations did not enamour the Soviet Union with the rest of the world.
Still all, was not lost, and in the early/mid 1920s if the New Economic Policy of Market Socalism greatly improved economic growth and productivity....and would have continued.
Unfortunatly with Lenin dying then dead, Stalin took power within the party and renounced Market Socalism in favour of greater collectivisation and 'Communism within a single state', thus preventing a market economy simmilar to modern day China's forming, as well as taking on a brutal nationalistic ideology that made the Soviet Union the 'bugbear of Europe' and so led to increasing isolation of Russia from the global community.
If instead the NEP had been allowed to prosper, Stalin sidelined or removed in favour of Trotsky and other left-wing radicals, rather than statists the Soviet Union could have very well have been like the United States of America or Modern China, a strong market economy based on cooperative ownship of company and company property/profits, rather than of state ownership and collectivism that held back market forces and prevented the generation of wealth.