Re: Soviet balance sheet

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>	The problem is that you can't take Russia out of the post-WW2
>picture as a major power.  Otherwise Germany wins or the war ends with
>nuclear attacks on Berlin or something.

right. That's what Barkley and I were saying with our independently-posted
comments disparaging counterfactuals.

>	The trick is to determine whether, for example , the third world
>was open to the Soviet Union as an alternative colonial state (the best
>among bad choices), to the Soviet Union as a new social order, or to
>socialism, but not necessarily Soviet socialism.  In any of these cases,
>it stimulates the U.S. to polish itself up, but in two of three it is no
>particular credit to the Soviet Union as such.

My impression is that a lot of middle-class people and government officials
in 3rd world countries liked the SU as a model of economic development. The
SU encouraged this admiration, but after awhile pushed the a
non-capitalist, non-socialist, road to development.

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
as far as they are certain, they really do not refer to reality." -- Albert
Einstein.