Re: Why did USSR fall

["Chris Doss" <nomorebounces@xxxxxxx>]

Hi, Charles.


>
> Well, comparing them with an exaggerated  image of _U.S._  living standards.
> In actual fact, the SU did not "fail" economically,in the sense that there
> were no famines or homeless or severe economic crisis.  The illusion
> regarding the living standards of the West and U.S. contributed  to a
> _political_ fall.
>

They certainly did have exaggerated ideas of Western living standards. If the Soviet media sayed something negative about Western reality, like homeless people, it was widely viewed as just being bullshit propaganda.

That said, as you know I think life in the USSR was about 100 times better than it is usually depicted in the West, and there were definite, big plusses like total job security. However, there were serious shortages of goods. I was just in Detskii Mir, which is the supermarket near the Lubyanka, and it is full of goods. There was almost nothing in Detskii Mir 15 years ago. (And Detskii Mir is affordably priced, unlike an upscale place like GUM.)


>
> ^^^^
>
> CB: I recall him claiming to bring "democracy".
>
> At any rate, in _fact_ , living standards went down with Yeltsin, so if
> "economic failure" was the rationale, Yeltsin should have been ousted.

He almost _was_ ousted in 1996. By all accounts, if the election had been honest, Gennady Zyuganov would have been president of Russia from 1996-2000. (And of course he was finally ousted in 2000 in a near-universal rejection of him by the elite.)

It hasn't been _all_ bad post-1991. Like I said, there are a lot more goods. Moscow has 5 times as many cars as it did in the Soviet era (creating some really awful traffic jams).

>
> ^^^^^
>
> CB: In terms of the fall of the SU, I'm talking about both the fall of the
> "system" and the dissolution of  multinational state that was the USSR. For
> purposes of this thread , what is the significance of the distinction you
> are making ?
>

Just a conceptual one. Belarus has kept a lot of the Soviet system intact.