Re: The Fall of the USSR

["William F. Hummel" <wfhummel@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Henry,

Most of the testimonials you listed regarding the breakup of the
USSR are strangely silent on what actually did cause its demise.
But if the Soviets were in good shape socially and economically,
what would cause the fall of such a stout system?

Obviously it was not related to military weakness because the
Soviets were at least as strong as the US in that sphere.  Has
any nation in history surrendered to another when it had the
power to destroy its adversary?  I think not.

The testimonials from Americans with "impeccable credibility"
show how naive they can be.  If the US was engaging in economic
warfare with the Soviets, then there would have been a standoff.
The Soviets with far more natural resources and manpower than the
US could easily have outlasted any such siege -- unless there was
something deeper at work.

No, the real cause of the Soviet demise was the same as it always
has been for a corrupt oligarchy trying to hold together by media
control and  police state methods an empire of such diverse
peoples.  What might be seen in Moscow or Leningrad regarding
living conditions hardly reflects the conditions across the whole
empire.  Did the huns wage economic warfare on the Romans to
break up that empire?  I will let history be our guide, not
testimonials from nearsighted "experts".

The notion that Star Wars was the cause of the collapse is a
popular myth.  It's a convenient excuse after the fact by Soviet
apologists, but it has no substance.  Star Wars didn't "bankrupt"
the Soviets, nor did it scare them into submission.  Star Wars
was the dream of an obsessed American scientist (from a
Soviet-controlled state) who foisted it on a simple-minded and
gullible president.  Most US scientists that I know felt it was
totally impractical, as no doubt did Soviet scientists.  I'll be
glad to discuss the technical aspects of Star Wars further, but
it really shouldn't be necessary.

William

>"William F. Hummel" wrote:
>
>> Henry I can't believe you would write such stuff as this.
>> >
>> >The USSR also made impressive gains in the 1920s.  Reagan's star war
>arms race broke the USSR > >and Mao's China was held back entirely by US
>embargo and isolation of China.
>>
>> USSR broke because its command economy and totally corrupt political
>system couldn't compete in the > civilian goods and quality of life
>arena with the western democracies, and the Kremlin couldn't hide the >
>facts from its citizens any longer.  Why else would a national glasnost
>develop within?  The collapse of > the Soviets was inevitable.  Star
>Wars was a joke and Soviet scientists knew it.  As an engineer, I >
>worked on an aspect of it for the US, and know a little something about
>it.
>
>> Your own credibility on other issues is placed in question with such
>stuff as you have been writing > lately.
>>
>> William
>
>Well, let us hear from some Americans of impeccable credibility:
>
>
>The Fall of the USSR
>
>"The Soviet Union is not now, nor will it be during the next decade, in
>the throes of a true systematic crisis, for it boasts enormous unused
>reserves of political and social stability that suffice to endure the
>deepest difficulties."
>--Seweryn Bialer, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University,
>Foreign Affairs Magazine, 1982/3.
>
>"I found more goods in the shops, more food in the markets, more cars on
>the street ... those in the United States who think the Soviet Union is
>on the verge of economic and social collapse, ready with one small push
>to go over the brink are wishful thinkers who are only kidding
>themselves."
>--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1982.
>
>"All evidence indicates that the Reagan administration has abandoned
>both containment and detonate for a very different objective: destroying
>the Soviet Union as a world power and possibly even its Communist
>system. [This is a] potentially fatal form of Sovietphobia ... a
>pathological rather than a healthy response to the Soviet Union."
>--Stephen Cohen, Princeton University Sovietologist, 1983.
>
>"That the Soviet system has made great material progress in recent years
>is evident both from the statistics and from the general urban
>scene...One sees it in the appearance of well-being of the people on the
>streets...and the general aspect of restaurants, theaters, and shops...
>Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the
>Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower." --John
>Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University, 1984.
>
>"On the economic front, for the first time in its history the Soviet
>leadership was able to pursue successfully a policy of guns and butter
>as well as growth ... The Soviet citizen-worker, peasant, and
>professional - has become accustomed in the Brezhnev period to an
>uninterrupted upward trend in his well-being ..."
>--John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, Harvard University,
>New Yorker Magazine, 1984.
>
>"What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet
>planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth... The
>Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable
>of mobilizing resources for rapid growth."
>--Paul Samuelson, MIT, Nobel laureate in economics, 1985.
>
>"It's clear that the ideologies of Communism, socialism and capitalism
>are all in trouble."
>--James Reston, New York Times, 1985.
>
>"Can economic command significantly compress and accelerate the growth
>process? The remarkable performance of the Soviet Union suggests that it
>can. In 1920 Russia was but a minor figure in the economic councils of
>the world. Today it is a country whose economic achievements bear
>comparison with those of the United States."
>--Lester Thurow, Professor of Economics, MIT,
>The Economic Problem, 1989.
>
>All the above were correct observations in their time because no one
>expected the US would engage in economic war against the USSR.
>
>Then, the Reagan coordinated defense policies kicked in:
>
>"Ladies and gentlemen, if it had not been for the Reagan defense
>buildup, if the United States had not demonstrated that it is willing
>not only to stand up for freedom but to devote considerable sums of
>money to defending it, we  probably would not be sitting here today
>having a free discussion between Russians and Americans."
>--Boris Pinsker, Soviet Economist.
>
>"American policy in the 1980s was a catalyst for the collapse of the
>Soviet Union."
>--Oleg Kalugin, former KGB general (Victory: The Reagan Administration's
>Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, page
>xi.)
>
>"[Reagan administration policies] were a major factor in the demise of
>the Soviet system."
>--Yevgenny Novikov, former senior staff member of the Soviet Communist
>Party Central Committee (CPCC) (Victory: The Reagan Administration's
>Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, page
>xi.)
>
>In a introduction to Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret
>Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, Newt Gringich
>wrote:
>
>Much of the news media and liberal academia would have you believe that
>Gorbachev was the hero who modernized the Soviet Union and liberated it
>from the past.  Schweizer outlines in detail the long strategic effort
>to defeat the Soviet Union through a multiplicity of specific
>strategies.  From delaying and minimizing the natural gas pipeline to
>western Europe, to working with the Saudis to bring down the price of
>oil (the number one source of hard currency for the Soviet Union), to
>actively working to cut off technology from reaching the Soviet Union,
>to launching an arms race of high technology systems that would bloc
>obsolesce the old systems and force the Soviets into an exhausting
>effort to keep up, to financing opposition forces in Afghanistan,
>Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Central America.
>
>Now, several Reagan advisors have written that they advised Reagan that
>in the 1980s the Soviets had more planes and tanks.  When Reagan asked
>what the US had more of, the answer was money.  Then the strategy was
>born to out spend the USSR, resulting in the biggest deficit in
>history.  The strategy worked, but it was not communist ideology that
>did the USSR in. It was economic war from the US.
>
>As for China, I have already answered and the subject is now off limit
>on this list. My final post on China was rejected.
>
>Henry C.K. Liu