[ProtectOurFreedom]

Rent and watch “Lives of Others.” You’ll see.

[Washi]

The Lion of Panjshir (Afghani Ahmad Shah Massoud) played a major part in grinding down the soviet military in Afghanistan, at great cost to the soviets.

We (America/Reagan) provided support to him, just how much support is unclear.

[Bean Counter]

Are you shitting me?? Why do you think it is our job to educate you about a subject like that? What makes you think that anyone here could possibly explain almost 100 years of brutal repression and economic failure to you?

Hit Wiki and do a couple of years of reading Zippy, and quit wasting someone else’s expensive bandwidth.

There. Someone needed to say it.

Carry on.

[ctdonath2]

Whatever the cause, the core moment as I remember watching live tv then was the inability to print paychecks for government workers. No pay, no prospect of pay, everyone just went home.

[Cementjungle]

I was always fascinated with the USSR as a kid.. my grandfather (a supermarket CEO in the 50's-60') went there a few times to offer advice (and told me stories of being followed, wiretapped, even his taxi being bugged).

In the 80's I did a bicycle trip all around Russia, Estonia and Latvia (was supposed to hit Lithunia too, but wasn't allowed because of protests). I always had my government "escort" with me to make sure I saw the "right" things and got the correct messages.

I talked to foreign construction workers building Moscow's first McDonalds... and learned that no russian would do the labor. Why work when you make the same money doing nothing?

The story was the same everywhere... why should we work? We can't ever get more by working, so we don't.

The only folks with nice dachas on the rivers were government workers... everyone else lived in the ugly concrete public housing situations, or out in the country in little shacks... farmers... who had to give their products to the government and get back just enough to live on.

They had seperate stores for foreigners and government workers. Those stores had nice things, imported booze, cigarrettes, etc. The "regular" people had to shop in markets which had bare shelves most of the time, and low quality items.

There was no productivity... the economy failed.

This seems to be what Obama wants for us.

[oyez]

The USSR sunk a lot of cash into the Viet Nam conflict. Cuba was an expensive liability. Their economic program was not based on supply and demand. They spent butt loads of cash on dead ends in their defense programs. Their adventure in Afghanistan as the final straw.

According to Pravda it was a series weather related crop failures.

[Leisler]

Workers, productive workers saw little connection between production and reward. ( There were incentives, right from the beginning with Lenin and right through the end. The state did reward, but it was central planning rewarding, which suffers from what is called the Knowledge Problem. The well educated elites didn't, and could never, have enough knowledge to deliver rewards to the factory floor. When they delegated the gift giving, it was taken by intermediate graf/management. There is no way around this command economy problem. Hitler, the Soviets, Mao, even the Mafia and even the Army and General Motors all suffer from this command, large organizational problem.)

Some lectures on the Soviet Union from an economic view. Click on the one that seems most general/easiest first.

[miele man]

bump for later read

[tanuki]

Two big props to the Soviet economy were oil and gold. Much of their foreign exchange came from these two sources. Under Reagan, private gold ownership was restored which brought a flood of gold purchases, especially South African Krugerrands. Then, the Saudis agreed to increase oil production. The result-both commodities tanked in price, undercutting the Soviet economy and stimulating ours.

It didn’t help either that we effectively made China an ally at the same time. The American connection enabled the Chicoms to build up both their military and their economy, both of which at the time were in a rudimentary state. All the while, taxing the capabilities of their neighbor.

[Noob1999]

btt for later!

[Chances Are]

PROMIS technology.

(Yes, it’s spelled that way!)

CA....

[Tenega]

The USSR had many weaknesses, but the most crucial tipping point came from our successful effort to drive down oil prices in the 1980s. The resulting collapse in hard-currency revenues ultimately bankrupted the inefficient empire. A detailed history of how that oil price management occurred is available in a book, “The Oil Card: Global Economic Warfare in the 21st Century.”

Ultimately, Gorbachev had to go hat in hand to borrow about $100 billion from Western governments to feed the Russian people in the final years of the 1980s. The strings attached to those loans and the treat of them being called due were a key factor in preventing Soviet troops from being sent in to crush the popular uprisings in Eastern Europe. Moscow lost control of its borders and ran out of money at the end of 1991.

The key question now: Are current high oil (and iron ore and bauxite) prices being managed upward to try and slow down the Chinese?

[PGR88]

All of you are only partially correct.

Yes, bad economics is the background. All Communist systems become increasingly inefficient, and despite whatever tinkering (so-called planning) is done, it will not improve.

But - what brought the Soviets down (and nearly brought the Chicoms down in May-June of 1989) are divisions and power struggles within the party itself. After the strong-man (ie. Mao/Stalin) destroys any rule of law, power naturally becomes dispersed among the bureaucrats who battle each-other over economic policy, power, control over the military, etc... In fact, they probably hate each other more than the outside enemy.

George Kennan knew this when he proposed “Containment” after WWII, and Reagan understood that, Totalitarian Gov’ts are, in fact, very weak internally.

[ETL]

Did Communism Fake Its Own Death in 1991?
American Thinker ^ | January 16, 2010 | Jason McNew

In a bizarre 1984 book [New Lies for Old], ex-KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn predicted the liberalization of the Soviet Bloc and claimed that it would be a strategic deception. ..."

"Golitsyn's argument was that beginning in about 1960, the Soviet Union embarked on a strategy of massive long-range strategic deception which would span several decades and result in the destruction of Western capitalism and the erection of a communist world government."

"Golitsyn published his second book, The Perestroika Deception, after the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991. This book contained further analysis of the liberalization, in addition to previously classified memoranda submitted by Golitsyn to the CIA. The two books must be read together to get a complete picture of Golitsyn's thesis."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/did_communism_fake_its_own_dea.html

[Vendome]

Another detail I failed to mention:

Lech Walesa

[dr_lew]

I always thought Chernobyl had a lot do with it.

[nathanbedford]

The fundamental, although not in the immediate, causes of the disintegration of the Soviet Union have much in common with the policies of Barack Obama.

First the country was governed by elites. Second, it was governed ostensibly according to an ideology which later degenerated into cronyism, paranoia, self-interest, and institutionalized corruption. Third, the reflexive adherence to an ideology meant that there was no self-correcting mechanisms available to correct policy mistakes and misallocation of resources, so problems simply got bigger and bigger and the lies bigger and bigger to cover them.

If one looks at the American democracy one sees that we often make mistakes, we often miss allocate resources-a phenomenon which we often call a "bubble"- but we have inherent corrective mechanisms which we see at work even as we ponder the destruction of the Soviet Union. America will go to the polls on November 2 and change course away from the destructive ideology of a Barack Obama which, if unchecked, would lead to the disintegration of the United States of America.

Our Constitution keeps alive the freedom to make corrections, it does not guarantee that we won't make mistakes.

[aberaussie]

Bttt

[bert]

They gave stuff away. They sold weapons, their only export of consequence, on credit. They accepted IOU’s rather than cash.

Their banks took the notes as collateral for payroll and operating expense loans to the factories making the weapons .

They did not know how to run a business and did not know the most important part of the transaction........ getting paid

[Katya]

There was a domino effect taking place, which began with Reagan’s Tear Down This wall speech...it started before the Berlin Wall fell in 89. First Hungary and then Czechoslovakia stopped enforcing border crossings from people leaving East Germany and crossing over into Germany. There was a slow and building exodus, especially of young people.

Coupled with the low price of crude... there was no stopping the pending collapse.