It might be that my comparison wasn’t the most accurate, since my main insight in the USSR is through the DDR, which was mainly a pawn in the face off between the superpowers at that time, and thus was a hotspot for tensions around that time. And I do believe that the wealth disparity wasn’t as extreme as in capitalist countries, yet it says little about what the actual average living conditions were compared to other countries. Also, corruption doesn’t always have a wealth disparity as a result. After all, people can also get corrupt due to self-preservation, which I think is most evident under Stalin’s later rule, after his wife committed suicide.
Yet I can’t really agree that it was “killed off” during its downfall, as I have my doubts that it would have survived much longer than it did without its subnations separating from it. The only way I could imagine it surviving would have been if they “licked their own wounds” after the war, so to speak, recuperate from their losses instead of its rapid militarisation that it gone through to keep up with the USA in order to win a dick measuring contest.
The USSR was constantly trying to de-escalate tensions on the Cold War. The US actually kept pushing because they knew they had the upper hand in terms of resources in a post-war world, so it was a way to keep the USSR focused on keeping up rather than rebuilding. This led to the USSR using a significant chunk of resources on keeping up so as to not be nuked into oblivion in a first strike attack by the US. I recommend reading Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? which goes over the actual state of the USSR and what led to its downfall.
Yes, after the reign of Stalin, where Khrushchev took over, the USSR deescalated the Cold War, yet it was the actions taken by Stalin’s regime that let the conflict start to begin with, with the USSR not retreating from Iran as the other Allied Forces did, the threat of force in the Turkish Straits crisis, comparing Churchill to Adolf Hitler and breaking the Yalta Agreement by meddling with the 1947 Polish elections.
Also, the article seems to be paywalled, so I have to see when I get around to reading it.
Here’s a non-paywalled version. Either way, no, you’re entitely off. The USSR began its life has heavily invaded and sanctioned by countries like the US. The USSR would have rather had time for peaceful development, but the US Empire could not allow an alternative. Additionally, Churchill was similar to Hitler, the two admired each other and Churchill was responsible for mass famine in India. He had this to say about it:
I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.
If anything, it was the west that wanted the Cold War from the beginning.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.
That’s a non-sequitor and even false in some instances. We were discussing how their claim was that the USSR provoked the Cold War, but that wasn’t the case at all, as I pointed out. You’re trying to make this a point about “invasion bad,” which isn’t always true and moreover isn’t at all relevant to the topic at hand.
It might be that my comparison wasn’t the most accurate, since my main insight in the USSR is through the DDR, which was mainly a pawn in the face off between the superpowers at that time, and thus was a hotspot for tensions around that time. And I do believe that the wealth disparity wasn’t as extreme as in capitalist countries, yet it says little about what the actual average living conditions were compared to other countries. Also, corruption doesn’t always have a wealth disparity as a result. After all, people can also get corrupt due to self-preservation, which I think is most evident under Stalin’s later rule, after his wife committed suicide.
Yet I can’t really agree that it was “killed off” during its downfall, as I have my doubts that it would have survived much longer than it did without its subnations separating from it. The only way I could imagine it surviving would have been if they “licked their own wounds” after the war, so to speak, recuperate from their losses instead of its rapid militarisation that it gone through to keep up with the USA in order to win a dick measuring contest.
The USSR was constantly trying to de-escalate tensions on the Cold War. The US actually kept pushing because they knew they had the upper hand in terms of resources in a post-war world, so it was a way to keep the USSR focused on keeping up rather than rebuilding. This led to the USSR using a significant chunk of resources on keeping up so as to not be nuked into oblivion in a first strike attack by the US. I recommend reading Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? which goes over the actual state of the USSR and what led to its downfall.
Yes, after the reign of Stalin, where Khrushchev took over, the USSR deescalated the Cold War, yet it was the actions taken by Stalin’s regime that let the conflict start to begin with, with the USSR not retreating from Iran as the other Allied Forces did, the threat of force in the Turkish Straits crisis, comparing Churchill to Adolf Hitler and breaking the Yalta Agreement by meddling with the 1947 Polish elections.
Also, the article seems to be paywalled, so I have to see when I get around to reading it.
Here’s a non-paywalled version. Either way, no, you’re entitely off. The USSR began its life has heavily invaded and sanctioned by countries like the US. The USSR would have rather had time for peaceful development, but the US Empire could not allow an alternative. Additionally, Churchill was similar to Hitler, the two admired each other and Churchill was responsible for mass famine in India. He had this to say about it:
If anything, it was the west that wanted the Cold War from the beginning.
Harry Truman, in 1941 in front of the Senate, stated:
The Red Army invaded many countries, like Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Baltica, etc.
That’s a non-sequitor and even false in some instances. We were discussing how their claim was that the USSR provoked the Cold War, but that wasn’t the case at all, as I pointed out. You’re trying to make this a point about “invasion bad,” which isn’t always true and moreover isn’t at all relevant to the topic at hand.