What ended the cold war?
Was it the military-industrial complex of reagan and bush, or was it gorbachev's policies?
I guess both helped, but what was more fatal?
>What ended the cold war?
>>990093
Oh man, someone beat me to it.
You can totally trace the cracking of the Iron Curtain to John Paul's visit to Poland.
I would say it was khrushevite revisionism and the sino-soviet split that truly hamstrung the socialist camp.
>>990093
Overstated, but still eternally based
The USSR was dying to reckless military spending far in excess of what it could afford as well as the fact it was falling hopelessly behind technologically making their massive investments into the military mostly useless as they were producing very inferior weaponry in many areas.
Reagan's tough stance at first solidified USSR leadership, but when he turned to more "nice" attempts to deal with the USSR it allowed Gorbechav to tear down the rotting walls.
Gorbachev's policies were pretty bad, but the point of no return was probably the failure of the GKChP.
I'd say the outcome of the Cold War was predetermined by Stalin failing to leave a successor.
When you have a country where the population trusts your ideology completely, and where the ruling class (bureaucracy and party elites) has unprecedented power and control and yet is not supposed to have a much better standard of living than the average person, the temptation of corruption is especially high.
What Stalin managed to achieve under Stalinism was almost a total absence of corruption under these difficult circumstances through fear and intimidation of the elites/ruling class.
Stalin was actually a little naive in this area because he believed he scared the ruling class enough to deter them from trying anything greedy, but of course, he was wrong, because humans apparently deserve worse treatment than a Stalinist dictatorship to keep them from turning into power-hungry egotists.
When he died, everyone in the upper echelons was already in Olympic running low-start position, and the competition was to see who could get away with selling as many Soviet assets for the highest price in the shortest time possible.
Expected profits were trillions of dollars.
Did you really expect human beings to invest in "agriculture" and "industry" when they could live like kangz?
Gorbachev was just symptomatic of a larger problem.
>>990612
>The USSR was dying to reckless military spending far in excess of what it could afford as well as the fact it was falling hopelessly behind technologically making their massive investments into the military mostly useless as they were producing very inferior weaponry in many areas.
Nice memes.
The USA was overexhausting itself with military spending no less than the USSR was.
The USA was in more of an economic crisis than the USSR in the 80s. The only thing that saved the US economy was Gorbachev selling out.
Not an expert on weapons, so I would like some info on Soviet inferior weaponry.
>>990718
Sorry Vlad but this just isn't true. The USSR was spending in excess of 30% GDP on the military according to Gorb himself. The US at the time a meek 8%.
The US economy was booming, the Soviet economy was shrinking, and had been shrinking, for years.
>>990718
>The USA was overexhausting itself with military spending no less than the USSR was.
>The USA was in more of an economic crisis than the USSR in the 80s. The only thing that saved the US economy was Gorbachev selling out.
ugh, I can smell the vodka coming off that post.
>>990093
True, his cooperation with CIA was golden.
>>990718
And as for military? By the time of the collapse computers, targeting system, software, you name it. If the Soviets had it the West had it but better. Aircraft were a serious area where the Russians had fallen behind, in large part due to their lack of software or computer developments. The Abrams was out in full force and ammo usable by pretty much any NATO tank could at this point easily own a T-72 at 1000m. Even the old Pershing could kill Soviet tanks at combat ranges because of new ammo. And the German's new 120mm gun boasted penetration only previously dreamed of. Advances in composites like chobam(?) I'm sure you've heard of it, also gave the West an edge in defense. The Russians fell behind, hard. They started losing the balance of power in the 70s. By the 80s they were hopelessly behind and Russian eggheads started to leave the country in droves.
The brain drain of the fall of Russia is heavily apparent. Even today Russia is trying so hard to play catch up and they're still at least a decade behind.
In computing, they're about two decades behind. Russian computers are hilariously bad. Straight out of early 2000 with that processing power.
>>990923
You forgot to mention that NATO 120mm guns didn't have HE round for ages which only shows how clueless they were about warfare.
>hey famillia, we have enemy that has 20k tanks and some 5 million soldiers, let's focus on killing tanks, forget about that dumb shit called soft targets
The fun fact about all of this is that you know the narration from the Eastern Bloc. The military thought that all of it was falling apart, but then you see a records from US army veterans who served in Germany and they tell you about everything falling apart with shit like 1/4th of vehicles being operational because bureaucratic obstruction in logistical departments and so on.
It's like they all knew that they're not going to see too much action here.
>>990945
>everything falling apart with shit like 1/4th of vehicles being operational for weeks
****
>>990945
probably because the tactical nukes were going to kill the soft targets.
>>990084
What about Nixon's meetings with communist countries like China
>>990945
NATO troops weren't equipped for combat because the politicians didn't want to spend the money with war clearly not on the horizon.
Soviet troops weren't equipped for combat because they couldn't afford to do so. Make no mistake, if there was a threat of war ready rates would have been at 80% or more.
And the 120s didn't have HE because there weren't that many 120s yet so ammo production hadn't exactly started yet. The Abrams didn't even mount the gun in the 80s after all, it kept using the 105 well into the 90s.
>>990949
Tactical nukes were going to kill everybody anyway, collective NBC protection helps you for so long until you have to resupply.
NATO had dumb-ass fixation on tanks for the entire cold war. When Soviets were getting rid of IS tanks, they've adopted M103 and Conqueror to deal with them. When they were concerned about T-80, Soviets kept it far away from Afghanistan because they weren't exactly pleased with its actual performance. They've used T-72 instead. They saw 20-30k tanks but didn't see proportional amount of mechanised infantry, greatly overstating the threat from tanks themselves.
>>990084
Combination of a lot of things
>Political unrest in the Combloc
>Catholic Church stirring unrest in the Combloc
>Reagan Era military spending forcing the Soviets to move money away from domestic to military spending
>Lack of Soviet growth in the 70's meaning the economy was literally imploding all across the Eastern Europe in the 1980's
It wasn't just ONE thing. It was a shit ton of things. If you're asking which was the MOST beneficial in causing the Soviets to fall, it was probably a combination of Reagan and Jan Pavel.
The point when ussr collapsed
http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/#photo-433895
>>991047
>at the end of the 80s of the USSR economically out-competing the Western World, right?
>She was obviously just trolling
Or just seriously fucking misinformed when you consider that the whole system fell apart in '89 because the Eastern Bloc couldn't compete with the West.
>Explaining the fall of the soviet bloc without using historical materialism.
It's like you all can't into marxism, guys.
>>990084
Pantera invaded
>>991396
What does your historical materialist analysis tell you about the fall of the USSR, wise one?
It's not like the entire historical academia is still filled to capacity with various biases and memes concerning soviet history, and it's not as if thousands of documents germane to that period are still top secret, all of which makes proper analysis impossible.
People are still analysing what the fuck the Soviet Union was, as a system, and as a logical part of the Russian historical dynamic. In fact, the only person I can think of who's actually down that now, and not just meme'ing, is Andrey Fursov, and his analysis is still in progress.
>>990084
Do you want to see why the USSR collapsed? Look at the current EU.
A completely undemocratic technocratic organ that is incredibly inefficient and tries to stamp out those inefficiencies with authoritarianism. This means people lose faith in the institutions and the entire system which in turn, is met with more authoritarianism.
In this regard, the USSR was doomed from the beginning, just like the EU is, as soon as they threw democracy out the window.
But there are numerous other issues that led to the USSR collapse.
Catastrophically stupid decisions by the leadership over decades, Gorbachev's amateurish policies that led to right-wing nationalist revolution right across the Eastern Bloc and I think a major point that many seem to underlook, how culturally stagnant the USSR was and how the youth were importing all their culture from the west. Go listen to USSR pop music from the 80s, it all sounds like fucking folk music from the 1800s, why would kids want to listen to that?
>>990718
>The USA was in more of an economic crisis than the USSR in the 80s.
The 80's was a period of solid growth in the US, following the incredibly stagnant 70's. There's a reason American culture became so much more upbeat in the 80's; jobs were coming back, the economy was growing, drugs and gang violence finally looked like they could be solved (although rates didn't truly decline until the 90's), and there was plenty of money to spend. If you had said the 70's, I'd agree, but after 1983 the 80's had some of the most solid growth in the US since the 50's.
>>991659
>Go listen to USSR pop music from the 80s, it all sounds like fucking folk music from the 1800s, why would kids want to listen to that?
They still do.
The very existence of Russian/Soviet Rock/Pop is disputed.
Some say it's its own musical canon based on national folk ideas imbued with Rock/pop elements and played with Rock/Pop instruments.
That kind of destroys the whole argument that all culture was imported from the West and people preferred Western culture to their own. It's just not true. Sure, they were interested in it because it was taboo, and they enjoyed it because it was good in its own way, but it wasn't necessarily more enjoyable to them. That's just memes.
Teenagers and young people in Russia still very much enjoy and respect 80s songs.
The idea that the USSR was devoid of its own cultural identity and innovation is just propaganda.
Vladimir Vysotsky alone is a national hero and considered a genius.
And I'm not even mentioning Soviet cinema, which has many, many masterpieces which are still watched today alongside the newest American movies.
>>991690
Wasn't that economic upswing built on debt though, in contrast to, say the 50s/60s?
Just because there was an appearance of economic growth, doesn't mean it was sustainable.
You would say that's actually what the USSR did: just create an illusion of stability and keep prices level artificially, etc. What's to say the US didn't do the same.
>>991713
Because the US economic system maintained itself all the way through the 80's, while the USSR's completely collapsed, and actually entered its longest period of uninterrupted economic growth from 1991-2001? US debt was also among the lowest in the developed world proportionately, all the way until the recession hit back in '08.
>>991728
>while the USSR's completely collapsed, and actually entered its longest period of uninterrupted economic growth from 1991-2001?
You don't think these two things aren't related in any way?
>>991704
>The idea that the USSR was devoid of its own cultural identity and innovation is just propaganda.
It had it's own cultural identity, it's own cultural identity though couldn't compete at all with the west and was entirely dictated by geriatrics circlejerking over the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Look at Soviet fashion for example, it literally copies American fashion identically about 5 years after. Soviet music the same, follows western trends a few years after they are popular in the west.
I enjoy Soviet cinema, but there is a reason the USSR never had it's own Star Wars or blockbusters.
Everything from the USSR is steeped in heavy nationalism, Russiocentrism and circlejerking over classical Russian culture.
This is in my opinion, one of the biggest failings of the USSR, that it, itself should have had it's own strong cultural brand to export. Where is the Soviet Gangnam Style? Where is the Soviet Star Wars? Where is the Soviet Fashion trends? Where is the Soviet art post 1920s?
It should be telling that union of countries numbering 400 million people had barely any real cultural output on the global sphere.
>>991743
Well partially, sure. The new markets opened up to Western investment definitely helped the US economy to grow then, but a lot of US growth during the 90's was due to investment in housing and the dot com bubble. Just to address the debt again, during the 90's US debt was actually falling, and the nation had a budget surplus for the first time in its post-war history.
The point is, you can't really place the growth of the 80's and 90's US in the hands of debt-driven growth. Most of the growth in US debt during the 80's actually came from the surge in defense spending that Reagan pushed.
I fail to see how any of this could be seen as a worse economic crisis than the USSR, which collapsed utterly in the 80's and whose major successor state of Russia struggled through the 90's.
>>991047
I don't know what the fuck she was on about but she was clearly wrong, the soviet economy had been stagnant for over a decade.
>>991744
>Look at Soviet fashion for example, it literally copies American fashion identically about 5 years after.
It's not like the USSR was busy eliminating decades of civil unrest and political crisis, while catching up 200 years of economic development to Europe and creating a functional alternative to the course of the rest of the world.
That doesn't mean the Soviet demographic was fundamentally incapable of the same level of cultural productivity as any other.
>was entirely dictated by geriatrics circlejerking over the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
Yep, it's not like they had a dissident movement (which was actually curated by those same geriatrics indirectly) with novel ideas.
It's not like they had philosophers and thinkers like Zinoviev, who broke the whole Marxist-Leninist mold. But mostly, yes, I guess.
> but there is a reason the USSR never had it's own Star Wars or blockbusters.
Because people had a different mentality based on other interests and priorities instilled in them by the system? That doesn't say anything about the quality of the culture.
>Soviet music the same, follows western trends a few years after they are popular in the west.
The pop/rock trend doesn't define all music. In fact, I'll remind you that the Soviet Union produced some of the greatest pianists and performers of Classical music in history (Gilels, Kissin). The Classical tradition was very, very strong.
Not to mention Soviet (choir) anthems, which are their own genre and exported their style to the rest of the Socialist bloc.
>Everything from the USSR is steeped in heavy nationalism, Russiocentrism and circlejerking over classical Russian culture.
Agreed.
>This is in my opinion, one of the biggest failings of the USSR, that it, itself should have had it's own strong cultural brand to export.
Totally agreed, and it's actually a major problem Russia still faces today. No soft power at all.
![image[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/IVLfxb6.jpg "image[1].jpg")
>>991763
>the soviet economy had been stagnant for over a decade.
Right back at you, buddy, I don't know what you're talking about.
It was doomed from the start. Socialism in one state isn't possible.
>>991047
>>991763
Wrong or using the Soviets to rally support from nationalists like Reagan was.
The Soviets went on a tear in the 1970's.
1. U.S. loses Vietnam
2. Massive scandal as a President is found to be committing felony crimes against political rivals.
3. Socialist coups across Africa and South America.
4. Soviets go into Afghanistan prompting fears of a Soviet path to the Gulf.
Also, people assume MAAD existed from the time the Soviets got the bomb. This isn't true. The U.S. maintained a fantastic first strike capability through the 1950's. They had better air defense and bombers. Russia's advantage in early rockets was born of the necessity of getting to the U.S. by some other means.
While the Russians went out to an early lead, the U.S. quickly caught up. MAAD was a sop to the Soviets when Nixon and Kissinger realized Congress wasn't going to keep funding more missiles. Instead of giving the Soviets the advantage, they went for dentente and linkage.
But the Soviet economic system was already fucked by the 70's. Major reforms could have turned around, but their coups abroad made them think they were on top, and it doomed them.
>>991810
The Soviets didn't increase spending in the 1980's. That's the myth part.
http://i.imgur.com/ShFR3.png
But they were matching or outspending the U.S. for years despite having a much smaller economy. So in that sense, they were at a comparative disadvantage.
The lack of cultural exports from the USSR was also huge for diplomacy and keeping vassels happy.
Centralized multi-ethnic empires like Rome and China always were helped by having a superior culture the barbarians looked up to. I don't see how eastern Europe could compare the east and west and not think the east was stagnant.
To be sure, the Soviets produced lots of great writers, but they tried to arrest most of them, which is top lulz.
>>991841
>But the Soviet economic system was already fucked by the 70's
Why do you say 70s and not mid-80s?
>>991850
>Centralized multi-ethnic empires like Rome and China always were helped by having a superior culture the barbarians looked up to.
Well, the Soviets did too in the face of Marxism-Leninism, but it was disembodied and did not intrinsically represent a cultural centre (Russia). So the challenge was to combine Russo-centrism with Marxism or replace it, or to raise children from an early age to respect a nation-less principle and create the "Homo Sovieticus", a person with a collectivist mentality who values an international cause over his own roots.
>>991856
Because the seeds of collapse were already there.
Major reforms could have fixed it, but they came too late.
>ctrl + f oil
>0 results
/his/ is dumb as hell
