I thought you would have like 2 million subscribers until I looked at the number and realised you only had around 120. I hope you get more subscribes because you have very good content.
No. It’s not good content, it’s sorely lacking in sociological analysis, namely conflict theory, but that would debunk the entire premise that the Soviet Union had a communist mode of production
@@geediali9941 Would you like a long winded explanation, an severe oversimplification that doesn’t do the concept justice, or would you like to have it explained by Crash Course, yes THAT crash course, in 10 minutes. The video is titled “Sociology #6 Conflict Theory”. If you want my explanation I already warned you I’ll oversimplify it drastically.
Also interesting is how people in USSR used to steal from their employers. We used to have saying in Slovakia “Who is not stealing is stealing from his family”. My grandpa built a whole tractor from parts he got this way lol
My parents are from Poland, and they told me the same about life under communism. "If you're not stealing from your workplace, you're stealing from your family" XD Greetings from Australia my friend!
One minor point i think should be added here, is that a lot of the industrialization of the USSR came from other countries, namely the western capitalist countries. They didnt have the know-how nor the engineers at the time to expand their industrialization as almost everyone was stuck working at a farm, so what they did was they sold off wheat and other food stuffs which they did have, and spend that money on hiring people from the capitalist countries that had the know-how the engineers etc etc, so they could grow their economy for them. There is a very interesting historical examination of this but i cant for the life of me remember by whom, he examined the USSR's growing industrialization and how well it was linked with hiring people from other countries. And nearly all of their expanding economy at the start came from hiring people from capitalist countries, but it slowly changed over time as they gained the know-how and grew their numbers of engineers.
Great Point! I read a great biography on one of those foreign engineers, it was called "behind the Urals" by John Scott. I definitely agree that I should have touched on this subject, therefore Ill pin your comment so that other people can also know this. Thanks for the Great insight and feedback!
@@dr.floridaman4805 Where does Marx tout the joys of forced collectivization? Actually he complains specifically about this sort of thing as it transpired in W Europe, completely obliterating the peasant population through famine and sweatshop labour in the 17-1800s. Marxism as a theory does not begin until capitalist development is achieved. Which, we know, the Soviet Union never had.
The eastern block had an old joke, What is the biggest difference between capitalism and communism? With capitalism, man exploits man. With communism, it's the other way around.
No, Communism is just bad in terms of allocation of the resources and it's inherently very inefficient. In a free market once you recognise crooks you don't buy things from them anymore.
And some systems are worse than others even if booth have the same crooks. But if you feel happy to simplify everything into a simple answer to pretend to be smart keep on doing you...
@@ghosty0612 but it ultimately come to individual leader itself. system that are better than other exist to create a good leader but sometime even a good system they will crooks up there by complete accident that ruin it.
My take: although the tzar did not encourage industrial development and there were some problems, he offered better living conditions than his communist successors who saw people as mere disposable tools for their dystopian goals.
A story my grandfather told me about shopping in Soviet Russia: If you walk down the street and see people queuing up outside a store, you just get in line. By the time you reach the front, you'll find out what they're selling - if it's something you don't need right now or doesn't fit, trade it to your neighbor later!
Here's what my dad told me about shopping in Russia: you stand in one line to pay for the bread, you stand in another line to get the bread. By the time you get to the front of the line, they are out of bread. You stand in another line to get your money back.
My grandfather living in northern soviet Kazakhstan told me that you usually want to get in line early (like 4am) otherwise meats and milk will be gone by sunrise if you live in more rural parts where all surrounding villages gather for food distribution.
I think in videos like these it is very important to emphasize that rulers who tried to reform the feudal system were often assassinated. People who live in comfortable modern-day societies and judge people of the past have no clue how difficult it was to change even the most obvious societal injustices. For most of history, a reformist ruler was literally putting his life on the line
That joke: 'what weighs 20 tons, guzzles diesel, belches clouds of steam and smoke, makes a ferocious noise, takes a team of 10 engineers and mechanics on round the clock shifts to maintain, and cuts an apple into 3 pieces?' - A Soviet machine designed to cut an apple into 4 pieces.
@spaceflight101 True, but I would imagine that (in the same way it did for the west) it had something to do with the German rocket scientists they had working for them after the war.
This is a tiny side note to a really excellent presentation. While the 'Romanovs' held the throne for 300 years, they were not blood-related. This was not a family in the Patri-lineal sense, but rather members of the Romanov clan who happened to bull their way onto the throne. The bloodline had been broken several times since Peter the Great. I don't think the Nicholas clan held it for even a hundred years.
The most interesting part of this whole shitshow would be the fact that Stalin knew and spoke about the problem of transformation which CPSU was undergoing. The one which turned revolutionaries into new tyrants. What is surprising is the method chosen to fight it. Great Purge wasn't just about spy paranoia, it was about counter-revolution as well. For whatever reason, instead of reforming the system, people in power doubled (or tripled? screw it, let's say, magnified) the suppression and bloodshed. The second interesting part is the fact that people describing Soviet economy somehow think that it didn't change in the 60+ years it existed. If someone will say that during the Stalin's reign there WERE market elements of the economy, no one will believe it. Private cooperatives were a thing, you know. Since such companies(? not sure if it's the right word) had a MASSIVE part in satisfying demand for the common goods (clothes, for example). Abolishment of that element is actually the major part of the bad image Khruschev has even now in the post-Soviet countries, and some russian economists think that it played a major role in economic stagnation and eventual decline of the Soviet Union. Do hope that my ramblings here are comprehensible. I tend to really mess up the word order in English.
Wait, so Khrushchev abolished private/market elements in the Soviet Union? Why would he do that? I always thought the fall of the Soviet Union came from bad leadership, not its core ideas.
@@DasRaetsel core idea of communism is abolishment of classes and private property on the MEANS OF PRODUCTION. The latter part just means that means of production (instruments, factories, land etc) cannot belong to people who doesn't work on it (or with it, dunno how to say it better). The thing with cooperatives was that, if I remember things right, they couldn't use more than 40% of the stuff as the hired workers, everyone else should have a part of the business. Fun part being that market elements existence does not contradict the idea AT ALL. The thing with the Khrushchev is a little bit more complicated. As researchers say, computing (processing?) power necessary for fully planned economy will be achieved in a few years from now, thanks for the development of digital tech. Trying to do that in 1960s... Well, it didn't go well, right? Not to mention that "reorganisation of cooperatives" wasn't the only bad thing done by that man and his powerbase, restructurization of Gosplan (planning agency) was really, really badly mishandled. As they say, "is it a treachery or mistake, and what's worse?" Edit: Oh, and I'm sorry that I couldn't type this sooner, it was like 3 am in my time zone. Sleep is important. Edit 2: Cooperatives couldn't have more than 20% of hired workforce. Checked that just now.
I've actually watched a documentary on this!!Stalin had tried to democratize the USSR since he took power but the war and resistance from leaders hindered this.He worried about the bureaucracy and said that self criticism was key to growth.Also,the great purge was a result of him giving in to other leaders.I realize that setting up such a system will require a way for one to structure a government in which the leaders don't look for self preservation.
This one is from Scandinavia. A local journalist got a guided tour in a factory by a foreman and was very impressed. Asked: "- How many work here?" "- About half of them."
I worked in the public healthcare system in my country, and it sounds like this. If anything there’s disincentive to be productive because if you work harder, make improvements, stay under budget the government will expect the same next year. Any funding that wasn’t used will be reallocated elsewhere next year. If you show you can be efficient on a tight budget with low staff, they’ll never increase. So people do bare minimum to get their pay checks. And managers make sure they only just meet their targets and spend all their allocated funds by the end of the financial year.
The analysis of the feudal system and how that indirectly led to such a long time of no technological developments was so well explained. You gained a subscriber just for that!
@@War4Skills Some of the technological developments during European feudal middle ages: The blast furnace Rear-mounted rudder for stearing larger ships Gunpowder Eyeglasses Treadmill construction cranes Cannons The heavy plow, revolutionizing agriculture The hourglass Endless castle and other fortification and general construction technique developments Development of advanced armor Wheelbarrows (invented in China earlier but first seen in Europe around 1200) Caravel (ship that could travel further, vital for the Age of exploration) The printing press Perfection of astrolabes (astronomical device) Mechanical clocks Tidal mills Telescopes Advanced distilleries able to make fine liquour ++, the list goes on. I agree with Christopher, the video oversimplifies it to such a high degree it is almost wrong. The creater seems to have a heavy pro-capitalism bias and presents all other systems unreasonably harshly.
@@Spacemongerr and you're communism fan that's why you're downplaying holdomor death counts. There is no doubt capitalism is better than whatever soviet union was trying to do. And he would certainly criticize the system which soviet union was following that's why they started declining in 70s and 80s after the post ww2 boom.
I wonder what role the arms race played in the economic weakening -- and eventual collapse -- of the USSR. I heard that as spending in the US and USSR on weaponry increased, the Soviets had a hard time keeping up, and this expenditure deprived other sectors of the Soviet economy of needed resources.
At the beginning of this video, and if I heard it correctly, it was said that the USSR had the worlds second largest economy. ??? Germany & Japan, along with other Democratic countries, had much larger economies than the USSR. I remember an estimate from the Nineteen Seventies, (The Soviets never released their economic statistics) that the economy of the USSR equaled that of about Italy. In other words, The USSR was a military superpower, it was never an economic superpower. As for the Arms Race, of course the citizens of the USSR had a much lower standard of living than the people of the West. When a country spends around fourty percent of their GDP on weapons, and their economy is third rate, their people stand in bread lines and have communal bathrooms. The people of Italy had much higher living standards because they didn't spend a almost half of their income on weapons.
@@robertsansone1680 the soviets never got to concentrate on life improvement since they were constantly forced into spending everything for their military. First in the civil war, then to defend themselves from the Nazis, and then they had to keep up with the other global superpower, the USA.
@@kajetanscholz1991 And if they weren't spending tremendous sums of money supporting "Socialist" countries all around the world, their people would have had a much higher standard of living.
@@kajetanscholz1991 The soviet's didn't have to keep up with the US and maintain a superpower status. Britain and France relinquished their superpower status to save their economies after ww2. They could have poured money to maintain their status risking economic collapse. Instead they fixed their economies and maintained a major power status instead.
I worked in sales for many years and I never knew that American companies adopted the Communist pay scale. In sales, one was given a goal and a bonus schedule. If you achieved your goal or exceeded it you got more money. However, next year your sales goal was what you sold last year plus a sales increase. It didn't take long to realize that it did not pay to work hard because of this constant increase in your goal and bonus. If they wanted maximum output they should have just paid a bonus on what you sold and not raise your cap every year.
Think that's mainly in the public sector jobs. Everyone gets the same pay in their scale no matter their performance. Private sector pay is based on experience and demand, is my understanding.
Private sector sales isn’t this simple. Your goal does increase in most roles but you also continue to get renewals or repeat sales from your previous customer wins. You also have accelerators that incentivize you to keep going even once you’ve hit your target. Basic Example: your target is ten, you get paid $1000 on top of your salary for each of those ten. Your 11th, 12th, 13th etc. all reap you $2000 and in some cases, if you keep going, they start to pay $3000. It’s worth keeping going even if you fail the next year bc you get paid so much more on those extra sales.
@@brettclark4276 No, most sales people hand off the accounts to an account manager once the deal is signed. I'm in B2B sales. I don't get any renewals or upsells, just an increased quota the next year if I do well. Most sales people these days sell only to net new customers or existing customers (account management), not both.
I was thinking about the exact same thing while watching that part. You do have some other variables that take place which can motivate you (like promotions) but yes, it does happen often. I worked for several B2C companies (both from the US and Europe) and I saw this time and again
In 1976 my company sold aerospace test equipment to the USSR. I spent 2 weeks there setting it up. It was unbelievable watching them work. Two men installed 2 marble tiles a day, often taking them down again next day. The restaurant had 2 waiters working and 10 sitting on a bench in the kitchen. The central planners scheduled concrete work so they did it at -10 C knowing it wouldn't set. The inefficiency drove me nuts.
@@Steve.._. hey - they served beer! No snack... Picture the Backrooms but a plane full of people. Yellow everything with mismatched upholstery, indeterminate carpets, but no (visible) gremlins. Had to get to the Square somehow amirite
Read how the Chernobyl power plant was built. Concrete was poured wrong, parts ordered for the plant were unusable. Bryukhanov who was in charge of the construction tried to quit, because of all the mismanagement
Which is why it’s hilarious that almost all western communists are unemployed, lazy neets who think communism means free money and no work lmao. I’d love to send some tankies to North Korea
@@MIchaelSybiI think they mean if you can’t find official employment in the US you end up being forced to live a lifestyle that breaks some law one way or another. But I think it’s a bit of a silly comparison
@@trevoncowen9198 We all are communist and capitalist in some sense at same time. When 4 friends open a startup they are communist for themselves and capitalist for others and when one of them try to outshine or do fraud with Company money that one friend is nothing but capitalist.
16:40 this is absolutely not true. Most significant pay raises are self-made as they come from when people start new jobs, not employers giving current employees raises hence why they discourage salary discussions amongst employees
Its true in theory, not in practice. I mean in "Theory" you can make your own soda recipe and become a big competitor that can overthrow Coca Cola and Pepsi, in reality, Coca Cola will buy your company and not get overthrown, talking in "Theory" when discussing economics is usually the easiest way to explain things, so I guess that's why Casual Scholar phrased it like that
Yeah exactly what I was thinking, especially for smaller businesses that rely on cheap labor regardless of the skill, eg small hats shops and malls. If the employee works hard, they get more responsibilities, if they don't they won't necessarily get fired either. Tho if they ask for a pay rise, no matter how hard working of an employee they are, for a job as mundane as cashier, they could leave and you could hire someone else. Pay rises may become an option tho in interesting scenarios like you're working for the small business of a family friend, but these scenarios are not rly important
@@vonkouva2619 It's in theory and in practice. Google, Facebook and Amazon were started just by a few average guys 25 years ago who are now all multi-billionaires. The sugar water example doesn't hold weight because society doesn't need another version of sugar water.
Plus, ironically enough, they were relatively spared when compared to the west. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, they instituted quarantine type of measures which made it so that they were relatively spared compared to the rest of Europe. That backfired quite a lot. Lol
Both capitalism and communism rose from a need to improve on feudalism. Both have been improvements, but both created new power elites taking the role of nobility. Eventually a new economic system will replace capitalism. After all, feudalism lasted 700 years.
@@Santhoshkumar-ku1jg600k homeless and 7 million unemployed would like to disagree with you. Not to meantion that not all that aren't homeless own a house, many of them rent stuff out.
@@Santhoshkumar-ku1jg "house" Thousands get evicted from their homes in the USA. Meanwhile in Russia it's literally forbidden by the constitution to get evicted from your home.
Lol no. There can't be another economic system. It's pretty simple. Either the people collectively own the means or the factors are privately owned. There can't be anything else because they're the polar opposites of one another. There will always only be 2. In economics there are 4 systems. Planned and market are the main ones whereas mixed and traditional are derived from them.
@@zerog1037 700 years ago the notion of capitalism was inconceivable. That we cannot find our way out of the bag today doesn't make it a permanent condition.
Fun fact about Stalin taking control: When Lenin was still alive, he held the position of General Secretary, which is not a fancy title because it's not a fancy position. The thing is, he never left that position; when Lenin died, he didn't take his position, he controlled the Soviet Union from the position of General Secretary. Every subsequent leader of the country also took that position, so for most of its existence, one of the most militarily powerful countries of its time was ruled by a secretary.
I would argue that Stalin was a pretty methodical politician. He was quite shrewd by portraying himself as "Lenin's best pupil" and "the defender of the revolution" during much of the 1920s when he started to embrace "us vs. them" tactics against his political rivals. Most importantly, the position of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed him to gradually fill both the party and the government positions (the secret police and the military in particular) with his followers and also to recruit newbies who were more likely to be unconditionally loyal to him. Overall, all of these appointees owed their careers to him which allowed Stalin to gain the kind of influence none of his contemporaries achieved. (Hitler would be the only other leader who came close.) But notice that, once the Soviet-German War broke out, Stalin became both the Commissar of Defense and the Head of the Defense Council, meaning he no longer needed to cover himself under the veneer of the General Secretary. Of course, Stalin could afford to do so since, by then, he had destroyed all of his political rivals.
@@fukkitful Wrong, he actually put him in the position as the "second man" in 1922. Lenin was still alive when he appointed Stalin as the leader of the party.
@@fukkitful Lenin was the one who gave Stalin control over the party. When Lenin testament came out, it criticized all high ranked Bolshevik, with Trocky being criticized the least. However, legitimacy of that testament is dubious. Remember, no original was ever found with his signature. At that time Lenin was paralyzed from stroke, barely spoke and could only use left arm. Even Trocky didn't initially claim that document was meant as testament (not to mention that in his publishing wording of document changed several times) so it might be something that Trocky or other disgruntled party members produced to get rid of Stalin because Stalin was already indirectly dictating in what direction will party go (by assigning his people to key positions). Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev met in secret during vacation to discuss how will recently leaked document be used: will they get rid of Stalin or put Stalin on a leash. Anyway, when testament was discussed among high ranking Bolsheviks Stalin offered resignation but these 3 gave Stalin support. However, they failed in long run use this because all 3 had their own vision of how to do this. Only Trocky and his block, who had large support in the army stood against Stalin, but he was exiled soon after. Zinoviev, Bukharin and Kamenev were kicked out of Party in 1934 purge for not reporting about Ryutin affair (200 page document circulating among Bolsheviks, calling for getting rid of Stalin for handling of collectivization and famine), shortly reinstalled only to be executed in Great Terror of 1937-1938. Am I only how thinks this would be excellent TV drama miniseries?
I’m the type of socialist who would’ve been killed or put in a gulag, so I loved your point about how a sustainable revolution requires a broad coalition. ANY government that stifles freedom is ultimately sowing the seeds of its own demise.
@@edwardheaney3641 lmao same thing that happens when someone uses their freedom to buy slaves. I’m referring to freedom of speech, religion, press, etc. Small businesses are fine but (in the view of a socialist like myself) capitalist enterprise eventually becomes comparable to slavery so businesses should be capped and the rest of the private sector should be non profits and cooperatives
@@jaredharmer7047 - Except you would be more akin to the slave master in this scenario. You know what is funny? In a capitalist country, you are 100% free to start your own business, pay everyone exactly the same, and give everyone an equal vote. Other people are free to start businesses in the traditional sense. So, you are already free to be a socialist in a capitalist country, but socialist type models can't compete against traditional capitalist models, so they never grow above a neighborhood co-op. Why would you force an inefficient business model that can't compete with other models? It would ruin a country economically, and it would stifle the freedom of citizens. This is why socialists are inherently authoritarian. They have to force everyone to follow their model at the barrel of a gun, and it inevitably leads to that country having a horrible standard of living. So, what why do you hate freedom so much? Why do you hate prosperity so much?
A lot of major factors were not mentioned here. First, the plague epidemic was far worse in western europe, because it was more densely populated, than in the eastern part. So the workforce was never scarce in eastern europe. Second, you did not even mention the colonization of the western european powers during the industrial revolution. Serfdom and slavery was exported to their new colonies, which was not the case in eastern europe.
That's because the "Sovjet Era" startet after the October revolution, and that was 60 years after the Industrial revolution. During that period you describe it was basically a Monarchy/Feudalist Economy. LIKE THE REST OF EUROPE.
@@sblbb929 You could argue they did when the soviet union kept occupied lands and nations around them after WW2, all the satellite states were very much under Russia's thumb and had a similar relationship with Russia as colonies did with owner countries.
Despite what some people like to say, the industrial revolution was not created on the back of colonial wealth. Portugal and Spain ran larger slave and colonial empires than brittain and they didn't birth the industrial revolution, and a large portion of the revolution happened in the US. It's a line people use to try to de-emphasize the importance of property rights and other government structures that motivated the innovation, it's a cynical dishonest ploy to promote top down control economies.
Outside the US most people didn’t experience the roaring twenties. Central Europe still heavily suffered from the consequences of the war and economic turmoil. In Austria you had to spend 20000 Kronen for one beer and half a loaf of bread in 1922
The world superpower at that time, the United Kingdom had an excellent economy in the 30s and 40s, while millions were doing of starvation in their colonies at the same time. Isn't that funnier still?
@@venkats0iitk 3rd.) a lot of those areas that GB colonized thrived, even today and were far better off when GB was in control of them. (i dont like GB anyway but its the truth)
Another lesser fact know in the west. After 1945, the USSR was using east european countries as its collonies. These countries had to support extremely uneffective soviet economy and had to cooperate in so called Comecon(RVHP in czech) which caused, that more modern countries such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, had to support the worse ones. This caused another degradation of the economical growth.
How come negative trade balance of USSR, DDR and CzSSR in favour of less developed countries is colonialism? Colonialism is what like 1880-1910 several TRILLIONS of modern USD's juiced from India
@@beibotanov Curse between rubles and czechoslovak crowns was 10:1. The prices were artificial. 2 000 factories were robbed and moved to USSSR from Czechoslovakia after WWII. Part oc Czechoslovakia was added to the USSR. over 30 000 czechoslovak citizens were kidnapped to USSR and murdered there. etc.
@@premyslsedy2904 yes, in the early 50's USSR needed restoration. Let me remind you, these factories were working for whom? And these exact citizens were collaborators with whom? Indeed a hideous Soviet crime. Also, wasnt' Cz-S the one of the few countries having a real Socialist revolution in 1948, not a rigged election with smart political maneuvering like Hungary had? (It was)
@@premyslsedy2904 reparations. It was USSR having 10 millions of it's civilians killed and a third of national wealth destroyed not without the help of Czech-produced weaponry. And those citizens - do you really mourn collaborators? Ew
@@beibotanov Czechoslovakia was occupied (partially) by the Third Reich. Exile Czechoslovak government signed several pacts with the USSR. Czechoslovakia and USSR were allies at the paper. But in reality, USSR was only next ocupier. SO called socialistic revolution was just a military putsch led by soviet agents (Zorin etc.) You may think, you know more about it than me, but You don´t.
@@CasualScholar Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1917 ended Imperial Russias involvement in WW1. This allowed the Germans to relocate manpower to the Western Front and led to the Falkenhayn offensive in early 1918. The US was able to reinforce British and French Armies to stall that offensive, but it was a close run thing.
@@choro3d191 The inefficient Soviet production couldn't supply enough. The efficient developed production served more than the owner. It created a twx base for local governments to develop and maintain public works.
terrible shortages, food shortages and queues arose in the USSR during the privatization of the 80-90s, when traitors in the government began to create owners of national assets and it became profitable for them to export products to neighboring countries, leaving a deficit within the country. It was the same during the Tsarist oligarchic regime and famine constantly arose
Today corporations owns all new ideas, products, why bother developing anything new as an individual? All the profits still going to the top and the most incredible thing is that was enabled by creative people trying to organize themselves, they were not good enough to prevent the organizations to be stolen.
One obvious flaw in your reasoning is that disgruntled malcontents aren't actually ingenious drivers of technological innovation, they are the whiners dependent on the union to keep their jobs.
@@kerriwilson7732 Inventing is all luck. You can increase the odds by trying, but if it doesn’t pay off (it doesn’t in a late stage capitalist society) why would you?
Yet here you are, on the internet, using a corporate service called UA-cam, posting a comment using a corporate made iPhone bitching about corporations.
16:29. Total bullshit. Common misconception that in capitalist society you can be whatever you want to be. Imagine if you what to be a plumber, but being a doctor is pays 5 more times than that. You will take, obviously, a doctors job. But still, someone has to be a plumber. So you, for example, take a poor mexican so he can be a plumber and get paid less for his job. "God bless the US". Or, like in USSR you can be plumber and get paid like doctor. And you will get an apartment for free from the government just because you started working. Got wife and kid? Get bigger apartment. There was not enough apartment for everyone for quite some time, but still, it was for free.
Sounds fucking horrible if a plumber gets paid the same as a doctor. Imagine going to schooling for a decade or more just to make as much as the dude who took a few classes in one semester. You say that like that’s a good thing. That’s fucking horrible.
Or you go to an area with a small supply of plumbers but a large demand for them which will allow you to be a plumber and with way better pay. In Mother Russia it doesn't matter where you go as a plumber your payed like a doctor and as a soviet doctor you're payed like an American plumber. The Soviet workers had a saying "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
I think soviet workers also had incresing in payment for experience(стаж), qualification(разряды), extra work hour(переработка). Its a fact. They were not stupid
Yeah, pretty sure this video is blunt and dishonest about reality of Soviet Economic system. It also ignores differences of Soviet generations. Not to say the economy functioned well and didn't have serious contradictions.
Actually, the so-called "second serfdom" in the eastern (tightening of control over serfs) part of Europe did not have result in centralized absolute power as in Russia. In Poland, it led to... weakening of the royal power to the benefit of nobility. Nobles empowered by increased ownership over their serfs, and high demand for their produce in the 16th century got strong enough to widen their political powers at the expense of the king and burghers. Generally, Poland transformed into a sort of a republic: nobles elected, impeached kings. At the local level, nobles ran a sort of self-governing bodies, which voted on local affairs and delegated members to the country's parliament/diet (naturally only composed of nobles). Peasants were reduced to slavery: not only were they unable to leave the land without permission but there were cases of trading them like livestock and they could not appeal to royal courts - their lord was their judge and master of their lives. Burghers and cities started to vegetate due to unfavorable laws enacted by the nobility. The next stage of the system was an anarchic oligarchy: a dozen of rich noble families accumulated so much wealth, that they could raise private armies and buy the votes of poorer nobles - unlike elsewhere, nobility was numerous in Poland and amounted to even 5-10% of the population, so it was stratified economically, many did not own any estate altogether, the only things differentiating them from peasants being personal freedom and political rights. Under the shock of the first partition, some top families pushed for reforms, so the last stage was a proper, "English-like" constitutional monarchy when the national constitution was adopted in 1791. Alas, the extractive second-serfdom could also end up with a constitutional monarchy. The reasons why Russia has almost always been a tyranny are more complex.
I've also seen arguments that the Polish noble class also hurt Polish sovereignty and nationalism overall by often being easily lulled by Russia, Austria, or Prussian neighbors to snap off pieces of the country over the centuries which in many ways makes them more like the Holy Roman Empire than a republic per se.
@@Taospark It was less "The nobles were fooled" and more "The nobles were bribed": The senior nobility in Poland-Lithuania had what was called a "Librum Veto": during most normal meetings of the legislature (the Sejm) all it took was one senior noble objecting to grind everything to a halt. The Austrians, Prussians, and Russians exploited this constitutional quirk to eventually destroy Poland. The reforms of the 1791 Constitution were only possible because they were enacted by a "Confederated Sejm" which were immune to the librum veto. By this point Poland was so weak militarily that the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians were able to roll in under the pretext of "defending the ancestral rights" of nobles they had bribed. Afterwards, more bribes and direct force (there were Russian troops in the chamber) led to the later Grodno Sejm ratifying the destruction of the nation. It arguably had the effect of martyring the country in the eyes of its people however. Over the next 100+ years the Poles would be a restive as all hell pain in the ass for the Czars. "Poland is not yet lost" indeed...
I am glad you enjoy the fruits of EU membership. Ireland joined the Community, then known as the EEC, in 1973. Before that the country was very poor and backward and relied mainly on agriculture and local services and mnfg for its sparse survival. Most people emigrated to the UK and US to find work and make a living. Now after nearly 50 years of EU membership Ireland is an economic hotbed of foreign direct investment in growing sectors such as IT and pharma. Large scale investment in education and infrastructure has resulted in making Ireland very attractive for immigration, the exact opposite of the situation in one lifetime. In 50 years ireland has gone from a population of 2.8 million to a population exceeding 5 million with high employment. The two flies in the ointment are dear and inaccessable housing and substandard, often chaotic, health service provision, especially for those who cannot afford private health insurance. It seems that the government, in focussing on job creation, has taken its eye off the ball in terms of providing secure and affordable housing of a acceptable standard and an adequately run health service. It is interesting to note that sectors which have no outside competition such as teaching, law and some parts of health, have very high costs and those sectors such as private sector mnfg and tech have lower costs because of external competition from poorer countries. This has resulted in higher inequalities than existed in the 1950's when everyone was poor. Not everyone has benefitted from EU membership and the uneducated and older people have not seen any improvement in living standards.
Zero % unemployment in the Soviet Union. Of course. They famously cooked the books on a lot of things. A good economy requires some unemployment. As odd as it sounds.
I just interviewed a gentleman who lived in old Soviet Union. He had a master degree in engineering. Once he graduated he was assigned to become a forklift driver in a factory. It’s pretty obvious why they failed lol
I've heard about this practice throughout western Europe even nowadays. The idea is for the employee to recognize and appreaciate the job of his collegues bellow his level of skill. He gets promoted to higher level, like every other day or so, until he gets the position for which he applied for.
@@philldonn705 this wasn’t that. He was a forklift driver for 15 years. But even what you’re describing isn’t ideal but not a terrible idea. I worked at a company once that made all professional employees spend 3-6 months in their plants so they understood the operation which I thought was a good idea.
There are plenty of people with higher degrees from top tier US universities who could never find a job to utilize what they learned. I know guys with pharmacy degree who have struggled to find a permanent job. It happens in every system or country.
@@joetred that’s true but the difference is in America you could get a bad degree or just not in demand and the choice is yours what you do. He was assigned.
If Bukharin took over instead of Stalin the Soviet economy would be a lot more saner and functional. Unlike Stalin, Bukharin is a trained economist and knows that an economy needs to have a certain level of competition, liquidity, incentives and a mechanism for allocation of capital goods and means of production. He might continue and develop the NEP further such that we end up with a Soviet Union which has a market socialist economy not too dissimilar to what Yugoslavia has back in the day, or modern Vietnam which is fairly prosperous.
Bulgarian lead the right opposition which in the US meant the Lodestones who reverential made peace with Imperialism like Gorbachev did. This whole line of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist on the same planet was totally wrong. You only get to socialism by advancing the world revolution.
@@kimobrien. Fair, but you need a system that works first. Marx was right about a lot of Capitalism's problems but was hazy about what could replace it, something even Lenin acknowledged. Had Bukharin's ideas take precedent instead of Stalin's the USSR would actually be in even better position to spread world revolution under whoever succeeds him since the economic system, instead of the dysfunctional centralised planned economy under Stalin, would had worked a lot better and address/mitigated issues such as lack of incentives. This is especially since Bukharin would never had been able to achieve the level of totalitarian domination as Stalin did, meaning there would still be plenty of Trotskyites in the Soviet government who would have a shot to take over once he hits the bucket.
@@TheVoiceOfReason93 Stalin should have been removed as Party Secretary as Lenin had said it was too much power for him and I don't know if he will always use it wisely.Once he went though with the fame ups and murder of the old Bolshevik's the Party as a revolutionary organization was finished. He also destroyed the Communist International. Put in a bunch of yes men as leaders. It was enough to just murder the Party in the Soviet Union but he had to do it in Spain also.
@@kimobrien. Yes. And he also messed up the five-years plans and caused disasters (some accidentally and others deliberately) like the Holodomor. He turned his back on many tenets of Communism, and despite his supposed obsession with saving it ultimately doomed it. In the end, whether he was a true believer or a power-hungry tyrant, it was ultimately his fault the USSR failed, or at least failed as it did in our world.
@@TheVoiceOfReason93 When Trotsky died he left a movement behind Bukharin didn't. Today that movement still publishes The Militant and Pathfinder Press.
I'd argue that the video is mostly on point, even though a lot of factors were left out for the sake of short video format. However, the ending kind of really lacks the much needed details, since gorbachev wasn't necessarily the first to try and didn't really have the goal in mind of instilling societal "freedoms" in SU. Good video nonetheless.
Gorbachev was Focused on International relations, but lost in the National interest/control departement. After he was basically pushed out of Office, The Oligarchs ran wild under .Jeltsin.
@@mirthmagic6370 Gorbachev and company were following in the footsteps of Stalin and class collaboration with the Democratic Imperialists. Now the bitter fruit is being harvested by the Russian people in Putin's war on Ukraine. Ukraine's struggle for national independence is like all struggles of oppressed nations a progressive one despite the reactionary role of the US and NATO Imperialists. When Lenin was alive the Soviet Union was a voluntary federation of Socialist republics not a prison house of nations. Stalin reversed all that. It was Stalin who was responsible for the death of Lenin's party. Stalin who began the march back to the misery of capitalism.
@@kimobrien. Soviet Union changed its economic structure several times during its 70 years of history. To be national independent Ukraine had to NOT sign the _European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement,_ besides typical bla-bla for all the good against all the bad, the most interesting part there is about the economy and relationship. If this is not enough, then Biden demanded to fire the Prosecutor General of Ukraine in exchange for a loan and Poroshenko did. These are few examples in the long list of being so called an “independent” country.
@@mirthmagic6370 soviets colonized Siberia and Kazakhstan. They used the same strategy to genocide the Kazakhs that the western American settlers used. Kill their food supply that they migrated with. Please educate yourself and stop simping for authoritarians.
“Even in Germany by 1923 the economy bounced back.” I guess you never heard of the Weimar Republic and the main reason the NSDAP party grew and took power.
I came back to this video months later. I just love how it simply conveys the topic without overburdening a viewer, but gives them enough context on its own at each stage to understand the main conversation point. It is divided up well and dialogue flows effectively and purposefully. The voice, assuming yours, is soothing but not so to the point of inducing slumber. I very much enjoyed rewatching this video again, and wanted to make sure I left a comment this time!
Actually, the first Bubonic Plague epidemic was in 541-542AD (known as the Justinian Plague), it decimated Europe (and Asia) in the 540s and in many waves thereafter but was fairly quiet in the 3-4 centuries before its huge resurgence during the 14th C.
Actually, it is said that the first Yersinia pestis(Bubonic Plague) epidemic was 4000 BCE in Europe, which practically wiped out their population and made Europe be far behind in creating civilizations compared to Mesopotamia and Egypt.
@@johnhurley8918 yeah. Huge effect on labor markets. Our current pandemic has too, although not for the same reasons (fortunately no drastic 40% population drop)
All farms in Russia are controlled by the government. They dont pay much, so the guy whose job is to plow the field sets the plow depth to two inches deep. Races through the job and gets paid. The crop produces very little. The saying is "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work"
Well atleast the government still helps you to plow, in the third world country I use to live, not even ploughing would the government help with, and would rather see their people die of starvation, or use their daughters for prostitution in order to pay them
That's like saying "the world wide web started mass adoption in 1996... a 23 year delay (ie 2019) isn't a very big delay". It absolutely was when you realize the main reason why the South lost the American Civil War has a lot to do with their lesser railway system. Rail, like the internet, was an insane game changer.
I think you miss some true historical forces here: Russian/Ukrainian farmers were not necessarily inefficient-there’s no proof of that. The “collectivization” of their surplus-mostly at gunpoint and with some rape and murder-was the major disincentive to surplus. Otherwise, great work, but very simplistic. There was plenty of innovation happening in USSR-look up the space race. Corruption and theft at the top often shut new technology down. This is more similar to crony capitalism. As far as your concept of “property rights”. We had 3 houses in Odessa in 1980’s and sold two. True, the government could have taken them away, but that isn’t much different from how property rights exist in US. I think there are more similarities between the Soviet system and crony nationalist capitalism than a true socialism. Apart from big industry, we had small businesses run with permits, restaurants, bars, arcades, cobblers, we had money that we traded for goods and services-we did not have control of production. Control of production was limited to party elites, so did all the perks-very similar to crony capitalist nationalism-or, fascism. Not socialism. Thanks.
I think you give him too much credit. this guy doesn't have a grasp on economics yet but speaks as if he knows everything about it. Side note: 50% of the land in sweden was private property during the medieval period
I concur... from the beginning, as soon as knowing thanks to Antony Sutton that the bolshevik revolution was financed by the Rockefellers, Wallstreet magnates and the German treasure, we can all asume that the soviets were going to go through a corporate capitalism route in the long run. I don't know of a single socialist government that hasn't been linked with corruptions with their elites or with the elites they impose as chiefs in national statal regulated enterprises. They all fall into crony capitalism because of their greed and failure.
@@ILAptenodyte 1. I don’t know any government free of elites and their corrupt influence. In the West we just call it “lobbying”. 2. I know plenty of governments that call themselves “socialist,” but I don’t know any socialist governments. Every country is capitalist, bordering on fascist-nationalist, crony capitalist, militant. 3. I don’t know about Rockefellers funding Bolsheviks. I know that there are definite links between Lenin and the German government, who rightfully hoped that a Russian revolution would get Russia out of the war. Take care.
@@genathing903 Again, 1 and 3, I absolutely agree. The difference is that wherever an elite tries influencing via legislation, taxes and manipulating the capital needed to pay for the product (in this case, the dollar), the market is not free nor will be able to stand on its own. What I think when I hear a pure capitalist market without rulers, taxes and political manipulation of the capital, I think about the Silk Road, where people traded freely as nomadic merchants. Today there isn't a single country leader that don't want to do some protectionism or manipulation over importation or exportation. And that manipulation tend to benefit just those ones that can pay for the fee, thus, the crony capitalists. Both the Soviet Union, China and the Nazis did this btw, they let some selected enterprises who financed their rise, the same corrupt relationship as the polititians with the businessmen who financed their campaigns. Corruption everywhere. The ones who say that take care of us, are the ones that we must be most aware of.
We have always to keep in mind that Soviets were trying to deal with 1930 economic problems using a completely new economic system they built in under 10 years, out of the blue
That the USSR did not innovate is just false, as it massively did in the sectors of military and even IT, one of the actual problems of the Soviet system was, that this knowledge developed in the military wasn’t shared as it was in the west. True innovation isn’t made in companies that seek short term profit but is made by government, it is the same in the west and east. The television, the internet, rockets and much more were developed in government programs, that give innovation the budget and the time it needs. Capitalist corporation always build on that technology developed by governments and just give us small incremental improvements to justify higher prices and animate us to buy new things. But they rarely produce any groundbreaking innovation, seemingly innovative companies like Apple, SpaceX and etc just piece together what was already there, in terms of technology and knowledge, instead of actually innovating.
Well, all those who live in a country which was once in former Soviet economy, smarter economists know it was disaster. Russia even after getting all money into Moscow and military from all countries, Russia is still developing. It will not change because communism, socialism works this way. Propaganda, brain washing and “networking “ based on who is in a power. That is way how to create a oligarchy who do not like competition . There are numerous researchers who are data proving growth between socialism, former socialism countries and “open market” economies. And the biggest fail is that Marx wrote communism manifest , that capital or capitalism is about a money. So people there do not know about other capital, as human capital, raise know how , create something or etc. because all is about a money and only those who are with ties with those who are in a power can have more money. So Russia will be developing country for another 50-100 years, another such like countries maybe less.
I remember that I have heard that in 1914 Germany decided to support the austrains in invading serbia to provoke a war with Russia, because supposedly the germans had estimated that if Russia kept industrializing unmolested, they would have become the most powerful military in the world by 1917. But after seeing your video all the way up to 11:00 more or less, I gotta wonder how realistic this was. Cuz sure, Russia had the resources and size to potentially become an industrial juggernaut, but by introducing me to the concept of creative destruction you made me realize that... I mean... wouldn't russia collapse before 1917 if it kept industrializing? the growth of a middle class would eventually add pressure to transform Russia in, to the very least, a constitutional monarchy, something that Nicholas, after dismantling the Duma, was very clearly not gonna agree to. Best case scenario Nicholas ends up in front of a shooting squad and a new dynasty takes power and agrees to make it into a constitutional monarchy, plenty of european nations went that way, worst case scenario, a communist takeover just like it happened, which again would have been such a messy process germany would probably have been able to just walk it's way into St. Petesburg by then without firing a shot.
@@sblbb929 I thought this was a comment about WW2 germany and I was about to drop so many insults... But you mean WW1 germany. So: As I said I heard that germany was actually looking forward to fight with Russia because they felt they had to fight now or face an even stronger and more industrialized Russia later. Worse of all, the Austria-hungarian empire was dying, so it was better to squeeze what little juice was left out of it before that orange was rotten. What do this letters say?
His research is garbage. Russia had plenty of industrialization before WWI and all of the West was aware of it. I love his piss poor spelling "surf". This is the same old trash: blame Nicholas II for everything even though Witte, Stolypin and Kokovtsov were likely the best prime ministers Russia ever had. Ulyanov, Bronstein and Djugashvili turned Russia into hell; the tsars had no gulag.
@@icecold1805 If I recall, Russia during ww1 was ranked 4th in national income. In WW1, Russia's industrial production increased by 21.5 while the British Empires decreased by 11% and Germany decreased by 36%. It should be noted however, that it was that industrialization itself that led to the spark of revolution. Industrialization caused people to move to the cities to work, only to end up working with dangerous machinery and terrible working conditions. This made it easier for groups like the Bolsheviks to become more popular and for workers to become more organized. As far as leaders go, Nicholas II was not that incompetent in domestic matters. I would like to add that his father not wanting to teach him any responsibilities/duties of his position until Nicholas became 30, and then dying before that does not help things here.
For hundreds of years, the West has been so terrified of Russia that they repeatedly invade her. I made a list: In 1000 years there were at least 32 invasions of Russia - one every generation. That looks like a pattern to me but the West claims that it's Russian paranoia.
@@daMacadamBlob I expected to see the generic teenagers who think pretending to see the USSR is still a glorious country, even if the joke has been mostly dead since 2018.
@@200131356 Nah, it's brutally accurate. Tankie. Adding this for the comment below, because YT keeps deleting my perfectly acceptable response: You can bet that, and you'd be betting wrong. I was born into and under communism, and it was brutal, stupid, and horrible. I know a whole lot more than you do. I've studied Marx my whole life, first because I had to and later because it's fascinating how much was incorrect presumptions, deliberately incorrect presumptions, shifting definitions (and goalposts) to suit given arguments, and outright lies. I was spoonfed Marxist propaganda without any nuance. I went looking for nuance, and I found that the Western narrative about Marxism, its failures, and its naked imperialism is about 90% accurate, the Marxist one about itself and the west being absolute and irredeemable lies. Even in the PRC, university economics departments talked openly about all the ways Marxism screwed up. At least until Xi came along. Now my professors have their lips zipped. It's so sad that people like you have been so successfully swindled by the reversed american exceptionalism of propagandists like Chomsky and Zinn. Hint: The rest of the world doesn't like them, because the rest of the world sees that they're just spewing out another kind of American exceptionalist polemics. Your parents must be extremely disappointed in you, and they should be.
6:47 did you forget about the stories of absolute monarchies of Europe, like France? You're only talking about England. This story absolutely was not the story of Western Europe but the story of England. England was the only major countro to actually saw massive difference. France just doubled down and created absolute monarchy.
Everyone hates that fact it was almost all England literally God's it's why English essays Americanism is the biggest enemy of woketards today it's projection against greatness
bro is arguing in favour of middle age feudalism from his comfortable home in America, where he is free to move, because he is not bound to the soil he works on, where he is free to criticize his government, because Lèse majesté doesn't exist in the US, where he can freely choose any job he wants, because inherited obligations of guildspeople do not exist, where he can marry anybody he wants to, because it doesn't matter in what social class he was born in, where he can go to school and get as much education as he wants because he doesnt need to be a nobleman in order to attend university.
@@slik_ only positive thing about feudalism would be that you would get over 150 days of freetime. Where in Capitalism you'd be lucky to get a month. Well, atleast the 150 day freetime rule would only apply to nations loyal to the Catholic church, as it mandated mandatory freetimes.
Also, famines and fuel shortages were common in imperial times, and led to the military and economic collapse of the Empire and ineffectual Provisional Government. These things weren't caused by the Soviet Union, they were remedied: centuries of damage in decades of repair, amid two world wars. It was far from the ideal solution, but the Bolsheviks weren't the main cause.
Голод при СССР был гораздо сильнее голодов при Империи. Советский голод был вызван социальными факторами, в то время как имперский только климатическими.
This is just not true, because there were no famines in Russian Empire since 1891. And famines that happened later in the Soviet era (1921, 1933, 1947) did not lead to collapse of the Soviet Union.
The point about innovation seems to ignore that the majority of the 20th century inventions / breakthroughs came from government programs. Particularly the military, from internet to microchips, rockets etc they weren't developed by the market but completely subsidised institutions.
Being government backed doesnt mean it's not capitalist lol Those inventions were immediately placed on the market and had private backing to. I. Fact you only have access tk the internet and a smartphone because of capitalism
Those who lived in the Soviet Union would not support your opinion on the Soviet Union at all. There is a good book on it written by Alexander Baykov, former professor of the University of Birmingham in the UK, please read if you want to have the correct idea. The Soviet Union has not collapsed because of economic failure but because of the policies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin supported by the IMF and the wrong policy suggested by the economists from Harvard, Oxford and LSE.
I'm honestly curious about where you got the fixed wages thing? Yes, that was the case in certain times, in a few primary sourcea, pqy rates and their change over time increased. Look at for example Behind the Urals.
After watching some asianometry, I was primed by the innovation part. He repeatedly mentions the ussr was good in inventing, but had much trouble rolling those inventions into their economy. This video feels like an explanation why that was the case.
The USSR was also highly compartmentalised and the system fostered distrust among the people which meant that cooperation, when needed, was something that had to be forced.
I'm from Russia by the way (so I apologize for the imperfect eng. further). I adhere to social democratic views, and therefore not a communist. And, in addition to personal study of sources, I communicated with people who lived in the USSR until the 90s. The only thing I want to say is that the video distorts the historical truth, for the simple reason that the author takes out of context the incredible difficulties faced by the Soviet economy throughout almost its entire history, missing the significant achievements that it managed to achieve. In the conditions of a hostile outside world, having gone through the civil war and overcome the economic stagnation of the Russian Empire, forging a nation in the first ranks of the victorious strongest army of its era (Nazi Germany), having lost almost all the infrastructure and crops of the western part of the country during the Second World War (plus 27+ million people killed in the war itself), - through all this, new soviet society was the first to launch a man into space, became the 2nd superpower of the planet, in the period from the 30s to the 50s achieved the largest (for a country with the size and population as in the USSR of those times) economic growth rates (14.7% per year) in the history of mankind, and brought many socialist ideas to life (women's rights, vacations and decrees, the institute of childhood, equal rights to all nations, etc.), which in capitalist countries were only a theory on paper. Yes, the USSR was far from a paradise, but it is the economy of the USSR - a product of its time, with its ups and downs. And there is nothing "Insane" there.
English Wikipedia address "Soviet Union" Human Development Index(1989) - 0,920 Gini (1989) - 0.275 English Wikipedia address "United States" Human Development Index(2019) - 0.926 Gini - 48.5 English Wikipedia address "Gini coefficient" The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution, for example, levels of income. A Gini coefficient of 0 expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (i.e. where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (i.e. for a large number of people where only one person has all the income or consumption and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be nearly one).[3][4]
As someone who lived in the Soviet Union, I don't think the private agriculture of the farmers (during the NEP, for example) was all that inefficient or backward. I saw with my own eyes how Ukrainian farmers squeezed huge (at least to me they were) amount of quality agriculture from very small plots (front and back yards) they were allowed to own privately in the 1970s. Then carried it all to markets and sold at profit. The same farmers had an essentially devil-may-care attitude to the large fields they were obliged to work on as members of collective and state farms. The amount and quality of agricultural production per area differed correspondingly: tiny family plots worked on with basic tools produced many times more per area than very large fields worked on by tractors and combiner harvesters. Resulting in full food markets and empty food stores (and also in the USSR buying grain from the US and Canada).. So what is efficient and forward, and what is inefficient and backward?
Ну лол, конечно выжмешь огромный урожай с клочка земли, когда труд ручной, каждому росточку уделяется внимания как ученику в школе, а ещё есть фактически бесплатный, то есть за магарыч механизатору, трактор. Моточасы и прочее, украденные у совхоза. А в вакууме, когда нет совхоза, чтобы что-то с него украсть тем или иным способом, конечно же, оно так не работает. Прекрасный пример Польша, где коллективизацию ещё в 60-х прекратили, и торговый баланс завалился набок чисто из-за импорта жратвы. Прекрасный пример Россия с Украиной, где фермеры частники занимали ~10% товарного сельскохозяйственного сектора, карлики на фоне выросших из совхозов агрохолдингов
16:29 There's some truth to it. But not completely. The person's efforts (merit) has to actually be valued too. Otherwise, you're just wasting human potential. This happens in other economic systems too. Where companies will only hire their friends. While those who are actually qualified, are refused promotions. Because they care more about being entertained. Rather than what will keep things afloat. And just like in Tsarist Russia: The performance of the company tanks. The most ignorant people get all the money. And those who could have saved the effort, are thrown away. Just like every other subordinate in their company. Because ignorant people will make ignorant decisions.
Haha, yeah I was thinking how similar corporate America is to the Soviet Union, and how more and more of the US economy is controlled by corporate-government alliances, for instance, blackrock getting money at 0% interest to buy 28% of all US homes. All entrenched oligarchies look like the USSR.
I havent end watching it but I hope you mention the compulsory military spending wich was insane... there were some moments that it reach 50% of the gdp
@@johnmonkelennon3900 but why do they have prioritised the military? They were intelligent orherwise the ussr would never reached second world superpower right? So what was the rationel behind « we have to spend so much in the military »?
@@tomlxyz No it wasn't spending half your goddamn federal budget on defence isn't a necessity, it's lunacy. 50 percent is nation ruining. And it did ruin said nation.
My dude, I love shitting on communism as much as the next guy, but you're preaching a bit too much in favor of capitalism. Under capitalism, we're absolutely not free to pick and choose jobs, nor how we live our lives. We have to have jobs, or we starve. And when we're in a position where we cant really choose the jobs (say that the jobmarket in the field you're educated in is saturated, or you just dont get a break), we get forced to pick whatever is available just to actually survive, usually for the lowest wage possible - which is made worse when workers have to compete against eachother for jobs which leads to a race to the bottom. Because large and small capital owners only want to increase their capital, and you dont increase your capital by spending "too much" of it, and as such, capital owners will always strive to push wages as low as possible. Under capitalism, capital is the only actual power that counts. With no capital, you have no power. This power imbalance capitalism creates between people is not just, it is not liberating, and it certainly doesnt push innovation, only stress and depression. Not to mention that innovation means nothing if it doesnt get popularized. And extremely few inventions get popular and profitable, leading to maybe 1 "winner" out of hundreds of thousands of "losers" whose ideas just didnt get popular enough. The closest thing to a functional economical framework under capitalism is social democracy, where you have a healthy private sector where people can try new and experiemental things with their surplus capital, but also a strong public sector that makes sure society and its infrastructure remains functional while giving people the breathing room needed for lifes often sudden and unexpected changes. Infrastructure should never be in the hands of the private sector, because the private sector is only motivated by generating profit for the owners, not the common good for all. Not to mention that if public infrastucture fails, it gets bailed out because you dont really have a choice. When private sector infrastructure fails, the owners gather whatever capital they can, and throws the consumers and workers under the bus. EDIT: Not to mention that under capitalism, we in the west are enjoying a lot of prosperity because we outsourced our exploitation of workers to other countries where the population are little more than slaves.
Wouldn't the same apply to capitalism as "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". Inequality in life seems inevitable as nobody is the same, nor has the same experiences, nor at the same time. The market itself must be free in order to thrive though, and even though people have limited choices, at least they have more than governments without checks and balances. Until you can accept these are fundamentals of life it doesn't matter how bad capitalism is, that's just...humanity.
Had a professor that loved this little anecdote. For most of human history, life was sheer misery for 999/1000 people. Capitalism facilitated that now it's miserable for 500/1000 people and in response people pointed to the 500 still in poverty and lectured to capitalism, saying "That's your fault". So people decided to cast off capitalism in favor of communism and life went back to misery for 999/1000 people again. This went on for decades, as the world was stagnant. Eventually people got smart again and brought back capitalism, and once again 500/1000 people were lifted back out of poverty, and only 500/1000 people lived in anything close to misery. And then, wouldn't you know it, the same people from before lectured capitalism by pointing at the half remaining in poverty and said "Still your fault". He claimed the 5 things most responsible for the miracle of humanity was: The nuclear family, universal literacy, access to higher education, universal religion across an entire region, and capitalism
TLDR: What was described is an idealistic 'view' of Capitalism but not the reality observed since it was instated (within America). The actual quality and length of work provided with your effort is not correspondent with how Companies and Businesses treat their Workers. The actual incentives they provide are already poisoned by the fact that they've made economic conditions to serve them, you are barely free in a technical sense, and are worsening the already bad reality of living paycheck to paycheck into a state where widespread poverty is the new norm. In problems with the Soviet Economy I would call what you describe as Capitalism as the ideal and theorized outcome of the System. But in reality, at least in America, the fact our Healthcare is connected to our Employer, most commonly, and Economic system makes wages a 'have or have not situation'. Where either you work for a Company and Business that does not at all care about you, and at most in a superficial manner for PR, or be forced into the cesspool that is the job market where there are active cases of them using an interview and offering an 'exercise' to 'test' you to gain free labor. Which isn't even getting into the fact of how having names spelt a certain, being a non-white race, ethnic group, or just simply having (in some cases I believe Companies check for your values) you thrown out of consideration due to your political, social, or economic thoughts. But the biggest issue I have with this take is that working harder, longer, or provide 'extra benefits' means nothing. For they will fire you just as readily as an long-term employee, or the new hire that's just been there for maybe a few months. All they have as incentives is at best passable healthcare in a health system that regularly bankrupts people, or charges absurd fees for every little thing ,even to the point of being born is expensive. And that they (typically) provide barely enough money in a system where prices are rising across the board with wages being low. As of right now, that I'm at least aware of, rent is slowly becoming more like the housing market in terms of pricing, gas and other company products are intentionally overpriced alongside current inflation, and Companies are fighting against Remote Working because it hurts property value and their Corporate Culture over the workplace. Hell I believe Applebees' CEO, or some high ranking executive, wanted to reduce wages and take advantage of people's desperation in these increasing problematic economic times for the common person.
The healthcare system you are complaining about is due to govt policy. It was FDR that tied healthcare to employment. I imagine that most of your qualms for capitalism can be explained by/blamed on occupational licensing laws and regs making good more expensive & jobs harder to get, tax expenditure limited to employer based health insurance & certificate-of-need laws, etc making healthcare expensive, and NIMBYism based zoning laws making housing expensive.
@@davidthehudson no. The deadly flaws of capitalism can be explained by conflict theory, modes of production, forces of production, relations of production, class society and wage slavery.
considering all that. capitalism's benefits are still far better. look at china, it lost the second largest amount of deaths in ww2,then it got hit by the civil war, then the great leap forward. it was still able to recover in only 20 years and become the world's second richest country.
This is all a lie. Healthcare in America is not tied to the employer as people are able to buy their own private plan from other private companies. The companies pay for insurance as its a benfit they give their workers, God forbid people actually treat their workers right. Wages in America aren't low, they are higher than in most countries in the world. People aren't denied jobs because of their names or race. Stop trying to infuse silly race nonsense with your silly ideology. People are free and them having to work is not a lack of freedom, people are free to choose where they work and are free to make their own life choices that makes that leads them down whatever path they so wish. Most americans aren't going bankrupt because of healthcare.
@@리주민 Nations fail because today you have a world market and no individual nation can control it. Capitalism and the capitalist classes are based in nation states. They can not and have not escaped the Imperialist stage of history. Socialism can't be built in one country its an international project of revolutionary working class solidarity. You do need a state though and that's what the Soviet Union was a workers state. Socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with the Imperialist is just so much non sense. You didn't win the cold war either. The Stalinist edifice collapsed and the wannabee capitalist among the most corrupt bureaucrats took over. World capitalism is in crisis and American Imperialism its chieftain and top cop since the end of WW2 is itself in crisis. The German Imperialist have decided to rearm not trusting Washington's NATO allaince of major Western European Imperialist powers. The UK has left the EU and France is calling them a Vassal state of Washington. Once again the Imperialist and wannabees in Russia are beginning to fight over territory and trade with profits in mind.
@@kimobrien. Extremes of either absolute capitalism or absolute socialism is folly and leads to pain and suffering. Find the middle. Nordic model: capitalist, but with strong social safety nets.
@@리주민 World capitalism entered the Imperialist stage in 1914. If anyone is to blame for failure in Russia its the German Social Democrats and the Social Democrats in general. These gentleman and their allaince with rotting capitalism are responsible for the horrors of WW1 and along with the new group of Stalinist for World War 2. The Nordic Social Democrats do nothing for socialism but sit on their hands and make concessions to the capitalists. Will it be good to sit in the middle of nuclear war?
@@kimobrien. the socialist theory has long been disproven empirically. Trotskyism was just as wrong as Stalinism which was just as wrong as Maoism. Socialism in one county was a failure because it was Socialism, not because of they one country part. You have lost over and over again. All that remains now is a cultlike devotion to a dogma (theory). Most socialists are socialists because they like to cosplay as revolutionary, despite being upper class even by western standards
Great documentary - however the line "In a capitalistic society you have total freedom to change your job and work anywhere that will hire you. If you work smarter, harder or longer you provide extra benefits to your employer...they will reward you with increased pay or benefits". Don't know about others but this is a fantastically notion in practice. In my experience capitalism in recent decades has been full of foolish greed, exploitation and worker frustration.
Good to hear reasonable explanation of Soviet union economy, multiple layers of factors, where economics stands in a major place. I always blamed Dutch illness as a significant cause of downfall and current state of Russian economics, now I see, this trace up to history of political, therefore structural misguidance and mismanagement. Спасибо.
@@bautistacastilla7762 I think a combination of centrally planned major industry and a market of cooperatives, nonprofits, and small businesses is the most reasonable path forward. It's what Lenin originally intendend for the Union to be.
@@ГригорийШумилов-ф5р The "Great Democrat" Yeltsin shelled the white house after which he was secretly praised by that other "Great Democrat" Bill Clinton.
Yes. They might have been living a substandard life in the USSR but, they were ALL in the same boat living thru ration cards. That homoginization of people created a type of satisfaction among the masses. When USSR collapsed, most people were dumbfounded on how to earn money. Money was now requied to live. BTW, not only USSR but most of the Eastern block countries faced the same thing when they got 'freedom' in the late 1980s. This includes Romania, Bulgaria, Chech, Poland,etc. Some have turned capitalism quite well,especially Poland
@@billrusso8100today because of capitalism Russia Russian exports of arms energy increased USSR was selling half of usa arma now Russia sells like usa arms bad student need justice
I think you're wrong on Tsars during the 18th-19th century. There were some real western-philes that tried to modernize Russia during that time. It was the old nobility that tried to curtail this process. For example they tried several attempts on Peter I 's life over his reform mentality
what stalin did with ussr was miracle, yes we can talk about his gulags, and political opponents killings, but to go from feudal country to superpower during depression and during 2 world wars is insane. because of that people lived almost utopic life in 60s 70s, equality, stability, guaranteed free school/univercity, then jobs , free housing etc etc. yes stagnation and west pressure with weak leaders at end killed it in end, but damn it was amazing life for my family in lithuanian ssr. what it needed to survive was smarted leaders, and more economic future planning, better balancing of good and products around all ussr. china kinda fixed it in 80s 90s i wish they would have focused on renewable energy, new tech, instead of pouring more money to space/nuclear/military race, ussr already won space race when they sent first satelite and human into space, it was enough, military was also superior in 50s early 60s to whole world, more focus in economy would have saved it as china saved themselves and now soon to be superpower itself
@@lmy2366 care to elaborate? yes there were lines for apartements, but most families lived in free apartements in ussr. if you were anti comunist or pro western then yeah you had really bad time and getting free apartements was out of question, but vast majority of common people like my family and my all relatives got housing from state
@@NostalgicMem0ries 'free' housing would actually be more costly than if you paid for it yourself. Due to the added cost of bureaucracy such as collecting the taxes, distributing the taxes and finally spending them you have probably thousands of middlemen between you getting your home.
@@lmy2366 today same apartemetns cost 60-80-100k euros, its 10 years of more of minimum wages in my country (ex ussr), and thats if you dont spend a cent what u earn. so i think my family who got free apartement free is happy. and now i inherited that apartement, its renovated and is almost equal to new built today that cost 100k++. not sure what taxes you talk and bureaucracy.
@@NostalgicMem0ries Zoning laws are the main inhibitor to affordably housing, restricting by law the building of certain types of buildings in the majority of areas in a city. City planning and zoning laws ought to be abolished if we are to achieve more affordable housing, allowing the market to determine the layout of cities. I never said I supported the system as it stands, but most certainly the system you speak of is worse than the current.
Correct. Basically forced labor. Unless you had party connections, you didn't have much of a choice as to where you worked. My grandmother was separated from her family at age 15 because there was a shortage of workers in another part of the country. She was not allowed to reunite with them until around a decade later.
In many ways a great ovierview. I would however, add population growth and city-expansion after the plague in the West, as well as the Atlantic economic, as important for the early East-West division. In addition, The oil Crisis in the mid-1970s, gave the USSR relatively small incomes from export to the West since most energy was already promised for the CMEA area, which could not pay, in spite of price increases, the same high price as the West. Low energy efficiency thus continued. Without cheap oil and gas, there was no rational for CMEA trade in the 1970s. Stagnation was however already there.
The historical analysis is great, but when you get into theory, especially theory of free market economics, it doesn't match reality. It should be correct, but too many people take advantage of loopholes in the system to enrich themselves, and so the theory breaks down. For example, the idea that workers can improve their situation by working harder or faster fails when the capitalists decide to move production facilities to countries with zero environmental regulation, and slave wages. Any theory of productive economics also fails when wealthy people can acquire more wealth by speculation.
In the early 1980s, I took a course in University called “Comparative Economic Systems”. In it, we studied various economic systems throughout history. My professor had predicted that before the twentieth century was over, the Soviet economy will collapse, the Soviet Union will no longer exist and that the former Soviet Republics will emerge as independent states. His prediction was based on the fact that you cannot prop up an economy forever…when the gas tank is empty, it’s empty. Robbing from one sector of your economy to feed the other, and trying to maintain a massive military will collapse your economy like a house of cards. He was right, but missed the date by about a decade as it all happened sooner than expected. Smart man.
American farmers suffered from low commodity prices in the 1920's. They were still producing as they were for the war. My grandfather told me that in the 1920's, farmers were really struggling and many lost their farms.
@@brian190 untold millions. Even currently, roughly 30 million in the u.s. alone face food insecurity, meaning many are starving and dying today due to the commodification of food.
Important point: the Russian economy collapsed completely after the rapid introduction of neoliberalism. Poverty and inequality skyrocketed. Tyranny, both economically in the form of an oligarchy and politically in the form of a dictator, popped up anew. The vast majority of Russians today prefer the Soviet era to the neoliberal one. Even at the time, the abolishment of the USSR lacked popular support.
The same neoliberalism that gave USSR its most prosperous years and the idea it was in the same league as the US until the US's military spending exposed the limitations of the Soviet economy.
How does western neoliberalism relates to the closed world of USSR? Collapse of the USSR was related mostly to the oil prices, then oil embargo and disastrous invasion to Afganistan. It was buying grain and other goods for oil in Breznev's times, because it could not produce it efficiently, nothing related to western systems.
12:29 Idk where he got this information but the ussr never privatized the agricultural sector. After the Civil War they collectivized agricultural industries and it didn't change until the ussr's fall.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics opened an era of a new type of development of culture and civilization, and its experience in crushing Nazism is invaluable today, in the context of a global conflict, the main front of which has been transferred to Ukraine, believes Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Crete Dimitrios Patelis, Candidate of Philosophy. "On December 30, 2022, all progressive humanity celebrates the centenary of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR, the fruit of the first early victorious revolution, opened the era of a revolutionary transition to a new type of development of culture and civilization: to a united humanity. This was the triumph of the revolutionary creativity of the oppressed, proven by the example of the USSR "that they can take their destiny into their own hands, emancipate society, begin unprecedented revolutionary transformations, overcoming antagonisms and exploitation, towards a society of solidarity and humanity," Patelis said. In his opinion, the triumphal march of the USSR is associated with the world-historical achievements of man: the fight against illiteracy, the establishment of a number of social benefits, free education, healthcare, medical care, proper rest, the rapid development of the economy, society, science, technology, sports, art and culture . “A titanic feat was the crushing of the anti-Comintern axis by the Soviet Red Army thanks to the self-denial and self-sacrifice of the entire people of the USSR, ensuring the world with nuclear parity, internationalist assistance to the world anti-imperialist movement, as well as primacy in space exploration. A clear example of internationalism is providing access to education in USSR universities to students from different capitalist countries, thanks to which I personally received an excellent education,” the professor noted. What did the Soviet government of the USSR give to the people? 1.The right to an eight-hour working day. For the first time in the world in the history of mankind. 2. The right to annual paid leave. For the first time in human history. 3. The impossibility of dismissing an employee on the initiative of the administration or the owner without the consent of the trade union and party organization. 4. The right to work, to the opportunity to earn a living by one’s own labor. Moreover, graduates of vocational educational institutions had the right to compulsory employment in the labor field with the provision of housing in the form of a dormitory or apartment. 5. The right to free general and vocational education. Moreover, both secondary vocational education and higher education. For the first time in the world. 6. The right to free use of preschool institutions: nurseries, kindergartens, pioneer camps. For the first time in the world. 7. The right to free medical care. For the first time in the world. 8. The right to free sanatorium and resort treatment. For the first time in the world. 9. The right to free housing. For the first time in the world 10. The right to protect the state from the arbitrariness of local bosses and officials. For the first time in the world. 11. The right to free travel to the place of work or study using an individual travel document paid for by the state. For the first time in the world. In addition, women had the right to a number of additional benefits: 1. The right to three years of maternity leave with job retention. (56 days - fully paid, 1.5 years - benefits, 3 years - without interruption of service and a ban on dismissal from the administration.). 2. The right to free foster care for a child for up to one year. 3. The right to a free dairy kitchen for newborns up to three years of age. 4. The right to free medical and sanatorium-resort treatment for any childhood diseases. There was nothing like this in any country in the world and there could not even be a trace of it. Some social benefits in foreign countries began to appear only after the Second World War as a result of a powerful labor movement caused by the existence on the planet of the Soviet state, the State of Workers and Peasants. Citizens of the USSR had much more rights than Americans or Germans! But those don’t have them today, and don’t expect them to. In addition, in the USSR cross-subsidization made payments for utility services symbolic. When setting prices for certain goods in the USSR, they were primarily based on their social significance. Therefore, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, and many varieties of fish and fish products were sold below cost and at constant prices. Children's clothing and shoes, textbooks for schools and universities, toys, notebooks and other writing materials, medicines, cotton fabrics and many other goods were sold at a loss. State subsidies for these purposes amounted to tens of billions of rubles annually. The state partially covered its losses through high prices for jewelry, natural furs and other luxury goods, and alcoholic beverages. But the main source of subsidies is the profits of state-owned enterprises. By spending a significant portion of the profits of its enterprises on subsidies, the state covered its losses. Losses in favor of the consumer.
I thought you would have like 2 million subscribers until I looked at the number and realised you only had around 120. I hope you get more subscribes because you have very good content.
Yeah ive been recomended his stuff quite a bit. I think I'm gonna sub
Thank you, I really appreciate it! Glad you enjoyed the video
No. It’s not good content, it’s sorely lacking in sociological analysis, namely conflict theory, but that would debunk the entire premise that the Soviet Union had a communist mode of production
@@JoseRodriguez-pn8yj I’m pretty lacking in that area, do you think you can explain it? Sounds interesting.
@@geediali9941 Would you like a long winded explanation, an severe oversimplification that doesn’t do the concept justice, or would you like to have it explained by Crash Course, yes THAT crash course, in 10 minutes. The video is titled “Sociology #6 Conflict Theory”. If you want my explanation I already warned you I’ll oversimplify it drastically.
Also interesting is how people in USSR used to steal from their employers. We used to have saying in Slovakia “Who is not stealing is stealing from his family”. My grandpa built a whole tractor from parts he got this way lol
My parents are from Poland, and they told me the same about life under communism. "If you're not stealing from your workplace, you're stealing from your family" XD Greetings from Australia my friend!
@@Kashchey1 hahah I imagine all the USSR countries were the same. greetings kamarat
Well yeah, socialism is basically slavery and slaves only work hard enough to not get in trouble. Makes sense that theft was common.
wtf i live in germany and i am stealing from my employer in this very second. its the natural thing to do
Was that not the entire point of communism? That the workers own the wealth? Seems stupid not to take and use whats supposedly yours.
One minor point i think should be added here, is that a lot of the industrialization of the USSR came from other countries, namely the western capitalist countries. They didnt have the know-how nor the engineers at the time to expand their industrialization as almost everyone was stuck working at a farm, so what they did was they sold off wheat and other food stuffs which they did have, and spend that money on hiring people from the capitalist countries that had the know-how the engineers etc etc, so they could grow their economy for them.
There is a very interesting historical examination of this but i cant for the life of me remember by whom, he examined the USSR's growing industrialization and how well it was linked with hiring people from other countries. And nearly all of their expanding economy at the start came from hiring people from capitalist countries, but it slowly changed over time as they gained the know-how and grew their numbers of engineers.
Great Point! I read a great biography on one of those foreign engineers, it was called "behind the Urals" by John Scott. I definitely agree that I should have touched on this subject, therefore Ill pin your comment so that other people can also know this. Thanks for the Great insight and feedback!
Holodomor was the consequences of collective farming and mass execution of kulaks.
Marxism is death
@@dr.floridaman4805 that sounds a bit irrelevant
Anthony Sutton?
@@dr.floridaman4805 Where does Marx tout the joys of forced collectivization? Actually he complains specifically about this sort of thing as it transpired in W Europe, completely obliterating the peasant population through famine and sweatshop labour in the 17-1800s. Marxism as a theory does not begin until capitalist development is achieved.
Which, we know, the Soviet Union never had.
The eastern block had an old joke, What is the biggest difference between capitalism and communism? With capitalism, man exploits man. With communism, it's the other way around.
My special ed teacher taught me and the class that joke
LoL...good one
Exploits man exploits
remains true to this day, lol
In capitalism, you get something for being “exploited”. In communism they kill you
What to take away here: No matter what system is in place, if you allow crooks to control it, the people will suffer.
No, Communism is just bad in terms of allocation of the resources and it's inherently very inefficient. In a free market once you recognise crooks you don't buy things from them anymore.
And some systems are worse than others even if booth have the same crooks. But if you feel happy to simplify everything into a simple answer to pretend to be smart keep on doing you...
@@ghosty0612 but it ultimately come to individual leader itself. system that are better than other exist to create a good leader but sometime even a good system they will crooks up there by complete accident that ruin it.
Honestly, a crooked capitalist country works.
A crooked socialist country gets obliterated.
My take: although the tzar did not encourage industrial development and there were some problems, he offered better living conditions than his communist successors who saw people as mere disposable tools for their dystopian goals.
A story my grandfather told me about shopping in Soviet Russia:
If you walk down the street and see people queuing up outside a store, you just get in line. By the time you reach the front, you'll find out what they're selling - if it's something you don't need right now or doesn't fit, trade it to your neighbor later!
Communism is a market economy and Ford ran the soviet car industry
Here's what my dad told me about shopping in Russia: you stand in one line to pay for the bread, you stand in another line to get the bread. By the time you get to the front of the line, they are out of bread. You stand in another line to get your money back.
This sounds similar to what the anarchist Alexander Berkman in his book The Bolshevik Myth experienced when he visited Soviet Russia.
Under communism, people queue for bread. Under capitalism, people queue for iPhones.
My grandfather living in northern soviet Kazakhstan told me that you usually want to get in line early (like 4am) otherwise meats and milk will be gone by sunrise if you live in more rural parts where all surrounding villages gather for food distribution.
I think in videos like these it is very important to emphasize that rulers who tried to reform the feudal system were often assassinated.
People who live in comfortable modern-day societies and judge people of the past have no clue how difficult it was to change even the most obvious societal injustices.
For most of history, a reformist ruler was literally putting his life on the line
Thats depressing
@@sandran17 indeed
Which rulers?
@@AlbertBasedman dentist Speer
@@chadspaceman1014 I had nothing to do with it, I swear. I'm an architect.
That joke: 'what weighs 20 tons, guzzles diesel, belches clouds of steam and smoke, makes a ferocious noise, takes a team of 10 engineers and mechanics on round the clock shifts to maintain, and cuts an apple into 3 pieces?' - A Soviet machine designed to cut an apple into 4 pieces.
you just made that up
It's from Chernobyl
Hey, they figured out how to send things into space first, so credit is earned.
@spaceflight101 True, but I would imagine that (in the same way it did for the west) it had something to do with the German rocket scientists they had working for them after the war.
@@AsmodeusT True. As my late father wryly observed, "their Nazi scientists are better than our Nazi scientists."
This is a tiny side note to a really excellent presentation. While the 'Romanovs' held the throne for 300 years, they were not blood-related. This was not a family in the Patri-lineal sense, but rather members of the Romanov clan who happened to bull their way onto the throne. The bloodline had been broken several times since Peter the Great. I don't think the Nicholas clan held it for even a hundred years.
It died with the rurikids
average western comprehension of Russian history
The Romanovs were related to the German and English crown
Aren't the modern day royals in Britain british I don't think so
All true but Peter was not great. And they were mostly German.
Babe it's 2am. Time to watch a half-hour long documentary
Oh Boy! 2am!
Haha just popped this on, it's currently2am 😂
Story of my life
12.52am here lol
Its 2:44 AM for me
The most interesting part of this whole shitshow would be the fact that Stalin knew and spoke about the problem of transformation which CPSU was undergoing. The one which turned revolutionaries into new tyrants. What is surprising is the method chosen to fight it. Great Purge wasn't just about spy paranoia, it was about counter-revolution as well. For whatever reason, instead of reforming the system, people in power doubled (or tripled? screw it, let's say, magnified) the suppression and bloodshed.
The second interesting part is the fact that people describing Soviet economy somehow think that it didn't change in the 60+ years it existed. If someone will say that during the Stalin's reign there WERE market elements of the economy, no one will believe it. Private cooperatives were a thing, you know. Since such companies(? not sure if it's the right word) had a MASSIVE part in satisfying demand for the common goods (clothes, for example). Abolishment of that element is actually the major part of the bad image Khruschev has even now in the post-Soviet countries, and some russian economists think that it played a major role in economic stagnation and eventual decline of the Soviet Union.
Do hope that my ramblings here are comprehensible. I tend to really mess up the word order in English.
This was a very great ramble, thanks for sharing since I think a lot of people look at the Soviet Union in a black and white perspective
Wait, so Khrushchev abolished private/market elements in the Soviet Union? Why would he do that?
I always thought the fall of the Soviet Union came from bad leadership, not its core ideas.
@@DasRaetsel bit of both I believe
@@DasRaetsel core idea of communism is abolishment of classes and private property on the MEANS OF PRODUCTION. The latter part just means that means of production (instruments, factories, land etc) cannot belong to people who doesn't work on it (or with it, dunno how to say it better). The thing with cooperatives was that, if I remember things right, they couldn't use more than 40% of the stuff as the hired workers, everyone else should have a part of the business. Fun part being that market elements existence does not contradict the idea AT ALL.
The thing with the Khrushchev is a little bit more complicated. As researchers say, computing (processing?) power necessary for fully planned economy will be achieved in a few years from now, thanks for the development of digital tech. Trying to do that in 1960s... Well, it didn't go well, right? Not to mention that "reorganisation of cooperatives" wasn't the only bad thing done by that man and his powerbase, restructurization of Gosplan (planning agency) was really, really badly mishandled. As they say, "is it a treachery or mistake, and what's worse?"
Edit: Oh, and I'm sorry that I couldn't type this sooner, it was like 3 am in my time zone. Sleep is important.
Edit 2: Cooperatives couldn't have more than 20% of hired workforce. Checked that just now.
I've actually watched a documentary on this!!Stalin had tried to democratize the USSR since he took power but the war and resistance from leaders hindered this.He worried about the bureaucracy and said that self criticism was key to growth.Also,the great purge was a result of him giving in to other leaders.I realize that setting up such a system will require a way for one to structure a government in which the leaders don't look for self preservation.
The general joke in the Eastern Block was "We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us".
Lol
honestly that's the general joke in a lot of american jobs currently too lmao
Welcome to the real world. People are lying all the time. Lol
This one is from Scandinavia. A local journalist got a guided tour in a factory by a foreman and was very impressed. Asked:
"- How many work here?"
"- About half of them."
@@The_memory_be_greennot even close. These American jobs actually pay… lol
I worked in the public healthcare system in my country, and it sounds like this. If anything there’s disincentive to be productive because if you work harder, make improvements, stay under budget the government will expect the same next year. Any funding that wasn’t used will be reallocated elsewhere next year. If you show you can be efficient on a tight budget with low staff, they’ll never increase. So people do bare minimum to get their pay checks. And managers make sure they only just meet their targets and spend all their allocated funds by the end of the financial year.
Sounds Finnish problem
The analysis of the feudal system and how that indirectly led to such a long time of no technological developments was so well explained. You gained a subscriber just for that!
Unfortunately, it is a gross oversimplification - its basically a description of video game feudalism.
@@CMVBrielman in which way you think it is oversimplified? The video is also limited on how much it can say without going off-topic too much.
Really appreciate such a nice comment! Glad you enjoyed. Comments like these keep me motivated to make more content!
@@War4Skills Some of the technological developments during European feudal middle ages:
The blast furnace
Rear-mounted rudder for stearing larger ships
Gunpowder
Eyeglasses
Treadmill construction cranes
Cannons
The heavy plow, revolutionizing agriculture
The hourglass
Endless castle and other fortification and general construction technique developments
Development of advanced armor
Wheelbarrows (invented in China earlier but first seen in Europe around 1200)
Caravel (ship that could travel further, vital for the Age of exploration)
The printing press
Perfection of astrolabes (astronomical device)
Mechanical clocks
Tidal mills
Telescopes
Advanced distilleries able to make fine liquour
++, the list goes on.
I agree with Christopher, the video oversimplifies it to such a high degree it is almost wrong. The creater seems to have a heavy pro-capitalism bias and presents all other systems unreasonably harshly.
@@Spacemongerr and you're communism fan that's why you're downplaying holdomor death counts. There is no doubt capitalism is better than whatever soviet union was trying to do. And he would certainly criticize the system which soviet union was following that's why they started declining in 70s and 80s after the post ww2 boom.
I was in Russia after the fall. At one place there was a 15 hp electric motor running a little time card machine.
What
15hp is 11kW.
Nearly four boiling kettles worth of power just to power a time card machine.
I wonder what role the arms race played in the economic weakening -- and eventual collapse -- of the USSR. I heard that as spending in the US and USSR on weaponry increased, the Soviets had a hard time keeping up, and this expenditure deprived other sectors of the Soviet economy of needed resources.
It’s estimated that at it’s highest 40% if the Soviet economy was contributed by military industry.
At the beginning of this video, and if I heard it correctly, it was said that the USSR had the worlds second largest economy. ??? Germany & Japan, along with other Democratic countries, had much larger economies than the USSR. I remember an estimate from the Nineteen Seventies, (The Soviets never released their economic statistics) that the economy of the USSR equaled that of about Italy. In other words, The USSR was a military superpower, it was never an economic superpower. As for the Arms Race, of course the citizens of the USSR had a much lower standard of living than the people of the West. When a country spends around fourty percent of their GDP on weapons, and their economy is third rate, their people stand in bread lines and have communal bathrooms. The people of Italy had much higher living standards because they didn't spend a almost half of their income on weapons.
@@robertsansone1680 the soviets never got to concentrate on life improvement since they were constantly forced into spending everything for their military. First in the civil war, then to defend themselves from the Nazis, and then they had to keep up with the other global superpower, the USA.
@@kajetanscholz1991 And if they weren't spending tremendous sums of money supporting "Socialist" countries all around the world, their people would have had a much higher standard of living.
@@kajetanscholz1991 The soviet's didn't have to keep up with the US and maintain a superpower status. Britain and France relinquished their superpower status to save their economies after ww2. They could have poured money to maintain their status risking economic collapse. Instead they fixed their economies and maintained a major power status instead.
Sorry 0:17 into the video and were told WW1 ended in 1917?! 😳
You're right actually... What the fuck Is that
thought the same thing, but I think he meant for the Russians it ended in 1917
I agree with this opinion
I worked in sales for many years and I never knew that American companies adopted the Communist pay scale. In sales, one was given a goal and a bonus schedule. If you achieved your goal or exceeded it you got more money. However, next year your sales goal was what you sold last year plus a sales increase. It didn't take long to realize that it did not pay to work hard because of this constant increase in your goal and bonus. If they wanted maximum output they should have just paid a bonus on what you sold and not raise your cap every year.
Think that's mainly in the public sector jobs. Everyone gets the same pay in their scale no matter their performance. Private sector pay is based on experience and demand, is my understanding.
Private sector sales isn’t this simple. Your goal does increase in most roles but you also continue to get renewals or repeat sales from your previous customer wins. You also have accelerators that incentivize you to keep going even once you’ve hit your target. Basic Example: your target is ten, you get paid $1000 on top of your salary for each of those ten. Your 11th, 12th, 13th etc. all reap you $2000 and in some cases, if you keep going, they start to pay $3000. It’s worth keeping going even if you fail the next year bc you get paid so much more on those extra sales.
@@brettclark4276 No, most sales people hand off the accounts to an account manager once the deal is signed. I'm in B2B sales. I don't get any renewals or upsells, just an increased quota the next year if I do well. Most sales people these days sell only to net new customers or existing customers (account management), not both.
I was thinking about the exact same thing while watching that part. You do have some other variables that take place which can motivate you (like promotions) but yes, it does happen often. I worked for several B2C companies (both from the US and Europe) and I saw this time and again
@brettclark4276 But that same logic also applies to the Soviet jobs. You would still have repeat customers in communism.
In 1976 my company sold aerospace test equipment to the USSR. I spent 2 weeks there setting it up. It was unbelievable watching them work. Two men installed 2 marble tiles a day, often taking them down again next day. The restaurant had 2 waiters working and 10 sitting on a bench in the kitchen. The central planners scheduled concrete work so they did it at -10 C knowing it wouldn't set. The inefficiency drove me nuts.
Imagine living in a building built with the same ethic -
I couldn't.
I flew a short flight in country & wanted to kiss the ground after deplaning...
That's crazy brother, would have drove me nuts also.
@@favoritemustard3542 you say you couldn’t, But then you had the balls to get on their airplanes? Lmao
@@Steve.._. hey - they served beer!
No snack... Picture the Backrooms but a plane full of people. Yellow everything with mismatched upholstery, indeterminate carpets, but no (visible) gremlins. Had to get to the Square somehow amirite
Read how the Chernobyl power plant was built. Concrete was poured wrong, parts ordered for the plant were unusable. Bryukhanov who was in charge of the construction tried to quit, because of all the mismanagement
In soviet union...it was illegal to be unemployed. True story.
Which is why it’s hilarious that almost all western communists are unemployed, lazy neets who think communism means free money and no work lmao. I’d love to send some tankies to North Korea
Yes, you would go to jail. Also not having children would be punished with fines and constant social deprecation
@@MIchaelSybijust like living in the United States of America.
@@stevewalther2293 Proofs?
@@MIchaelSybiI think they mean if you can’t find official employment in the US you end up being forced to live a lifestyle that breaks some law one way or another. But I think it’s a bit of a silly comparison
"To understand Soviet economy we must go back to Romans". Holy shit that deep dive
because they were all cousins
@@varunmittal3617 so they are genetically communist?
@@trevoncowen9198 We all are communist and capitalist in some sense at same time. When 4 friends open a startup they are communist for themselves and capitalist for others and when one of them try to outshine or do fraud with Company money that one friend is nothing but capitalist.
It's a warm summer evening in Athens circa 600 bc
Putin style
16:40 this is absolutely not true. Most significant pay raises are self-made as they come from when people start new jobs, not employers giving current employees raises hence why they discourage salary discussions amongst employees
Its true in theory, not in practice. I mean in "Theory" you can make your own soda recipe and become a big competitor that can overthrow Coca Cola and Pepsi, in reality, Coca Cola will buy your company and not get overthrown, talking in "Theory" when discussing economics is usually the easiest way to explain things, so I guess that's why Casual Scholar phrased it like that
Yeah exactly what I was thinking, especially for smaller businesses that rely on cheap labor regardless of the skill, eg small hats shops and malls.
If the employee works hard, they get more responsibilities, if they don't they won't necessarily get fired either.
Tho if they ask for a pay rise, no matter how hard working of an employee they are, for a job as mundane as cashier, they could leave and you could hire someone else.
Pay rises may become an option tho in interesting scenarios like you're working for the small business of a family friend, but these scenarios are not rly important
@@vonkouva2619 It's in theory and in practice. Google, Facebook and Amazon were started just by a few average guys 25 years ago who are now all multi-billionaires. The sugar water example doesn't hold weight because society doesn't need another version of sugar water.
@@deathmetal11111 I got the biggest pay raise of my life after the 2 week strike at Westinghouse.
I had always heard the Black Death was simply not as impactful in Eastern Europe as it had low population density to begin with limiting the spread
Plus, ironically enough, they were relatively spared when compared to the west. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, they instituted quarantine type of measures which made it so that they were relatively spared compared to the rest of Europe.
That backfired quite a lot. Lol
And it primarily spread through ports. When ships came in trading goods. The only access to the East really had to seaways was the Black Sea.
Both capitalism and communism rose from a need to improve on feudalism. Both have been improvements, but both created new power elites taking the role of nobility.
Eventually a new economic system will replace capitalism. After all, feudalism lasted 700 years.
house,work, and life is guaranteed in Us
@@Santhoshkumar-ku1jg600k homeless and 7 million unemployed would like to disagree with you. Not to meantion that not all that aren't homeless own a house, many of them rent stuff out.
@@Santhoshkumar-ku1jg "house"
Thousands get evicted from their homes in the USA.
Meanwhile in Russia it's literally forbidden by the constitution to get evicted from your home.
Lol no. There can't be another economic system. It's pretty simple. Either the people collectively own the means or the factors are privately owned.
There can't be anything else because they're the polar opposites of one another. There will always only be 2. In economics there are 4 systems. Planned and market are the main ones whereas mixed and traditional are derived from them.
@@zerog1037 700 years ago the notion of capitalism was inconceivable. That we cannot find our way out of the bag today doesn't make it a permanent condition.
Fun fact about Stalin taking control: When Lenin was still alive, he held the position of General Secretary, which is not a fancy title because it's not a fancy position. The thing is, he never left that position; when Lenin died, he didn't take his position, he controlled the Soviet Union from the position of General Secretary. Every subsequent leader of the country also took that position, so for most of its existence, one of the most militarily powerful countries of its time was ruled by a secretary.
I would argue that Stalin was a pretty methodical politician. He was quite shrewd by portraying himself as "Lenin's best pupil" and "the defender of the revolution" during much of the 1920s when he started to embrace "us vs. them" tactics against his political rivals. Most importantly, the position of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed him to gradually fill both the party and the government positions (the secret police and the military in particular) with his followers and also to recruit newbies who were more likely to be unconditionally loyal to him. Overall, all of these appointees owed their careers to him which allowed Stalin to gain the kind of influence none of his contemporaries achieved. (Hitler would be the only other leader who came close.) But notice that, once the Soviet-German War broke out, Stalin became both the Commissar of Defense and the Head of the Defense Council, meaning he no longer needed to cover himself under the veneer of the General Secretary. Of course, Stalin could afford to do so since, by then, he had destroyed all of his political rivals.
@@Waterflux Lenin warned not to let Stalin gain control of the party. Lenin unfortunately was correct.
@@fukkitful Wrong, he actually put him in the position as the "second man" in 1922. Lenin was still alive when he appointed Stalin as the leader of the party.
@John Doe In hes last word he warned about ALL who could become next leader
@@fukkitful Lenin was the one who gave Stalin control over the party. When Lenin testament came out, it criticized all high ranked Bolshevik, with Trocky being criticized the least. However, legitimacy of that testament is dubious. Remember, no original was ever found with his signature. At that time Lenin was paralyzed from stroke, barely spoke and could only use left arm. Even Trocky didn't initially claim that document was meant as testament (not to mention that in his publishing wording of document changed several times) so it might be something that Trocky or other disgruntled party members produced to get rid of Stalin because Stalin was already indirectly dictating in what direction will party go (by assigning his people to key positions). Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev met in secret during vacation to discuss how will recently leaked document be used: will they get rid of Stalin or put Stalin on a leash. Anyway, when testament was discussed among high ranking Bolsheviks Stalin offered resignation but these 3 gave Stalin support. However, they failed in long run use this because all 3 had their own vision of how to do this. Only Trocky and his block, who had large support in the army stood against Stalin, but he was exiled soon after. Zinoviev, Bukharin and Kamenev were kicked out of Party in 1934 purge for not reporting about Ryutin affair (200 page document circulating among Bolsheviks, calling for getting rid of Stalin for handling of collectivization and famine), shortly reinstalled only to be executed in Great Terror of 1937-1938. Am I only how thinks this would be excellent TV drama miniseries?
"Who is not stealing is stealing from his family" was something South and Western Slavs heard many times back in the day.
And "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." That was a popular one in the USSR.
It's love I can't steal from u utopia joint family
I’m the type of socialist who would’ve been killed or put in a gulag, so I loved your point about how a sustainable revolution requires a broad coalition.
ANY government that stifles freedom is ultimately sowing the seeds of its own demise.
So what happens when someone uses that freedom to start their own business and hire employees?
@@edwardheaney3641 lmao same thing that happens when someone uses their freedom to buy slaves. I’m referring to freedom of speech, religion, press, etc. Small businesses are fine but (in the view of a socialist like myself) capitalist enterprise eventually becomes comparable to slavery so businesses should be capped and the rest of the private sector should be non profits and cooperatives
@@jaredharmer7047 what gives you the right to cap business?
@@markgilrosales6366 well I’m not a government so I don’t have that right, but it’s the same thing that gives the government the right to cap slavery
@@jaredharmer7047 - Except you would be more akin to the slave master in this scenario. You know what is funny? In a capitalist country, you are 100% free to start your own business, pay everyone exactly the same, and give everyone an equal vote. Other people are free to start businesses in the traditional sense. So, you are already free to be a socialist in a capitalist country, but socialist type models can't compete against traditional capitalist models, so they never grow above a neighborhood co-op. Why would you force an inefficient business model that can't compete with other models? It would ruin a country economically, and it would stifle the freedom of citizens. This is why socialists are inherently authoritarian. They have to force everyone to follow their model at the barrel of a gun, and it inevitably leads to that country having a horrible standard of living. So, what why do you hate freedom so much? Why do you hate prosperity so much?
Controlling people is stupid.
Governments around the world: Allow us to demonstrate.
A lot of major factors were not mentioned here. First, the plague epidemic was far worse in western europe, because it was more densely populated, than in the eastern part. So the workforce was never scarce in eastern europe. Second, you did not even mention the colonization of the western european powers during the industrial revolution. Serfdom and slavery was exported to their new colonies, which was not the case in eastern europe.
The West is still exporting communist prejudice
Russia didn't colonize anything famously.
That's because the "Sovjet Era" startet after the October revolution, and that was 60 years after the Industrial revolution. During that period you describe it was basically a Monarchy/Feudalist Economy. LIKE THE REST OF EUROPE.
@@sblbb929 You could argue they did when the soviet union kept occupied lands and nations around them after WW2, all the satellite states were very much under Russia's thumb and had a similar relationship with Russia as colonies did with owner countries.
Despite what some people like to say, the industrial revolution was not created on the back of colonial wealth. Portugal and Spain ran larger slave and colonial empires than brittain and they didn't birth the industrial revolution, and a large portion of the revolution happened in the US. It's a line people use to try to de-emphasize the importance of property rights and other government structures that motivated the innovation, it's a cynical dishonest ploy to promote top down control economies.
0:05 Fun fact: Bank of Italy is now known as Bank of America
America was named after an Italian, Américo Vespucci, só maybe the bank got the name in a similar Way.
The roaring 20s being followed by the Depression and WW2 is the epitome of "pride cometh before the fall"
@antonkrieg3708 The roaring 20s had nothing to do with "pride".
Read Rothbard's book on the American Depression. It explains boom bust cycles in greater detail that "They got greedy and it got bad."
Chews come before the fall
Outside the US most people didn’t experience the roaring twenties. Central Europe still heavily suffered from the consequences of the war and economic turmoil. In Austria you had to spend 20000 Kronen for one beer and half a loaf of bread in 1922
@@slow_goon73 capitalists got greedy? Who'd have thunk it eh?!
Funny you say russias economy was booming in the early 30s when 6+ million Russians died from 1930-1933 from starvation.
'cause they were exporting the food that they would've ate
but that line on the graph still went up irregardless
The world superpower at that time, the United Kingdom had an excellent economy in the 30s and 40s, while millions were doing of starvation in their colonies at the same time. Isn't that funnier still?
@@venkats0iitk 1st.) just because people are starving around their colonies does not mean the colony is starving.
@@venkats0iitk 2nd.) thats like blaming parents when their 30 year old son is homeless.
@@venkats0iitk 3rd.) a lot of those areas that GB colonized thrived, even today and were far better off when GB was in control of them. (i dont like GB anyway but its the truth)
Another lesser fact know in the west. After 1945, the USSR was using east european countries as its collonies. These countries had to support extremely uneffective soviet economy and had to cooperate in so called Comecon(RVHP in czech) which caused, that more modern countries such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, had to support the worse ones. This caused another degradation of the economical growth.
How come negative trade balance of USSR, DDR and CzSSR in favour of less developed countries is colonialism? Colonialism is what like 1880-1910 several TRILLIONS of modern USD's juiced from India
@@beibotanov Curse between rubles and czechoslovak crowns was 10:1. The prices were artificial. 2 000 factories were robbed and moved to USSSR from Czechoslovakia after WWII. Part oc Czechoslovakia was added to the USSR. over 30 000 czechoslovak citizens were kidnapped to USSR and murdered there. etc.
@@premyslsedy2904 yes, in the early 50's USSR needed restoration. Let me remind you, these factories were working for whom? And these exact citizens were collaborators with whom? Indeed a hideous Soviet crime. Also, wasnt' Cz-S the one of the few countries having a real Socialist revolution in 1948, not a rigged election with smart political maneuvering like Hungary had? (It was)
@@premyslsedy2904 reparations. It was USSR having 10 millions of it's civilians killed and a third of national wealth destroyed not without the help of Czech-produced weaponry. And those citizens - do you really mourn collaborators? Ew
@@beibotanov Czechoslovakia was occupied (partially) by the Third Reich. Exile Czechoslovak government signed several pacts with the USSR. Czechoslovakia and USSR were allies at the paper. But in reality, USSR was only next ocupier. SO called socialistic revolution was just a military putsch led by soviet agents (Zorin etc.) You may think, you know more about it than me, but You don´t.
Correction: 1918 is when the armistice was signed to end hostilities but 1919 for the treaty to be signed.
Not for the Russians
@@CasualScholar didn't Lenin end the war between Imperial Russia and Imperial Germany?
@@CasualScholar but WW1 was still being fought in 1917, wether the Russians were in it or not ( also great vid)
@@CasualScholar Treaty of Brest Litovsk in 1917 ended Imperial Russias involvement in WW1. This allowed the Germans to relocate manpower to the Western Front and led to the Falkenhayn offensive in early 1918. The US was able to reinforce British and French Armies to stall that offensive, but it was a close run thing.
@@CasualScholar Not what you said. Accept your correction.
This reminds me of when I worked in the NHS. The Lada factory employed 10 times as many workers to make a car as it did in Developed Countries.
@@choro3d191 The inefficient Soviet production couldn't supply enough.
The efficient developed production served more than the owner.
It created a twx base for local governments to develop and maintain public works.
Because in "developed" countries, you have homeless starving people...
@@choro3d191 If you have less people to make the car. That means less people to pay. Which in turn makes the car cheaper.
@@humbleguardsman5578 no freaking way. No one tells you how much money settles on bank account of the highest management. Wait, Forbes does)
@@vojtasmejda1254 Better than starving in a Gulag.
terrible shortages, food shortages and queues arose in the USSR during the privatization of the 80-90s, when traitors in the government began to create owners of national assets and it became profitable for them to export products to neighboring countries, leaving a deficit within the country. It was the same during the Tsarist oligarchic regime and famine constantly arose
Today corporations owns all new ideas, products, why bother developing anything new as an individual? All the profits still going to the top and the most incredible thing is that was enabled by creative people trying to organize themselves, they were not good enough to prevent the organizations to be stolen.
I love how every video about economics etc just ignores these obvious facts.
Yeah because Notch is dirt poor, right? heh.
Your propaganda is garbage, leftist.
One obvious flaw in your reasoning is that disgruntled malcontents aren't actually ingenious drivers of technological innovation, they are the whiners dependent on the union to keep their jobs.
@@kerriwilson7732 Inventing is all luck. You can increase the odds by trying, but if it doesn’t pay off (it doesn’t in a late stage capitalist society) why would you?
Yet here you are, on the internet, using a corporate service called UA-cam, posting a comment using a corporate made iPhone bitching about corporations.
"We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us."
And you pretend to have a brain.
@@kimobrien. this is a real political joke so i dont know who's pretending to be smart here
@@kimobrien. LMAOOO A REAL COMMIE
@@odder5154 you have any argument against communisms? rewatch video again, communism was superior to all in 20th century first part
16:20 This is not how capitalism plays out, neither in Europe nor in America.
For qualified jobs it does. For most of the job it doesn't.
16:29. Total bullshit. Common misconception that in capitalist society you can be whatever you want to be. Imagine if you what to be a plumber, but being a doctor is pays 5 more times than that. You will take, obviously, a doctors job. But still, someone has to be a plumber. So you, for example, take a poor mexican so he can be a plumber and get paid less for his job. "God bless the US". Or, like in USSR you can be plumber and get paid like doctor. And you will get an apartment for free from the government just because you started working. Got wife and kid? Get bigger apartment. There was not enough apartment for everyone for quite some time, but still, it was for free.
Sounds fucking horrible if a plumber gets paid the same as a doctor. Imagine going to schooling for a decade or more just to make as much as the dude who took a few classes in one semester. You say that like that’s a good thing. That’s fucking horrible.
Or you go to an area with a small supply of plumbers but a large demand for them which will allow you to be a plumber and with way better pay. In Mother Russia it doesn't matter where you go as a plumber your payed like a doctor and as a soviet doctor you're payed like an American plumber. The Soviet workers had a saying "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
I think soviet workers also had incresing in payment for experience(стаж), qualification(разряды), extra work hour(переработка). Its a fact. They were not stupid
Yeah, pretty sure this video is blunt and dishonest about reality of Soviet Economic system. It also ignores differences of Soviet generations. Not to say the economy functioned well and didn't have serious contradictions.
Lol yes but only ever so slightly an increase because that would promote a class system.
Actually, the so-called "second serfdom" in the eastern (tightening of control over serfs) part of Europe did not have result in centralized absolute power as in Russia. In Poland, it led to... weakening of the royal power to the benefit of nobility. Nobles empowered by increased ownership over their serfs, and high demand for their produce in the 16th century got strong enough to widen their political powers at the expense of the king and burghers. Generally, Poland transformed into a sort of a republic: nobles elected, impeached kings. At the local level, nobles ran a sort of self-governing bodies, which voted on local affairs and delegated members to the country's parliament/diet (naturally only composed of nobles). Peasants were reduced to slavery: not only were they unable to leave the land without permission but there were cases of trading them like livestock and they could not appeal to royal courts - their lord was their judge and master of their lives. Burghers and cities started to vegetate due to unfavorable laws enacted by the nobility. The next stage of the system was an anarchic oligarchy: a dozen of rich noble families accumulated so much wealth, that they could raise private armies and buy the votes of poorer nobles - unlike elsewhere, nobility was numerous in Poland and amounted to even 5-10% of the population, so it was stratified economically, many did not own any estate altogether, the only things differentiating them from peasants being personal freedom and political rights. Under the shock of the first partition, some top families pushed for reforms, so the last stage was a proper, "English-like" constitutional monarchy when the national constitution was adopted in 1791. Alas, the extractive second-serfdom could also end up with a constitutional monarchy. The reasons why Russia has almost always been a tyranny are more complex.
I've also seen arguments that the Polish noble class also hurt Polish sovereignty and nationalism overall by often being easily lulled by Russia, Austria, or Prussian neighbors to snap off pieces of the country over the centuries which in many ways makes them more like the Holy Roman Empire than a republic per se.
@@Taospark It was less "The nobles were fooled" and more "The nobles were bribed": The senior nobility in Poland-Lithuania had what was called a "Librum Veto": during most normal meetings of the legislature (the Sejm) all it took was one senior noble objecting to grind everything to a halt. The Austrians, Prussians, and Russians exploited this constitutional quirk to eventually destroy Poland. The reforms of the 1791 Constitution were only possible because they were enacted by a "Confederated Sejm" which were immune to the librum veto. By this point Poland was so weak militarily that the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians were able to roll in under the pretext of "defending the ancestral rights" of nobles they had bribed. Afterwards, more bribes and direct force (there were Russian troops in the chamber) led to the later Grodno Sejm ratifying the destruction of the nation. It arguably had the effect of martyring the country in the eyes of its people however. Over the next 100+ years the Poles would be a restive as all hell pain in the ass for the Czars. "Poland is not yet lost" indeed...
Polish history is fascinating.
It's a pity it's not better known.
Where do I find out more about this?
@@schoo9256
Try Perry Anderson,
Lineages of The Absolutist State, a great overview of the period from 1500 - 1800.
AS a Lithuanian, ex soviet state, i am glad that it fell down, life is much greater now here compared to soviet union
I am glad you enjoy the fruits of EU membership. Ireland joined the Community, then known as the EEC, in 1973. Before that the country was very poor and backward and relied mainly on agriculture and local services and mnfg for its sparse survival. Most people emigrated to the UK and US to find work and make a living.
Now after nearly 50 years of EU membership Ireland is an economic hotbed of foreign direct investment in growing sectors such as IT and pharma. Large scale investment in education and infrastructure has resulted in making Ireland very attractive for immigration, the exact opposite of the situation in one lifetime.
In 50 years ireland has gone from a population of 2.8 million to a population exceeding 5 million with high employment.
The two flies in the ointment are dear and inaccessable housing and substandard, often chaotic, health service provision, especially for those who cannot afford private health insurance.
It seems that the government, in focussing on job creation, has taken its eye off the ball in terms of providing secure and affordable housing of a acceptable standard and an adequately run health service.
It is interesting to note that sectors which have no outside competition such as teaching, law and some parts of health, have very high costs and those sectors such as private sector mnfg and tech have lower costs because of external competition from poorer countries. This has resulted in higher inequalities than existed in the 1950's when everyone was poor. Not everyone has benefitted from EU membership and the uneducated and older people have not seen any improvement in living standards.
@@jgdooley2003 Interesting comment, thank you for it.
When Britain tried to leave the EU, all it took was a vote. When Hungary tried to leave the USSR, they sent in the tanks and murdered everyone
p.s. some kid born after the 1991
@@kobemop i was born after 1994 xD
Zero % unemployment in the Soviet Union. Of course. They famously cooked the books on a lot of things.
A good economy requires some unemployment. As odd as it sounds.
I just interviewed a gentleman who lived in old Soviet Union. He had a master degree in engineering. Once he graduated he was assigned to become a forklift driver in a factory. It’s pretty obvious why they failed lol
I've heard about this practice throughout western Europe even nowadays. The idea is for the employee to recognize and appreaciate the job of his collegues bellow his level of skill. He gets promoted to higher level, like every other day or so, until he gets the position for which he applied for.
@@philldonn705 this wasn’t that. He was a forklift driver for 15 years. But even what you’re describing isn’t ideal but not a terrible idea. I worked at a company once that made all professional employees spend 3-6 months in their plants so they understood the operation which I thought was a good idea.
"Assigned" that Job. Simply to summarize it; Communism and it's descended ideologies are Feudalism Without Religion. That's all.
There are plenty of people with higher degrees from top tier US universities who could never find a job to utilize what they learned. I know guys with pharmacy degree who have struggled to find a permanent job. It happens in every system or country.
@@joetred that’s true but the difference is in America you could get a bad degree or just not in demand and the choice is yours what you do. He was assigned.
If Bukharin took over instead of Stalin the Soviet economy would be a lot more saner and functional. Unlike Stalin, Bukharin is a trained economist and knows that an economy needs to have a certain level of competition, liquidity, incentives and a mechanism for allocation of capital goods and means of production. He might continue and develop the NEP further such that we end up with a Soviet Union which has a market socialist economy not too dissimilar to what Yugoslavia has back in the day, or modern Vietnam which is fairly prosperous.
Bulgarian lead the right opposition which in the US meant the Lodestones who reverential made peace with Imperialism like Gorbachev did. This whole line of peaceful coexistence with the imperialist on the same planet was totally wrong. You only get to socialism by advancing the world revolution.
@@kimobrien. Fair, but you need a system that works first. Marx was right about a lot of Capitalism's problems but was hazy about what could replace it, something even Lenin acknowledged. Had Bukharin's ideas take precedent instead of Stalin's the USSR would actually be in even better position to spread world revolution under whoever succeeds him since the economic system, instead of the dysfunctional centralised planned economy under Stalin, would had worked a lot better and address/mitigated issues such as lack of incentives. This is especially since Bukharin would never had been able to achieve the level of totalitarian domination as Stalin did, meaning there would still be plenty of Trotskyites in the Soviet government who would have a shot to take over once he hits the bucket.
@@TheVoiceOfReason93 Stalin should have been removed as Party Secretary as Lenin had said it was too much power for him and I don't know if he will always use it wisely.Once he went though with the fame ups and murder of the old Bolshevik's the Party as a revolutionary organization was finished. He also destroyed the Communist International. Put in a bunch of yes men as leaders. It was enough to just murder the Party in the Soviet Union but he had to do it in Spain also.
@@kimobrien. Yes. And he also messed up the five-years plans and caused disasters (some accidentally and others deliberately) like the Holodomor. He turned his back on many tenets of Communism, and despite his supposed obsession with saving it ultimately doomed it. In the end, whether he was a true believer or a power-hungry tyrant, it was ultimately his fault the USSR failed, or at least failed as it did in our world.
@@TheVoiceOfReason93 When Trotsky died he left a movement behind Bukharin didn't. Today that movement still publishes The Militant and Pathfinder Press.
I'd argue that the video is mostly on point, even though a lot of factors were left out for the sake of short video format. However, the ending kind of really lacks the much needed details, since gorbachev wasn't necessarily the first to try and didn't really have the goal in mind of instilling societal "freedoms" in SU. Good video nonetheless.
Gorbachev was Focused on International relations, but lost in the National interest/control departement. After he was basically pushed out of Office, The Oligarchs ran wild under .Jeltsin.
If to start showing the other point then it's all about a *colonialism* - the major source of so called freedom and success of the capitalism.
@@mirthmagic6370 Gorbachev and company were following in the footsteps of Stalin and class collaboration with the Democratic Imperialists. Now the bitter fruit is being harvested by the Russian people in Putin's war on Ukraine. Ukraine's struggle for national independence is like all struggles of oppressed nations a progressive one despite the reactionary role of the US and NATO Imperialists. When Lenin was alive the Soviet Union was a voluntary federation of Socialist republics not a prison house of nations. Stalin reversed all that. It was Stalin who was responsible for the death of Lenin's party. Stalin who began the march back to the misery of capitalism.
@@kimobrien. Soviet Union changed its economic structure several times during its 70 years of history.
To be national independent Ukraine had to NOT sign the _European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement,_ besides typical bla-bla for all the good against all the bad, the most interesting part there is about the economy and relationship.
If this is not enough, then Biden demanded to fire the Prosecutor General of Ukraine in exchange for a loan and Poroshenko did. These are few examples in the long list of being so called an “independent” country.
@@mirthmagic6370 soviets colonized Siberia and Kazakhstan. They used the same strategy to genocide the Kazakhs that the western American settlers used. Kill their food supply that they migrated with. Please educate yourself and stop simping for authoritarians.
“Even in Germany by 1923 the economy bounced back.” I guess you never heard of the Weimar Republic and the main reason the NSDAP party grew and took power.
I came back to this video months later. I just love how it simply conveys the topic without overburdening a viewer, but gives them enough context on its own at each stage to understand the main conversation point. It is divided up well and dialogue flows effectively and purposefully. The voice, assuming yours, is soothing but not so to the point of inducing slumber. I very much enjoyed rewatching this video again, and wanted to make sure I left a comment this time!
Even more fun at .75 % speed
Actually, the first Bubonic Plague epidemic was in 541-542AD (known as the Justinian Plague), it decimated Europe (and Asia) in the 540s and in many waves thereafter but was fairly quiet in the 3-4 centuries before its huge resurgence during the 14th C.
Actually, it is said that the first Yersinia pestis(Bubonic Plague) epidemic was 4000 BCE in Europe, which practically wiped out their population and made Europe be far behind in creating civilizations compared to Mesopotamia and Egypt.
@@newstartyt3700 it must be fleas and rats all the way down then 😀
All because some random Aksumite farmer threw a rat
It did however have a similar effect on labor markets.
@@johnhurley8918 yeah. Huge effect on labor markets. Our current pandemic has too, although not for the same reasons (fortunately no drastic 40% population drop)
All farms in Russia are controlled by the government. They dont pay much, so the guy whose job is to plow the field sets the plow depth to two inches deep. Races through the job and gets paid. The crop produces very little. The saying is "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work"
Well atleast the government still helps you to plow, in the third world country I use to live, not even ploughing would the government help with, and would rather see their people die of starvation, or use their daughters for prostitution in order to pay them
Europe started having railways in 1830. A 23 year delay in that century wasn't a very big delay.
That's like saying "the world wide web started mass adoption in 1996... a 23 year delay (ie 2019) isn't a very big delay". It absolutely was when you realize the main reason why the South lost the American Civil War has a lot to do with their lesser railway system. Rail, like the internet, was an insane game changer.
I think you miss some true historical forces here: Russian/Ukrainian farmers were not necessarily inefficient-there’s no proof of that. The “collectivization” of their surplus-mostly at gunpoint and with some rape and murder-was the major disincentive to surplus.
Otherwise, great work, but very simplistic. There was plenty of innovation happening in USSR-look up the space race. Corruption and theft at the top often shut new technology down. This is more similar to crony capitalism. As far as your concept of “property rights”. We had 3 houses in Odessa in 1980’s and sold two. True, the government could have taken them away, but that isn’t much different from how property rights exist in US.
I think there are more similarities between the Soviet system and crony nationalist capitalism than a true socialism. Apart from big industry, we had small businesses run with permits, restaurants, bars, arcades, cobblers, we had money that we traded for goods and services-we did not have control of production. Control of production was limited to party elites, so did all the perks-very similar to crony capitalist nationalism-or, fascism. Not socialism. Thanks.
I think you give him too much credit. this guy doesn't have a grasp on economics yet but speaks as if he knows everything about it. Side note: 50% of the land in sweden was private property during the medieval period
I concur... from the beginning, as soon as knowing thanks to Antony Sutton that the bolshevik revolution was financed by the Rockefellers, Wallstreet magnates and the German treasure, we can all asume that the soviets were going to go through a corporate capitalism route in the long run. I don't know of a single socialist government that hasn't been linked with corruptions with their elites or with the elites they impose as chiefs in national statal regulated enterprises. They all fall into crony capitalism because of their greed and failure.
@@ILAptenodyte
1. I don’t know any government free of elites and their corrupt influence. In the West we just call it “lobbying”.
2. I know plenty of governments that call themselves “socialist,” but I don’t know any socialist governments. Every country is capitalist, bordering on fascist-nationalist, crony capitalist, militant.
3. I don’t know about Rockefellers funding Bolsheviks. I know that there are definite links between Lenin and the German government, who rightfully hoped that a Russian revolution would get Russia out of the war. Take care.
@@genathing903 Again, 1 and 3, I absolutely agree. The difference is that wherever an elite tries influencing via legislation, taxes and manipulating the capital needed to pay for the product (in this case, the dollar), the market is not free nor will be able to stand on its own. What I think when I hear a pure capitalist market without rulers, taxes and political manipulation of the capital, I think about the Silk Road, where people traded freely as nomadic merchants. Today there isn't a single country leader that don't want to do some protectionism or manipulation over importation or exportation. And that manipulation tend to benefit just those ones that can pay for the fee, thus, the crony capitalists. Both the Soviet Union, China and the Nazis did this btw, they let some selected enterprises who financed their rise, the same corrupt relationship as the polititians with the businessmen who financed their campaigns. Corruption everywhere. The ones who say that take care of us, are the ones that we must be most aware of.
We have always to keep in mind that Soviets were trying to deal with 1930 economic problems using a completely new economic system they built in under 10 years, out of the blue
They also knowingly committed a genocide to to enact this super fast industrial economic plan.
@@_reZ what genocide are you talking about?
@@_reZ which
@@ratulxy the holodomor
@@_reZ sure buddy
That the USSR did not innovate is just false, as it massively did in the sectors of military and even IT, one of the actual problems of the Soviet system was, that this knowledge developed in the military wasn’t shared as it was in the west. True innovation isn’t made in companies that seek short term profit but is made by government, it is the same in the west and east. The television, the internet, rockets and much more were developed in government programs, that give innovation the budget and the time it needs.
Capitalist corporation always build on that technology developed by governments and just give us small incremental improvements to justify higher prices and animate us to buy new things. But they rarely produce any groundbreaking innovation, seemingly innovative companies like Apple, SpaceX and etc just piece together what was already there, in terms of technology and knowledge, instead of actually innovating.
They only innovated to keep their empire and themselves safe and to show it to the west. Stop listening to all the tankie bullshit and grow up
whats the song being used at 1:23?
please has anyone found this out
it's "From Russia With Love"
@@fab6246 yoo thank you so much!!
@@fab6246It's the one in the oversimplified I think?
"smooth rest Café"
Well, all those who live in a country which was once in former Soviet economy, smarter economists know it was disaster. Russia even after getting all money into Moscow and military from all countries, Russia is still developing. It will not change because communism, socialism works this way. Propaganda, brain washing and “networking “ based on who is in a power. That is way how to create a oligarchy who do not like competition . There are numerous researchers who are data proving growth between socialism, former socialism countries and “open market” economies. And the biggest fail is that Marx wrote communism manifest , that capital or capitalism is about a money. So people there do not know about other capital, as human capital, raise know how , create something or etc. because all is about a money and only those who are with ties with those who are in a power can have more money. So Russia will be developing country for another 50-100 years, another such like countries maybe less.
I remember that I have heard that in 1914 Germany decided to support the austrains in invading serbia to provoke a war with Russia, because supposedly the germans had estimated that if Russia kept industrializing unmolested, they would have become the most powerful military in the world by 1917.
But after seeing your video all the way up to 11:00 more or less, I gotta wonder how realistic this was.
Cuz sure, Russia had the resources and size to potentially become an industrial juggernaut, but by introducing me to the concept of creative destruction you made me realize that... I mean... wouldn't russia collapse before 1917 if it kept industrializing? the growth of a middle class would eventually add pressure to transform Russia in, to the very least, a constitutional monarchy, something that Nicholas, after dismantling the Duma, was very clearly not gonna agree to. Best case scenario Nicholas ends up in front of a shooting squad and a new dynasty takes power and agrees to make it into a constitutional monarchy, plenty of european nations went that way, worst case scenario, a communist takeover just like it happened, which again would have been such a messy process germany would probably have been able to just walk it's way into St. Petesburg by then without firing a shot.
Germany didn't want to provoke a war. Just read the private letters to the Austrians
@@sblbb929 I thought this was a comment about WW2 germany and I was about to drop so many insults...
But you mean WW1 germany. So:
As I said I heard that germany was actually looking forward to fight with Russia because they felt they had to fight now or face an even stronger and more industrialized Russia later. Worse of all, the Austria-hungarian empire was dying, so it was better to squeeze what little juice was left out of it before that orange was rotten.
What do this letters say?
His research is garbage. Russia had plenty of industrialization before WWI and all of the West was aware of it. I love his piss poor spelling "surf". This is the same old trash: blame Nicholas II for everything even though Witte, Stolypin and Kokovtsov were likely the best prime ministers Russia ever had. Ulyanov, Bronstein and Djugashvili turned Russia into hell; the tsars had no gulag.
@@icecold1805 If I recall, Russia during ww1 was ranked 4th in national income. In WW1, Russia's industrial production increased by 21.5 while the British Empires decreased by 11% and Germany decreased by 36%.
It should be noted however, that it was that industrialization itself that led to the spark of revolution. Industrialization caused people to move to the cities to work, only to end up working with dangerous machinery and terrible working conditions. This made it easier for groups like the Bolsheviks to become more popular and for workers to become more organized.
As far as leaders go, Nicholas II was not that incompetent in domestic matters. I would like to add that his father not wanting to teach him any responsibilities/duties of his position until Nicholas became 30, and then dying before that does not help things here.
For hundreds of years, the West has been so terrified of Russia that they repeatedly invade her. I made a list: In 1000 years there were at least 32 invasions of Russia - one every generation. That looks like a pattern to me but the West claims that it's Russian paranoia.
Western Europe had colonies, Eastern Europe had suffering ^^
What is the name of the song at 1:23?
Smooth Rest Cafe - Emily Shephard
Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64: No. 13 Dance of the Knights - Sergei Prokofiev
You can tell this must be a banger because the tankies are here
I expected to see more angry tankies
@@daMacadamBlob I expected to see the generic teenagers who think pretending to see the USSR is still a glorious country, even if the joke has been mostly dead since 2018.
If by "tankies" you mean "people who aren't 95 IQ midwits who get their history from braindead UA-camrs", sure.
Well when you make a ridiculous video like this one mostly based on Cold War propaganda that tends to happen lol
@@200131356 Nah, it's brutally accurate. Tankie.
Adding this for the comment below, because YT keeps deleting my perfectly acceptable response:
You can bet that, and you'd be betting wrong. I was born into and under communism, and it was brutal, stupid, and horrible. I know a whole lot more than you do. I've studied Marx my whole life, first because I had to and later because it's fascinating how much was incorrect presumptions, deliberately incorrect presumptions, shifting definitions (and goalposts) to suit given arguments, and outright lies.
I was spoonfed Marxist propaganda without any nuance. I went looking for nuance, and I found that the Western narrative about Marxism, its failures, and its naked imperialism is about 90% accurate, the Marxist one about itself and the west being absolute and irredeemable lies.
Even in the PRC, university economics departments talked openly about all the ways Marxism screwed up. At least until Xi came along. Now my professors have their lips zipped.
It's so sad that people like you have been so successfully swindled by the reversed american exceptionalism of propagandists like Chomsky and Zinn. Hint: The rest of the world doesn't like them, because the rest of the world sees that they're just spewing out another kind of American exceptionalist polemics.
Your parents must be extremely disappointed in you, and they should be.
6:47 did you forget about the stories of absolute monarchies of Europe, like France? You're only talking about England. This story absolutely was not the story of Western Europe but the story of England. England was the only major countro to actually saw massive difference. France just doubled down and created absolute monarchy.
Everyone hates that fact it was almost all England literally God's it's why English essays Americanism is the biggest enemy of woketards today it's projection against greatness
FYI 4:37 is the castle of Hohenzollern in Germany. I see this beauty every day from my window
the "heavy taxes" during feudalism were roughly 10% of your annual income. way better than what we have now
bro is arguing in favour of middle age feudalism from his comfortable home in America, where he is free to move, because he is not bound to the soil he works on, where he is free to criticize his government, because Lèse majesté doesn't exist in the US, where he can freely choose any job he wants, because inherited obligations of guildspeople do not exist, where he can marry anybody he wants to, because it doesn't matter in what social class he was born in, where he can go to school and get as much education as he wants because he doesnt need to be a nobleman in order to attend university.
@@slik_ yes
@@recreationalplutonium bros IQ peaked in elementary school
@@slik_ only positive thing about feudalism would be that you would get over 150 days of freetime. Where in Capitalism you'd be lucky to get a month.
Well, atleast the 150 day freetime rule would only apply to nations loyal to the Catholic church, as it mandated mandatory freetimes.
Also, famines and fuel shortages were common in imperial times, and led to the military and economic collapse of the Empire and ineffectual Provisional Government.
These things weren't caused by the Soviet Union, they were remedied: centuries of damage in decades of repair, amid two world wars.
It was far from the ideal solution, but the Bolsheviks weren't the main cause.
Well...they caused infinite amounts of additional harm through the wars. To other countries and their own people.
Голод при СССР был гораздо сильнее голодов при Империи. Советский голод был вызван социальными факторами, в то время как имперский только климатическими.
This is just not true, because there were no famines in Russian Empire since 1891.
And famines that happened later in the Soviet era (1921, 1933, 1947) did not lead to collapse of the Soviet Union.
16:08 : There's an old Soviet saying: "As long as they pretend to pay us, we'll pretend to work."
The point about innovation seems to ignore that the majority of the 20th century inventions / breakthroughs came from government programs. Particularly the military, from internet to microchips, rockets etc they weren't developed by the market but completely subsidised institutions.
Yes, from governments in competition to outperform the others. In other words, a process quite similar to what happen in a free market !
Being government backed doesnt mean it's not capitalist lol
Those inventions were immediately placed on the market and had private backing to. I. Fact you only have access tk the internet and a smartphone because of capitalism
Those who lived in the Soviet Union would not support your opinion on the Soviet Union at all. There is a good book on it written by Alexander Baykov, former professor of the University of Birmingham in the UK, please read if you want to have the correct idea.
The Soviet Union has not collapsed because of economic failure but because of the policies of Gorbachev and Yeltsin supported by the IMF and the wrong policy suggested by the economists from Harvard, Oxford and LSE.
I'm honestly curious about where you got the fixed wages thing? Yes, that was the case in certain times, in a few primary sourcea, pqy rates and their change over time increased. Look at for example Behind the Urals.
Yeah, I thought in the first decades they didn't even want to use fixed wages (for that time), they rewarded you for your labour.
After watching some asianometry, I was primed by the innovation part. He repeatedly mentions the ussr was good in inventing, but had much trouble rolling those inventions into their economy. This video feels like an explanation why that was the case.
Soviets incenting stuff? More like copying the homework of the occupied European nations.
No ,Communism can't Innovate ,they can only copy and steal technology ,only the German scientist that the USSR took after WW2 could invent .
@@Passonator11nope, they stole most stuff from enemy nations.
The USSR was also highly compartmentalised and the system fostered distrust among the people which meant that cooperation, when needed, was something that had to be forced.
I'm from Russia by the way (so I apologize for the imperfect eng. further). I adhere to social democratic views, and therefore not a communist. And, in addition to personal study of sources, I communicated with people who lived in the USSR until the 90s. The only thing I want to say is that the video distorts the historical truth, for the simple reason that the author takes out of context the incredible difficulties faced by the Soviet economy throughout almost its entire history, missing the significant achievements that it managed to achieve. In the conditions of a hostile outside world, having gone through the civil war and overcome the economic stagnation of the Russian Empire, forging a nation in the first ranks of the victorious strongest army of its era (Nazi Germany), having lost almost all the infrastructure and crops of the western part of the country during the Second World War (plus 27+ million people killed in the war itself), - through all this, new soviet society was the first to launch a man into space, became the 2nd superpower of the planet, in the period from the 30s to the 50s achieved the largest (for a country with the size and population as in the USSR of those times) economic growth rates (14.7% per year) in the history of mankind, and brought many socialist ideas to life (women's rights, vacations and decrees, the institute of childhood, equal rights to all nations, etc.), which in capitalist countries were only a theory on paper. Yes, the USSR was far from a paradise, but it is the economy of the USSR - a product of its time, with its ups and downs. And there is nothing "Insane" there.
English Wikipedia address "Soviet Union"
Human Development Index(1989) - 0,920
Gini (1989) - 0.275
English Wikipedia address "United States"
Human Development Index(2019) - 0.926
Gini - 48.5
English Wikipedia address "Gini coefficient"
The Gini coefficient measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution, for example, levels of income. A Gini coefficient of 0 expresses perfect equality, where all values are the same (i.e. where everyone has the same income). A Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100%) expresses maximal inequality among values (i.e. for a large number of people where only one person has all the income or consumption and all others have none, the Gini coefficient will be nearly one).[3][4]
@@КолтуновСерёга wikpedia hahhahh
@@Cd5ssmffan I have Wikipedia and you have "hahhahh"
@@КолтуновСерёга You have fetal alcohol syndrome so it's okay
As someone who lived in the Soviet Union, I don't think the private agriculture of the farmers (during the NEP, for example) was all that inefficient or backward.
I saw with my own eyes how Ukrainian farmers squeezed huge (at least to me they were) amount of quality agriculture from very small plots (front and back yards) they were allowed to own privately in the 1970s. Then carried it all to markets and sold at profit.
The same farmers had an essentially devil-may-care attitude to the large fields they were obliged to work on as members of collective and state farms.
The amount and quality of agricultural production per area differed correspondingly: tiny family plots worked on with basic tools produced many times more per area than very large fields worked on by tractors and combiner harvesters. Resulting in full food markets and empty food stores (and also in the USSR buying grain from the US and Canada)..
So what is efficient and forward, and what is inefficient and backward?
Ну лол, конечно выжмешь огромный урожай с клочка земли, когда труд ручной, каждому росточку уделяется внимания как ученику в школе, а ещё есть фактически бесплатный, то есть за магарыч механизатору, трактор. Моточасы и прочее, украденные у совхоза. А в вакууме, когда нет совхоза, чтобы что-то с него украсть тем или иным способом, конечно же, оно так не работает. Прекрасный пример Польша, где коллективизацию ещё в 60-х прекратили, и торговый баланс завалился набок чисто из-за импорта жратвы. Прекрасный пример Россия с Украиной, где фермеры частники занимали ~10% товарного сельскохозяйственного сектора, карлики на фоне выросших из совхозов агрохолдингов
what music is playing at 1:19 just wondering.
From russia with love
@@threespotgaming ok thanks
16:29
There's some truth to it. But not completely.
The person's efforts (merit) has to actually be valued too. Otherwise, you're just wasting human potential.
This happens in other economic systems too. Where companies will only hire their friends.
While those who are actually qualified, are refused promotions.
Because they care more about being entertained. Rather than what will keep things afloat.
And just like in Tsarist Russia: The performance of the company tanks.
The most ignorant people get all the money.
And those who could have saved the effort, are thrown away. Just like every other subordinate in their company.
Because ignorant people will make ignorant decisions.
why you write like that
Haha, yeah I was thinking how similar corporate America is to the Soviet Union, and how more and more of the US economy is controlled by corporate-government alliances, for instance, blackrock getting money at 0% interest to buy 28% of all US homes. All entrenched oligarchies look like the USSR.
@@gentronseven cringe comment
so where does that money come from that the ignorant people get if they don't even have competent workers lol
I havent end watching it but I hope you mention the compulsory military spending wich was insane... there were some moments that it reach 50% of the gdp
DAMN
To be honest, it was kinda needed to fight against anti communist forces
@@tomlxyz "kinda needed" I mean not really, they priotized military power rather than economy and ended having neither of those
@@johnmonkelennon3900 but why do they have prioritised the military?
They were intelligent orherwise the ussr would never reached second world superpower right?
So what was the rationel behind « we have to spend so much in the military »?
@@tomlxyz No it wasn't spending half your goddamn federal budget on defence isn't a necessity, it's lunacy. 50 percent is nation ruining. And it did ruin said nation.
Great video, very informative and gives you all the surrounding contextual information needed! Earned a subscriber 👍
My dude, I love shitting on communism as much as the next guy, but you're preaching a bit too much in favor of capitalism.
Under capitalism, we're absolutely not free to pick and choose jobs, nor how we live our lives. We have to have jobs, or we starve. And when we're in a position where we cant really choose the jobs (say that the jobmarket in the field you're educated in is saturated, or you just dont get a break), we get forced to pick whatever is available just to actually survive, usually for the lowest wage possible - which is made worse when workers have to compete against eachother for jobs which leads to a race to the bottom. Because large and small capital owners only want to increase their capital, and you dont increase your capital by spending "too much" of it, and as such, capital owners will always strive to push wages as low as possible.
Under capitalism, capital is the only actual power that counts. With no capital, you have no power. This power imbalance capitalism creates between people is not just, it is not liberating, and it certainly doesnt push innovation, only stress and depression. Not to mention that innovation means nothing if it doesnt get popularized. And extremely few inventions get popular and profitable, leading to maybe 1 "winner" out of hundreds of thousands of "losers" whose ideas just didnt get popular enough.
The closest thing to a functional economical framework under capitalism is social democracy, where you have a healthy private sector where people can try new and experiemental things with their surplus capital, but also a strong public sector that makes sure society and its infrastructure remains functional while giving people the breathing room needed for lifes often sudden and unexpected changes.
Infrastructure should never be in the hands of the private sector, because the private sector is only motivated by generating profit for the owners, not the common good for all. Not to mention that if public infrastucture fails, it gets bailed out because you dont really have a choice. When private sector infrastructure fails, the owners gather whatever capital they can, and throws the consumers and workers under the bus.
EDIT: Not to mention that under capitalism, we in the west are enjoying a lot of prosperity because we outsourced our exploitation of workers to other countries where the population are little more than slaves.
Wouldn't the same apply to capitalism as "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others". Inequality in life seems inevitable as nobody is the same, nor has the same experiences, nor at the same time. The market itself must be free in order to thrive though, and even though people have limited choices, at least they have more than governments without checks and balances. Until you can accept these are fundamentals of life it doesn't matter how bad capitalism is, that's just...humanity.
Had a professor that loved this little anecdote. For most of human history, life was sheer misery for 999/1000 people. Capitalism facilitated that now it's miserable for 500/1000 people and in response people pointed to the 500 still in poverty and lectured to capitalism, saying "That's your fault". So people decided to cast off capitalism in favor of communism and life went back to misery for 999/1000 people again. This went on for decades, as the world was stagnant. Eventually people got smart again and brought back capitalism, and once again 500/1000 people were lifted back out of poverty, and only 500/1000 people lived in anything close to misery. And then, wouldn't you know it, the same people from before lectured capitalism by pointing at the half remaining in poverty and said "Still your fault".
He claimed the 5 things most responsible for the miracle of humanity was: The nuclear family, universal literacy, access to higher education, universal religion across an entire region, and capitalism
TLDR: What was described is an idealistic 'view' of Capitalism but not the reality observed since it was instated (within America). The actual quality and length of work provided with your effort is not correspondent with how Companies and Businesses treat their Workers. The actual incentives they provide are already poisoned by the fact that they've made economic conditions to serve them, you are barely free in a technical sense, and are worsening the already bad reality of living paycheck to paycheck into a state where widespread poverty is the new norm.
In problems with the Soviet Economy I would call what you describe as Capitalism as the ideal and theorized outcome of the System. But in reality, at least in America, the fact our Healthcare is connected to our Employer, most commonly, and Economic system makes wages a 'have or have not situation'. Where either you work for a Company and Business that does not at all care about you, and at most in a superficial manner for PR, or be forced into the cesspool that is the job market where there are active cases of them using an interview and offering an 'exercise' to 'test' you to gain free labor.
Which isn't even getting into the fact of how having names spelt a certain, being a non-white race, ethnic group, or just simply having (in some cases I believe Companies check for your values) you thrown out of consideration due to your political, social, or economic thoughts. But the biggest issue I have with this take is that working harder, longer, or provide 'extra benefits' means nothing. For they will fire you just as readily as an long-term employee, or the new hire that's just been there for maybe a few months.
All they have as incentives is at best passable healthcare in a health system that regularly bankrupts people, or charges absurd fees for every little thing ,even to the point of being born is expensive. And that they (typically) provide barely enough money in a system where prices are rising across the board with wages being low. As of right now, that I'm at least aware of, rent is slowly becoming more like the housing market in terms of pricing, gas and other company products are intentionally overpriced alongside current inflation, and Companies are fighting against Remote Working because it hurts property value and their Corporate Culture over the workplace. Hell I believe Applebees' CEO, or some high ranking executive, wanted to reduce wages and take advantage of people's desperation in these increasing problematic economic times for the common person.
The healthcare system you are complaining about is due to govt policy. It was FDR that tied healthcare to employment.
I imagine that most of your qualms for capitalism can be explained by/blamed on occupational licensing laws and regs making good more expensive & jobs harder to get, tax expenditure limited to employer based health insurance & certificate-of-need laws, etc making healthcare expensive, and NIMBYism based zoning laws making housing expensive.
@@davidthehudson no. The deadly flaws of capitalism can be explained by conflict theory, modes of production, forces of production, relations of production, class society and wage slavery.
considering all that. capitalism's benefits are still far better. look at china, it lost the second largest amount of deaths in ww2,then it got hit by the civil war, then the great leap forward. it was still able to recover in only 20 years and become the world's second richest country.
This is all a lie. Healthcare in America is not tied to the employer as people are able to buy their own private plan from other private companies. The companies pay for insurance as its a benfit they give their workers, God forbid people actually treat their workers right. Wages in America aren't low, they are higher than in most countries in the world. People aren't denied jobs because of their names or race. Stop trying to infuse silly race nonsense with your silly ideology. People are free and them having to work is not a lack of freedom, people are free to choose where they work and are free to make their own life choices that makes that leads them down whatever path they so wish. Most americans aren't going bankrupt because of healthcare.
@@JoseRodriguez-pn8yj I see no deadly flaws.
"Why nations fails" really amazing book for explaining such things
Francis fukuyama's "political order" bilogy (2 books) too.
@@리주민 Nations fail because today you have a world market and no individual nation can control it. Capitalism and the capitalist classes are based in nation states. They can not and have not escaped the Imperialist stage of history. Socialism can't be built in one country its an international project of revolutionary working class solidarity. You do need a state though and that's what the Soviet Union was a workers state. Socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with the Imperialist is just so much non sense. You didn't win the cold war either. The Stalinist edifice collapsed and the wannabee capitalist among the most corrupt bureaucrats took over. World capitalism is in crisis and American Imperialism its chieftain and top cop since the end of WW2 is itself in crisis. The German Imperialist have decided to rearm not trusting Washington's NATO allaince of major Western European Imperialist powers. The UK has left the EU and France is calling them a Vassal state of Washington. Once again the Imperialist and wannabees in Russia are beginning to fight over territory and trade with profits in mind.
@@kimobrien.
Extremes of either absolute capitalism or absolute socialism is folly and leads to pain and suffering. Find the middle. Nordic model: capitalist, but with strong social safety nets.
@@리주민 World capitalism entered the Imperialist stage in 1914. If anyone is to blame for failure in Russia its the German Social Democrats and the Social Democrats in general. These gentleman and their allaince with rotting capitalism are responsible for the horrors of WW1 and along with the new group of Stalinist for World War 2. The Nordic Social Democrats do nothing for socialism but sit on their hands and make concessions to the capitalists. Will it be good to sit in the middle of nuclear war?
@@kimobrien. the socialist theory has long been disproven empirically.
Trotskyism was just as wrong as Stalinism which was just as wrong as Maoism. Socialism in one county was a failure because it was Socialism, not because of they one country part.
You have lost over and over again. All that remains now is a cultlike devotion to a dogma (theory). Most socialists are socialists because they like to cosplay as revolutionary, despite being upper class even by western standards
Well written and not repeating repetitive info. Thanks for this other channels on UA-cam are too annoying when they do that.
Great documentary - however the line "In a capitalistic society you have total freedom to change your job and work anywhere that will hire you. If you work smarter, harder or longer you provide extra benefits to your employer...they will reward you with increased pay or benefits". Don't know about others but this is a fantastically notion in practice. In my experience capitalism in recent decades has been full of foolish greed, exploitation and worker frustration.
Because it’s cronyism and not actual free market capitalism.
@@juanbigstoner3413 lol thats a meaningless distinction
In capitalism there is competition of free talent to pay them higher society is more then industry it's service I am I'll so interview is funny
Good to hear reasonable explanation of Soviet union economy, multiple layers of factors, where economics stands in a major place. I always blamed Dutch illness as a significant cause of downfall and current state of Russian economics, now I see, this trace up to history of political, therefore structural misguidance and mismanagement. Спасибо.
soviet union collapsed because a centralized economy just doesn work and its unefficient.
@@bautistacastilla7762 I think a combination of centrally planned major industry and a market of cooperatives, nonprofits, and small businesses is the most reasonable path forward. It's what Lenin originally intendend for the Union to be.
@@jakekaywell5972 even better than that. It was what it was during Stalin.
@@bautistacastilla7762 "centralized economy just doesn work and its unefficient" Is it?
Modern corporation are disagree))))
@@ГригорийШумилов-ф5р The "Great Democrat" Yeltsin shelled the white house after which he was secretly praised by that other "Great Democrat" Bill Clinton.
Many Russians today long for the life, back when it was the Soviet Union..
Yes. They might have been living a substandard life in the USSR but, they were ALL in the same boat living thru ration cards. That homoginization of people created a type of satisfaction among the masses. When USSR collapsed, most people were dumbfounded on how to earn money. Money was now requied to live. BTW, not only USSR but most of the Eastern block countries faced the same thing when they got 'freedom' in the late 1980s. This includes Romania, Bulgaria, Chech, Poland,etc. Some have turned capitalism quite well,especially Poland
Envy and selfishness harsh truth
@@billrusso8100today because of capitalism Russia Russian exports of arms energy increased USSR was selling half of usa arma now Russia sells like usa arms bad student need justice
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channel delivers as advertised in its name
I think you're wrong on Tsars during the 18th-19th century. There were some real western-philes that tried to modernize Russia during that time. It was the old nobility that tried to curtail this process. For example they tried several attempts on Peter I 's life over his reform mentality
Peter I was in the very beginning of the 18th century. But yeah Alexander I was more liberal, especially in the begging of his reign
Passion knows student student is greatest army he we don't want to choose gossips students
This channel is great. I predict 1 million subscribers, minimum
what stalin did with ussr was miracle, yes we can talk about his gulags, and political opponents killings, but to go from feudal country to superpower during depression and during 2 world wars is insane. because of that people lived almost utopic life in 60s 70s, equality, stability, guaranteed free school/univercity, then jobs , free housing etc etc. yes stagnation and west pressure with weak leaders at end killed it in end, but damn it was amazing life for my family in lithuanian ssr. what it needed to survive was smarted leaders, and more economic future planning, better balancing of good and products around all ussr. china kinda fixed it in 80s 90s
i wish they would have focused on renewable energy, new tech, instead of pouring more money to space/nuclear/military race, ussr already won space race when they sent first satelite and human into space, it was enough, military was also superior in 50s early 60s to whole world, more focus in economy would have saved it as china saved themselves and now soon to be superpower itself
'free housing' only if you can get it!
@@lmy2366 care to elaborate? yes there were lines for apartements, but most families lived in free apartements in ussr. if you were anti comunist or pro western then yeah you had really bad time and getting free apartements was out of question, but vast majority of common people like my family and my all relatives got housing from state
@@NostalgicMem0ries 'free' housing would actually be more costly than if you paid for it yourself. Due to the added cost of bureaucracy such as collecting the taxes, distributing the taxes and finally spending them you have probably thousands of middlemen between you getting your home.
@@lmy2366 today same apartemetns cost 60-80-100k euros, its 10 years of more of minimum wages in my country (ex ussr), and thats if you dont spend a cent what u earn. so i think my family who got free apartement free is happy. and now i inherited that apartement, its renovated and is almost equal to new built today that cost 100k++. not sure what taxes you talk and bureaucracy.
@@NostalgicMem0ries Zoning laws are the main inhibitor to affordably housing, restricting by law the building of certain types of buildings in the majority of areas in a city. City planning and zoning laws ought to be abolished if we are to achieve more affordable housing, allowing the market to determine the layout of cities. I never said I supported the system as it stands, but most certainly the system you speak of is worse than the current.
1:50 isn't it effectively zero unemployment because they jailed anyone who didn't cooperate?
Correct. Basically forced labor. Unless you had party connections, you didn't have much of a choice as to where you worked. My grandmother was separated from her family at age 15 because there was a shortage of workers in another part of the country. She was not allowed to reunite with them until around a decade later.
In many ways a great ovierview. I would however, add population growth and city-expansion after the plague in the West, as well as the Atlantic economic, as important for the early East-West division. In addition, The oil Crisis in the mid-1970s, gave the USSR relatively small incomes from export to the West since most energy was already promised for the CMEA area, which could not pay, in spite of price increases, the same high price as the West. Low energy efficiency thus continued. Without cheap oil and gas, there was no rational for CMEA trade in the 1970s. Stagnation was however already there.
Exactly. The west had *slavery* and *race colonies* and the east only serfdom. Also finance and banking and literacy.
@@SK-le1gm Certain countries in west had those, not my country
The first part is basically Why Nation Fail written by acemoglu, right?
Bingo
The historical analysis is great, but when you get into theory, especially theory of free market economics, it doesn't match reality. It should be correct, but too many people take advantage of loopholes in the system to enrich themselves, and so the theory breaks down.
For example, the idea that workers can improve their situation by working harder or faster fails when the capitalists decide to move production facilities to countries with zero environmental regulation, and slave wages.
Any theory of productive economics also fails when wealthy people can acquire more wealth by speculation.
Economics as it is now is basically a cult. It never reflects reality
Another salty socialist. Shut up, dude.
In the early 1980s, I took a course in University called “Comparative Economic Systems”. In it, we studied various economic systems throughout history. My professor had predicted that before the twentieth century was over, the Soviet economy will collapse, the Soviet Union will no longer exist and that the former Soviet Republics will emerge as independent states. His prediction was based on the fact that you cannot prop up an economy forever…when the gas tank is empty, it’s empty. Robbing from one sector of your economy to feed the other, and trying to maintain a massive military will collapse your economy like a house of cards. He was right, but missed the date by about a decade as it all happened sooner than expected. Smart man.
American farmers suffered from low commodity prices in the 1920's. They were still producing as they were for the war. My grandfather told me that in the 1920's, farmers were really struggling and many lost their farms.
How many people starved to death in the USA?
@@brian190 untold millions. Even currently, roughly 30 million in the u.s. alone face food insecurity, meaning many are starving and dying today due to the commodification of food.
@@pugduck1917 lmaoooo
@@mitonaarea5856
> soccer pfp
Opinion discarded
@@pugduck1917lmao who are you 😂
Important point: the Russian economy collapsed completely after the rapid introduction of neoliberalism. Poverty and inequality skyrocketed. Tyranny, both economically in the form of an oligarchy and politically in the form of a dictator, popped up anew. The vast majority of Russians today prefer the Soviet era to the neoliberal one. Even at the time, the abolishment of the USSR lacked popular support.
The same neoliberalism that gave USSR its most prosperous years and the idea it was in the same league as the US until the US's military spending exposed the limitations of the Soviet economy.
Russia and a few Central Asian states, maybe. But Ukraine? Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia? They wanted out.
@@mazkas1476 spratland - yes, they wanted
Ukraine didn't, google results of the referendum (1991)
@@karaluv_ravenovich en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
How does western neoliberalism relates to the closed world of USSR? Collapse of the USSR was related mostly to the oil prices, then oil embargo and disastrous invasion to Afganistan. It was buying grain and other goods for oil in Breznev's times, because it could not produce it efficiently, nothing related to western systems.
This is a great peace of content 👍👍
Dopemine is money understand pycology
What is the song that plays around 1:30 please ?
Russian communist anthem
A deep insight into a topic I never really thought about, awesome job, you have my sub
Thank you! Really appreciate it and glad you enjoyed :)
@@CasualScholar no problem, remember me when you blow up cause I guarantee it’s happening soon
16:39 your employer couldn’t care less about you leaving, a more desperate worker willing to work for less would just replace you
Difficult if we talk about highly skilled and experienced workers.
Different with untrained "conveyor line" workers, though. Easily replaceable.
12:29
Idk where he got this information but the ussr never privatized the agricultural sector. After the Civil War they collectivized agricultural industries and it didn't change until the ussr's fall.
Actually Lenin did , allow the kulaks to keep their lands with them.
There were actualy private plots wich farmers could use.
@@gloekgloek3046 thts very close to privatisation.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics opened an era of a new type of development of culture and civilization, and its experience in crushing Nazism is invaluable today, in the context of a global conflict, the main front of which has been transferred to Ukraine, believes Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Crete Dimitrios Patelis, Candidate of Philosophy.
"On December 30, 2022, all progressive humanity celebrates the centenary of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR, the fruit of the first early victorious revolution, opened the era of a revolutionary transition to a new type of development of culture and civilization: to a united humanity. This was the triumph of the revolutionary creativity of the oppressed, proven by the example of the USSR "that they can take their destiny into their own hands, emancipate society, begin unprecedented revolutionary transformations, overcoming antagonisms and exploitation, towards a society of solidarity and humanity," Patelis said.
In his opinion, the triumphal march of the USSR is associated with the world-historical achievements of man: the fight against illiteracy, the establishment of a number of social benefits, free education, healthcare, medical care, proper rest, the rapid development of the economy, society, science, technology, sports, art and culture .
“A titanic feat was the crushing of the anti-Comintern axis by the Soviet Red Army thanks to the self-denial and self-sacrifice of the entire people of the USSR, ensuring the world with nuclear parity, internationalist assistance to the world anti-imperialist movement, as well as primacy in space exploration. A clear example of internationalism is providing access to education in USSR universities to students from different capitalist countries, thanks to which I personally received an excellent education,” the professor noted.
What did the Soviet government of the USSR give to the people?
1.The right to an eight-hour working day. For the first time in the world in the history of mankind.
2. The right to annual paid leave. For the first time in human history.
3. The impossibility of dismissing an employee on the initiative of the administration or the owner without the consent of the trade union and party organization.
4. The right to work, to the opportunity to earn a living by one’s own labor. Moreover, graduates of vocational educational institutions had the right to compulsory employment in the labor field with the provision of housing in the form of a dormitory or apartment.
5. The right to free general and vocational education. Moreover, both secondary vocational education and higher education. For the first time in the world.
6. The right to free use of preschool institutions: nurseries, kindergartens, pioneer camps. For the first time in the world.
7. The right to free medical care. For the first time in the world.
8. The right to free sanatorium and resort treatment. For the first time in the world.
9. The right to free housing. For the first time in the world
10. The right to protect the state from the arbitrariness of local bosses and officials. For the first time in the world.
11. The right to free travel to the place of work or study using an individual travel document paid for by the state. For the first time in the world.
In addition, women had the right to a number of additional benefits:
1. The right to three years of maternity leave with job retention. (56 days - fully paid, 1.5 years - benefits, 3 years - without interruption of service and a ban on dismissal from the administration.).
2. The right to free foster care for a child for up to one year.
3. The right to a free dairy kitchen for newborns up to three years of age.
4. The right to free medical and sanatorium-resort treatment for any childhood diseases.
There was nothing like this in any country in the world and there could not even be a trace of it. Some social benefits in foreign countries began to appear only after the Second World War as a result of a powerful labor movement caused by the existence on the planet of the Soviet state, the State of Workers and Peasants.
Citizens of the USSR had much more rights than Americans or Germans! But those don’t have them today, and don’t expect them to.
In addition, in the USSR cross-subsidization made payments for utility services symbolic. When setting prices for certain goods in the USSR, they were primarily based on their social significance. Therefore, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, and many varieties of fish and fish products were sold below cost and at constant prices. Children's clothing and shoes, textbooks for schools and universities, toys, notebooks and other writing materials, medicines, cotton fabrics and many other goods were sold at a loss. State subsidies for these purposes amounted to tens of billions of rubles annually. The state partially covered its losses through high prices for jewelry, natural furs and other luxury goods, and alcoholic beverages. But the main source of subsidies is the profits of state-owned enterprises. By spending a significant portion of the profits of its enterprises on subsidies, the state covered its losses. Losses in favor of the consumer.
@@johnhudson2210 What exactly?