Reddit reviews Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union

I see the Soviet question a lot so I am gonna repost somthing I posted a while back.

My opinion on your first hypothetical question:

I am not entirely sure. It would depend on the disposition of the world to be honest. The United States as a rival and destabilizing factor was tremendously important to the downfall of the Soviet Union even outside of military channels. If the US wasnt around? Probably. With the US? Would probably see market changes like China so it would cease being the "Soviet" Union. Just my thoughts.

The Soviet Union collapsed for numerous reasons, Ill just list a few of them:

1. The second economy. This was an economy that was blackmarket and involved corrupt part officials. Basically manufacturing product or goods would be rerouted, misrepresented, misreported, ect, and then resold to people. This really kicked off under Khrushchev, and then rocketed after. The real danger came from a new strata of petty-bourgeoisie who started to make their whole livings off the second economy. They then began agitating for more free market reform, which eventually game to a head under Gorbechev. Also this threw off the planned economic model. Its hard to plan to deliver 500 shoes to X town, and then have some official lie and deliver 400 shoes, selling 100 off to the black market. This would escalate more and more later on.
   
   
2. External pressure. The USA primarily under Reagan began aggressive campaigns to destabilize the Soviet economy. The sold bad computer chips, a much needed resource for a country looking to rapidly develop their technological infrastructure, to the tune of 10 billion +. I think the Chernobyl incident cost another 10 billion +. The aggressive CIA funding of the hardline Islamic mujaheddin in Afghanistan cost the Soviet Union billions in equipment, lives, munitions, logistics, and political capital. Also the US went to OPEC and got the Saudis to produce millions more barrels of oil a day, sending the price of oil plummeting. Obviously this was devastating to the Soviet oil industry, which watched 10 billion dollars worth of value dry up over night.
   
   
3. Brezhnev. The man came into power and established a "cadre of stability". What this basically meant was the old guard stayed in power, and corruption began to run rife. The second economy begins to expand rapidly. Brezhnev decidedly attempted to retain the status quo.
   
   
4. Khrushchev. His revisionist policies aside of appealing more to the peasant class than the labor class. He introduced reforms that vastly expanded party membership, thinking that average person had achieved a premier socialist mindset (not true). He dismantled the Stalinist state owned tractor plants, instead forcing communes to purchase their tractors. He pushed a "virgin lands" program, that aimed to till and farm millions of acres of Siberian untouched land. He transitioned the Soviet economy from a heavy metal and heavy machinery economy to a consumer goods and light machinery based one, intending to compete with the capitalist west and increase living standards (something that was nigh impossible). The virgin lands campaign would produce the grain that would offset the cost of the retooling of infrastructure. The problem was that the grain harvest was poor several years in a row, and the virgin lands campaign never really succeeded quite to predictions. Also he dissolved many government branches that were responsible for portions of the planned economy, merging them into others and altogether destroying them in some cases. This threw off the planned economic model developed under Stalin. Khrushchev wanted quick solutions to problems that needed deeper long term solutions. He did not realize the long term damage of the second market and did not do enough to curb it when it was possible.
   
   
5. Andropov. He came in with the right ideas, to bring in new minds and flush out the old cadre. In one case he completely dismissed the entire board of the party of Azerbaijan (I think it was like the party leader and 15 of his family who had set up a corrupt circle that disregarded many things). To push the importance of labor. "The harder we work the better we will live". Sadly he died, within 15 months of taking over the Party. If he hadnt died he most likely could have corrected the economic mistakes made under Khrushchev, but sadly we will never know.
   
   
6. Gorbachev. Ah Gorbachev. A lot can be said about the man, viewed as a hero in the West (got a Nobel peace prize), but generally disliked at home. He toured the west more than any other party leader. He let the reigns of the media go, which opened the door for criticism of the government. This lead to popular unrest, combined with the war in Afghanistan and Chernobyl, a standard of living not comparable to the West in many regards, long simmering ethnic tensions, all came together to force the dissolution of the Soviet Union. State owned companies were recklessly auctioned off, and power came into the hands of very very few (known as tsars, I think there were 5 of them, 2 in exile after Putin went to curb their power).
   
   Some of the things that were accomplished under the Soviet Union:
   
   
7. In fifty years the country went from an industrial production of 12% of the US, to a country with 80% of the production of the USA, and 85% of the agricultural production.
   
   
8. Employment was guaranteed
   
   
9. Free education for all
   
   
10. Free healthcare for all and about twice as many doctors as the USA
    
    
11. Injured workers had job guarantees and sick pay
    
    
12. State regulated and subsidized food prices
    
    
13. Trade unions had the power to veto firings and recall managers
    
    
14. Rent only constituted 3% of the normal family budget, utilities only 5%
    
    
15. No segregated housing by income existed (Though sometimes Party members lived in nicer areas)
    
    
16. State subsidies kept the price of books, magazines, periodicals down.
    
    
17. A concerted effort to bring literacy to the more backwards areas of Russia.
    
    Now, as for how people feel about the Soviet society now. Some of the things that happened when the Soviet Union converted to gangster capitalism.
    
    
18. People living in poverty increased by 150 million.
    
19. Inflation skyrocketed
    
20. National income declined dramatically
    
21. By 1998 the economy was half the size it had been in 1990
    
22. Meat and dairy herds were a quarter their size
    
23. Wages were less than half
    
24. Typhus, typhoid, cholera, and other diseases reached epidemic proportions
    
25. Male life expectancy dropped to 60 years old, where it was at the end of the 1800s
    
    As you can see capitalism was not kind to the Soviet Union. Last I remember (though I have no sources) the average ground level support for the return of communism was somewhere between 20-30%. The problem now is that almost all the power is invested politically in Putin, and economically in Moscow and several "tsars" who control large portions of the mining, gas, natural resources industry. The real problem is that the Russian society is rotting, the population is decreasing rapidly, political apathy is rampant, and the opposition is harshly dealt with by Putin (For example on Friday, the State Duma passed a law imposing heavy burdens on foreign funded NGOs. The new law requires frequent audits, spot checks, and organisations will have to identify themselves publicly as "Foreign Agents".)
    
    There is a lot more, for additional reading I very much recommend Socialism Betrayed by Rodger Keeran:
    
    http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342325347&sr=8-1&keywords=socialism+betrayed
    

I think this might help, it's called Socialism Betrayed. Here is the link to the Amazon book, but you can likely find a free PDF.

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719

I met the old leader, Sam Webb, once. I asked him about a couple things, one of which was the book Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union. He told me that he opposed the publishing of the book. One of the authors (Roger Keeran, I believe) even got in trouble a few years back for attending a conference of the Communist Party of Canada.

What was basically left unsaid about why the CPUSA was mad at Keeran for doing this is that, frankly, the 49th parallel is an imaginary border separating a single nation.

On that note, I also learned recently that the other author of the book, Thomas Kenny, is a pseudonym of someone who used to be a high-ranking official in the AFL-CIA. Basically he used a pseudonym in order to make sure he would keep his pension safe from the shitbag labor bureaucrats who might want to screw him for writing a pro-Soviet book.

The overall thesis of the book I think is generally wrong today. Not enough emphasis is stressed on the National Question as it relates to Eastern Europe, or the Common European Home line, which was basically Gorbo making a play for the Western Europeans against 'America' and their Takfiri friends in the 'Middle East'.

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719

As long as capitalism exists, there is always a danger of socialist countries reverting back to capitalism through outside attacks be it military or ideological.

I would not go as far as to say it only failed because of outside aggression but also because of the relative inexperience of the working class, as it was the first successful try of building socialism, and subsequent ideological mistakes.

What proved to be effective against the Soviet Union was not direct aggression. The Soviet Union was able to withstand these quite well but a more indirect approach of promoting "peaceful cooperation" and "shared humanitarian value" that weakens the (ideological) defenses.

There was a concept called peaceful coexistence in the socialist community. Obviously, the Soviet Union cannot be perpetually at war with all capitalist nations. This concept only does not constitute opportunism as long the fight on the ideological, cultural, economic and so on, so on all levels except the military one is kept going. There can not be any lasting peace with imperialism. This concept got perverted. People thought that since socialism was fully built there would be no danger of reverting back and class war can be reduced. Through this, bourgeois ideology could slowly penetrate the ideological foundation of the Soviet Union; we call this revisionism.

This caused the idea of mixing socialism and market economy and having the best of both worlds, so in the Khrushchev era some reforms were implemented that crippled the growth of the economy and lessened the importance of the plan. Through some of the reforms were reverted later, this also helped bourgeois ideology getting even more traction and made the black market bigger. The black market created some people that had an economic interest in a free market again.

While the soviet union had many problems, until 1985 when Gorbachev started the destruction or maybe even later, they could have been still reversed, and the path of socialism could have continued.

Socialism Betrayed has an excellent analysis of the end of the soviet union: https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-Betrayed-Behind-Collapse-Soviet/dp/1450241719