----- Original Message -----
From: John D. Giorgis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2001 9:20 AM
Subject: The Fall of Communism RE: The Evils of Communism (was RE: American
Attitudes)
> At 11:30 AM 5/26/01 +0300 Charlie Bell wrote:
> >However, everyone did expect it. In another 5-10-15 years, possibly, if
> >things went well. Everyone thought the slow change would continue. It was
> >the astounding speed of the whole event that was most remarkable at the
> >time.
>
> I think that you will have a hard time citing sources that suggested the
> Soviet Union would inevitably collapse by 1995-2005.
>
Dates and times were not given, but the understanding that the Soviet Union
was bound to collapse was the cornerstone of US policy since 1948. It was a
bipartisian viewpoint.
> Indeed, in the 1970's, I can make a reasonable case that the consensus is
> that it was *capitalism* that was doomed to failure.
The only way that was true was that some thought that capitalism invariantly
exploited the poor in the world and that Communism was their best hope and
that the US would finally have to face an angry world, all stung by the
capitalistic exploitation.
No one in their right mind would think that the USSR was an economic
challenger to the US in the '70s. I was from a city that was considered
very backwater (Duluth MN) and I had friends who had personal experience
with unused newsprint being the best toilet paper in Russia and seeing the
long queues for basics. That was well known.
Japan was considered a real challenger to the US at the time.
> As Khrushchev said, "We Will Bury You" - citing what he felt was the
inevitability of
> communism's triumph.
At the time of Khrushchev, it was possible; the USSR was growing faster than
the West. But we knew that the Soviet Union was growning slower than the US
during the '70s. We underestimated by how much, mind you, partly because
the military intelligence felt the need to be conservative in their
estimates. But, the fact that ordinary bright Russians usually politely put
off accepting invitations to join the Communist Party, as my house guest of
several years ago told me that he and his friends did, showed something was
amiss. Why would people turn down a chance to be in the upper echelon of
society?
>Meanwhile, in the Western World, faced by the
> economic crisis of stagflation, with rising prices and rising unemployment
> - likewise were forced to consider that communism's day might soon come.
>
The only way that was considered true was the thought that people were
choosing to side with the communists. The logical framework for this
thought was as follow.
The US supports the status quo in the 3rd word, it supports the interests
that will make its corporations money. Thus, it typically sides with the
rich exploiters of the poor. The Communists side with the poor. In the
long run, with so many poor, they will triumph in most countries, with just
marginal support from the Soviet Union. The US needs to have massive
intervention with troops to have any chance because their allies are the
unpopular rich rulers.
While the US economy will be superior at this point, it will be the US,
Japan, and Europe against the people of the rest of the world. At this
point, the US economy will go downhill, since they cannot keep afloat by
their neo-colonialism exploitation of the rest of the world...which is why
the economy works in the first place.
Well, there are a lot of problems with this idea. The biggest one is that
the US economy was built on the third world. While there was exploitation
by US companies, the trade with the 3rd world was way to small to have much
of an impact on the US.
The second problem with this view is that the Soviet Union was not really a
friend of other countries. It tried to pass itself off as such in the 3rd
world, but the invasion of Afghanistan put that to rest. I've argued that
this was the death knell for the Soviet Union.
And, it turned out that all estimations of the USSR economy were optimistic.
IIRC, almost half went to support the military at the end.
Dan M.
