If the Soviet Union never fell, would the world be better or worse?

Augmerson

Was thinking recently with some western commentators saying that Putin is trying to restore the Soviet Union, how do you think the world would look like today if the USSR never dissolved and still existed today?

Certainly the US wouldn't be able to act so absolutely on the world stage and although the Gulf War would have still happened I believe, I don't think the NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, the breakup of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the civil wars in Syria would have happened.

What do ye think?

jamo2oo9

If the USSR was still standing today, US would've still invaded Iraq. Not sure about Afghanistan though but definitely Iraq anyway.

The Cold War probably would've still be going on today or perhaps during World War 3.

Just speculations though

ScumLord

If the soviet union didn't dissolve they'd probably be much poorer. It was a failed system that was imploding. They'd more than likely be rightly screwed by now.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

jamo2oo9 wrote: »

If the USSR was still standing today, US would've still invaded Iraq. Not sure about Afghanistan though but definitely Iraq anyway.

The Cold War probably would've still be going on today or perhaps during World War 3.

Just speculations though

Russia could well have joined the US/UK invasion of Afghanistan. They wanted the Taliban wiped out more than any other country.

The fall of the USSR has cleared the path for China to become the worlds biggest counterweight to American power. No clue if that's better or worse for us though.

BoJack Horseman

Not sure if it would have made huge difference for us.

Certainly worse for those living under communism though.

cletus van damme

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Not sure if it would have made huge difference for us.

Certainly worse for those living under communism though.

not sure about that to be fair.

Plenty of poor (esp the elderly ) in russia lament the fall of communism saying at least they had food in those days.
Russia changed from a place of everybody having little to some having lots and many having nothing at all.
For some this hasnt been positive.
The gap between rich and poor is huge makes comments about the rich/poor divide in ireland meaningless.

positron

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo wrote: »

Russia could well have joined the US/UK invasion of Afghanistan. They wanted the Taliban wiped out more than any other country.

The fall of the USSR has cleared the path for China to become the worlds biggest counterweight to American power. No clue if that's better or worse for us though.

This is all hypothetical of course, but if USSR never fell, USA probably would have never stopped providing arms and support for the likes of Taliban, and Taliban probably would have never bothered to attack USA in the first place....

Laois6556

Many people in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries want a communist system back!

paulbok

It'd be a hell of a lot easier for Ireland to qualify for the world cup or the Euros without those countries that sprung up following the collapse.
Jason McAteer would never have had a Macedonian.
Chelsea would still be a mid table cup team.
Gas would be scarcer.
Tom Clancy would have had more material to work with.
Moscow would have been able to bribe officials to get to host an Olympics. oh.....

irish_goat

Laois6556 wrote: »

Many people in Russia and other former Soviet Union countries want a communist system back!

I was in Stalin's hometown of Gori, Georgia and you got a real sense of communist nostalgia there. The museum dedicated to him described him as "a man loved by all his people". They seemed to leave out the minor details of several million deaths as well. :pac:

BoJack Horseman

cletus van damme wrote: »

not sure about that to be fair.

Plenty of poor (esp the elderly ) in russia lament the fall of communism saying at least they had food in those days.
Russia changed from a place of everybody having little to some having lots and many having nothing at all.
For some this hasnt been positive.
The gap between rich and poor is huge makes comments about the rich/poor divide in ireland meaningless.

Since becoming capitalist, wages in Russia have trebled on average, while poverty has more than halved.
The diversity & quantity of goods available to Russians has never been better.

I'd love to see data that suggests anyone other than the top benefited more pre-1991 vs post USSR.

Some elderly prefer commie times more from a sence of nationalism than economics.

Tangatagamadda Chaddabinga Bonga Bungo

positron wrote: »

This is all hypothetical of course, but if USSR never fell, USA probably would have never stopped providing arms and support for the likes of Taliban, and Taliban probably would have never bothered to attack USA in the first place....

Well the main reason given for why the Taliban started hating the US was because of troops and military bases being placed on the holy land (Saudi Arabia).

It's hard to know what exactly would have happened, but there was/is enough Islamic fundamentalists in the region to make hell for anybody who gets involved there, as in, the US providing arms to the Taliban to fight the Russians isn't the deciding factor in how that war went. The same way Hezbollah don't need American arms and support to be an effective and deadly organisation, neither did/do the Taliban.

ScumLord

cletus van damme wrote: »

Plenty of poor (esp the elderly ) in russia lament the fall of communism saying at least they had food in those days.

There are still some Spaniards that lament the loss of Franko.

wazky

ScumLord wrote: »

There are still some Spaniards that lament the loss of Franko.

Name several.

sarkozy

Egregious counterfactual. Not worth discussing. It happened. History must be understood in context.

Jimoslimos

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Some elderly prefer commie times more from a sence of nationalism than economics.

Not 100% correct. In fact it is probably economics that would drive their thinking. Major upheavel of the system isn't generally a good thing for those approaching retirement age. Most would have been employed by the state in jobs for life. Loss of state benefits/pensions and not enough time (or money) to retrain to do anything else.

Menas

wazky wrote: »

Name several.

Alejandro, Emiliano and Juan.

ScumLord

wazky wrote: »

Name several.

Just go to some of the communist bars scattered around the countryside.

recylingbin

It'd be easier to win the Eurovision. That much is certain.

Duckworth_Luas

ScumLord wrote: »

There are still some Spaniards that lament the loss of Franko.

Rumour is that they're going to reform and go on tour. Alejandro and Emiliano may well get to see them live on stage soon. Juan actually thinks they're $hit though.

Mr. CooL ICE

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Juan actually thinks they're $hit though.

Theres always Juan

Iwasfrozen

They would have had to block the internet like China does now.

Tbh I don't see the system lasting much longer than it did. If it survived to this point it would probably be collapsing now.

Karl Stein

It was always doomed to failure imo. You just can't plan/manage an economy on such a grand scale and in such detail. It would have been interesting to see how a smaller socialist economy like Cuba would have fared had it not been throttled by US economic warfare. The US made sure it wouldn't develop as a successful alternative model. The fear of a good example is too much for some it seems:

Speaking before the General Assembly, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez railed against the embargo.

"The economic damages accumulated after half a century as a result of the implementation of the blockade amount to $1.126 trillion," he said.

US style Capitalism, in contrast, kept a strong state 'skeleton' but let the economic body grow mostly of its own accord. That's not to say the US didn't hugely benefit from central planning when it clearly did. Massive projects like the interstate highways aided the auto and petroleum industry. The US space program hugely benefited communications and satellite technology.

Ploughing public money into R&D led to the US being the world leader in hi-tech industry. For example, approximately three quarters of MIT's funding comes from US Government sources.

The telephone, electromagnets, radars, high-speed photography, office photocopiers, cancer treatments, pocket calculators, computers, the internet, the decoding of the human genome, lasers, space travel . . . the list of innovations that involved essential contributions from MIT and its faculty goes on and on.

A survey of living MIT alumni found that they have formed 25,800 companies, employing more than three million people including about a quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley. Those firms between them generate global revenues of about $1.9tn (£1.2tn) a year. If MIT was a country, it would have the 11th highest GDP of any nation in the world.

theguardian.com

Harry Palmr

The f@cking Trabant would never have been be a cool item - not even for Bono (and yes I know its an East German car but if the Soviet Union was still here so the GRD would be)

dd972

sarkozy wrote: »

Egregious counterfactual. Not worth discussing. It happened. History must be understood in context.

That's a shame, I was just going to ask what would have happened if Hitler...

Fuhrer

Karl Stein wrote: »

It was always doomed to failure imo. You just can't plan/manage an economy on such a grand scale and in such detail.

China did, sort of.

Egginacup

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Not sure if it would have made huge difference for us.

Certainly worse for those living under communism though.

Tell that to the thousands of Ukrainian corpses.

Cool Mo D

Fuhrer wrote: »

China did, sort of.

It didn't though. China stopped centrally planning their economy, and it took off.

Central planning of an economy works when the nation is united by a single, well defined goal, like producing enough weapons to win a war. Central planning has been proven to be a complete failure when it comes to producing the range and selection of consumer goods people want in their lives.

In the 1960s, the USSR had some incredibly clever minds trying to make central planning work better than capitalism, but they failed, for quite a lot of reasons.
There's a good book about it: http://redplenty.com/Red_Plenty/Front_page.html

BoJack Horseman

Egginacup wrote: »

Tell that to the thousands of Ukrainian corpses.

Tell them what?

BoJack Horseman

Fuhrer wrote: »

China did, sort of.

China is a capitalist economy.
Centrally controlled & a dictatorship.

So a hybrid of sorts.

Fallschirmjager

Egginacup wrote: »

Tell that to the thousands of Ukrainian corpses.

Is that the millions killed during their forced famine (Holodomor)under Stalin, those people?

Iwasfrozen

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

China is a capitalist economy.
Centrally controlled & a dictatorship.

So a hybrid of sorts.

Speaking of which China is trying to strangle democracy in Hong Kong as we speak. Should have stayed with the Brits guys.

Cool Mo D

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Speaking of which China is trying to strangle democracy in Hong Kong as we speak. Should have stayed with the Brits guys.

They wanted to, but were not given a choice.

Augmerson

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

Since becoming capitalist, wages in Russia have trebled on average, while poverty has more than halved.
The diversity & quantity of goods available to Russians has never been better.

I'd love to see data that suggests anyone other than the top benefited more pre-1991 vs post USSR.

Some elderly prefer commie times more from a sence of nationalism than economics.

The 1990s, especially the early 90s, were incredibly difficult for ordinary Russians and there still exists difficulties for the elderly and the young. Some areas of Russia have really been left behind.

The Russians also got fleeced when state resources were handed over to the Oligarchs for privatization thanks to connections to corrupt members of government. The Russians had to default on their debt in 1998 during the financial crisis. Bartering was the preferred method of transaction, inflation was pretty bad, people weren't paid by the government.

Yeah, nowadays things are a lot better, largely thanks to rising Oil prices and that Russia has so much of it. Russia has an incredible gap between rich and poor.

BoJack Horseman

Augmerson wrote: »

The 1990s, especially the early 90s, were incredibly difficult for ordinary Russians and there still exists difficulties for the elderly and the young. Some areas of Russia have really been left behind.

The Russians also got fleeced when state resources were handed over to the Oligarchs for privatization thanks to connections to corrupt members of government. The Russians had to default on their debt in 1998 during the financial crisis. Bartering was the preferred method of transaction, inflation was pretty bad, people weren't paid by the government.

Yeah, nowadays things are a lot better, largely thanks to rising Oil prices and that Russia has so much of it. Russia has an incredible gap between rich and poor.

Absolutely true.

But on the whole, its been better for your average Russian compared to communism.

The birth of a new nation out of the collapse of not just an empire, but an ideology was always going to be devastating, but on the whole, its been to the peoples benefit.

Karl Stein

Fuhrer wrote: »

China did, sort of.

It's true to an extent that both USSR and China did develop rapidly under the communist systems from agrarian societies to major industrial powers but it often came at enormous cost to the public.

Red Nissan

Communism is not a bad system and worked reasonably well over greater Russia. It did spawn the corruption that the revolution tried to annihilate, if we could just root out this corruption in ALL walks of life, we'd probably all have a fair system under any regime.

The Third World War has already been fought, it was a spy and deception war and the perhaps the final missile exchange was Reagan and his 'Star Wars' threat which the Ruskies bought [or swallowed] and it ultimately sunk the USSR.

The USSR did bring forced peace to areas that had historically been in conflict which in one way or another was responsible for the Crimea War, the First World War, WWII and Yugoslavia.

It's happening all over again, and could lead to open warfare on a grand scale, I think we need a USSR back again to contain an impossible to contain situation that threatens our peace for the next 300 years, under a Western Democracy.

BoJack Horseman

Red Nissan wrote: »

I think we need a USSR back again to contain an impossible to contain situation that threatens our peace for the next 300 years, under a Western Democracy.

On behalf of the scores of millions of souls slaughtered for Communism & the millions still ruined in its repugnant name.
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

BlibBlab

Red Nissan wrote: »

Communism is not a bad system and worked reasonably well over greater Russia. It did spawn the corruption that the revolution tried to annihilate, if we could just root out this corruption in ALL walks of life, we'd probably all have a fair system under any regime.

The Third World War has already been fought, it was a spy and deception war and the perhaps the final missile exchange was Reagan and his 'Star Wars' threat which the Ruskies bought [or swallowed] and it ultimately sunk the USSR.

The USSR did bring forced peace to areas that had historically been in conflict which in one way or another was responsible for the Crimea War, the First World War, WWII and Yugoslavia.

It's happening all over again, and could lead to open warfare on a grand scale, I think we need a USSR back again to contain an impossible to contain situation that threatens our peace for the next 300 years, under a Western Democracy.

Eh? It tends to be the large, imperial countries that cause world wars. If the world broke down into several small states it would keep conflicts localized

DazMarz

Communism: great idea in theory... absolutely appalling in practice.

BlaasForRafa

If the Soviet Union hadn't fallen we'd probably have won the bloody eurovision about 15 times by now.

Iranoutofideas

The Brosnan era Bond movies would have had much better villains

Iwasfrozen

If the Soviet Union had not fallen most of the developing world would be socialist now.

The wealthy developed nations would be capitalist and there would be an even greater divide.

AllGunsBlazing

Well, the space race was very much a by-product of the cold war. So I'd imagine NASA's shuttle programme would stll be in operation and possibly much more advanced.

Edit - Although that doesn't mean the world would neccesarily be any better a place tbh..... so I dunno.

Augmerson

BoJack Horseman wrote:

On behalf of the scores of millions of souls slaughtered for Communism & the millions still ruined in its repugnant name.
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

The Soviet Union was communist in name only, exactly the same as the People's Republic of China. In truth it was state capitalism. The USSR did everything in it's power to exterminate and stamp out people really having power and organizing in their own interests. That would be completely counterproductive to the totalitarian state to allow people a say, to organize freely.

Communism is the people owning the means of production. The people decide what is to be built, and you receive based on your ability and need.

Yes the Soviet Union had powerful enemies, first in Nazi Germany and Japan, then later in the United States and having a powerful military is certainly a deterrent to being invaded but does anyone really think the peoples of the Soviet Union were happy to spend over 30% of their GDP on weapons when there were food shortages and lack of luxury items like soap?

Augmerson

I always wondered why didn't the Russians force Poland, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia into joining the USSR? They did it with the Baltic states before.

j80ezgvc3p92xu

The best thing that happened in the 20th century was the destruction of the "evil empire", the USSR. Thank you JP II. Thank you Reagan.

BlaasForRafa

Augmerson wrote: »

I always wondered why didn't the Russians force Poland, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia into joining the USSR? They did it with the Baltic states before.

Well I suppose there's only so much foreign territory you can absorb into a country in a short amount of time. The Soviet Union in the post-war treaties gained South Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands from Japan, large parts of East Prussia from Germany (now the Kaliningrad Oblast) and stole Viipuri city (now Vyborg) and surrounding areas from Finland in the 1939/40 winter war and regained them in the post-war peace. Also the Soviet republic of Ukraine absorbed large amounts of what used to be pre-war Poland. And as you said they kept hold of and absorbed the baltic states. That's quite a lot of new territory to take in, plus they had to ethnically cleanse much of it to make it manageable.

There were partisan activities in the Baltic republics lasting right into the 60's, if the Soviets were to Russify the Warsaw pact states post-war there would be rebellions that would require such a huge amount of repression and bloodbath that it might even draw the Americans into another war in Europe. And the americans had the A-bomb at that stage when the Soviets didn't.

Much easier to let your ideologically obsessed puppets in the warsaw pact governments do the hard work for you.

Iranoutofideas

Londyn Glamorous Spring wrote: »

The best thing that happened in the 20th century was the destruction of the "evil empire", the USSR. Thank you JP II. Thank you Reagan.

What about this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zXiClnK8oE

Manach

Well the Atheist types could point with pride on the how a society which had an aggressive secularist statist policy turns into.

Aongus Von Bismarck

The parents and two surviving grandparents of my current girlfriend grew up in the former East Germany. Every conversation I've had with them about the era is one filled with talk about stupidity, jealousy and pettiness. They received a TV in 1982 that was tuned exclusively into the state television extolling the virtues of socialism. Two days later they had the rabbit ears necessary to get the fuzzy pictures of TV broadcast from 'West Germany'. In return for cigarettes.

Couple more years of it. I find myself in on a holiday in Cuba with herself. Same old rubbish. Same anger, resentment and hopelessness. At least they have the weather. If you ever want to truly understand the complete tyranny of socialism then I'd suggest you dudes hop on a flight over there. From the airport of a beautiful and unquestioning social democracy.