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People liken Glasnost and Perestroika with the fall of the USSR, how accurate is this? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I surprisingly don’t know as much of the dissolution of the USSR as I would hope. I know that 70%+ of every polled nation wanted a reformed Soviet Union not dissolution, but why did it get to that point. Did things slowly decline since Khrushchev, since Brezhnev, or later? What led to the liberalization of their statesmen? Like, Gorbachev and Yeltsin (I think?) were involved in government, how did this happen? Were Glasnost and Perestroika the killing blow after a long time coming or were they the first of their kind? Do most communists dislike both of these policies or were they decent ideas that were fucked up in implementation? Thanks in advance I don’t know enough about the details of the USSR’s fall

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

There are several reasons I can think of:

  • It was the first socialist country in the world, it was bound to make mistakes. All other countries that came after the USSR can study it and correct its mistakes.
  • When the first 5 year plan was initiated, the Bolshevik party was desperate because they knew Germany was going to invade them sooner or later. This led to the censorship of all ideas that were different than rapid industrialization of the country. This censorship didn't end after WW2, and this opened the door for opportunists like Khrushchev to begin the de-Stalinization of the country.
  • The Soviet electoral system was bad, and led to a systematic increase in abstention. This allowed corruption to permeate into the political class. Corruption is in a lot of cases a lack of democratic participation from the masses. Xi Jinping didn't fight corruption by simply executing billionaires, he increased the participation that the masses have in politics. This is why the approval of the local governments has been increasing.
  • The population was not educated in Marxism.
  • They overcommitted with military spending. This meant that the quality of life of their citizens became stagnant.
  • They got baited by the West in regards to consumerism. Like not having jeans in the USSR was seen as oppressive and a sign that Socialism can't give people good products.

Eventually this led to a general perception that the politicians were corrupt, a romanticized view of the West, a government that was disconnected from the masses and a general discontent from the population regarding their living standards and consumer goods.