Around a decade and a half of economic stagnation was enough to bring down one of the most powerful states in history. On the other hand, almost all of the most advanced economies today are experiencing prolonged stagnation, but appear stable. What made the late Soviet system so fragile in the face of its economic problems?
>>18471976Few states were as top-heavy as the USSR, when the elite decided to go separate ways there was nothing left to hold things together
>>18471976In modern capitalist or mixed economies, the financial elites exist as an at least nominally separate class from the government, meaning that when there are economic downturns, the government can externalize blame.
>>18471976The soviet union was like a 19th century empire in how many captive nations it had, and that played a significant part as well. There aren't really any countries in that situation.
>>18471979>The USSR was top-heavy!Western nations have power consolidated in the hands of very few elite, who all went to Epstein island. They are way top-heavier than the USSR ever was. Literally, the power of the entire west is in the hands of less than 1k people for all the nations combined. Your top heavy explanation doesn't cut it
>>18471976The USSR spent 30% of its GDP on defense. That's 1/3 of its production possibility dedicated to making shit the average ivan will never benefit from. A good comparison is that China today spends 1.7% of its GDP on defense.
>>18472016In the United Kingdom there are obviously different nations with their own separatist movements. It's difficult to imagine England producing a Yeltsin or the SNP unilaterally breaking Scotland off from the Union though.
The collapse of the USSR was not necessarily inevitable. Although the Soviet economy was much more developed than the Chinese or Vietnamese economies when they began reform, so comparison is difficult to make, we will never know what might have happened if USSR had tried a similar gradual liberalization of the market while retaining the authority of the state. Policies similar to Dengism were tried briefly under Andropov, but were rolled back after his death. Then Gorbachev came to power and tried to immediately and radically alter the economy while also changing the entire power structure of the state, most damningly giving more power to the individual republics, which stoked nationalist movements and was the actual cause of the full blown collapse. Gorbachev did not just cause the inevitable, he blundered and made huge policy errors, ie. causing rapid inflation by removing the division between nal and beznal. It's hard to say what a competent head of state could have made out of the USSR.
>>18471976Countries are just far more robust on average than decades ago, and less dependent on oil and particular suppliers, and even when they are, it can be changed in the medium term. Well, we'll see what effects the Hormuz supply shock will have around the world in the near future, but it's really not talked about enough how crippling the oil crisis of the 1970s was for the socialist bloc. They just went broke. How that happened is less obvious for the Soviet Union than it was for its Eastern European satellite states (which got far higher prices for energy and higher rates for foreign credit) but the USSR was bordering on food shortages constantly starting in the 1970s and on the edge of famine going into 1990.
>>18471976Breaking down by country>United StatesFar too socially and ethnically unstable to peacefully split up, especially since its national government views any form of secession as tantamount to treason and will readily resort to violence to keep the Union united. When it eventually dissolves, it's 100% going to violently collapse into multi-faction civil war along racial/sectionalist/ideological lines in a manner similar to Somalia, Syria, or Yugoslavia and wind up becoming 5-10 separate countries.>United KingdomHad a long history of ethnic tension, but that has tapered off considerably in recent decades (the Irish Republican Army for instance ended the Troubles almost universally reviled in both Northern Ireland and Ireland proper). The British monarchy is also seen as a stabilizing force that can keep the country united even during periods of unstable government.>FranceSimilar situation to the UK, but has considerably more muted ethnic tension, and an inverse of far less stable government (has had five republics, a pro-German puppet dictatorship, and three attempted returns to monarchy in the same length of time as the United States has existed).>ChinaBy far the most comparable to the USSR but managed a transition to de facto capitalism and has arguably been far more effect at stamping out separatism than the USSR was. The collapse of China is more likely to resemble a regression back into societal isolation
>>18471976Why not recently? The rise of the surveillance state. Violent dissent is squelched long before it ever happens. If violent dissent ever DOES happen, it was **allowed** to happen. The FBI would have gotten wind of both attempted Trump assassinations and the Charlie Kirk assassin long before they ever made a move. These events were allowed to happen for political reasons. Hell, Trump's first would be assassin was spotted on the roof with a rifle by many people in the crowd and they let him pop a couple shots off before they sniped back at him.In many cases, I figure some of these would-be assassins even had government agents encouraging them to do it... much like how the FBI likes to "thwart" Muslim terror attacks (they send an FBI instigator in who says they'll fund and arm would-be militants, who never would have made a move without the FBI encouraging them). But yeah, the modern surveillance state is actually quite effective at preserving the status quo. No one wants to stick their neck out.
>>18471976I think anything holds together as long as the people who make it hold together are able and willingThe point of the USSR was decolonisation and creating a workers' society. When it became more an impediment to that than a post-Soviet sphere integrated into the global economy with full independence, then it made sense to dissolve it. Also the Soviet elite wanted socialism with a human face to solve the contradiction of repressing the people in a humanistic peoples' state. As long as the West does what it's supposed to for various people
>>18472317I think you're completely wrong and the idea of U.S. balkanization is the biggest dog that just won't hunt. It's primarily something believed in by foreigners who have experienced such things happening in their own countries and they project their own historical experiences onto Americans. But in fact a lot of Americans are suspicious of trying to transplant "Old World" ethnic conflicts into the U.S. such as between Arabs and Jews in New York City:https://x.com/StatusCoup/status/2053993076444496156>>18472321Federal agencies do prod/encourage extremists, this is actually documented. But everything I've read about it is that it's done as a way to make arrests. This happens a lot with groups who get infiltrated by federal hunt-and-peckers who then set the group up with an illegal firearms buy, a plot to attack some venue, or procuring explosives (sourced from the feds). But that doesn't preclude such people from actually following through and the feds dropping the ball which results in some people being killed. I doubt that the attempted Trump assassins and the Charlie Kirk assassin are such cases though. The main reason I don't believe it is because these guys don't actually fit the profile of the typical political radical / extremist (like people in wignat groups or anarchists), which is a very weird phenomenon that nobody has quite figured out yet. The guy who bumrushed the White House correspondent's dinner was a rather centrist liberal normie going by his social media profile. Doesn't strike me as a typical target for fed grooming / infiltration.
>>18472321Spot on..
>>18472336You are naive, if there is another great depression or something then America won't be able to throw bread and circuses at its massive ethnoreligious divisions. Then there's AI and murderdrones, climate change, climate refugees, the return of a cold war with Russia and China and these countries launching aggressive invasions and the US's future is uncertain. History has proven that blood is thicker than water. It would help if the US was still white and christian, then like India or China it could withstand massive poverty without falling apart, but obviously that is no longer the case.There was a study that estimated that a loving family and being included in the community is the equivalent of a 6 figure income in terms of happiness, and naturally when these are threatened people turn militant. Would you risk your life for $5000 like a gangster? No? What about your daughter? Most ordinary men would. They'd sigh, realize the world has turned to shit and they need to root grandpappy's rifle out the barn and learn how to use it, like the minutemen or ww2 volunteers. Or more realistically for the 21st century, they need to covertly organize with other men while avoiding glowies, figure out how to counter the state's murderdrones and how they might utilize them themselves to assassinate key politicians and sabotage military installations and so on and so forth.Shit's going to be wild. /pol/ says it wants the accelerate, but I actually don't, I am hoping we don't get to that point, I hope we sort of end up in a low ebb and that's the wake up call America needs not an absolute crisis. Then we can go back to the 1950s, the way America was supposed to be before the great experiment with civil rights, equality and now diversity. It is clear now that most humans are not like calm rational middle class WASPS, ironically it is BIPOCs not raziz azz wypipo who make it impossible.
>>18471976Because we don't have any other USSRs yet>>18472054And before someone brings up "common destiny" or whatever, the Angles, Scots, and Welsh have been one nation for a lesser span of time than had the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians
>>18472396>then like India>using the state with a shitload of different minority groups as an example of how same blood can totally get you past being poor
>>18471976It wasn't eco stagnation, Gorby wanted eco reforms, was afraid central apparatus will depose him, weakened central apparatus, this empowered local governors or whatever you call them to make power grabs, which they did, so that weakened central power to the point it controlled literally nothing, so then USSR dissolved. Then the eco problems caught up and shake-ups followed, which is what retards think collapse was. Same as people think commies made the revolution when in fact there was a complete power vacuum as Tsaar abdicated, so a civil war between commies and normies followed in that vacuum. Though Russia is notorious for having palace coups so that guy would've probably been gone, abdication or no abdication. Basically countries only break up/have revolutions when central power is weak/fractured, if it's monolithic nothing happens (see Iran/North Korea/current Russia).
>>18473798Not him but India is overwhelmingly Hindus of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian descent. It does have a lot of minorities but they make up less than 3% of the entire population.
>>18473865muslims alone make up 15% of the general pop of India, and this is just for religious minorities, in others your claim only 3% of the pop is different is plain wrong
