(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think that article supports my argument though? Much of the manufacturing was lost from the shift away a command economy; and the rest of the Russian economy wasn't able to consume the output the manufacturing center could produce. Hypothetically this manufacturing output could have been available to be utilized instead of Chinese factories if they had been able to stay open and productive. We see manufacturing, and assume it is value-adding manufacturing. That the product is better than the raw materials, and the loss of the ability to turn raw materials into product was damaging. But according to that extract, across the soviet union, the equipment, training, and organizational mindset to actually create something worth creating in civilian manufacturing capacities in a way Chinese factories can did not exist. It makes sense that military industries would be proportionally less effected by this, because up until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the customer (the Red Army) can and did push back and complain when a product was substandard, compared to what was needed to fight NATO. It certainly did happen, but there's a reason military goods remained one of Russia's only industrial export post-collapse.
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Jul 30, 2023 19:06
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cr0y posted:Oh word? He cannot be contained
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Jul 30, 2023 19:10
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cr0y posted:Oh word? PigBenis
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Jul 30, 2023 20:48
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Sorry if this was already answered somewhere. But is it known where they launched the drones that attacked the Kerch bridge? Clandestinely somewhere in the occupied zone? Or can those things get all the way from Odessa to there?
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Jul 30, 2023 21:07
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This derail about who should have invested in Western Russia in the 90s has very little to do with the topic of the thread.
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Jul 30, 2023 21:17
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mrfart posted:Sorry if this was already answered somewhere. But is it known where they launched the drones that attacked the Kerch bridge? How would they first get to the occupied areas undetected and then launch from some beach, still undetected? The shortest distance around the Crimea from Ukrainian mainland to the bridge is just shy of 600 km. Add some to avoid going too close to Sevastopol, and it should still be well within the stated range of 800 km. Conditions at sea may increase or shorten the range. You could increase the range a little by launching from sea, but without a battle fleet you wouldn't want to go too far from the coast. And if the ~800 km range is true, it means that the Black Sea Fleet is truly safe only in the easternmost gulf of the sea, in the Azov Sea, or in ports completely covered by anti-torpedo nets. Even most of Azov Sea is within range, but I wouldn't rely on the drones getting through the entire Kerch straits undetected, and the bridge there is a much bigger target than anything beyond it anyway. Damaging the ports connecting shipping from Russian side to the Crimean side might be worthwhile though as they would be the alternative to the bridge.
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Jul 30, 2023 21:31
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GoatSeeGuy posted:I thought the goal was to resist penetration? please, do not over-yonify the beep trench
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Jul 30, 2023 22:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:I think that article supports my argument though? Much of the manufacturing was lost from the shift away a command economy; and the rest of the Russian economy wasn't able to consume the output the manufacturing center could produce. Hypothetically this manufacturing output could have been available to be utilized instead of Chinese factories if they had been able to stay open and productive. Even if the Soviet heavy industry had been highly efficient and well run (it was not), it's hard to see how Russia was going to become an export powerhouse in manufactured goods at the same time the value of their oil exports was overwhelming everything else. They have the same problem that massive oil exporting countries always have: the oil industry consumes everything and floods the economy with very cheap imports (when priced in oil inflated local currency). Local manufacturers then are unable to compete with cheaper imports and so close down. Classic resource curse, except worse then usual since you have metals and natural gas on top of roughly a Saudi Arabia of oil exports.
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Jul 30, 2023 22:35
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saratoga posted:Even if the Soviet heavy industry had been highly efficient and well run (it was not), it's hard to see how Russia was going to become an export powerhouse in manufactured goods at the same time the value of their oil exports was overwhelming everything else. They have the same problem that massive oil exporting countries always have: the oil industry consumes everything and floods the economy with very cheap imports (when priced in oil inflated local currency). Local manufacturers then are unable to compete with cheaper imports and so close down. Classic resource curse, except worse then usual since you have metals and natural gas on top of roughly a Saudi Arabia of oil exports. are there any good economic history books of the transformation of the soviet economy towards petrochemical exports, or good wide overviews? i keep finding very niche stuff like Producing Power and How Not To Network A Nation, which are interesting in their own right, but are very much trees and not the forest
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Jul 30, 2023 23:14
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looks like there's been another attack on the chonhar bridge. russian authorities say they shot down every missile, but rumors are there's some damage to the bridge. i did a quick search but couldn't turn up any hard evidence either way
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Jul 30, 2023 23:54
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:looks like there's been another attack on the chonhar bridge. russian authorities say they shot down every missile, but rumors are there's some damage to the bridge. i did a quick search but couldn't turn up any hard evidence either way https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1685745696538820608?s=20 I don't think it is consequential either way. The Russians have been adept at throwing up bridges as needed in a timely manner.
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Jul 30, 2023 23:57
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Flavahbeast posted:He cannot be contained Goddammit wrong thread
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Jul 31, 2023 00:57
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MikeC posted:https://twitter.com/PStyle0ne1/status/1685745696538820608?s=20 I am bad at maps, but this reply maybe has a point? https://twitter.com/SquireDigital/status/1685759961442238464
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Jul 31, 2023 01:52
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A number of factors in particular moved against post-Soviet transition deep in the Soviet imperial core relative to its periphery, and these were directly linked to key ideological beliefs of Soviet communism The most notorious is the status quo, by the 1980s, of flinging upwards of 15% of gross national product at military spending (as I remarked before upthread, Portugal faced a revolution against its colonial aspirations over far less. Of course Portugal was not an oil exporter! So the Soviets had more runway, at least whilst oil prices were high). But another is that the Soviet system reflected an earnest and sincere belief that it was under constant threat of massive land invasion, five decades after WW2. It responded to this by placing a strong premium on dual use production or spare capacity as potential dual use production (most obviously in rolled steel, where the late Soviets were perpetually stuck in steel overproduction at a world-market-distorting level, and yet steel undersupply because the steel production capacity focused on sizes that were militarily useful but not commercially useful in peacetime), by overvaluing shelf life and excess warehouse stocks (in wartime just-in-time would be impossible!), and by deliberately investing in excess production capacity in isolated (and therefore costly to ship to/from) factory towns. All these decisions inflicted real costs. A Western audience is desensitized to Western tankie rhetoric on unrelenting Western hostility to communism but the Soviets really believed it and paid real costs for that belief, whilst it existed. And when it no longer did, this meant that post-Soviet Russia (and Ukraine, mind) inherited a vast network of factories and railyards and warehouses that were not valuable except in the specific sense of guarding against a prospective land invasion. ronya fucked around with this message at 13:10 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 04:10
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Steel is sort of more competitive, too. What do you do if you make TVs or computers that are at least two decades behind?
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Jul 31, 2023 04:50
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quote:Much of the waste in the Soviet economy was actually a by-product of the system of mobilisation planning. For example, in the 1970s and 1980s, the production of fertilisers was greatly increased. However, it was notorious that much of this increased production was simply wasted. It was left lying around in heaps to decay in the rain. The explanation is simple. The fertiliser factories were built and kept in operation as part of mobilisation planning. They were reserve capacity for the ammunition industry, and on mobilisation would have switched over to producing ammunition. The fertiliser output was just a by-product produced in order to keep the reserve ammunition production capacity in use and supplied with labour and other inputs necessary when war broke out (Shlykov 2001:84). Considers from a military point of view, the system of mobilisation planning was highly efficient. It ensured that in a major industrial war of the World War II type, the Soviet economy could be converted to military production fasted than its opponents. An (arguably too optimistic) argument for Soviet planning efficiency, itself taken heavily from Vitaly Shlykov's interpretation of the late Soviet experience (e.g. https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/back-into-the-future-or-cold-war-lessons-for-russia-2/, which is itself probably overstated to some degree; Ellman points out that contra Shlykov the premises were not even militarily appropriate). Nonetheless. ronya fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 04:57
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ronya posted:An (arguably too optimistic) argument for Soviet planning efficiency, itself taken heavily from Vitaly Shlykov's interpretation of the late Soviet experience (e.g. https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/back-into-the-future-or-cold-war-lessons-for-russia-2/, which is itself probably overstated to some degree; Ellman points out that contra Shlykov the premises were not even militarily appropriate). Nonetheless. They spent the 70s and 80s becoming more and more dependent on exchanging oil for western food imports, so I'm not sure how seriously they were still planning for a land war that point. At least it doesn't seem to have been driving economic planning, which instead tried to ramp up oil exports in order to pay for more imports. Food security apparently not being so important anymore.
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Jul 31, 2023 05:28
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It's not for the lack of trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Programme
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Jul 31, 2023 06:09
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ronya posted:It's not for the lack of trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Programme If they were really expecting the reborn wehrmacht to roll across the border and cut off food imports they'd have done a lot more than shuffle around committees and increase subsidies on (import-dependent) food. But they weren't so they kicked the can down the road.
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Jul 31, 2023 07:09
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Eh, can always just introduce rationing again. Can't ration bullets though.
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Jul 31, 2023 07:25
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Deputy Defence Minister Shlykov's interpretation is obviously self-serving in a "why yes we the military who make 100% of Soviet Russia's TVs should continue to make Russia's TVs under import protection even after communism, if we made mistakes it's because we intended to make them, we are very competent" kind of way. Counterpoint is the Soviet bureaucratic struggle to even know how much it was spending on defense, say... Probably the truth is partially like that and partially bog-standard incentive alignment inefficiencies etc., but either way a good chunk of that productive capacity really had no market value in a post-Soviet world ronya fucked around with this message at 10:45 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 08:17
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For anyone interested in part how/why Russia is what it is today I would highly recommend Trauma Zone documentary by the BBC. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGDByvdY5CHX_BTvG2X4vPrQfgqlSwSy5
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Jul 31, 2023 08:44
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Dick Ripple posted:For anyone interested in part how/why Russia is what it is today I would highly recommend Trauma Zone documentary by the BBC. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGDByvdY5CHX_BTvG2X4vPrQfgqlSwSy5 I think while entertaining it is really bad in the way Adam Curtis usually fails and also just poverty porn
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Jul 31, 2023 09:33
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While there is a lot of that it is a long series and in parts focuses on the manufacturing/economic sectors which are quite interesting in particular if you compare that to what is happening in many western countries. I do think the docu can give someone who is not familiar with the many nuances of the Soviet/Russian economy some insight, and shows how the grift/corruption infects the entire society from the top down.
Dick Ripple fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 10:34
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fatherboxx posted:I think while entertaining it is really bad in the way Adam Curtis usually fails and also just poverty porn It definitely had poverty porn. Unless it was widely inaccurate, it did help connect some dots for me, as to why certain things happened and why Putin was possible / happened. I assumed the base information conveyed was correct though about different points in time. I never knew about the soviet plan, just the gently caress ups. When hearing and reading about the gently caress ups, it generated a bias not unlike the memed up view of Russia in WW2. Were the depictions of life for regular folks during that time in Russia not accurate? I also picked up “Second hand time” to help me better understand but haven’t started it yet. I grew up in a time and place that was very “lol Russia” and so my biases, like many Americans, was pretty deep. Anything that helps build empathy and understanding seems like a good idea.
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Jul 31, 2023 11:53
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cr0y posted:Oh word? lmao the number 1 trump forum are they not using truthsocial anymore?
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Jul 31, 2023 13:16
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Paladinus posted:I am bad at maps, but this reply maybe has a point? Looks like the special kherson cat account posted a closer picture of damage to the rail bridge. https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1686000671974174720#m Attached for people who can't use the site:
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Jul 31, 2023 14:25
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WarpedLichen posted:Looks like the special kherson cat account posted a closer picture of damage to the rail bridge. I'm not an expert on Railroad track repair, but that one looks like it could be fixed in a few days.
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Jul 31, 2023 14:45
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Yes, that's the problem with attacking routes in general. It would take a truly extraordinarily destructive strike or sustained effort to yield significant results.
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Jul 31, 2023 14:56
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daslog posted:I'm not an expert on Railroad track repair, but that one looks like it could be fixed in a few days. They can hit it again. The point is to degrade their supply lines -they can't stop it completely. Russia will always find new ways to move things, the point is to make it as difficult as possible.
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Jul 31, 2023 14:59
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daslog posted:I'm not an expert on Railroad track repair, but that one looks like it could be fixed in a few days. The tracks yes, what about the huge hole in the middle? Usually you don't want very heavy, vibrating trains driving over those
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Jul 31, 2023 15:32
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daslog posted:I'm not an expert on Railroad track repair, but that one looks like it could be fixed in a few days. Someone on Reddit claiming to an an engineer who does railwork said as much. The earthen embankment is about the easiest thing to fix, apparently. Degradation does have value, though. You can't cut that line entirely, but you can keep it from running for 2 days here, 2 days there, etc. It adds up.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:34
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Somaen posted:The tracks yes, what about the huge hole in the middle? Usually you don't want very heavy, vibrating trains driving over those That crater is well on shore, it's not the span of the bridge that got hit. So that's just a matter of dumping in and packing dirt.
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Jul 31, 2023 15:38
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daslog posted:I'm not an expert on Railroad track repair, but that one looks like it could be fixed in a few days. "Repairable in a few days" and "repairable in a few days spent entirely inside Storm Shadow range" are two different things
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Jul 31, 2023 16:02
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Looks more like hours and slower speed until proper repairs to me, tbh. Rail is very resilient to this kind of thing. It's comparable to throwing a few conventional bombs on a runway.
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Jul 31, 2023 16:28
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How many times do you trust the Russian Graft Machine to fix the bridge before accumulated damage causes a more catastrophic failure?
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Jul 31, 2023 16:34
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Pablo Bluth posted:How many times do you trust the Russian Graft Machine to fix the bridge before accumulated damage causes a more catastrophic failure? If they don't care about safety, pretty much forever. They don't care about safety
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Jul 31, 2023 17:12
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Somaen posted:The tracks yes, what about the huge hole in the middle? Usually you don't want very heavy, vibrating trains driving over those It’s on the approach. Filling a hole with rocks is trivial and might take a couple hours. Edit that’ll teach me not to refresh (probably not)
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Jul 31, 2023 17:29
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It’s on the approach. Filling a hole with rocks is trivial and might take a couple hours.  But Sir, when we pour rocks in the hole they fall down, and the train drivers say they want the big metal bit that goes underneath to be straight.
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Jul 31, 2023 17:33
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Railroad tracks are vital to military logistics but they're also incredibly easy to repair, that's why hitting bridges is so important.
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Jul 31, 2023 17:46
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