Typo posted:

I disagree with this, I think the traditional Moscow-ruled USSR was a rebrand of the Russian Empire, but Gorbachev's New Union treaty would have transformed the USSR into something which looked like a stronger version of the EU, with SSRs controlling their own domestic policy but a federal government controlling foreign policy and an All-Union armed forces. In a referendum held in 1991: almost 80% of the Soviet population outside of the Baltics, Armenian and Georgia voted to continue the USSR under the New Union treaty.

Yeltsin could have signed onto a version of that (as he actually did in actual history -before- the August coup), as late as November 1991 he was assuring people the Union was going to continue, and when Belavezha Accords was signed, Yeltsin actually immediately announced that it was going to be replaced by the CIS. At the time, lots of people thought that the CIS -was- going to be something like a rebranded New Union Treaty.

The USSR had existed for 70 years and during that time, factors other than Communist ideology and party discipline had already developed to hold the Union together. There was the shared memory of the Great Patriotic War, pride in the Soviet armed forces, a common langa franca (something like 80% of non-Russians spoke Russian fluently), a common integrated economic zone with free movement of goods and people, the economic ministries and Central bank centered in Moscow with branches in the Repubics, the inter-migration of Soviet citizens between Republics, the list goes on.

We could discuss about the structure of subsidies from Russia to Uzbekistan or w/e, but that's no different than discussion German subsidies to Greece in whether it's worth Germany propping up the EU today. When discussing whether the USSR could hold together under those lines, it sounds -a lot- like a debate on whether the EU is worth or will continue on -today-. The answer is of course, it could have continued on as long as the man of the moment: Boris Yeltsin, decided it was politically convenient to.

evilweasel posted:

That's fair. I think that version of the USSR is so different than the "USSR" people think of when discussing it that discussing it when discussing if the USSR could have been preserved is hard because its sort of preserved and sort of not (and because it never really got implemented I don't know very much about it and completely forgot about it, which is an oversight on my part). To me, that intermediate USSR more feels like the transition from the British Empire to the Commonwealth than the EU, and if I had to guess that's my bet for how it would have ended up by now if it had implemented. The various states would sort of drift away and become more and more actually independent, until it became something like the Commonwealth where it was little more than a social club for former Empire subjects, with legal fictions about how they were all one nation that are as a practical matter meaningless. But it's definitely an interesting question of what might have happened - unified military forces, in particular, would have been a powerful force keeping the nations together, but I think that would have eventually started breaking off anyway.

Typo posted:

Actually, was the USSR post-Stalin really an empire?

Empires by the traditional definition involved extraction of resources from the periphery to the center, in the USSR it was the center which subsidized the periphery

I mean, it was an empire in the sense that there was to-down centralized control of many peoples from the capital, but it doesn't fit the definition of empire very well imo

Typo posted:

or the alternative was that the New Union would have re-centralized over time due (like the EU today) economic necessity and convenience, a common currency with a central bank in Moscow alone automatically makes it more EU than Commonwealth imo

Typo posted:

Actually, was the USSR post-Stalin really an empire?

Empires by the traditional definition involved extraction of resources from the periphery to the center, in the USSR it was the center which subsidized the periphery

I mean, it was an empire in the sense that there was to-down centralized control of many peoples from the capital, but it doesn't fit the definition of empire very well imo

evilweasel posted:

The key difference, I think, is that the EU was created voluntarily so that it trended towards greater control, while the Commonwealth was more of a retraction of central control so that it trended towards less. It could have re-centralized over time, but my assumption is that the trendline would continue because getting a little bit of independence tends to trend towards wanting more, even where it doesn't make a whole lot of economic or political sense.

Squalid posted:

It's actually extremely normal for empires to subsidize their periphery. There are many reasons for this, but extracting wealth is only one of several reasons that a state might want to control a territory. Sometimes they are simply held for prestige, other times because they are strategic locations. Sometimes they are theoretically supposed to produce returns but the investments just never pay off like a franchise in a crummy location.

We can see this today in US investment in Guam and Samoa. It was also the case for many of the European colonies in Africa, which were frequently major resource sinks. Alternatively you can also look at the Roman Empire's investment along the Rhine frontier, where the empire built up extensive infrastructure to efficiently move troops and supplies around the border.

Ardennes posted:

If you want, the Yeltsin of that period 1990-1991 certainly was relying on nationalism at the core of what he was appealing to and relying on the surge of Russian nationalism in particular that had been growing during the 1980s.

If he really believed in anything except his favorite brands of drink, that is more stable.

As for "empire", lets be clear it is going to get down into a tedious debatable over definitions. I do think the Soviet Union was run differently than the British Empire at very least though. It is clear that regional magnates did have influence in the center (Baghirov and Aliyev are good examples of this).

evilweasel posted:

And the USSR, specifically, wanted borders as far west as possible because Europe had a history of trying to invade them and needing to rely on trading space for time. Hence the whole "we're just going to shift the entire nation of Poland westward a bit, they can have some of Germany to make up for the parts we're taking" - the USSR had absolutely no intention of letting anything like Barbarossa happen again.

Typo posted:

there was never a popular movement in -Russia- against the USSR, in fact just a year after the collapse polls show even in Pro-Yeltsin Moscow showed 2/3 "regrets" the collapse of the USSR

I basically stopped buying the narrative that Russian nationalism brought down the USSR, at least not directly, it looks more like Yeltsin won the 1991 election on a whole host of issues (dissolving the union was not among them) and dissolved the USSR as a political play to get rid of Gorbachev, the feelings of the Russian people didn't really matter

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, plenty of people that can actively remember that time, there was plenty of reason to be upset. Also, 1992 was one of the worst years in post-war in post-war Russian history, it isn't that surprising to see a shift in opinion. Also there is a still a third that didn't regret it even so.

quote:

Also, getting rid of Gorbachev was a motivation, but he was clearly against the entire Soviet project at that point.

Typo posted:

there's plenty of people upset over the EU today (see Brexit), and plenty of people upset with the US governemnt today, yet probability for the collapse of either the EU or the US are very low. And in the US there aren't many people who even if they think the system is broken wants to dissolve the Union. I really don't think public opinion translates into political collapse as easily as commonly imagined.

In may ways we over-learned the lessons of 1980s-90s, the last few years have shown that authoritarian regimes willing to resist popular will could stay in power indefinitely
Again, I don't think he really gave a poo poo about the Soviet project either way except in relations to his own power, if he decided that the Soviet project put him as #1 guy in charge, he supports it, if it didn't, he opposed it

Ardennes posted:

Uh and sometimes they fall, look at the Arab spring, Egypt was going to have Mubarak forever until it didn't. During the late 1980s/early 1990s, average people were suffering just because honestly the Soviets were in all honesty broke and desperate to try to scrape up the cash for imports. Isn't a lie that in rural regions that bread was disappearing from stores not to mention other products. It is just that shock therapy obviously didn't solve the issue and instead liquidated the population of the savings and much of their employment. Also, the effective death of Comecon was another giant blow, the Soviets, in all honesty, needed a way to barter energy for imports including food.

Also it is clear Yeltsin turned against the system as a whole, and I believe he honestly did not have faith in it by 1989.

Ardennes posted:

Uh and sometimes they fall, look at the Arab spring, Egypt was going to have Mubarak forever until it didn't.

quote:

During the late 1980s/early 1990s, average people were suffering just because honestly the Soviets were in all honesty broke and desperate to try to scrape up the cash for imports. Isn't a lie that in rural regions that bread was disappearing from stores not to mention other products. It is just that shock therapy obviously didn't solve the issue and instead liquidated the population of the savings and much of their employment. Also, the effective death of Comecon was another giant blow, the Soviets, in all honesty, needed a way to barter energy for imports including food.

Also it is clear Yeltsin turned against the system as a whole, and I believe he honestly did not have faith in it by 1989.

Some Guy TT posted:

So I finished Anna Karenina and I have another question. The final part of the book makes heavy references to some Slavonic War, which appears to be the Russo-Turkish War, which I had never heard of before. Weirdly enough it's the most relatable part of the book, because the political arguments made seem almost identical to the ones used to rationalize the war in Iraq, right now to Levin meekly having trouble expressing a strong contrary opinion because it would seem rude even though the whole thing is obviously a load of crap.

But my question is more specific than that. Throughout the section the Russians who go to war are referred to as volunteers, and we get enough information from them directly to see that they do indeed appear to be volunteers- Vronsky in particular is described as sending a regiment on his own expense. So that got me wondering about how Putin was describing the Russians fighting in Ukraine as being volunteers. Was he using the word in the same way? To refer to people who specifically asked to do this job? Because the media made it sound like he was telling a bald-faced lie that the Russians in Ukraine weren't working for the government, but in this (admittedly archaic) context that qualifier is not mutually exclusive with the idea that they're volunteers.

I'm also wondering whether the whole idea of volunteers is an Eastern concept to begin with. I've seen Turkish men fighting in the Korean War described in the same way- as volunteers who signed up for this very specific job for moral reasons. Regardless, they were still officially representing the Turkish government. I can't think of any equivalent concept in Western culture.

Typo posted:

The support and inclusion into the New Union Treaty had both popular support and enough benefits for the Republican political elites for it to be considered voluntary.

no matter the origin of the Union, once you are in it you are subjected to the same incentive/disincentive structure as EU member states, Greece probably really loving hates the EU and the Euro but can't leave because of the material incentives. Imagine if an SSR 10 years down the road decide it wanted its own currency but "derublization" would be so economically disruptive it's not worth the cost. And the natural path for a monetary union is probably some kind of a renewed fiscal union centered in moscow.

icantfindaname posted:

The idea of a volunteer military or recruitment levies for specific wars/campaigns is an inscrutable Asiatic idea that is only conceivable to them? What on earth?

Lightning Knight posted:

I hesitate to ask this question, but is there any useful comparisons/contrasts to be had with how the Soviet economy failed as described here (and the leaderships’ response) to what’s presently occurring in Venezuela?

Some Guy TT posted:

But my question is more specific than that. Throughout the section the Russians who go to war are referred to as volunteers, and we get enough information from them directly to see that they do indeed appear to be volunteers- Vronsky in particular is described as sending a regiment on his own expense. So that got me wondering about how Putin was describing the Russians fighting in Ukraine as being volunteers. Was he using the word in the same way? To refer to people who specifically asked to do this job? Because the media made it sound like he was telling a bald-faced lie that the Russians in Ukraine weren't working for the government, but in this (admittedly archaic) context that qualifier is not mutually exclusive with the idea that they're volunteers.

I'm also wondering whether the whole idea of volunteers is an Eastern concept to begin with. I've seen Turkish men fighting in the Korean War described in the same way- as volunteers who signed up for this very specific job for moral reasons. Regardless, they were still officially representing the Turkish government. I can't think of any equivalent concept in Western culture.

clusterfuck posted:

Three books on Russia I've enjoyed:

The Icon and the Axe
Wonderful sweeping history of Russian culture

The First Circle
Classic Stalin's reign of terror story of gulags, science and the chain of fear.

The Compromise
Glimpses of the 1970's Brezhnev stagnation era through stories of Soviet journalism.

Typo posted:

But the Egyptian state did not collapse and indeed, 2 years after the revolution an Egyptian army general is once more in charge of Egypt. The Arab Spring actually showed exactly how resilient authoritarian regimes are.

At the same time, Egypt 2011 and USSR are poor comparisons, there was never anything comparable to Tahir square in Moscow indicating popular resistance against Gorbachev. Not only that, but the Egyptian revolution was only possible because of Social media and the precense of well-organized opposition groups (the Muslim brotherhood), neither of which existed in 1985 in the USSR.

quote:

There were both pro-Communist and anti-Communist rallies and gatherings in Perestroika era Russia. The closest thing you had to a mass rally against the regime was the reaction against the August coup, but that was against an illegitimate takeover of the government rather than the government itself. And even then, the crowds were a tiny percentage of even pro-Yeltsin Moscow, let along the population of the Soviet Union as a whole. The vast majority of Russian simply sat on the sidelines and waited to see which way the horse jumped. The level of opposition to the Soviet Union as a state has always being vastly exaggerated by both western media (to satisfy a narrative of heroic popular masses overthrowing the evil communists) and by Yeltsin (to satisfy the narrative of himself as the father of Russian democracy).

quote:

The power and decision-making and event-making in Russia and Marxist-Leninist regimes was always in the hands of a selective group of political elites, the vast majority of the people did not matter. The USSR was dissolved against popular will.

quote:

The Soviet economy of the late 80s/early 90s was not the Soviet planned system of pre-1985: Gorbachev had already disrupted the system trying to transform it into a market economy. The shortage of that era wasn't the shortages of a planned economy: it was the problems of an economy undergoing transition from a planned system towards a market system.

To make it clear, I don't think the Soviet planned system is superior to a Social democracy, it's just that the transition was badly managed.

Typo posted:

I basically stopped buying the narrative that Russian nationalism brought down the USSR, at least not directly, it looks more like Yeltsin won the 1991 election on a whole host of issues (dissolving the union was not among them) and dissolved the USSR as a political play to get rid of Gorbachev, the feelings of the Russian people didn't really matter

21 August

At about 1:00, not far from the White House, trolleybuses and street cleaning machines barricaded a tunnel against oncoming Taman Guards infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs). Three men were killed in the incident, Dmitry Komar, Vladimir Usov, and Ilya Krichevsky, while several others were wounded. Komar, a 22 year old veteran from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was shot and crushed trying to cover a moving IFV's observation slit. Usov, a 37 year old economist, was killed by a stray bullet whilst coming to Komar's aid. The crowd set fire to an IFV and Krichevsky, a 28 year old architect, was shot dead as the troops escaped. [37][23][35][38] According to Sergey Parkhomenko, a journalist and democracy campaigner who was in the crowd defending the White House, “Those deaths played a crucial role: Both sides were so horrified that it brought a halt to everything.”[39] Alpha Group and Vympel did not move to the White House as had been planned and Yazov ordered the troops to pull out from Moscow.

The troops began to move from Moscow at 8:00. The GKChP members met in the Defence Ministry and, not knowing what to do, decided to send Kryuchkov, Yazov, Baklanov, Tizyakov, Anatoly Lukyanov, and Deputy CPSU General Secretary Vladimir Ivashko to Crimea to meet Gorbachev, who refused to meet them when they arrived. With the dacha's communications to Moscow restored, Gorbachev declared all the GKChP's decisions void and dismissed its members from their state offices. The USSR General Prosecutors Office started the investigation of the coup.[19][31]

During that period, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia declared its sovereignty officially completed with a law passed by its deputies, confirming the independence restoration act of 4 May as an official act.[40] In Tallinn, just a day after the resitution of independence, the Tallinn TV Tower was taken over by the Airborne Troops, while the television broadcast was cut off for a while, the radio signal was strong as a handful of Estonian Defence League (the unified paramilitary armed forces of Estonia) members barricaded the entry into signal rooms.[41] In the evening, as news of the failure of the coup reached the republic, the paratroopers departed from the tower and left the capital.

Mr. Grumpybones posted:

For those asking about books about Soviet life I recommend Svetlana Alexievich’s Zinky Boys and Voices From Chernobyl. Both are collections of interviews (without the voice of the interviewer); they read like oral histories.

clusterfuck posted:

If the feelings of the Russian people didn't matter then what do you make of the events on the streets of Moscow 21st August 1991? Your interpretation seems at odds with the events. The events of 21st August were the moment it became finally clear that the military would not crush the uprising, as did occur in Beijing two years earlier. This had been a question foremost in the minds of people demonstrating on the streets outside of Russia and here the question was being tested in Russia at the crucial moment and it was a pivotal shift. It demonstrated that the Gang of Eight running the Coup did not control the military and could not enforce their rule. That was the de facto end of the USSR and the subsequent dissolution was a de jure formality. Events very much turned on the feelings of the Russian people.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt]


I've bolded the portions indicating key moments where the feelings of the Russian people drove events. Obviously none of this occurred in a vacuum but I can't see how you can choose to dismiss these events.

quote:

That was the de facto end of the USSR and the subsequent dissolution was a de jure formality. Events very much turned on the feelings of the Russian people.

Typo posted:

The events on the streets of Moscow during the August 1991 involved, at best, a tiny percentage of the population even pro-Yeltsin Moscow. It was not "the Russian people" so much as it was a tiny percentage of the people in the capital city. The vast majority of the Russian people did nothing during the coup. A few miles outside of the central of Moscow, life went on as normal.

quote:

Also the protests were -against- an illegal takeover of the Soviet government, it wasn't a protest -for- dissolving the USSR. When the Belavezha Accords was signed, it was not a behest of Moscow crowds.

quote:

I wrote itt about why I don't agree with this, the USSR was not dead even after the August Coup. A return to pre-1985 old Soviet Union was, but something like a New Union Treaty style Confederation was still possible: as long as Yeltsin wanted it.

Squalid posted:

Why would Russian nationalists want to bring down the Soviet Union?

clusterfuck posted:

That's really not unusual for popular uprising events. There's an active vanguard that represents only a tiny percentage of the popoulation. It grows as the movement gains success, look at the numbers in the Arab Spring or the numbers in the rest of East Europe in this period. What is often the crucial factor is the allegiance of the military.

quote:

The "feelings of the Russian people" include those Russian people in uniform. They balked at shooting other Russians and shifted allegiance to Yeltsin. The loss of control of the military ended the USSR, in my view. That seems a fairly common take on these events.

quote:

How do you know the motivations of those people? What is your evidence? I would think some were there as Russian nationalists and some were there to head off an imminent wave of mass arrests and state violence. Many may have had a mixture of motivations. I doubt there were many there with the defense of the Soviet Union high in their priorities. You seem very sure of their motivations so please share your evidence.

quote:

You've said yourself that yours is not the mainstream view of these events, that you stopped buying the narrative of Russian nationalism bringing down the USSR. I expect you're much better read on these events than I am and I think I'm just repeating the mainstream take on these events. I would like to see more citations from you so I can inform myself better as I find the events of the coup in particular dramatic and compelling reading.

Some Guy TT posted:

But my question is more specific than that. Throughout the section the Russians who go to war are referred to as volunteers, and we get enough information from them directly to see that they do indeed appear to be volunteers- Vronsky in particular is described as sending a regiment on his own expense..

Typo posted:

There's a few things to unpack here

...

A lot of this is coming from Stephen Cohen's "Soviet Fates and lost alternatives":

https://www.amazon.ca/Soviet-Fates-Lost-Alternatives-Stalinism/dp/0231148976

And yes, it is a very compelling read

Typo posted:

That's basically what the August Coup and Belavezha Accords were, even if you were on the streets demonstrating against the coup, it doesn't mean you were in favor of dissolving the Union. Belavezha accords was signed without a referendum in Russia to legitimize it, it was a decision made at the center by Yeltsin. As late as November 1991, Yeltsin felt the need to promise people that the Union was going to continue. And Yeltsin's CIS looked to be a continuation of the USSR in a decentralized form and renamed.

So this is where the "sort of" mattering of public opinion came, in mattered for a small percentage of the population who happened to live in the capital, and only for one event which while important did not spell the inevitable end for the USSR. But the actual key decision made was done by 3 men, (Yeltsin, Kravchuk, shushkevich) and out of the 3 only Yeltsin really mattered since the other two was likely to follow the lead of the largest Republic.

A lot of this is coming from Stephen Cohen's "Soviet Fates and lost alternatives":

https://www.amazon.ca/Soviet-Fates-Lost-Alternatives-Stalinism/dp/0231148976

And yes, it is a very compelling read

Ardennes posted:

The issue at that point is what the USSR would have actually looked like beyond maybe some of the Central Asian states. It was clear the Baltic states were going, the Caucasus were a complete mess, and even Ukraine had been moving towards independence (and was independent at late August). The Soviet Union would a moniker at that point. (Also many Russians wouldn't be happy to have the Central Asian states tagging along regardless.)

quote:

As for Soviet fates, I am reading a copy of it right now and eh it I am skeptical it really adds that much to the table. In particular, the chapter on Bukharin seems more or less a rehash. (Also, Cohen obviously doesn't really touch on serious the economic debates going on and why the NEP was in many ways a failure.)

Typo posted:

The Republics with serious separatist sentiments were the Baltic Republics, Moldavia, Armenia and Georgia, those were 1-2% of USSR's population/territory. They could have jettisoned every single of those republics and still had the vast majority of the pre-1985 USSR.

quote:

The pre-Gorbachev look at Bukharin/Khrushchev adds nothing I agree and could just be skipped entirely, the interesting part of the book is about the late Gorbachev era. Cohen is hardly unbiased, being a personal friend of Gorbachev, but he makes very compelling argument in his book.

E: I'll try to address your other post later on when I have more time to post

quote:

Bare shelves in state stores, to take the starkest example, did not mean mass hunger. In the countryside, people grew much of their own food, as they always had, but even many urban dwellers were not greatly dependent on official shops. In addition to resorting to more costly but readily accessible nonstate markets and cultivating their own food gardens, almost all employed Soviet citizens and students traditionally received their main meal at midday in workplace and school cafeterias, where employees could also buy take-home supplies. That long-standing system continued to operate in 1990 and 1991, though no doubt with declining quantity and nutrition. In any event, as was later pointed out, the “sausage thesis” hardly explains the end of a Soviet state that had endured more severe food shortages before.

Typo posted:

I basically stopped buying the narrative that Russian nationalism brought down the USSR, at least not directly, it looks more like Yeltsin won the 1991 election on a whole host of issues (dissolving the union was not among them) and dissolved the USSR as a political play to get rid of Gorbachev, the feelings of the Russian people didn't really matter

Ardennes posted:

The USSR was certainly more than just the Russian Empire with new paint, that is a rather absurd reduction.

COMRADES posted:

Also the Communists were pretty much poised to win the '96 election on the promise of restoring communism and then in came the West to rig the gently caress out of that election and get Yeltsin elected again. Who then apparently was so ashamed about it he disappeared for months, drinking. Then Putin got appointed his successor and now the USA is mad that Russia attempts to mess with US elections.

quote:

Also the Communists were pretty much poised to win the '96 election on the promise of restoring communism

Ardennes posted:

Either way, the 1993 coup was straight out power-grab that at least 187, and likely much more, Russian Democracy was strangled in the crib.

quote:

The 1996 election was relatively soft because the regime had already cemented its rule.