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I wish we could look at what the ussr did right and how it worked around its restrictions without rose tinted glasses. Some central planning of efficient railways and large industrial machinery might not be a bad idea. Lezz a fair doesn't always produce great results. Walkable neighborhoods and commie blocks aren't such a bad idea but fascist dictators are.
Just thought you'd enjoy learning that it's laissez faire. It's French, so obviously it's hard to spell.
Hell if I'm about to let some boojwazi tell me how to spell.
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It's laissez-faire. It took a few reads until I got it.
I want to live in a walkable city so bad!
Say what you will about the USSR, but it took a bunch of peasant farmers under exploitative monarchy and literally rocketed them into a global superpower in, what, 2 generations? While weathering the immediate tangible effects of two world wars, and staying competitive against the capitalistic world power that remained virtually untouched in both wars and casually claimed industrial supremacy by virtue of that fact.
How great can capitalism be if the capitalists had a multi-century head start, better natural resources, advantageous geography, a bigger population, and it was still close?
it took a bunch of peasant farmers under exploitative monarchy and literally rocketed them into a global superpower in, what, 2 generations?
Russia was a superpower to begin with. The communists took over the Russian empire and it nearly lost them ww2 (in the beginning). What are you talking about?
Edit: clarity about losing the war.
It was WWI, not WWII. And the war was lost under the monarchy.
And Russia wasn't a superpower back then, it was barely a Great Power.
The leadership of the USSR was a genocidal imperialistic regime, but it did in fact get Russia specifically from snowsleds to space shuttles.
In the meantime it caused irreparable harm to most of Eastern Europe.
They did lose WW1 because of the revolution, that's true, or rather stepped out of it, but that's not what I was talking about. I meant the beginning of the WW2 and the Russian invasion which was a huge disaster overall. They managed to come out of it on top, but the cost was ridiculous. (Edited my original comment for clarification).
I'm calling them a superpower even if they were not on par with UK, France and Prussia, they were a bigger power than the Austro-Hungarian empire or the Ottoman empire at the time.
I'm not praising tzarist Rusia. It was a shit place, a reminesscence of feudalism after the industrial revolution. I'm simply trying to argue the fact that it was communism which allowed them the progress. They started from pretty high up to begin with. In fact, the two major examples, China and Rusia, while in some sort of identity crisis when they switched to communism, were historical powerhouses to begin with.
Other, no power houses who went communist didn't fare so well. Cuba, North Korea, countries in the Balkans ...
I don't think you can really compare pre and post industrial superpowers, especially measured specifically against the ridiculously advantageous position of the mid century USA (perhaps I should have said nuclear superpower, or space-faring). And pretty much everyone in the hemisphere "nearly" lost WW2
pretty much everyone in the hemisphere “nearly” lost WW2
I reread my comment and it was ambiguous. I meant nearly lost the war in the beginning due to lack of leadership which they basically executed early in the revolution.
You're right, nearly all of Europe lost in that war. The only two winners were USA and USSR
nearly lost the war in the beginning due to lack of leadership which they basically executed early in the revolution.
The only two winners were USA and USSR
A puzzling juxtaposition, that.
What would you call the siedge of Moscow if not nearly losing?
History is rife with "nearly"s. The USSR had to content with y'know, actually being in the middle of both world wars and suffering the material consequences. And then went on to go toe-to-toe with the golden child of capitalism (safely nestled on its distant continent, far from the material consequences of war, with all the post-war industrial economic advantages that wrought).
The US had a freakish advantage, no one should have gotten even close. And the USSR got smacked down bad through both wars. And yet, they were stiff competition. It's like gloating that your thoroughbred greyhound barely beat out a half-blind, 3-legged street dog in a race. The fact that it was close should be your sign.
That's a very narrow view of what happened after the second world war. URSS occupied half of the European continent. It basically was the last empire in Europe with all the resources and human capital at its disposal to do anything it wanted. Not to mention war reparations.
And it lost. The ideology wasn't working. It took 40 years for that empire to collapse, but collapse it did because it was built on the wrong principles.