Fall of the soviet union ???
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Fall of the soviet union ???It is my opinion that had the the soviet union not collapsed,there would be much less international tension ....
cause the soviet union was looking over entire asia and middle east preventing any major power uprisings....
and also was the perfect rival for USA
therefore there was more balance in the world than today.... two massive unrivaled power at the two corners of the globe....
What are url's opinions ??????????? -
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What about the fact they were in constant nuclear brinksmanship with the USA and both nations supported wars in the 3rd world to support nations they each supported, to carve up the world between communism and capitalism?
This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???so having 2 vast opposing armies each acting as each others deterant would cause stability... I know a man who may disagree with you
also i hope this video works
nope
well
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk37TD_08eA -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???Russia killed more of it's own people during the cold war than Germany did, as in German Jews and other people, during WWII. It wasn't a sustainable thing. It could only match the USA by bringing mass poverty to it's people to fund their military.
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???The USA and Soviet Union both had inherently different ideologies and ways to go about doing things - that could have only been a good thing. Feel free to disagree, however I feel that the world has entered an era of stagnation since the fall of the Soviet Union. Over 95% of the world's population are living under a capitalistic regime; now, no opposition to that regime exists.
Now the Soviet Union doesn't exist, we're a predominantly capitalist world now. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???Why comment if you don't know what you're talking about? Poland was not part of the Soviet Union. It was a satellite state and became non-communist in 1989, two years before the USSR fell. I don't get what you mean by "it was not really a union or partnership" because it certainly was a union between the soviet republics (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan etc) and there was great partnership between the USSR and its satellite states (Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria) through the Warsaw Pact (military partnership) and comecon (economic partnership.(Original post by eryk)
The soviet union was doomed to fall simply because it was not really a union or partnership between Russia and Poland and the rest of the countries. The people were suppressed living constantly in fear.
"The people were suppressed living constantly in fear." This isn't really a cause of the fall of the USSR at all. Terror as a method of control ceased following the beginning of Destalinisation after Khrushchev gave the Secret Speech in 1956. After this, there was much less suppression and people really weren't living in fear at all - only if you went out of your way to be a nuisance to the regime were you in risk of arrest, exile or placement in a mental asylum. And Gorbachev after coming to power in 1985 introduced Glasnost which gave people almost complete freedom of speech and increased democratisation. Yes, the backclash against Glasnost and the other policies of Gorbachev culminated in the 1991 August Coup, which was a major contributing factor towards the fall of the USSR, but people "living in fear" was not a factor at all. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???I bid you good luck as you attempt to follow this statement with proof that post-Stalin USSR was as murderous as and in anyway comparable to Nazi Germany.(Original post by DynamicSyngery)
This is like saying we should bring back Nazi Germany as a good counter-balance to Britain and France.
The world is better off with fewer homicidal militaristic dictatorships. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???> implying that the fall of the USSR assisted in this aim.(Original post by DynamicSyngery)
The world is better off with fewer homicidal militaristic dictatorships. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???It's hard to see the USSR being around today in the first place. When one looks at all the inherent flaws in the system it's hard to imagine it lasting any longer than 1991 when it of course officially dismantled.
Apart from Yuri Gagarin's flight into space, the USSR it can be argued were never serious rivals to the USA. It was all the propaganda that made them out to be a far bigger threat than they were. Copies of '1984' would be dished out to the masses with the tagline 'this is what a Communist world looks like'. However, if you look at how the USSR got their behinds handed to them by the Afghans, their away record is rather patchy. This is further backed up by their defeat to Finland in 1940.
However, the original statement that the USSR 'was looking over entire asia and middle east preventing any major power uprisings...', in my opinion, is a valid one. If you look at the way the state used the Warsaw Pact forces to put down various revolts, one could say that they did indeed ensure peace within the USSR. In contrast, slaughtering a million Hungarians in cold blood doesn't sound like a particularly inspiring method of doing so.
If you see how far behind the USA they were in the 1980's, imagine how far behind they would be today considering how rapidly the West has developed over that twenty-year span. With nuclear weaponry being the only thing they have to fall back on, I'm sure a second Cold War period would ensue.
Ok I'm spewing out two years of Soviet A-level here, and I don't think I'm making much sense. But ultimately I'd much rather have lots of small groups squabbling than two superpowers pointing big, shiny nuclear warheads at each other. There is no cause and effect here, rather a bleak hypothesis, but no single State should have power over that much land. It's absurd.
Oh and @Eryk, the USSR was never 'Doomed' to fall at any point. If the blithering idiots in the upper-echelons had decided to act like Gorbachev tried to, then the whole damn mess that was the Post-Stalinist USSR could have been avoided. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???The greatest problem with history is the fact that we have hindsight. Starting from the position that the USSR collapsed inwardly due to its economic and technical stagnation, people often conclude that this was inevitable, and that it wasn't a significant threat. This ignores the fact that the soviets were one of the most disasterous, murderous and instable regiemes to ever exist.
Lets be clear, without full nuclear war, there was no way that the USA could have defeated the Soviet Union. Other than the US, the USSR was the most powerful nation on earth which could easily have conquered all other nations if it put its mind to it.
It is similar to how Pre-revolutionary France but 20 years before the revolution was undoubtedly the most powerful, financial powerhouse of the world. We conclude with retrospect that it was weak because it collapsed and its rivals surpassed it, but that overlooks that at that time, it was the most powerful nation on earth. Similarly, the USSR was in a position where it was actively engaging in a policy of creating and cultivating political groups to subvert democracy and impose communist dictatorships. They actively promoted warfare and instability which caused the deaths of millions of people. They sought to change the viewpoints of entire continents, particularly ex-colonial states new to democracy, preventing them from developing into successful modern nations (obviously, only one of many varying reasons, but still significant).
In addition, to GibsonTM, India has a mixture of Social Democracy and capitalism, far from a purely capitalist system. In addition, China's system is exceptionally complicated and difficult to define, even amongst so called experts, but it is the closest one can get to a socialist state taking advantage of elements of capitalism, but essencially still a socialist country. Add to this the other 'people's republics', over half of the world lives in countries that self define as 'social democracies' rather than capitalist countries, so to assert that the world is 95% capitalist ignores the massive differences in political and economic thought that exist. The best example is the 'nordic' model of social democracy which is the closest any nation has come to successful and effective marxism to date. If anything, Capitalism won the battle, but Social Democracy won the war.
TL
R, the USSR was a massive instability, Social Democracy is the modern oppoenent to capitalism, and the Whig approach to history is *******s.
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???CHINA today follow Marxism–Leninism and have risen to be a massive superpower
where would the Soviet a superpower then, the founders of theses principles be today had they continued these practices .....
Unlike USA the SOVIET union had a 60 000KM border and and more than 20 different countries bordering them so naturally they had border issues and people died as a result.much like us civil war
The Soviet Union was dissolved when the world was beginning to enter a new era and rapid development was just beginning so had the soviet union lasted that phase and remained united today i believe those nations that broke off too would be in a better place today ....Last edited by King_Arthur; 04-08-2012 at 06:14. -
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Re: Fall of the soviet union ???So what about the vast nuclear arsenals they had aimed at each other, the huge regional power blocs they over saw and of course the fact the 'cold' war very nearly turned scorching hot on several occasions?(Original post by King_Arthur)
It is my opinion that had the the soviet union not collapsed,there would be much less international tension ....
cause the soviet union was looking over entire asia and middle east preventing any major power uprisings....
and also was the perfect rival for USA
therefore there was more balance in the world than today.... two massive unrivaled power at the two corners of the globe....
What are url's opinions ???????????
R, the USSR was a massive instability, Social Democracy is the modern oppoenent to capitalism, and the Whig approach to history is *******s.
