Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 2, 2023 21:30:28 GMT
I think saying that Brezhnev was the best Soviet leader is like saying which of the Nazi leaders was the best one. The Soviet Union was a brutal, atheistic, totalitarian regime which cared not one iota for its people.
[/quote] My whole point has been that the brutality, theomachism, and totalitarianism varied to a strong degree in different eras of Soviet history. Most people with whom I interact do not understand my views on Soviet history, which I have studied enough to form what in my opinion is a reasonable opinion on it, informed by my sensus fidei. I certainly don't view Soviet communism as a good model of governance.
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Post by ralfy on Nov 3, 2023 0:07:18 GMT
I remember Pilger point out that the likely reason the Soviet Union fell apart was because it was engaged in a contrived arms race with the U.S. that Russia could not win.
Meanwhile, countries like China had similar economic systems and failed, with 40 million dead, but when they tweaked economic policies after 1979 (e.g., allowed for foreign investments in export processing zones but required government working as an investment partner), that led to over 800 million lifted out of poverty and an average economic growth rate of around 7 pct per annum across decades, one of the highest sustained growth rates in modern history.
The policies are similar to that of the East Asian model (one economist refers to it as the Asian Capital Development model) promoted by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, and later copied by Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore: combinations of authoritarianism, centralization, free enterprise, and regulation, but heavily characterized by industrialization, nationalism, and export orientation.
From what I remember, the opposite of that was promoted in Ukraine and Russia (e.g., shock therapy and neoliberalism), and then dropped in the latter when Putin took over, leading to per capita income that's became four times higher in Russia than in Ukraine.
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