"What if~The Soviet Union won the Cold War?" Topic

"For nearly 50 years, the United States and the Soviet Union have slugged it out. Okay, not *slugged* it out, just bickering at one another, but that is not to say that they never came close to it. Their battle to see who was the greater superpower was one that people even today still talk about. But, this page has to ask.

What if the Soviet Union won the Cold War? What would the world be like if Communism would spread its influence around the world? But first, this page needs to give you a history lesson. Just scroll down to the "What if" category if you want to know what the world would be like if the Soviets won the Cold War…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Ever been to Detroit? Same worldwide, just worse.

I've always said if somehow the USSR landed on US beaches and entered many places like NY, NJ, LA, etc. The next morning they'd find all their vehicles up on bricks missing all the tires, road wheels and tracks a long with all their radios gone …

Well comrade, we would be speaking in Russian.

Those who wrote this text have little idea of the real situation in the USSR.
Starving people in the USSR in the 70s? Nonsense!))) There was a shortage of some goods, but these were never essential goods.
The health care of the USSR is one of the best in the world, especially in terms of accessibility for all citizens without exception. As well as education. And it's all free.
Women in the USSR had absolutely equal rights with men from the moment of the formation of Soviet Russia.
There were no unemployed in the USSR and could not be.
And so on)))

In my youth, I listened to the Voice of America radio station on an ordinary Soviet radio, bought in a Soviet store. I was interested in rock music))) The radio signal was jammed (not very carefully), but all I wanted to hear – I heard and even recorded it on a tape recorder)))

In the USSR, no one was forbidden to speak their native language. On the contrary, the Russians who lived in the national republics were obliged to learn the local language at school)))

Cuprun2,
Which Gulag were you working at?

Wolfhag

GULAG was abolished ten years before my birth)))
And in Soviet times, I worked at a chemical fiber plant as a mechanic for the repair of measuring instruments;)

I've always wondered … why so many Russians fled to America … and how many Americans fled to Russia (Cold War) …?

Amicalement
Armand

Eh, Marxism isn't done, they might win out yet.

On the other hand my Russian language learning dream might have happened and I would be better off being able to read Russian.

"There was a shortage of some goods, but these were never essential goods".

Yea, food's not essential I guess, as long as you have plenty of vodka to ease the pain.

Sorry, but I remember seeing lots of video of Soviet/Russian grocery store shelves and refrigerated meat sections, which were completely bare, except for poor quality meat, and/or overly expensive stuff, which the people wouldn't buy.

Kind of like here in the USA a few months back, when people started hording due to the Wuhan virus, and shelves were emptied.

She Chicago, IL, Portland, OR, and/or Baltimore, MD, and other cities/states for the answer. All of California is going that way, due to the leftists in total control in Sacramento.

I agree with Cuprum up to a point. I think basic food, clothes, furniture etc were pretty plentiful (if of indifferent quality by Western standards) and there was no starvation or malnutrition in the Soviet Union (although Army conscripts might have disagreed).

But by the 1980s the standard of living had been on that fairly low plateau for many years and I think most people felt there was almost almost no prospect of things EVER getting significantly better.
I also think that there were very different standards of healthcare, education, employment opportunities etc between the ordinary people and the families of ranking communist party officials.
This was the malaise of Soviet and East European socialism in the latter stages of the cold war- nothing to hope or strive for, and hypocritical inequalities.

The equality of women in the Soviet system was perhaps sometimes more apparent than real too- very few senior political figures were women for example- although they were very prominent in academic circles.

Agree that the article is garbage- though I cannot criticise Tango given his huge productivity for this forum.

No unemployment in the Soviet Union is kinda like saying there was no black unemployment in the pre-civil war south.

All pigs are equal except some are more equal than others. It's an age old problem across the planet.

What kills me is that some of these brain washed kids in the US can be seen at protests holding up flags of the old USSR; while in places like Hong Kong where their freedoms are in jeopardy they are proudly holding up flags of the USA. Crazy world.

Why did many Russians fled to the West? It's simple. It was not workers or farmers who fled, those who, thanks to their profession and qualifications, hoped to earn good money in the West, fled. In the USSR, there was simply nowhere to spend a lot of money))) But at the same time, you need to understand that these people received their profession and qualifications absolutely free – at the expense of Soviet society.
Marxism is not only not forgotten – it is only gaining strength. Each new crisis of capitalist society makes it stronger and more popular))) While the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer, this situation cannot be changed. However, let's not discuss politics – I can just tell you about life in the USSR, if anyone is interested.
Your idea of drunkenness in Russia is greatly exaggerated. Just look at the statistics on alcohol consumption. It's just that Russians drink differently – but no more)))
The video about empty shelves in stores is the result of "perestroika" and the activities of Mikhail Gorbachev. This is already the middle and end of the 80s. And this, by the way, is an even greater mystery, where suddenly goods disappeared from the shops, when industry and agriculture worked in the same regime and there was no production crisis.
Your left is something that has little to do with communism. These are not "red", they are "pink")))
Bravo ReallySameSeneffeAsBefore, your look is objective. I agree with almost all of your words. The example of socialism built in the USSR was ugly and flawed. The more correct path from my point of view is what we now see in China, and what in the early USSR was called the "New Economic Policy" (NEP).
I do not agree with the fact that women were limited in their rights. The past traditions were simply strong, no privileges or quotas for women were established, no special indulgences were provided for them in their careers. Accordingly, it was not easy for women to compete with men on equal terms.
Yes, in the USSR you had to work and pay taxes. Otherwise, by what right could you enjoy free public goods (education, medicine, state pension, etc.)? If a person did not engage in socially useful work for a long time, then he was threatened with a prison term of two years for dependency (unless, of course, not a s disabled, not a student, etc.).
Socialism is not equality in everyday life. Socialism is equal opportunity for all.
You may be born into the poorest family, but if you have talent and ability, then your chances of success will be great. Money in this case will not solve much. But if you were born into a very wealthy family, then your chances will not be much greater than the talents of the first person described.
Equality of chances for everyone.

Well, to answer the original post, we wouldn't be having this discussion, on this website, on the internet, now would we? None of this would've existed.

Cuprum is a fount of information on Russian topics. But his take on the old USSR often makes him sound like Chekov in the old Star Trek.

If everything was so good in the USSR, why did it collapse?
Cuprum, will, of course, will post a rebuttal. But note that I took Russian language, Russian history, and Russian literature in college. I'm one of those Americans who knows the massive sacrifice of the Russian people in WWII, and all that entailed in eventual allied victory.

For me, the absolute best book on the everyday USSR of the 1970s-early 80s is Hedrick Smith's "The Russians".
Get the mid 80s edition. Russians at that time lined up for everything except maybe bread. Meat, shoes, toilet paper. People got on lines, just because there was a line, not knowing what it was for, because they knew it was for an in demand item. If they didn't need it, they
could barter with a neighbor.

Plus, I have relatives who lived through Communism in Poland. It was much the same there, except food was more plentiful. The Communists never collectivized most of Poland's agriculture.

But his take on the old USSR often makes him sound like Chekov in the old Star Trek.

LOL !!!!! 😁😆😂🤣😄😎

Highly recommend watch DVDs of the series "The Americans". If any Russians, etc., wants to know what many in the US think/feel about the USSR. Watch all the seasons, I loved it … Seemed it was pretty accurate in many ways, AFAIK. I give it :👍👍

Of course during the Cold War, being in the US Army, '79-'90 I gave the USSR : 👎👎

And even today I give Putin and his cronies the same … 😁
But I'm sure he'd give me : 👎👎 Too!

😕😟

🤩

Wow!… you described a Paradise…

Not what I hear along my life from Russians I met…

Hope nobody here ended poisoned… (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Pan Marek – thank you for the kind words addressed to me))) I will always be happy to help my hobby colleagues)))

The USSR was not good!
First, Stalin destroyed democracy in the USSR, replacing the power of the people with the power of the party bureaucracy, he simply killed the majority of dissidents and curtailed the New Economic Policy. But under Stalin, a part of the "capitalist economy" remained, which quite effectively covered the demand for consumer goods for the population. These were cooperative (not state) enterprises. There were entire non-state factories and research institutes that worked on the principle of a market economy.
But Khrushchev completely destroyed this non-state sector of the Soviet economy and doomed the country to a chronic shortage of consumer goods.
The queues you describe in stores are the result of a shortage of goods, not money. The Soviet people were not poor – almost all of them had very large savings. The trouble was that many things could only be purchased on the illegal market and, naturally, much more expensive than their state value.
Can you imagine this situation? Not enough merchandise, but a lot of unused money. Huge unmet demand. Lack of reasonable logistics, when in some regions certain types of goods are in abundance, while in other regions such goods are completely absent …
All this is the result of the absence of a market sector in the economy.

Socialism is impossible without democracy (but not of the Western type, when someone's money, and not ideas and people, win the elections) and without a mixed economy.

By the way, any large Western corporation is almost communist production))) For settlements within the corporation, money has only a nominal value, when transferring a product from one workshop to another, no one includes profit in the price, and these workshops do not compete with each other)) )
Now just imagine that the state is a single corporation, and all those who work are co-founders of this enterprise.

Tango01 – are you talking about the scary poisonous "Novichok" now? In my opinion – the safest poison))) If the Russian special services continue to use this useless thing, then these are the most mediocre special services in the world))) The dagger and the flintlock pistol are much more effective)))

Yes, imagine the biggest evilest corporation ever and give it the power of life and death over its slaves, I mean workers. Some will say it just wasn't done right. To them, I say flap your arms like wings and it you don't fly it's because you're just not doing it right.

OK. Let's take a look at China))) So far they have been flying pretty well in the last thirty years)))
Unlike the West, whose flight is getting lower;)
Time is the best judge. And capitalism, as a system of social order, digs its own grave well. Can't you smell revolution in the air yet? More than a year protests in France, six months protests in the USA … The population of many countries is dissatisfied. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. In the poor take away the rights (for example, the retirement age is raised, crises lower the standard of living), reducing the number of middle class …. It may be that something is wrong in the world today? We'll see. Game is still far from over)))
And, in the end, competition, including between political systems, is good! This is a stimulus for development – isn't it?

By the way, when you talk about the life and death of workers, you do not mean the period of the Great Depression in the United States? Shootings of workers, WWI veterans? Political Discrimination? Invasion of the imperialist armies on the territory of independent states with the murder of tens and hundreds of thousands of local residents?

Ok, annual socilaism/communism thread :)

First of all, I hate when people start to teach you history and couldn't google a couple of things themselves.
- Gorvbachev wasn't a Premier, he was General Secretary of the CPSU.
- Beria was ousted by "hardliners"? Yeah, Beria was a true democrat, I see….
- in 1986, Soviet Union did a lot to help after Chernobyl. The total spendings after the disaster are considered to be one of the reasons of ruining economy of the USSR
- In 1989 there were no "Soviet Occupiers" in Romania.In fact, there were no Soviets troops there after WWII.
- It seems that the author never heard about GKCP and 1991 August coup attempt…
There's so many BS even in facts so you can't expect a lot from his "what ifs "

generally, the biggest appeal of socilaism and communism (never built anywhere) that in theory it is fair.
When glasnost has shown that some of the ruling elites lived much better than the rest of population it gave a huge impulse for the change.
What you had living in socialism was stability. You will always have a job, may be not what you like, but you won't die from hunger. You'll always have a roof and shelter. This roof might be leaking, but you'll not be sleeping on the street. There was less crime, less weapons in the hands of criminals.
However…the idea of proletariat revolution of Marx is built around workes proletariat, who has nothing to lose, except their chains. Russia was a peasant country, so Lenin had to adapt the original theory and include rural proletariat, peasants with no land or very small income.
There were rich villages and poor villages before the Revolution, and those, who had their property, were not happy to part with it. Their children would not form a "new man" who is happy without having a private property, his own land or business.
When Alexei from unknown village wasn't aware, that somewhere in Provance, farmer Jean had two cars, he would not start a revolution. He might get unhappy if his neighbour Andrey got one. And the system could not provide these cars for all, bleeding the country dry on military production, considered to be a matter of survival – and we had good reasons to beleive so,
Chinese liberated the economy, while keeping the ideology in the hands of CPC. In SU, Gorbachev started liberating the ideology and the construction crumbled.
Inequality is a problem pretty much everywhere, and yes, social state is still a dream in many places (and hated in lots of others ;)….and China is not an example of social state. To my mind they're state capitalism and they're not pretending to provide equal wealth and rights to their citizens.

Hello compatriot)))

To understand exactly what is happening now in China, I recommend that you read Lenin's work "On the Food Tax." There he expounds his view on how exactly a socialist society should be arranged at the beginning of its path. I don't suggest reading Bukharin and Zinoviev)))
I don't know to what extent Lenin is available in English, but on the Russian Internet you can easily find this article.

Well as we can see even here … the East meets West divide is still evident. Of course better to discuss or even argue about it. That start shoot'n and/or toss'n nukes …