Show of Hands

It ended when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Has it really though? Putin is ex-KGB.

You do realize the USSR had a three tier income level,?

Of course. Every capitalist country has more than three income levels or economic classes

In capitalist countries they're still called classes, although the barriers between classes are extremely weak to non existent. In my own lifetime I've been through seven classes. Here there is hope, that nearly extinct commodity in communist countries.

Like I said, there’s plenty of inequality in capitalist countries. If you deserve it, you’ll usually get to the top. This is why income is highly statified by intelligence, time preference, mental and physical health.

And effort and attitude.

Well said 👍

Thanks ✌🏿

I'd like to clarify – I saw the Cold War is a misnomer for the era because the USSR was never really aggressive towards the US, it was more the US just losing its shit whenever a country didn't want to be part of the empire, and sometimes receiving support from the Soviet Union, another country which didn't want to be in the empire... until Gorbachev.

Are you sure it wasn’t because we bankrupted them by forcing them to try and outspend us in military buildup? We have deeper pockets and were able to outspend them?

There wasn’t anything to lose in the Cold War?

No? What was there to win?

Maybe not being obliterated by atomic bombs?

In that case, everyone wins except Japan?

🧐 Japan was bombed during the second Great War, not the Cold War.

I’m not sure what would be more epochal than nuclear war. If it indeed was how it’s said to have been in the Cold War, we have never been closer to an epochal event in modern history.

But nuclear war never happened. No one won.

Japan was the only country nuked, and it was the first act of the Cold War, according to many historians, because its purpose was to show off the US arms development to the Soviets

Okay sure. It was the catalyst that set off the Cold War but it was mostly considered the catalyst for Japanese surrender IN the second Great War.

And of course nuclear war didn’t happen. That was the whole point of the Cold War.

It wasn't the catalyst for Japanese surrender. The Japanese were ready to surrender, especially with the prospects of Soviet invasion.

And the concept of MAD mutually assured destruction that worked with the Soviet Union won’t work with an EMP strike from them or anyone else. A detonation at 300 miles up will not be a reason for a retaliatory strike. But it will probably kill up to 90% of the US population within a year.

That’s why I said “mostly considered”. It seems you are just trying to find something to argue with me about.

“The Soviet economy had begun to stagnate by about 1975, in part dragged down by over-spending in the Soviet military at the expense of consumer needs and other necessary investments. And by the time of Leonid Brezhnev’s death in 1982, many in the Soviet leadership knew that their economy was beset by long term problems, including eroding worker discipline, rising alcoholism, wasteful investment and the Soviets’ striking failure to integrate computer technology into their production systems. None of these factors owed anything to the Reagan military buildup, which began only a year before Brezhnev’s death and several years after Soviet growth rates began to sputter.”

They figured out the computer tech

They sure did.

Which ex-soviet countries miss the union? From what I see, at least in Europe, all the countries are doing a lot better now that it’s gone. More freedom, better economies... Unless the -Stan countries are doing poorly, it seems everything’s better for everyone involved.

China is doing great because they adopted some free market principles. Communism is inherently set up to fail and starve millions.

Here's one poll on people about the breakup doing harm.
news.gallup.com/poll/166538/former-soviet-countries-harm-breakup.aspx

Pew research has other stuff. Very few people are satisfied with a move to capitalist society. Czech Republic being one such place.

Check out the 1991 referendum results.

Life genuinely isn't that much better in ex-Soviet states. While places have definitely seen updates thanks to simple progression of time there are many places that that are just shitty third world places to live.

Freedom doesn't mean much when you live in shit and worry about where your next meal comes from or if the water's safe to drink. Integration into the global capitalist economy has resulted in life just like the rest of the world - extraction of value into the first world while hampering development of the local scene.

Cherepaxa, thanks for the link. 👍 interesting & unexpected.

Not so very. There is the enduring fantasy, among those of the older generation who tell it to the younger, of a time when people didn’t have to work so hard. The truth is that communism was so inefficient that an assembly line worker only had to put in 2 or 3 hours per day, because after that there was nothing to assemble with.

Now people are expected to put in an honest 8 hours and that grates on people. It was one of the toughest things Germany had to deal with in reunification. Now, of course, people can aspire to better lives and do, but it comes with the cost of actually working harder and smarter.

I’ve been to former Soviet states immediately after the USSR went belly up and later on. The difference in people’s wealth and happiness is startling. Under communism the average person went about with a hangdog expression, with no gleam of hope in their eyes. These days it’s completely different and completely better.

Wealth does bring its own problem, of course. Just think of the stupidity of those in the US who think themselves intellectual by rejecting the cause of their easy lives.

Finally, isn’t it interesting that the poll was taken in countries where freedom and democracy haven’t been the result of the end of the heavy hand of the soviets.

A poll in search of a result?

>immediately visited collapse

Я тебе не верю. Think and say what you want, it doesn't change the facts that most people in most ex-Soviet countries (and non like Yugoslavia+Albania) miss the union and that the democratic choice to keep it was overthrown by western assisted coup. Only a handful benefitted at the expense of hundreds of millions. Union has turned into just another third world place like the rest of the capitalist third world subject to the whims of imperialist triad.

Now how do you think people in those first world countries get that wealth?

Not like the USSR, who stripped everything of value from conquered lands to keep up the facade that its system could work.

Poor you, ignorantly trying to defend the indefensible.

Your attitude is going to cost you so much.

>First world hasn't stripped everything of value

Yeah, keep up that attitude. I'm sure people in all the countries you go visit will appreciate your condescending first world views. 🙄

Yes. That right

What's a Clod war?

It was the war fought by iPhone users against the malicious force of Autocorrect, which sought to sabotage their communications with the outside world. The war was thought to have ended in the Battle of Palo Alto, where autocorrects core program was destroyed by a tactical nuke, but there are splinter factions which continue to hamper iPhone users’ communications to this day.

I just thought maybe it was a war fought by people with colds but your answer works too 😄

While they (Democrats) love communism, they hate America more. I’m sure it was a tough vote for some of them..... put down communism or support America??? In the end their overwhelming hate for America won out.

The left cannot give credit to America for anything - it shows the mentality of today's lefty.
It will be a generation or two in the wilderness before Obama's America sucks agenda is wiped from the minds of the left and the become relevant.
That is Obama and his merry band of misfit sycophants greatest gift to conservatism and he should be in the GOP Hall of Fame

I wonder if Michelle is still proud of her country or did her pride have an 8 year expiration date that coincided with her rich black family being evicted from public housing for an even richer white family.

.

Actually it is President Trump & his Merry Band of Misfits that love the Russians & Comrade Putin. How come no criticism of him & his bunch. And, you do know that there is no longer any communist countries. Not China nor Russia so update to 2018.

I condemn Put in for invading two countries while Obama did nothing.

I condemn Putin for convincing Obama to take missiles out of Poland and the Czech Republic.

I condemn Putin for allowing his mercanaries to get blown up by Trump in Syria.

I condemn Putin for cornering the market on our uranium.

Nacho, you know Trump has not heard any Russians in Syria. He has gone out of his way to avoid doing so. Your comments on Obama is old “fake news“. Shift gears and get real.

hurt any Russians

So the Russian mercanaries that died in the bombing were "fake".
It goes to show you because it was on MSNBC, CNN, NYT, Washington Post, NPR.
I see how you would think it was fake with their track record but the Russians actually said so and I trust them more than the other sources.
Try again to label real news as fake because it shows Trump doing something Obama did not.
That's why we have to keep an eye on you lefty TDS patients - you think whatever the senile Pelosi and Waters tell you to think.

What do you condemn Putin for or are you okay with invading countries, removing missiles from Poland and Czech, for cornering the US uranium market, for propping up Assad or are you more upset that he paid for Facebook ads?

Now that is something to get really pissed at - Facebook ads - those other trifle events happened under Obama so no big deal, nothing to worry about just part of the terrific global leadership and respect around the world that the Messiah generated.

Or simply good historians. Knowing facts does not make one unpatriotic, just smart & educated.

I lived the Cold War, from Star Wars to President Regan’s “Tear down this wall” speech to Glasnost and the ending of the Cold War. I was stationed in West Germany during the removal of the wall and have a piece mounted on my desk.

I know liberals are attempting to rewrite history and that unto itself is a crime. But please listen to me when I say DO NOT EVER TRY TO FEED ME YOUR $HIT ABOUT HISTORY THAT I LIVED AND WAS A PART OF.

I lived it too. That does not make me a historian, it makes me alive in the world. I think you should be proud of your service to the United States, but that does not make you correct on this issue. We disagree.

We surly do.

Let’s see, if one doesn’t like historical facts they need to leave the country, is that your position? I think those who who believe in & adhere to “alternative facts”, (Is that what KAC called them?), should read a book once a decade. Just sayin...

“Surrender Russkies! We have a laser that doesn’t work!”

Pepsi That’s exactly what happened, Reagan, bluffed they Russians, in a political power poker game & Gorbachov folded🤨❗️

What is it Trump wants to do? Form the Jedi or some goofy thing like that?

So communism would be ok on its own?

Wrong.

It doesn’t necessarily diss America. Stop being so partisan.

However, if I had to point to one thing, it would be Glasnost

☝️ this is what I read plus I also read countries were breaking off from the Soviet Union

Perestroika and glasnost caused that. Gorbachev didn’t want to put down uprisings as his predecessors had. After Chernobyl, he had quite a bit on his plate so things got out of control.

My favorite president!

It doesn’t become warped. It starts out warped. It is warped.

I'd say it starts out flawed, but warped implies there's an original state that is significantly changed over time.

We were able to spend more. They went bankrupt.