[Arkady]

The more i think and read about it , the more i cant get why such a huge power could collapse that bad.
I mean the had all the natural resources they needed, wood, oil, bead..
they had knowledge (the firs satellite and man on space!),

How could they fail to provide even food for narodny soyuz!!!?

What din't work in the Soviet Union ? I mean when Chine also becomed communist (1949) half of the world was communist!!! And still didn't work!!!

[Krasniy Yastreb]

Starting towards the end of Stalin's time, the USSR put all it's priority into building submarines, tanks and nukes. They also spent tons on giving the Party elite perfect luxury lives, especially in the 70s under Brezhnev.

Gorbachev could have sorted it out, but there was a slight hiccup with the Republics declaring themselves independent and the hardliner coup, and Yeltsin the little ******* strolling calmly up and taking power.

If you can find it, read Russia: The People And The Power by Bob Kaiser. It's a thoroughly good book which exposed just how rotten the Soviet core became under Brezhnev.

[Steve]

The fact that they had natural resources, knowledge, etc means nothing because, as Krasniy stated, they wasted it on weapons instead of things that people need. By the 1970s the Soviet economy was hugely outdated, and as the west moved towards computers the Soviets were still churning out steel and tanks in factories dating from the 1930s. Add the corruption of the Brezhnev years and there's a nice recipe for the collapse of an empire.

That's the economic side. The other part is that the USSR really shouldn't have come into being in the first place. A good chunk of the various ethnic groups which made up the USSR were forced in, and the only way they were kept in and quiet was by force as well.

Now enter Gorbachev. Gorbachev, initially, wants to reform the system which is already in place. He wants to change the USSR, make it more open, and efficient. By 1989 he finds out that he can't change the current system, so he has to take it down completely.

While he's letting people speak their minds, they come to the conclusion that the USSR sucks and they resent its domination over their nations. This brings us events like the anti-Russian riots in Kazakhstan in 1986, Baltic independence movements and other nationalist movements springing up everywhere. People now start to like nationalism more than communism.

Gorbachev, meanwhile, is swinging back and forth between hardline and reform elements of his government. In the winter of 1990 he allies with hardliners and starts putting them in his government - Valentin Pavlov as prime minister, Vladimir Kryuchkov as KGB chief, Yanayev as VP, etc. These guys have their own agenda. Gorbachev doesn't see it and proceeds to re-negotiate the Union treaty with his counterparts in the SSRs.

Now I'm sure we all know about what happened August 19-22, 1991 so I don't need to go over it. When it's over, a) Yeltsin is a hero and Gorbachev is now powerless, b) people realize that as long as the USSR exists, people like Yanayev and co. will always exist to try and turn back the clock. Yeltsin gets the upper hand and pushes Gorbachev out of the way. In quick succession the SSRs declare independence and it's all over on January 1, 1992.

Why'd it fall? People realized that the system sucked. They saw economic near-collapse and the coup in August 1991, and they concluded that as long as the USSR existed it could always go back to the old ways. Gorbachev didn't move fast enough to take the system apart, and put his trust in the wrong people. National movements gained steam, and then it was all over.

Wow. This is about my longest post ever.

[Krasniy Yastreb]

^ And a damn good one too.

[Arkady]

Usa was also spendi a lot of energy maoney an resources in weapons and military reserch and corruption is everywere.
what i'm wondering is why russians had such a little wiev on the evolution of things like computers, why they remained that backwarded respet to wester world though they had huge resources to grow up much better than they did.
Why? maybe the sience russian world was to rolled on itself or they had no reward by working ?
I mean The Soviet Union was destroyed after the war and that was the first big gap compared to USA but still not enough to explain why they failed so badly.

SU was destroyed but still the resources were unlimited, and the knolewdge as well ...

The answers seem to be that an open market will always produce more in terms of challange, goods, tecnics, and weapons also.




[/img]

[Steve]

Usa was also spendi a lot of energy maoney an resources in weapons and military reserch and corruption is everywere.

The US also produced a lot of consumer goods for its people. As for corruption, it was definently not as bad as in the USSR - the general secretary of the Uzbek SSR, Sharaf Rashidov, was able to embezzle 1 billion rubles (something like $1.6 billion at official exchange rates) out of the central government by falsifying cotton production figures over a period of years.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

The economy side is pretty simple. GDP per hour continued to fall for years. In the long run no economy can sustain this. However, the real crisis was delayed for years due to a rapid expansion of the labourforce. The collapse happened as the economy was no longer able to source additional labour. We have seen the same pattern in other economies, and they have all crashed. The Asian Crisis and the Crisis in Brazil are shinnig examples of the same type of collapse.

What should be worrying these days is the fact that the US economy is showing the same signs. Not that I care much for the US economy, but a crash will have deep impacts on the world economy, as it still is the largest economy. I sincerly hope they can turn it around.

[Din]

in other words the West kicked the USSR hard enough and the whole rotten mess collaspsed?
(sorry for using such a line i couldn't resist )