008Zulu t1_j28c0qo wrote on December 30, 2022 at 11:00 AM

A remarkable period of history it can be said.

ThatGuy798 t1_j29sg2m wrote on December 30, 2022 at 6:01 PM

I've been reading Midnight in Chernobyl by Michael Higginbotham and its really incredible how the USSR operated vs what the people believed. While there was genuine support of the idea of a Utopia, the higher ups especially after Stalin didn't seem to think so, which is what brought the decline that would ultimately lead to the disaster and the fall of the union.

Do I support the USSR? Not really but I do feel bad for the people who achieved incredible things for nothing.

Hunor_Deak t1_j2b2usv wrote on December 30, 2022 at 11:04 PM

It partially boils down to Hobbes's idea of the social contract.

Communism had a social contract with the population. You surrender individual sovereignty and we deliver improvement in material conditions to a point where we reach Utopia as described by Marx and Engels.

Once the cynicism sets in and the inevitability of utopia through Marxism gets replaced with Brezhnev's eternity of the same (the stagnation of the 1970s), the social contract fails.

That is why Communism was gone by 1989 and 1991. It failed to uphold its own end of the social contract while the population gave up everything.

I heard this comment before. Majority of the people believed till Chernobyl. Not after.

Cunninghams_right t1_j2d0mhd wrote on December 31, 2022 at 9:30 AM

It was doomed from the start. It basically depended on everyone being honest and altruistic at all times. The moment you have people elevating loyal followers or exercising their power for personal or factional gain, then the leadership will naturally move more factional and more sycophantic

ThatGuy798 t1_j2b7kby wrote on December 30, 2022 at 11:37 PM

That's a really good summary and its a shame really because based on what was created during that time who knows what would've happened.

Jhushx t1_j29pvzd wrote on December 30, 2022 at 5:45 PM

I genuinely believe that the Cold War brought major and minor advancements in science, tech, medicine, you name it.

I'm sure aside from obvious things like weapons, rockets and armor, everyday things like modern computers, GPS, and LED lights would've eventually been invented but the Space Race vs. the USSR and all the political/military posturing and maneuvering sped things up for sure.