That's a good analysis. I'd just add that it's possible to outrun your contradictions (for a while) via expansion. Which is exactly what the USSR did, first territorially and then culturally, its cultural influence peaking in the 1970s and its quest for territorial expansion dashed in the 1980s in Afghanistan. No longer able to expand, its contradictions caught up to it and, in true Marxist fashion, made its collapse inevitable.
Great piece. I too hate the Soviet regime with every fibre in my body but still find their anthem a strangely inspiring piece of music. Good to know I'm not alone.
I enjoyed this article, particularly your pulling apart the various ideologies in terms of what they embrace and what they reject (love Tim Urban too, from the days of his “ world’s raddest man” piece on Elon Musk).
I lived in the Soviet Union for two years, 1987-1988 and 1991-1992. During that time I was working in the refugee program that was moving Soviet Jews and Armenians to the United States. I was there watching when they removed the Soviet flag from the Kremlin, both shocked and not shocked.
Like any person who has seen a totalitarian regime up close and personal, I have been sickened to see similar tactics used here in the United States lately. Suppression of free speech, politics triumphing over truth and even use of the state machinery (FBI, IRS) against political opponents. It has resulted in things one can say in one’s own kitchen varying from the things that people say out in society, just like in the Soviet Union.
In terms of any disagreements with your piece, it must be pointed out that the Soviet Union‘s embrace of science had a definite asterisk! “* to the extent not inconsistent with Soviet ideology.” The field of biology being set back by Lysenkoism is the obvious first example, but there were many others. Couple this with an excellent education system that allowed some degree of contact for scientists with the West, and you have a formula for many people knowing that they are being lied to.
I was only in Moscow, with very few trips to the hinterlands, but my impression was that the era of glasnost and perestroika, along with Western goods and CNN flooding the streets, broke the back of the idea among the young people that the Soviet way was the better way. I would list this as one of the causes of the collapse as well.
My grandfather was a lead designer for the early MiGs and a colleague of Yuri Gagarin in the space program (and my mother often went ice skating with his kids, they all lived in the same science park).
So while I am certainly biased, I can confirm the technical education was world class. Moreover I would contend that this contributed to a competitive level of technical engineering innovation relative to the west when it comes to non-consumer goods. The research to innovation to development pipeline was fairly strong at these science parks and, at least after the embarrassment of discovering the absurdity of Lysenkoism, had good incentives. While successful inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. couldn't get paid windfalls as in the west, they still had 1) early access to the most advanced consumer goods (cars, appliances, etc.) 2) a number of perks regarding travel, tickets to cultural events, etc. 3) public prestige.
Many of the pioneers in my own field of numerical optimization/mathematical programming were from the Soviet Union. The field essentially arose in order to decide the optimal production targets to fit the input-output structure of the economy while maintaining steady growth. (great you've snatched the means of production, OK now there's thousands of goods in the economy and thousands of factories and you have to figure out how to coordinate it all....good luck!)
I recommend Alec Nove’s An Economic History of the USSR for a thorough account of the details. While heavy industry still had its problems with middle management incentivized to hit targets but produce no more or the targets would increase, and delays and shortages in critical parts was a common issue, heavy industry developed and improved more or less steadily. The conscious steady turn from heavy industry to consumer goods by the Party in the 60s-70s together with a string of incompetent leaders exposed the vulnerabilities of the system. It's a lot harder to make an economy driven by consumer demand without markets and price signals.
This is a good overview. I really like your framework at the start for comparing liberalism, Marxism, and postmodernism.
I might have mentioned it before in a comment here, but have you read Mancur Olson's "Power and Prosperity"? I really enjoyed that one.
He has an argument that productivity in command economies has a tendency to be swallowed up by networks of corrupt nomenklatura, who cut corners and siphon off the profits for themselves. They might even just turn out to be lazy, treat their jobs as sinecures, and allow their workers to behave lazily as well. Having an all-powerful autocrat like Stalin, for all the damage and evil he did, he WAS able to break up those corrupt networks during his lifetime and set up systems of incentives -- carrots and sticks -- that motivated everyone to keep the command economy running about as well as a command economy can. He was a sort of grandmaster slavedriver, which is apparently what command economies require to function at their best.
But after his death, while the system had enough momentum to keep going under Khruschev, by Brezhnev's time the corrupt networks resumed forming, and Brezhnev lacked some combination of the power, will, and political/economic acumen to punish the nomenklatura and get it functioning again.
So I think, if I can do Mancur Olson justice, part of his answer to your original question would be Stalin himself. If Lenin's successor had been a man more like Brezhnev, the stagnation seen under Brezhnev might have happened ~20 years sooner. Though any sort of counterfactual like that would be complicated by the question of whether WW2 plays out differently.
I have not read that specific book, but I am familiar with Mancur Olsen's theories. I think he is largely correct.
I am skeptical of your claim that Stalin reduced corruption. He also murdered competent administrators and generals. Also remember that a huge percentage of the Soviet economy under Stalin was devoted to the military. It is not at all clear that the material standard of living for the Russian people increased under his rule. It was essentially a massive military build-up from 1930 to 1945 and not much of a slowdown after that.
Remember that the Soviet Union had no free-floating prices, so it is impossible to calculate economic value. And with all the disruptions of WW1, the Civil War, Stalinist purges, WW2, Nazi genocide, and more Stalinist purges, there never was a stable baseline until Brezhnev.
>Also remember that a huge percentage of the Soviet economy under Stalin was devoted to the military. It is not at all clear that the material standard of living for the Russian people increased under his rule.
Yes, I want to be clear that I'm not really talking about the people's standard of living, and not necessarily even GDP per se (although it's related) -- I'm talking about state capacity. A totalitarian state is dependent on a high level of state capacity to keep running, a powerful central government that is capable of enforcing its will upon the population and upon any and all rival power centers in society.
That Soviet military buildup was state capacity in action, as was the ability to use that military to keep the satellite states in the Soviet orbit. The failure to even keep Belarus and Ukraine joined to Russia demonstrates the complete collapse of state capacity in the USSR's last days. I would say that Soviet state capacity peaked either under Stalin or Khruschev and then began to decline precipitously, even though GDP didn't contract until the post-Soviet era.
There's still a strong argument that, despite some economic growth, the Russian Federation's state capacity under Putin remains far below that of the USSR at its height, which is why it has struggled so greatly to impose its will on Ukraine (itself practically a failed state). And previously, Chechnya, which has only been reincorporated by essentially making it an autonomous feudal vassal of Russia. I've seen Putin's style of government described as neo-feudal in terms of his extraordinary level of reliance on personal relationships with trusted, corrupt subordinates.
>I am skeptical of your claim that Stalin reduced corruption. He also murdered competent administrators and generals.
Yes, the USSR lost a lot of human capital under Stalin (and for that matter, under Lenin, much of it through emigration during and in the aftermath of the civil war).
But the thing about Stalin is that, if anyone could say "L'etat c'est moi," it was he. His absolute control meant that he didn't need to buy favors from cronies by rewarding them far out of proportion to their contributions, as Putin does. He could rely more on the stick and less on carrots to ensure their loyalty. And he also had the power to crush any rival patronage networks in society. Because Stalin in a sense owned everything in the country, any nomenklatura who were using their position for personal enrichment, above and beyond their salaries, were in a sense stealing from Stalin, and Olson gives some anecdotes of this.
Also, in terms of personal corruption and nepotism, Stalin apparently engaged in a lot less of that than most other absolute autocrats. For example, nothing akin to that of the House of Kim.
To be sure, none of this is meant to be an apology for Stalin.
>Remember that the Soviet Union had no free-floating prices, so it is impossible to calculate economic value.
Yes, there's a reason why I described command economies as I did in my comment. They are bad, full stop. BUT Olson argues that Stalin came up with a wage scheme that generally worked well enough under the circumstances, as long as the autocrat on top was brutal enough to keep it running.
I was searching for reviews of that book, and this one is interesting, going into a little of Olson's view of Stalin's economics and both agreeing and disagreeing with Olson, from an Austrian perspective. I was an econ major but really don't know much about Austrian economics other than it's typically viewed as quackery by the mainstream. Still, take a look:
The CPSU had no term limits for its leaders. Without injections of new personnel, leadership calcified and society followed suit. Brezhnev was the outstanding example of this.
I suspect part of the problem we have in discussions like this (and understanding it "really"!) is trying to convey a "whole of life" experience just in words. Plus presenting multiple "eras", events, personalities, technologies, etc. over a many decade time span, compressed into a few minutes of (still very good) prose. This topic probably needs a combination of experiences (text, video, music, personal meeting attendance, etc.) to fully convey just how compelling, corrupt, conspiratorial, etc., the Marxist/ Soviet/ Leninist / Stalinist "ideology" was.
We have gone through (and may continue to some degree) the Woke/Progressive/ Leftist Obama/ Biden regime seeming to have been unbeatable because of all of the supportive bias and lying and indoctrination from the media (and other culture centers). Now we have an alternative for real "hope and change" once again. (Maybe we will never learn? :-) )
I guess the Post Modernism rejection of "reality" and true perceptions should have been ridiculed and laughed off the stage many decades ago, but managed to grow like a slippery slime on a rock through infiltration of true believers until most reasonable folks just walked away and let them have their "stupid little playground". But when it took over the sciences and engineering departments is when the die was fully cast, something I still find hard to really understand, as a former engineering student.
That's a good analysis. I'd just add that it's possible to outrun your contradictions (for a while) via expansion. Which is exactly what the USSR did, first territorially and then culturally, its cultural influence peaking in the 1970s and its quest for territorial expansion dashed in the 1980s in Afghanistan. No longer able to expand, its contradictions caught up to it and, in true Marxist fashion, made its collapse inevitable.
Good point. That was exactly the logic behind the foreign policy doctrine of Containment.
Yeah, I guess you could say they used Marxist doctrine (i.e. accelerate the contradictions) to defeat Marxism.
Great piece. I too hate the Soviet regime with every fibre in my body but still find their anthem a strangely inspiring piece of music. Good to know I'm not alone.
I enjoyed this article, particularly your pulling apart the various ideologies in terms of what they embrace and what they reject (love Tim Urban too, from the days of his “ world’s raddest man” piece on Elon Musk).
I lived in the Soviet Union for two years, 1987-1988 and 1991-1992. During that time I was working in the refugee program that was moving Soviet Jews and Armenians to the United States. I was there watching when they removed the Soviet flag from the Kremlin, both shocked and not shocked.
Like any person who has seen a totalitarian regime up close and personal, I have been sickened to see similar tactics used here in the United States lately. Suppression of free speech, politics triumphing over truth and even use of the state machinery (FBI, IRS) against political opponents. It has resulted in things one can say in one’s own kitchen varying from the things that people say out in society, just like in the Soviet Union.
In terms of any disagreements with your piece, it must be pointed out that the Soviet Union‘s embrace of science had a definite asterisk! “* to the extent not inconsistent with Soviet ideology.” The field of biology being set back by Lysenkoism is the obvious first example, but there were many others. Couple this with an excellent education system that allowed some degree of contact for scientists with the West, and you have a formula for many people knowing that they are being lied to.
I was only in Moscow, with very few trips to the hinterlands, but my impression was that the era of glasnost and perestroika, along with Western goods and CNN flooding the streets, broke the back of the idea among the young people that the Soviet way was the better way. I would list this as one of the causes of the collapse as well.
Thanks for the comment. I agree with all your points.
Good overview.
My grandfather was a lead designer for the early MiGs and a colleague of Yuri Gagarin in the space program (and my mother often went ice skating with his kids, they all lived in the same science park).
So while I am certainly biased, I can confirm the technical education was world class. Moreover I would contend that this contributed to a competitive level of technical engineering innovation relative to the west when it comes to non-consumer goods. The research to innovation to development pipeline was fairly strong at these science parks and, at least after the embarrassment of discovering the absurdity of Lysenkoism, had good incentives. While successful inventors, scientists, engineers, etc. couldn't get paid windfalls as in the west, they still had 1) early access to the most advanced consumer goods (cars, appliances, etc.) 2) a number of perks regarding travel, tickets to cultural events, etc. 3) public prestige.
Many of the pioneers in my own field of numerical optimization/mathematical programming were from the Soviet Union. The field essentially arose in order to decide the optimal production targets to fit the input-output structure of the economy while maintaining steady growth. (great you've snatched the means of production, OK now there's thousands of goods in the economy and thousands of factories and you have to figure out how to coordinate it all....good luck!)
I recommend Alec Nove’s An Economic History of the USSR for a thorough account of the details. While heavy industry still had its problems with middle management incentivized to hit targets but produce no more or the targets would increase, and delays and shortages in critical parts was a common issue, heavy industry developed and improved more or less steadily. The conscious steady turn from heavy industry to consumer goods by the Party in the 60s-70s together with a string of incompetent leaders exposed the vulnerabilities of the system. It's a lot harder to make an economy driven by consumer demand without markets and price signals.
Thanks for the comment and the extra context.
This is a good overview. I really like your framework at the start for comparing liberalism, Marxism, and postmodernism.
I might have mentioned it before in a comment here, but have you read Mancur Olson's "Power and Prosperity"? I really enjoyed that one.
He has an argument that productivity in command economies has a tendency to be swallowed up by networks of corrupt nomenklatura, who cut corners and siphon off the profits for themselves. They might even just turn out to be lazy, treat their jobs as sinecures, and allow their workers to behave lazily as well. Having an all-powerful autocrat like Stalin, for all the damage and evil he did, he WAS able to break up those corrupt networks during his lifetime and set up systems of incentives -- carrots and sticks -- that motivated everyone to keep the command economy running about as well as a command economy can. He was a sort of grandmaster slavedriver, which is apparently what command economies require to function at their best.
But after his death, while the system had enough momentum to keep going under Khruschev, by Brezhnev's time the corrupt networks resumed forming, and Brezhnev lacked some combination of the power, will, and political/economic acumen to punish the nomenklatura and get it functioning again.
So I think, if I can do Mancur Olson justice, part of his answer to your original question would be Stalin himself. If Lenin's successor had been a man more like Brezhnev, the stagnation seen under Brezhnev might have happened ~20 years sooner. Though any sort of counterfactual like that would be complicated by the question of whether WW2 plays out differently.
I have not read that specific book, but I am familiar with Mancur Olsen's theories. I think he is largely correct.
I am skeptical of your claim that Stalin reduced corruption. He also murdered competent administrators and generals. Also remember that a huge percentage of the Soviet economy under Stalin was devoted to the military. It is not at all clear that the material standard of living for the Russian people increased under his rule. It was essentially a massive military build-up from 1930 to 1945 and not much of a slowdown after that.
Remember that the Soviet Union had no free-floating prices, so it is impossible to calculate economic value. And with all the disruptions of WW1, the Civil War, Stalinist purges, WW2, Nazi genocide, and more Stalinist purges, there never was a stable baseline until Brezhnev.
>Also remember that a huge percentage of the Soviet economy under Stalin was devoted to the military. It is not at all clear that the material standard of living for the Russian people increased under his rule.
Yes, I want to be clear that I'm not really talking about the people's standard of living, and not necessarily even GDP per se (although it's related) -- I'm talking about state capacity. A totalitarian state is dependent on a high level of state capacity to keep running, a powerful central government that is capable of enforcing its will upon the population and upon any and all rival power centers in society.
That Soviet military buildup was state capacity in action, as was the ability to use that military to keep the satellite states in the Soviet orbit. The failure to even keep Belarus and Ukraine joined to Russia demonstrates the complete collapse of state capacity in the USSR's last days. I would say that Soviet state capacity peaked either under Stalin or Khruschev and then began to decline precipitously, even though GDP didn't contract until the post-Soviet era.
There's still a strong argument that, despite some economic growth, the Russian Federation's state capacity under Putin remains far below that of the USSR at its height, which is why it has struggled so greatly to impose its will on Ukraine (itself practically a failed state). And previously, Chechnya, which has only been reincorporated by essentially making it an autonomous feudal vassal of Russia. I've seen Putin's style of government described as neo-feudal in terms of his extraordinary level of reliance on personal relationships with trusted, corrupt subordinates.
>I am skeptical of your claim that Stalin reduced corruption. He also murdered competent administrators and generals.
Yes, the USSR lost a lot of human capital under Stalin (and for that matter, under Lenin, much of it through emigration during and in the aftermath of the civil war).
But the thing about Stalin is that, if anyone could say "L'etat c'est moi," it was he. His absolute control meant that he didn't need to buy favors from cronies by rewarding them far out of proportion to their contributions, as Putin does. He could rely more on the stick and less on carrots to ensure their loyalty. And he also had the power to crush any rival patronage networks in society. Because Stalin in a sense owned everything in the country, any nomenklatura who were using their position for personal enrichment, above and beyond their salaries, were in a sense stealing from Stalin, and Olson gives some anecdotes of this.
Also, in terms of personal corruption and nepotism, Stalin apparently engaged in a lot less of that than most other absolute autocrats. For example, nothing akin to that of the House of Kim.
To be sure, none of this is meant to be an apology for Stalin.
>Remember that the Soviet Union had no free-floating prices, so it is impossible to calculate economic value.
Yes, there's a reason why I described command economies as I did in my comment. They are bad, full stop. BUT Olson argues that Stalin came up with a wage scheme that generally worked well enough under the circumstances, as long as the autocrat on top was brutal enough to keep it running.
I was searching for reviews of that book, and this one is interesting, going into a little of Olson's view of Stalin's economics and both agreeing and disagreeing with Olson, from an Austrian perspective. I was an econ major but really don't know much about Austrian economics other than it's typically viewed as quackery by the mainstream. Still, take a look:
https://mises.org/mises-review/power-and-prosperity-mancur-olson#:~:text=Olson%20has%20given%20us%20much%20of%20the%20answer%3A,during%20his%20or%20her%20primary%20hours%20of%20labor.
I largely agree with. Too much state capacity is just as much a danger as too little. Both become rule by the most ruthless.
Winning the Second World War also gave communism a whole generation of propoganda wins. This was followed up by linking decolonization to communism.
Once this and catch up growth ran out of steam, all that was left was of wondering why the grocery stores sucked.
The CPSU had no term limits for its leaders. Without injections of new personnel, leadership calcified and society followed suit. Brezhnev was the outstanding example of this.
Great post, and good comments.
I suspect part of the problem we have in discussions like this (and understanding it "really"!) is trying to convey a "whole of life" experience just in words. Plus presenting multiple "eras", events, personalities, technologies, etc. over a many decade time span, compressed into a few minutes of (still very good) prose. This topic probably needs a combination of experiences (text, video, music, personal meeting attendance, etc.) to fully convey just how compelling, corrupt, conspiratorial, etc., the Marxist/ Soviet/ Leninist / Stalinist "ideology" was.
We have gone through (and may continue to some degree) the Woke/Progressive/ Leftist Obama/ Biden regime seeming to have been unbeatable because of all of the supportive bias and lying and indoctrination from the media (and other culture centers). Now we have an alternative for real "hope and change" once again. (Maybe we will never learn? :-) )
I guess the Post Modernism rejection of "reality" and true perceptions should have been ridiculed and laughed off the stage many decades ago, but managed to grow like a slippery slime on a rock through infiltration of true believers until most reasonable folks just walked away and let them have their "stupid little playground". But when it took over the sciences and engineering departments is when the die was fully cast, something I still find hard to really understand, as a former engineering student.
The illustration of Lenin in the hall looks somewhat similar to The 1887 Constitutional Convention: https://constitutioncenter.org/images/uploads/blog/640px-Scene_at_the_Signing_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States.jpg
Wrong year, but yes. This may have been intentional.