[WikiEN-l] My (User:172's) response to Christopher Mahan

Sun Oct 5 03:45:03 UTC 2003

You're a bit off on the role of MAD in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The structural problems, and the macroeconomic imbalances, while not evident 
until the 1970s, predated the Cold War. The underlying problems were not the 
product of the Cold War, but the Cold War did reinforce them, and did pose 
obstacles to any timely reform. If you want you can read my sections on this 
in the Wiki articles on Soviet history.

The "East", in many respects, had been behind the "West" for centuries. 
Russia was left competing with all the advanced capitalist countries put 
together in a bloc (the UK, W. Germany, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, etc.), 
and the USSR certainly had to devote a far higher share of its resources to 
military expenditures. Its military-industrial complex had to be privileged 
over the consumer economy, and reform was for practical purposes was 
contingent on marginalizing this sector.

Thus, I don't understand why you'd confuse the mechanisms that limited the 
Cold War to proxy wars; and attempts to buttress geo-political influence 
through political, diplomatic, and economic means; to the underlying causes 
of Russia's troubles today. If you want, there's a lot of information about 
this in the Wiki article on the history of post-Communist Russia.

-Abe Sokolov (aka User:172|172)

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