Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000 (Stephen Kotkin)
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- čas přidán 12. 12. 2023
- The history of the collapse of the Soviet Communist regime, and the lessons to found therein.
The written version of this review can be found here: theworthyhouse.com/2023/12/13...
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This and all Worthy House narrations are offered with accurate closed captions (not auto-generated).
"All of history is littered with dead empires. Since the so-called Enlightenment, history is also littered with dead regimes-governments built around an ideology, which in time collapsed, entirely killing the ideology which birthed them or forcing it to mutate into something new. The Eastern European Communist regimes collapsed in 1989. Their hegemon regime, Soviet Communism, followed in 1991. Yet the Soviet regime did not use its power to preserve its Eastern European satrapies, nor did it act to preserve its own ideology, even though its elites still fervently believed in that ideology. Why? That is what Stephen Kotkin says he answers in Armageddon Averted. He doesn’t, but the history he covers is its own reward." . . .
Thank you, that was excellent. I agree that Kotkin's often first-class takes on Russian history are undermined by his insistence that the way forward for us here in Russia is to embrace liberal democracy. After living in London for three years, my answer is: thanks, but no thanks.
I've seen talks given by Stephen Kotkin on Soviet History. I consider him one of the good ones.
Have you looked at the works of Robert Conquest and Robert Service?
Yes, among other Service's biography of Trotksy.
Any book which does not describe the behaviour of the money supply during the period is hopelessly inadequate.
The move from gold-backed international dollar trade to oil-backed international dollar trade was enormous. The static planned economy where the currency is arbitrarily valued by authoritarianism, what could go wrong? BRICS is still hampered by its inner Argentina.
Offshoring began long before the 2000s. OEM appliances were being manufactured in Japan and Korea in the '60s and '70s, respectively. The Ford Festiva was launched in the US in '86. It wasn't manufactured by Ford. Craftsman power tools were made for Sears in Hong Kong by a company named Techtronic in the mid '80s. Texas Instruments opened its first factory in Singapore in 1968 - at the time TI was the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductors. Fairchild semiconductor was manufacturing in Hong Kong and Korea in the early '60s. Take a look at something mundane like footwear. Almost all shoes worn in the US in the early '60s were made in New England. It was Kennedy's demand for the ability to solely set tariffs and quotas without Congressional approval that led to the 1962 Trade Act. Look what happened to the footwear and textile industries in the US thereafter.
It's true that it began before the 2000s, but it was the expansion of the WTO, especially to China, that really did it.
I’m surprised you haven’t done an analyst of Putin and the Russian Federation as the leading example of Foundationalism or Traditionalism. Russia always seems to be in vogue with the counter culture, the left during the Cold War and the right during the current era of Globalization.
I'm not sure it's the leading example, and as I say it's hard to get straight information, but that is something that might happen.
Kotkins takes on the Ukraine war have been tragically abyssmal. Has given me second thoughts about reading his Stalin books
I agree his recent stuff is Neocon cringe, which is weird because in Armageddon Averted, he predicts the conflict due to how weak the central apparatus was in relation to the satellite SSR states.
I still recommend checking out both Stalin books. They are excellent.
Are they are actually abyssmal or they just don’t conform to your own opinions?
Wha has he said? I have only heared him talk about his Stalin books and I think most of the things he says is a bunch of cliches. But I have not read them.
Current or future events are harder than a well-documented past. Funny how many Soviet apologists are still around after their utopia fell on its face.
@@VectorOfKnowledge what the fck does this even mean are you retarded?