> but it might not quite be the same path that led the USSR to ruin.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.
If you really want to find out the reasons why USSR failed I suggest reading “Collapse the fall of Soviet Union” by Zubok or “Collapse of an Empire” by Gaidar. They are easy to read books. Said reasons are quite different from what is going on in USA at the moment.
Yeltsin was the strongman ruler of the 90s. When parliament wouldn't kowtow to him, he launched a bloody coup and then rewrote the constitution to consolidate power in his office.
The only thing that he was truly unsuccessful at as a politician was failing to shrug off some bullshit credit card bribery scandal.
When you've deployed tanks and mortars against the lawful government, and everyone's fine with that I can't understand why you'd let a few thousands dollars that you put on a company credit card bring you down.
> Present circumstances in America aren't that different.
They are different, in the sense that all the damage happening right now is both unnecessary and self-inflicted. Russia needed to do something to transition from the USSR. Shock therapy was a terrible 'something', but it's at least possible to see how it got there.
> an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
Probably can't mention Yeltsin in the context of strongmen without mentioning the shelling of the parliament building.
You’re not wrong but those all happened _after_ the fall of the USSR. They weren’t the cause of its fall they were the cause of post-USSR Russia becoming an oligarchy.
You are completely missing Gorbachev, the fall began with him. He was a good guy, but a bit naive within soviet situation. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY hated russians. That's where brutal oppression came from for rest of soviet republics, that's where eastern Europe satellites were invaded and controlled from via strong firm hand (and many military bases). I know this damn well as I was raised thre and saw first hand the continuous destruction of what we would call normal society that russians brought along with them everywhere they went.
When the soviet empire twitched a bit and seams became just slightly more loose, everybody run the fuck away from them. You can't be literally enslaved for 2 generations and ignore whats around you and whats happening to all your citizens, family, friends, yourself. Not when you clearly see how west has technological, moral and societal advantage in its approach and its getting bigger every year. The only exception is Belarus, and the only reason is that the dicktator there needs desperately strong continuous backing or he would be brought down in quick coup.
The fall didn't begin with Gorbachev, it began with the communist party being clueless at adapting to new situations, essentially what China managed to do after Mao, the Soviets didn't after Stalin and the rest. The regime ossified and fell apart, at first slowly and then rapidly.
Gorbachev just refused to spill even more blood.
Present circumstances in America are very different. When Putin took power, Russia's economy had been declining rapidly for a decade; then over his first decade, the GDP dectupled. If the US were to somehow achieve $600,000 GDP per capita by the end of Trump's current term, yeah, Americans would probably want to reevaluate their conventional wisdom about what good governance looks like. But I'm pretty confident that won't happen.
The GDP rise your talking about is to some extent an exchange rate phenonomena. Russia's currency collapsed in the early 90s, by the 00's it was able to strengthen and stabilize. Quality of life went down, but it was not proportionate to the collapse in GDP. Thinking about similar phenomenon occurring in the United States is kind of pointless, that would require a collapse in the dollars reserve currency status which would have dramatic ramifications world wide. The Dollar is the yardstick, if another currency became stronger, it would be the yardstick, and that's an entire regime change kind of for everybody. While Russia's currency can collapse in strength vis a vis the dollar, and then increase a great deal, but it was weaker than the dollar at every point. The collapse in its strength meant that it was difficult for the country to trade in that period. But Russia still had its domestic industry through the entire period, which wasn't affected to the degree that the collapse in trade and currency value would suggest,
Also the volatility of economic growth of smaller countries tends to be much higher than anything experienced by developed countries. When you start from a small scale, GDP jumps of 10x are hardly unheard of. While increases of such magnitude in an already developed country would be unprecedented.
Also, the Russian economy is just a series of frauds run by lawless oligarchs stacked on top of each other. The only limiting factor on them is when Putin randomly decides to throw one of them out of a window. It's a pure patrimonialist system, which is a system sustained by lawlessness, manipulation, and fraud. This is of course the truth of the fascist system itself, its simply an attempt to wrap the whole of society in one big patrimonialist network. There's a reason they had to invade Ukraine - the bills were coming due, and they knew the only way they could make good on promises they otherwise couldn't keep was a sustained program of national subjugation and exploitation. This was inevitable from the moment the system was set up. This system is inherently unstable.
The words of the participants in the system while it is ongoing are meaningless. They are wrapped in some kind of patrimonial network or another, supporting some kind of overhyped fraud or another that represents all their dreams and aspirations. They are censored, subject to constant manipulation, and deliberately manipulated with false flags and psy ops. Their whole society is designed as a giant cartwheel to shove people into various frauds. I can be sad for victims of fraud, yes, but that doesn't make them any easier to deal with before they give up on their expectations and stop believing the lies of the one who is defrauding them, who frequently sicks them on anyone who attempts to combat the fraud, telling them that "Actually that person is the one who's keeping you from getting your money!" Hitler arrayed millions of German youth upon fields of slaughter with such tactics once before, why would we expect any different outcome now? We should've known better.
By 1998 the shit had already hit the fan big time for the common people in Russia, all "thanks" to Shock Therapy (which you allude to at your point b)). That was the real tragedy, nothing a more "experienced" president could have fixed (other than doing what Putin ended up doing, which is trying to reverse some of the craziness of said Shock Therapy).
I write this from direct experience, as I grew up as a kid/adolescent in nearby Romania in the '90s, where we had our very own Shock Therapy. In fact my present political stance (a return to nationalism and a reversal of what globalisation has brought about) is heavily marked by that very traumatic period in my life (and the same thing is valid for many of my compatriots).
So you want to reverse the development in Romania over the last 3 decades [1] ? I agree that the way the transition from the Ceauşescu regime was handled was less than ideal to say the least. But let's not forget that rampant nationalism and isolism was what got Romania into the mess in the first ace. I would even argue that every time a government/regime is bringing out the nationalism card it is to cover up for rising inequality, decreasing quality of life and all sort of other issues. An appeal to the "nation" is just not necessary otherwise.
The end of the Soviet Union as a political and geographic entity was not its ruin. What ruined it and opened the door for a strongman ruler was:
a) an inexperienced President (Yeltsin) who lacked a unifying vision for the newly formed republic and wasn't respected by its business elite or by foreign leaders
b) the 'free market liberalization' reforms passed overnight, with minuscule oversight that predictably led to the open looting of the nation's resources by well-connected elites who quickly absconded abroad with their riches, leaving the country at the mercy of international creditors looking for deals heavily tilted in their favour
c) multiple economics crises triggered by a loss of confidence in the country's currency and ability to service its foreign debt. The Russian bond default of 1998 famously led to the collapse of the American hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Present circumstances in America aren't that different. All it's currently missing is a civil war to call its own, like Chechnya.