How Did the Soviet Union Actually Work?

How did the Soviet Union actually function? The USSR was a country of contradictions. It was a state purportedly founded to serve the interests of the working proletariat but that was always ruled either by a small elite (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) or by one man alone, as it was under the dictator Joseph Stalin. In theory, the Soviet people had votes and a voice, but in practice, a group of about 20, the Politburo, made all major government policies and were accountable only to the party.

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Sources Consulted:

Derbyshire, Ian. Politics in the Soviet Union: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. Cambridge: W&R Chambers LTD, 1987.

Marx, Karl & Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Translated by Samuel Moore (1885). Introduction and notes by A J P Taylor. London: Penguin Group, 1985.

Miller, Stuart T. Mastering Modern European History. London: Macmillan Education LTD, 1990.

O’Neil, Patrick H et al. Cases in Comparative Politics: Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Pipes, Richard. The Three Whys of the Russian Revolution. London: Pimlico, 1998.

[MichaelJohnson-vieh]

In the 80's when I was in high school I did a lot of research and still could not figure out how the government of the Soviet Union worked.

[Edits-with-Niko]

Fun fact: The Karelo-Finnish SSR (Karelia) was briefly it's own constituent republic from 1940 until it was annexed by Russia in 1956.

[phoenixshadow]

This more closely resembles corporate bureaucracy than it does any other democracy at the time.

[miniaturejayhawk]

"Soviet" means council. That pretty much explains everything you need to know about the system. The soviet union was basically a bunch of councils that managed the workers in a geographic location, almost like a labor union but on steroids. Its called syndicalism.

[aps]

Using corporate analogy, central committee = shareholders, politburo = board of directors, general secretary = board chair. government = corporate office

[Swissswoosher]

I love your videos. You take relatively complex themes like this and break it down to its most simple forms. Keep em coming!

[Dez.B]

I know you were just THRILLED to use that term “Totalitarian terror“ for the intro 😂

[waytoobiased]

seems very similar to the structure of the PRC’s government today, and that’s probably no coincidence

[littlemoocow]

If you don’t agree with the ways the government functioned, that is completely understandable. Saying “it didn’t work, ” is just childish…

[iumbo]

So many mistakes in this video, most of them come from the usual anti-Soviet mythology. Just to name a few:

-The Communist Party didn't debounce Stalin, Khruschev denounced Stalin mixing truth, half-truth and starightforward lies to drag more support towards him. In fact the Party tried to depose him a year later.

-The rest of the republics were not puppets of the RSFSR. The Communists there had already quite strong organizations by themselves, that's why following Lenin's national autodetermination ideas instead of being absorbed inside the RSFSR the USSR was created. Of course they kept being junior members as Russia was demographically and economically bigger than all of them combined by still retained a lot of power. The ammount of people from the other republics in high positions and important institutions never declined.

-After Stalin's death the country didn't go back to Lenin's view, it was the exact opposite. The corruption of the Party became bigger each year after Khruschev took control. Ideology and skill were bo longer needed to ascend, loyalty was enough. The Party started to fill with people that were everything but Communists. They promoted a gradual liberalizarion of the economy, rejected the OGAS and eventually well, we all know what they ended up doing. Today they are the "elites" of the post Soviet stayes. I doubt that's what Lenin wanted.

[KingSizzle]

When I visited Russia a few years ago, I found that most Russians, especially the older ones, had the same view of Stalin that they had of Peter the Great: a Russian leader who acted the way Russian leaders always have: using forced labor, secret police, and autocracy to modernize Russia.

An older woman who was born in the 1950s there said to me, “Russian people can do anything as long as someone forces us.”

A lot of westerners are too preoccupied with going out of their way to denounce countries that offered alternatives to capitalism to take the time to understand the USSR in the greater context of Russian history, and to not-do that inevitably prevents you from having a handle on the subject.

[tunemaki_izlasitrlv]

I originally wrote this comment as a reply to someone but I thought other people also might want to hear about how did people actually live in this disaster of a country that some of you in west even dare to refer as ''Super power''.

People even up to 1980's didn't have fridges in their flats (yes you heard right not homes with cold basements but flats), and something like washing machine didn't even exist in this ''super power'' so clothes were washed by hand up to mid 1990's. There were often 2 families with people from 3 generations living in tiny flats with 2 small rooms at best, and children often would sleep on floor not in beds. In shops people would form ques that were often 30 min - 1h long each morning before work. Why? Because there wasn't enough food for everybody. If you came last you often got almost nothing for that day.

Fun fact - people often had too much money in Soviet union. People from west might ask how is that possible? Well, because there was not much you could spend that money on. You were not allowed to buy property. If you wanted a car you would wait 5-7 years in a que or 2 years for motorcycle. There was never that many clothes or furniture in shops. But guess what? Alcohol rarely run out so many people just drunk themselves to death.

I often hear people on internet mentioning that people in Soviet union had free housing in ''commie blocks'' - meaning they got those flats for free (for their ''labour''). Yes that is true however that is not the entire story. Here is why:
How did those blocks got build in first place? Back in 1970's my Grandmother had and 6 bedroom family home that was there for many generations. One evening police came to her door and said that she will be moved to 1 room flat in a ''commie block'' and she had to pack immediately. She was moved out of the house the same week and right after that house was destroyed and more ''commie blocks'' got built instead. Her house was stolen from her and the compensation given back was barely worth anything in comparison.

And honestly this is the best possible outcome. Many people weren't that lucky so instead of being put in 1 room flat they were put in basements instead. Every ''commie block'' that I know of has a basement and believe it or not entire family would often live in them. And also Soviet union never put russians in basements at least where I live. Basements were only reserved for non-russians.
This is just one part of ''Russification'' processes that went up to 1985-1986 in place where me and all my family has lived for centuries. I would be getting into a real horror story territory which I am not in a mood for.

[rageagainstmyhatchet]

I think there's a lot of merit to the 1850s analysis. However once the 1920s to 70s came along the world was so complicated that a simple "take control of the local factories farms and mills for your own local township" was no longer viable. Before there was mechanisation, before there was advanced industrial medicine, before there was international travel and communication, before there was a need for roads, powerplants, cars, fashion, entertainment, science, and a real middle class... - it might have worked...
But the Communist manifesto was a political document 70 years out of date by the time it was implemented...
By the same logic we could implement feudalism today "in order to maintain local provincial autonomy"....

[animal]

I always wondered if the people were better off under this type of system? Some would say yes and give some answers, While others would say no and list there answers.

[lukaswilhelm]

I don't care about if communism works or not but i do care about how Soviet bureaucracy and government works. The whole video is about that not to defend communism so why the comments get it wrong?

[alexthorne]

Ive been studying about the ussr on and off for a bit now and could never fully get my head round the parrallel powers, like for example the politburo being part of the govt and the central committee the party. But i thought the politburo was voted in by the cc and made up of memders of the cc? Whats the difference between party and govt? Especially in a one party state? I think this clears things up 🤟

[micahistory]

Sure was complicated, thank for this breakdown

[Megalodon_Megumer]

Simplification - It worked, just not how a government should work.

[colindaniels]

The big reason why Stalin was able to rule as an absolute dictator with no one to stop him was because he had the 2 most powerful positions in the country and the party:

1. Stalin was General Secretary Of The Communist Party, this was the highest political office in the party, this meant that he was in charge of the party and could hire and fire people at will

2. He was the Premier of the Soviet Union, this meant he ran the country, in theory, the only one who could fire him was the General Secretary Of The Communist Party, but since Stalin held that post as well, the only one who could fire Stalin was Stalin.

Stalin was also a major ass kisser.

[SomasAcademy]

~4:29 Marxism-Leninism is the name of the ideology developed by Stalin, not Lenin. Lenin's ideology is just called Leninism. Stalin referred to his ideology as "Marxism-Leninism" to give it the weight of Marx and Lenin's legacies, but it's really a mix of his interpretations of Marx and Lenin and his own ideas (the name was part of Stalin's broader "cult of Lenin, " where rather than deliberately building up his own cult of personality he built one up for the late Lenin and then associated himself with Lenin to elevate his own reputation indirectly).