Why Did The Soviet Union Fall? | Hakim | History Teacher Reacts

Hakim @YaBoiHakim discusses the popular reasons that are given for the fall of the Soviet Union. Does he agree with them? Does Mr. Terry agree?

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#sovietunion #socialism #communism #gorbachev #geopolitics #ronaldreagan #coldwar

[MrTerry]

Why do YOU think the Soviet Union fell?

[thebairG]

You confuse democracy in a socialist state with social democracy. Social democracy is capitalism. It's embedded liberalism. Norway or USA under Roosevelt.

[TheMisterDarknight]

Mr. Terry History radicalisation is going strong

[OmarO]

I recommend reading "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union" by Vladislav M. Zubok. The author, who is not a socialist or communist, actually agrees with the thesis that the USSR committed suicide. The collapse was not inevitable.

[adamcornell]

Mr Terry on the deprogram podcast when lol?

[missk]

It fell because of me, sorry guys. Next time imma do a better job.

[E.C.GoMusicandMore]

I think his thesis was that there was a strain of opportunism in the Soviet government from start to finish, that was shown best in Gorbachev’s government. This strain believed something akin to all they needed to do was pass laws, policies, and declarations and the people will follow them without the struggle of actually enforcing them. Something like someone believing all they need to do to end poverty is pass a law saying poverty is illegal. The second this strain came to power they flapped around like a fish out of water, surprised that the people weren’t following them. Therefore the Soviet Union didn’t collapse because it failed, instead it was because it killed itself.

[karendarrenmclaren]

Easiest and simplified answer is: elite of the country dismantled it. It wasn't perfect. But it wasn't about to collapse. Until Gorbachev and his team did everything possible to dismantle it. (Comment from the start of the video)

[Honkious]

8:20 There is a number on that, in 1991 the USSR held a referendum asking the Soviet people if they thought the Union should be preserved, 77.85% voted yes (note some of the smaller SSRs didn't participate, though I doubt they'd make much of a difference even if they all voted no).

[XthissyouX]

21:00 "Is there some kind of measurable thing where you can definitively say that 'we are officially the party of the people'?"
There kinda is, and it's all about the structure of the party (most marxist-leninist parties), organization (zapatistas, rojava and other anarchist movements) or even an entire country (PRC, Cuba, USSR).
It's about having the entire structure begin at the local level - such as a cell, worker's council, community or a local assembly, basically you are electing people who you know personally and are therefore more accountable to the ones who elected them, rather than electing from the limited ammount of choices that are presented at a national level, which sorta works as a "popularity contest" on who can earn/buy the most publicity -, and then have the remaining structure start from there, having the already elected representatives at the local level elect their colleagues to become their representative at the next level, all the way up to the national level.
This is why socialist systems rarely have general presidential elections or general elections at the national level, because people at higher stages are elected from within the representatives of the previous stage of the structure.

When you have this sort of democratic system, media (which can be either state-owned or privately-owned, mainly private in most countries) becomes less relevant or outright irrelevant, which means there is no possibility of having mass media affect popular opinion on who to vote for, same thing for campaigning and all the money that it usually involves.
Since working class people don't have the money to possess mass media or to finance an electoral campaign, the less relevant they are, the more "of the people" that election becomes

[pinkharmonica]

28:22

16.5+121+38+2+35+9.5+5.5= 227.5 million people. So no, not small when compared to a population of 260 million as he stated prior to that citation.

Also, I believe what Castro meant by that quote was that socialism died in the USSR because of the internal struggles that they dealt with politically which ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It didn't die because of some inherent genetic or developmental flaw that is inevitable, it was deliberately killed from within.

[StekTM]

The fall of the Soviet Union came from the heads (politicians and traitors), not the people. That's not to say that pro-independence people and nationalist movements didn't exist, but every single soviet republic who participated in the referendum voted to preserve the state.

[Jooshyb]

His thesis is that Gorbachev is from a line of reformists looking to establish democracy and a market economy. In addition, the reformists idealized how the transition from central planning to free markets and private ownership would be seamless and without cost. In practice, it resulted in a firesale of public industry to a select few paving the way for Oligarchy and a massive decline in the standard of living for ordinary people resulting in millions of preventable deaths.

[PC]

Why do people insist on ignoring the 1991 referendum in the USSR? 3/4 of Soviet people voted for keeping the Soviet Union, not dismantling it

[johnnamorton]

I had to change planes in the USSR about six months before it fell. That summer no matter where I went there was disaster. I went to Tokyo and there was an Earthquake, I went to Bonn and there was a riot. I went to Missouri there was a flood. I got home and there were two earthquakes on the same day both over magnitude 6. So you could say I'm to blame for the fall of the Soviet Union.

[MOCHERlK]

You're doing great stuff with showing some of the more "radical" stuff. It's important to see different sides and you're pretty good at seeing both sides. While I am a socialist, I appreciate your openness and your mission to make people think for themselves and not just listen to anyone blindly!
Please continue to react to Hakim and definitely try second thought as he is specialized in beginner friendly content.

[bredoom]

During tianmen square, the Chinese communist party was split between those who wanted to follow Gorbachev reforms and those who wanted to maintain censorship and develop the private sector slowly. In the end, those who wanted to follow Gorbachev's reforms lost the struggle for power after the USSR collapsed.

[iamroberty]

The new Hakim video on liberalism is 🔥🔥🔥🔥

[turtlegamez]

Look up the 1991 referendum for the number regarding popular support

[loubaxo]

35:00

Well, even after the liberal revolutions that installed capitalism in Europe and abroad there were feudal restorations and attempts. In Portugal, we had a reactionary, absolutist, traditionalist, feudalistic and aristocracy-backed movement lead by prince (and then king-usurparer) D. Miguel I which lasted some years after being defeated in a Civil War. In Spain there were many drawbacks in liberalism protagonised by the king itself (Ferdinand VII) and then by his brother and his Carlist movement.
In England after the english revolution (aka the english civil war) you had the restoration of the stuarts and a kind of pause on the development of proper capitalism, which returned with the Glorious Revolution, the Enclosure Act and the subsequent First Industrial Revolution. France had reactionarism imposed by the Anti-Napoleon Coalition, the Bourbon Restoration, the Ultra-Royalist party and Charles X. So the fall of socialism in the eastern block and the drawback of many other countries (namely China and Vietnam) doesn't mean necessarily that socialism didn't accomplish the historical role Marx envisioned, since this kind of restoration of the previous mode of production/socioeconomic system also happened to early capitalism. The difference is that capitalism switched one oppressive class (Aristocracy) with another (Bourgeois), while socialism puts the majority of the population's interests (the working class) in power. In other words, far more dangerous to the elites of the surrounding countries and thus the counterrevolution has been far stronger.

Moreover, you could also argue two other points for why the socialism started by the soviet union wasn't able to bring down the capitalist order, like liberalism did:

1. It wasn't the right place or right time, Slave economy lasted more than a thousand years in Europe and feudalism too, why would I suppose that socialism would be successful in 1918? When most European countries still had semi-feudal remnants, strong aristocracies allied to the bourgeois? I believe we now are living in a far more advanced form of capitalism (which is crazy given how much changed in 100 years, fast growth and technological advancements are characteristics of capitalism it seems) and maybe in 50 years more susceptible to a new wave socialist revolutions. Russia was also a pretty feudal society when the bolsheviks took power, the bourgeois/liberal revolution of February didn't even have time to start the foundations for an actual capitalist society in Russia (something that would only happen with the NEP and then with the fall of the USSR). Thus the majority of the russian population were peasents, and in Marx the peasentry is not included in the proletariat, because while proletarian immediate interests are the collectivization of the means of productions, the peasent's are the ownership of the land (basically making them a kind of petty bourgeois, owners of the means of production while being the workers of said means), a problem that was shown in the resistance to Stalin Era collectivization for example. Then you had a strong socialist state that laid foundations in absolutist agrarian feudalism competing with advanced capitalist countries... Marx thought that socialism was only possible in advanced capitalist societies, because it needed a conscious and revolutionary proletariat and while that was proven wrong by Lenin, I still think that socialism will only succeed in putting down global capitalism when it sprouts in the most advanced capitalist countries, France, Germany, the UK and the US (in order of probability). The cyclical crises are becoming more commonly impactful and even when the period of recovery kicks in, some issues don't disappear (unemployment, housing crisis, pollution, etc...), the 2008 crisis didn't even end the neoliberal order like the Great Depression did to the Classical Liberal or the oil crisis of the 70s to the social-democratic Post-War Consensus, but we never know if the next big crisis won't spark new public revolt.

2. It wasn't actual socialism, the bureaucracy was the ruling class, owning the means of production through the state apparatus instead of private property and so it was destined to ruin. I don't see this one as very convincing because the bureaucracy while definitely a powerful and distanced social group didn't actually own the means of production and didn't function as a separate class to the proletariat since many of its members and leaders had a working class background and only obtained their status later in life. Tho I can understand the argument that the soviet union and its model may not have been actual socialism I am yet to see a better label.