hypo

[Freak]

I suppose Korea and Vietnam didn't help those security concerns. It was probably suspected that the US had missiles there and thus the Cuban ordeal.

I'm certain the US would never have attacked with nukes, but a conventional attack certainly could've occured if the US ever got way ahead of the USSR.

When did the economic problems start? In other words, when did the people begin to feel the pinch from lack of common resources? Also, did the political arrests ever cause a serious problem?

[Ilovecheese]

Problems started after Gorbachev came to power. He made a huge mistake of rapidly introducing capitalism to the country; privatization was allowed which ended with a group of people controlling all major resources.
Not to say that capitalistic aspects of economy should not have been presented to the country, but it should not have been done so fast. If Gorbachev started perestroyka the way Lenin controlled the economy, with only very small businesses such as grocery stores, barber shops and etc being privately owned, then the merging of capitalism and communism would not be so harmful.

Speaking of imprisonments, my family actually experienced it. In the 1930's my great grand fathers on my mothers side and my fathers side were imprisoned, exiled and executed. The reasoning for that was that they recieved education in Western Europe, hence were spies; that was Stalin logic. Later on the government sent my family an apologetic note saying that they got the wrong person and increased my grandparents' pension by 25 rubles.
Yes there were imprisonments, but they mostly happened during Stalin's regime and people leaned to live with it. There was no point in hating the government, it just did what all new governmets do - make sure that there are no conspirators and whoever was even slightly thought of of being harmful was taken care of.

The biggest problem with imprisonments was that the governenet never checked if the accused person really did something. Sometimes people just told on each other for no reason and then the KGB would just arrest whoever was accused.
If you wanan know more on imprisonments I suggest you read books by Anatoli Rybakov, especially "Children of Arbat" and "35 and other Years.". Both books concentrate on Stalin's regime, imprisonments, executions and WW2 policies of the USSR.

[Freak]

I'm somewhat confused now. I thought the military spending caused the short-falls not Gorbachev's capitalist changes. Maybe I have the chronology wrong.

I also didn't realize people were executed with so little evidence. I thought there'd be more hatred toward a government that did that.

[nllsq]

In other words was the lack of motivation the main reason it failed?

Lack of motivation was just one of the many reasons.

[nllsq]

When did the economic problems start?

This implies that at some point there were no economic problmes, and then they started. I wish this was the case.
Some people say, however, that the comrads realized in the late 70s - early 80s that the system is doomed.

[Ilovecheese]

This whole conversation is mindboggling.  Never once was there equality of pay in the USSR.  Managers made significantly more than their workers, but the differences were determined by the government, not by the owners of capital.

No one is saying that pay was equal among all levels of the work force.

And yes, there were many arrests without real evidence, but not much hate was directed toward the government. Even my family that was a victim of Stalin's regime became actively involved in the party.Like I have said before, people just learned to live with the fact that there is a chance of getting arrested randomly. The majority of people were not terrorized, it was only a  minority of intellectuals, who were educated enough to speak against the government, was taken care of.

[philibusters]

that was a hypo, I never said in the soviet union all people were paid the same.

[redemption]

This whole conversation is mindboggling.  Never once was there equality of pay in the USSR.  Managers made significantly more than their workers, but the differences were determined by the government, not by the owners of capital.

Thank god. I thought I was going mad or something.

[Victor]

(Since nobody responded to my highly opinionated, highly confusing, stream of conscious post (I don't blame you), maybe I can make some of the same points through a hypo)

Imagine we lived in a communist country.  All jobs pay the same.  If one job is more strenous than another job they are compensated by having to work less so that a coal miner would work 1/4th the amount of time as a lawyer and ideally his extra free time would compensate for the tougher nature of the work.  To sum up all jobs are equally desirable.  What role does affirmative action have in such a society?

Go get some fresh air kid! Envy and spite has you in a chokehold.

[philibusters]

"Go get some fresh air kid! Envy and spite has you in a chokehold."


What does that mean?  I am for affirmative action, I just disagree with common assumptions that both sides share about what forms the basis for affirmative action.  I have said that in all my posts about affirmative action-go see my thread what drives AA for my views.