(To read the discussion, click on title and scroll down to the end of the topic.)
(Une version française suit en dessous)
Deja vu – I’ve seen it before.
I worked on and off in the Soviet Union during the 1970’s and 1980’s and I watched the crash of the Soviet Empire – from inside.
There were three main causes of the crash: the loss of value of the ruble, the loss of the war in Afghanistan and the loss of confidence of the people.
The value of the ruble fell because the economy was over-militarized. Those who had money had to import their television sets and good clothes from Western Europe because all of the good electronics went to the military and you could not buy a good television made in Russia. Similarly all of the leather went into military boots and the shoes available to Russian consumers were made of cardboard. I couldn’t outfit a lab with good electronics, while a friend was able to equip his lab because “I have friends in the military.”
The war in Afghanistan was lost, well for the same reasons that the British lost in Afghanistan in the 19th Century and the United States lost in the 21st Century.
And the people’s confidence was lost because the Russian government tried unsuccessfully to control information. Russians used to tell me “you can find the truth anywhere but in Pravda and the news anywhere except in Izvestia” (Pravda, one of the two main Russian newspapers at the time, means truth in Russian, Izvestia, the other one, means news.) Realizing that these newspapers were heavily censored, people listened to the clandestine broadcasts of Radio Free Europe controlled by the American culture of war.
Putin is repeating history.
The war against Ukraine has cut off a failing Russian economy from all trade with the West and the ruble is crashing.
The war in Ukraine will bog down the Russian military as it was bogged down in Afghanistan. It is not a winnable war.
And now the Russian government is trying to control information and once again, this is bound to fail. Media that dare to challenge the war in the Ukraine are labeled as foreign agents. And the official announcement of censorship is patently ridiculous; prohibiting “information about the shelling of Ukrainian cities and the death of civilians in Ukraine as a result of the actions of the Russian Army, as well as content in which the ongoing operation is called an attack, invasion or a declaration of war.”
Tens of thousands of Russians are protesting the war and their voices cannot be silenced. We have recently published on CPNN thousands of signatures on anti-war petitions by Russian scientists, by Russian cultural figures, and by other Russian activists. (As of March 4 this list is expanded to include IT workers, teachers, the directors of LUKOIL, the largest private company in Russia, mathematicians and chess champions.)
Putin’s days are numbered with a crashing economy, an unwinnable war and the loss of confidence of the Russian people.
I continue to believe that the American empire will crash soon because of its over-militarization of the economy and the entire American culture. But it seems that Putin’s rule in Russia will crash even sooner.
The day of reckoning of the culture of war is arriving.
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LA CHUTE DE POUTINE – UN DÉJÀ-VU
J’ai travaillé par intermittence en Union soviétique dans les années 1970 et 1980 et j’ai observé le crash de l’Empire soviétique – de l’intérieur.
Il y avait trois causes principales du crash : la perte de valeur du rouble, la perte de la guerre en Afghanistan et la perte de confiance du peuple.
La valeur du rouble a chuté parce que l’économie était trop militarisée. Ceux qui avaient de l’argent devaient importer leurs téléviseurs et leurs bons vêtements d’Europe occidentale parce que tous les bons appareils électroniques allaient à l’armée et qu’on ne pouvait pas acheter un bon téléviseur fabriqué en Russie. De même, tout le cuir est entré dans les bottes militaires et les chaussures disponibles pour les consommateurs russes étaient en carton. Je ne pouvais pas équiper un labo avec une bonne électronique, alors qu’un ami a pu équiper son labo parce que “j’ai des amis dans l’armée”.
La guerre en Afghanistan a été perdue, bien pour les mêmes raisons que les Britanniques ont perdues en Afghanistan au 19e siècle et que les États-Unis ont perdues au 21e siècle.
Et la confiance du peuple a été perdue parce que le gouvernement a essayé sans succès de contrôler l’information. Les Russes me disaient “vous pouvez trouver la vérité partout sauf dans la Pravda et les nouvelles partout sauf dans l’Izvestia” (Pravda, l’un des deux principaux journaux russes de l’époque, signifie vérité en russe; Izvestia, l’autre, signifie nouvelles .) Réalisant que ces journaux étaient fortement censurés, les gens ont écouté les émissions clandestines de Radio Free Europe contrôlées par la culture de guerre américaine.
Poutine répète l’histoire.
La guerre contre l’Ukraine a coupé une économie russe défaillante de tout commerce avec l’Occident et le rouble s’effondre.
La guerre en Ukraine va enliser l’armée russe comme elle s’enlisait en Afghanistan. Ce n’est pas une guerre gagnable.
Et maintenant, le gouvernement russe essaie de contrôler l’information et encore une fois, cela est voué à l’échec. Les médias qui osent contester la guerre en Ukraine sont qualifiés d’agents étrangers. Et l’annonce officielle de la censure est manifestement ridicule ; interdisant “les informations sur le bombardement de villes ukrainiennes et la mort de civils en Ukraine à la suite des actions de l’armée russe, ainsi que les contenus dans lesquels l’opération en cours est qualifiée d’attaque, d’invasion ou de déclaration de guerre”.
Des dizaines de milliers de Russes protestent contre la guerre et leurs voix ne peuvent être réduites au silence. Nous avons récemment publié sur CPNN des milliers de signatures sur des pétitions anti-guerre par des
scientifiques russes, par des artistes russes , et par d’autres militants russes. (Depuis le 4 mars, cette liste est élargie pour inclure des informaticiens, des enseignants, les directeurs de LUKOIL, la plus grande entreprise privée de Russie, des mathématiciens et des champions d’échecs.)
Les jours de Poutine sont comptés avec une économie qui s’effondre, une guerre impossible à gagner et la perte de confiance du peuple russe.
Je continue de croire que l’empire américain s’effondrera bientôt à cause de sa sur-militarisation de l’économie et de toute la culture américaine. Mais il semble que le règne de Poutine en Russie s’effondrera encore plus vite.
La crise de la culture de guerre arrive.
“With every day of the war, one can see more and more clearly how Russia is approaching catastrophe.” Here is a clear, detailed and authoritative view from inside Russia. It was written on March 4 by Sergei Vladimirovich Aleksashenko, a Russian economist and former government official. He was the deputy finance minister and first deputy chairman of the board of the Central Bank of Russia from 1995 to 1998. For details, see his blog.
Fascinating take on the causes of the impending catastrophe in Russia. A few thoughts: In my humble opinion, the original fall of the Soviet Union had another serious cause: the failure of leaders to think like Marxists, who didn’t have it all right but did get how the infrastructure (economy, means of production and distribution, sources of wealth) affects the superstructure (political organization, cultural and spiritual choices, etc.). Gorbachev thought that freeing the political will of the people would save the union. But he was wrong: the people needed economic freedom: the ability to make decisions locally and in the best interest of the people not the apparatchik. I saw evidence that I am not wrong when I spent time in the USSR in the 1980s.
Yes, you are right. At the end of his life, Lenin denounced the “war communism” of centralized control and called for a state that would be “a cooperative of cooperatives.” But it was too late. The war communists Trotsky and then Stalin took control. And the Soviet Union never recovered. The German attack of World War II didn’t help, nor the American threat after the war.
Under Gorbachev there were attempts for democracy in some of the major factories, but the workers were not educated and they didn’t know how to vote for a proper management. Economic democracy can only work through effective education and that takes a lot of time and investment. Of course in capitalist countries economic democracy is not even discussed, let alone implemented.