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Comment by LordFast | Hacker News Reader

There's no need to go to war with a country if you can plant the seeds of a toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

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That's how US destroyed USSR.

They seemed to have been destroyed by more external forces like a failed economy, mass starvation and political strife.

There was no mass starvation at the end of the USSR and economy was in OK state (considering low oil prices).

How is any of that external?

Compared to an internal "mindset"?

The previous comment said something to the affect of how the US destroyed the USSR but the problems you mentioned are all problems that are "internal" to a nation. I don't see where the jump was made to talking about individuals vs the internal problems that plagued the USSR.

Maybe I understood it wrong because they said "mindset" instead of "internal".

To me, seeding ideas is internal to the people and society leading to chaos, as compared to external and physical forces like starvation, oppression and lack of infrastructure.

Can you help me understand how USSR collapses because of “toxic mindset”?

Western propaganda infected minds of USSR citizens with western values. They thought that capitalism would fix their problems, they thought that Coca Cola and Mac Donalds are better than their national drinks and foods, they thought that jeans are superior to their pants. Also I think that US intelligence service funded national revolts in some republics which further undermined an Union and eventually led to its collapse and people were OK with that, because they thought that better future awaits. It was all lies. US bought Gorbachev as well, though that's a different matter, I guess.

One might interpret the yearning for prosperity, personal freedom and generally capitalist values as a toxic mindset. That then leads to unrest in the population, bringing down the government.

But while all that might have been a factor in the downfall of the USSR, I think other factors have been far more important.

I think you got that mixed up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1EA2ohrt5Q

Or, vice versa.

> That's how US destroyed USSR.

Your arrow of causation is pointing in the wrong direction.

At the time, intellectuals in the US believed (and many still believe) that Communism(or whatever you call the economic system that was practiced in the USSR) is the superior economic system.

The USSR rotted from within due to fundamental economic problems like the principal agent problem[1] and the economic calculation problem[2].

The US didn't really have much to do with it, with the possible exception of "forcing" the USSR to spend a lot of resources it didn't have on weapons and space flight.

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

You're conflating "intellectuals" with "academic professors". Communism has been quite popular with college-bound academics for a long time, especially in professors in non-STEM fields, and especially in professors teaching undergrads. But the popularity wanes as people move away from college campuses and into other sectors.

In any other instance, if you described a certain adult as a person who, as they got older, continually hung out with 18-21 year olds, that fact would lend less credence to their viewpoints, not more.

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