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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

It was my understanding that the Soviet Union collapsed in part because they couldn’t afford the arms race anymore.

I’m not an expert in any way on this, but my impression from reading maybe half a dozen books involving the Soviets + living in a former Soviet-occupied country is that the USSR simply wasn’t ever going to work sociopolitically by nature of its multi-nation imperial structure. The client states were never really assimilated and didn’t want to be - and the relationship with them was hostile from the start - see the lack of help during the Warsaw Uprising, Hungarian Revolution in 1957, Prague in 1968, etc. So my impression is that the USSR would inevitably collapse and it was mostly just a matter of time.

The arms race definitely had an effect on the Soviet economy, but I don’t think it’s correct to say that was the main reason for the collapse.

Or in one sentence because communism can't work for long periods

I am rarely surprised at my age but HN community thinking that communism can indeed work over long periods is awesome

It seems like a lot of reasons, many of which derived from hubris and a delusion that one can plan an entire society, and everything that follows from this mistake. Bad economy, over reliance on limited set of heavy industries, corruption, lack of agency; overall reduced economic performance and thus unable to outcompete the US economy, which was forcing the Soviets into an arms race death march.

In part, yes, but the main reason was severely mismanaged economy, specifically — super unproductive agro. They had to buy food (grain), selling oil. And then oil prices went down.

There's some theories that the US poisoned some of the crop fields in the 60s and 70s especially in the Ukraine resulting in inadequate yields, exacerbating the budgetary issues already present from space race / arms race spending.

I'm sure they have such conspirancid paranoia in north korea right now. They are expressions of unvented frustration in unreformable systems. It can not be the ruler or the ideology, and it can not be that the combination is unable to deal with a world that regularly throws you a stick for the legs if you think you have a good run.

Pests evolve and the soil becomes less fertile .Industrial Agriculture is not the same every year. it just looks loke that for a layman.

That's the type of ridiculous conspiracy theory that Communists frequently invented to excuse their own failures. The US had no capability for spreading enough poison in the USSR to significantly reduce crop yields. Like seriously, was the CIA supposed to be flying stealth crop duster airplanes over Ukraine and dropping Agent Orange everywhere? Makes no sense at all.

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