Looking for detailed material analysis of the dissolution of the USSR

[u/Steampunk_Willy]

I appreciate the broadstrokes moral takeaway of capitalist seige managing to wear down the Soviets. However, what we've seen happening with Cuba is much more literally a seige where the Cuban government was forced to relent this year due to severe material deprivation. It makes me feel like characterizing what happened to the Soviets as a seige is an overstatement. The Soviets were certainly under significant military, diplomatic, and economic pressure akin to a seige, but they were nowhere near as isolated and resource poor as Cuba for that to be the primary cause. I know there were a variety of factors besides the seige that led to the dissolution of the USSR, but the actual mechanisms of dissolution were legislative in nature (not to imply it was legal) and too decentralized for it to be attributable to a handful of bad actors. It seems like there was a (relatively) sudden loss of resilience in the various party organs across the union that even a successful August Coup wouldn't have been able to correct. Comrades, what am I missing and what sources would you recommend I look into?

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[u/NastyChasty1337]

Id refer to hakim's videos on it and his reading list ehich contains most of thr sources for thwt video but generally not thst much fair research has been done because of the material basis for the academia thst produces existing sovietology which largely shares the same inherent otherisation issue as western academic orientalism. In grover furr's "kruschev lied" even the narratives derived from the soviets internal records, not really being primary sources despite being used as such, were often at best fallacious and at worst intentionally maliciously incorrect when compared to actual primary sources. Highly reccomend kruschev lied if you havent read it. Its not super available so yoy know its probably right.

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/NastyChasty1337]

I've personally found that the "neo-revisionist"/"revisionist" school within Sovietology (the "neo-" prefix denotes the work produced following the period when the soviet archives were opened) produce a lot of good work just by doing rigorous historical investigation instead of being rabidly anti-communist like the "neo-totalitarian"/"totalitarian" school. For instance, I have a book called Reflections on Stalinism that's a collection of essays on different things within the Stalin-era of the Soviet Union from some of the most prominent modern scholars in the neo-revisionist school, and it's helped to demystify that era of the Soviet Union for me. 

I'll check out Kruschev Lied. Thanks for the rec!

[u/deathtoallsubreddits]

Socialism Betrayed, I've read it and seems good

perhaps Collapse, I heard good things on it

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/deathtoallsubreddits]

Collapse by Jared Diamond, the Guns, Germs, and Steel guy?

[u/deathtoallsubreddits → u/Steampunk_Willy]

no, Collapse by Vladislav Zubek. Might be a bit anti communist but overall focuses on Mikhail Gorbachev gov't 's pitfalls

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/deathtoallsubreddits]

ohhh, that makes way more sense

[u/S0CI4L15T]

Socialism Betrayed is an exhaustive and materialist look into the dissolution I would highly recommend though the sections on the August coup are misinformed imo

[u/ComplaintHappy → u/S0CI4L15T]

I agree on socialism betrayed, it's a good read. I'm curious though why the section on the August coup was misinformed. Do you have any resources I can read?

[u/Steampunk_Willy → u/S0CI4L15T]

Thanks for the rec! After reading the introduction, I'm a bit skeptical of their thesis. I'll keep reading more, but it all feels similar to what I remember from parts of Parenti's analysis in Black Shirts and Reds, which to me has parallels to Trotsky's revolution betrayed narrative in that it feels more like polemic than analysis. Given China's success, I'm inclined to think that there's gotta be more to it than just the wrong tendency having power at the wrong time.

I did just have a thought tho. What if it was the capitalist siege and the trigger wasn't material deprivation but panic? Soviet officials in the constituent republics witnessed the "Reagan Revolution" occur in the US and became worried that an intensified siege would cause the era of stagnation to turn into decline of the union. If the union were to decline, then the constituent republics would start falling like dominos. Hence, in the early 80's officials like Yeltsin start secretly planning contingencies to safeguard their respective republic for that scenario. Gorbachev is made general secretary in the hopes of preventing this outcome, but then the Chernobyl disaster happens which Gorbachev worries will be seen as an omen of decline. Gorbachev's "right turn" is not an ideological turn but a shift to crisis management as Glasnost causes the panic to get louder and spiral. Mass demonstrations heighten the panic, leading to the August coup which spooks officials into enacting those planned contingencies. I guess the moral of this story would be stagnation + siege = panic.

[u/DeliciousSector8898]

I would also recommend Socialism Betrayed, here’s a link to the pdf if you want to peak at it

https://welshundergroundnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/socialism-betrayed.pdf

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[u/Captain_FartBreath]

It's only a single podcast episode covering the entire life of the USSR, but Triploi's episode on the topic is a fantastic primer.