Discussion How different would the world be if the August Coup had succeeded, or if the U.S.S.R. never disolutioned?

[Amol S.]

I am just curious as to know how the world would have been today. I was not even born in 1993, when the U.S.S.R. broke apart. I do know that foreign policy would have been a big thing here in the US, but what else would have been different? Would the world still be the same or similar to how it is today?

 

[allisolm]

A coupe is an automobile.

edit: and disolutioned isn't a word.

 

[BoomerD]

A coupe is an automobile.

Exactly...how about the September Sedan?

 

[rommelrommel]

The USSR collapsing was inevitable. So, probably not a lot different.

 

[senseamp]

You mean 1991?

 

[cytg111]

I dont know.
I still dont discount the idea that the US simply outspend USSR on war gadgets but opinions like this may have merit as well

Let’s stop revising history: Reagan didn’t win the Cold War

Most Americans are unaware that Reagan recanted his description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” dismissing his confrontational rhetoric as a relic of “another time, another era.”

thehill.com

Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

There were many factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, including political policies, economics, defense spending, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Find out more about how this political entity dissolved.

www.britannica.com

If we are talking USSR *after* Gorbatjov's democratic reforms among other things, the USSR model may just have reflected what you see around most of Europe. As a Scandinavian I cant say I see any bad in that.

So, a democratic USSR may have been a giant leap forward for peace around the sphere and advancement of our collective species.

Now we have a mafia state that threatens to novichok not only individuals but the democratic idea itself.

I think the west fucked up the handling of the last years of USSR, we probably should have helped out a hell of a lot more. Also WW2 right?

 

[pmv]

For a moment I thought the OP was asking about Auguste Comte, the father of positivism.

But I think the collapse of the USSR was inevitable for economic reasons. Reagan's cold-war arms-race probably hastened it.

I can't see that the consequences of it failing the way it did have been anything but bad. Not only the rise of Putinism, but the rise of the authoritarian right in former communist Eastern Europe, the backlash in the rest of the EU that has followed the admission of those countries into the EU, and of course the removal of the only brake on the US impulse to militarily intervene in countries across the globe, leading to disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more meta-issue is that the USSR collapsed because socialism didn't work as advertised, in terms of economics. Had socialism actually worked we'd have had an alternative to the problems of capitalism. As it turns out, only one system works, and even that one doesn't work terribly well. The only choices for humans to organise themselves are between abject failure and staggering along from one crisis to another.

 

[Amol S.]

A coupe is an automobile.

Fixed the title.

 

[rmacd02]

This thread wouldn't exist?

 

[cytg111]

For a moment I thought the OP was asking about Auguste Comte, the father of positivism.

But I think the collapse of the USSR was inevitable for economic reasons. Reagan's cold-war arms-race probably hastened it.

I can't see that the consequences of it failing the way it did have been anything but bad. Not only the rise of Putinism, but the rise of the authoritarian right in former communist Eastern Europe, the backlash in the rest of the EU that has followed the admission of those countries into the EU, and of course the removal of the only brake on the US impulse to militarily intervene in countries across the globe, leading to disasters like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The more meta-issue is that the USSR collapsed because socialism didn't work as advertised, in terms of economics. Had socialism actually worked we'd have had an alternative to the problems of capitalism. As it turns out, only one system works, and even that one doesn't work terribly well. The only choices for humans to organise themselves are between abject failure and staggering along from one crisis to another.

There is that grey area, in-between,

Nordic model - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

imo reaping the best of both worlds.

 

[brycejones]

@Amol S. what do you think would have happened?

 

[pmv]

There is that grey area, in-between,

Nordic model - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

imo reaping the best of both worlds.

Yeah, I honestly don't know why I find it hard to be convinced by that. It's a discussion I keep having. It might be just a question of national political culture - some European countries traditionally had a very adverserial relationship between economic classes, while others had a more co-operative style. Its the former, like the UK, that ended up with triumphant neo-liberalism, and where social-democracy has never been a succesful tradition.

I guess one issue is, that that sort of social-democratic/welfare state has historically usually come about due to the fear of revolution and communism. That's why Bismark created the welfare state in the first place (with, I only recently learned, the support of Krupp, the arms dealing maniac). Once communism ceases to be even a hypothetical threat, once it ceases to exist as one end of a spectrum, the whole concept of what is the 'centre' shifts, and all the pressures that social democrats or democratic socialists can bring to bear, cease to work.

There's also the issue that capitalism is a global system, and it's not clear that individual countries like the Nordic ones can go their own way. All those countries are finding their system under pressure now, and also tend to find it hard to deal with migration. Denmark in particular has some very strict rules about immigration and is almost Trumpist when it comes to taking asylum seekers. I admit though, that mostly I just keep forgetting about the existence of those countries.

 

[dank69]

@Amol S. what do you think would have happened?

"In a world ruled by a giant beaver, mankind builds many dams to please the beaver overlord. The low-lying city of Copenhagen is flooded. Thousands die. Devastated, the Danes never invent their namesake pastry. How does one miss that?"