1. You are a citizen working in a factory.

  2. You are the General Secretary.

What would you have done from both these perspectives?

  • CommieGirl69 [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    nothing, by the final years the tide was already too strong

    but i'd point out that i dislike how people blame gorbachev for everything, or blame party revisionism - which is always a very dubious concept to me

    two factors are key, 1) that the short term pressure of simply managing to survive in an extremely hostile environment and facing another great war made stalin have to shut down the NEP, and 2) that the party distanced itself from the people (which is also influenced by 1, as it becomes increasingly hard to be democratic under constant siege)

    if i could blame anyone, it would be brezhnev, his blind conservatism was responsible for setting up the conditions for all the problems in the 80s

    but again, it's bad to blame a single personality as they were just actors inside a very complex historical process - for instance, i see brezhnev as a representative and a product of the party's already existing conservatism, not someone responsible for it

    anyway, all the still existing socialist states have succeeded in avoiding letting all these issues come together in that perfect storm that destroyed the USSR - it's not about revisionism (whatever the hell that means) nor the actions of a single individual