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Welcome to the Myth of the 20th Century. The podcast airs on Fridays.
— Brought to you by —
Adam Smith, Hank Oslo, Alex Nicholson, and Mark Brown.
Notes:
When Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary in 1964, the Soviet Union began an era of stagnation. As economic growth slowed and military tensions with the United States were reduced during détente, the Soviet leadership pursued a policy of stabilization, demonstrating their resolve when the military dispatched Warsaw Pact tanks into Prague to stop reforms being pursued in Czechoslovakia. By the 1980s, the economic and political stagnation had worsened, however, and Mikhail Gorbachev began a series of reforms of his own in the Soviet Union under perestroika. As the 9-year war in Afghanistan began draining government coffers already run low by a substantial decline in oil prices, the USSR started to break apart as communist East Germany rejoined its capitalist brother to the west, and Warsaw Pact nations such as Poland and Lithuania began moves towards independence. On Christmas Day, 1991, Gorbachev officially announced the dissolution of the USSR, and Boris Yeltsin was declared President of Russia.
What followed was a severe economic contraction, with unemployment rising and many ordinary citizens falling into homelessness and early mortality. Large portions of strategic state assets in the heavy mining, energy, and industrial sectors were parceled off to these same citizens, who often out of desperation sold their shares and ended up handing much of the Russian economy to a new class of billionaire oligarchs. This concentration of wealth continued until 2000, when Vladimir Putin became Russian president and began a series of moves reversing much of the economic chaos and restoring some semblance of order to Russian society.
References:
– Failed Empire, Zubokov (2009)
– The Limits of Partnership (2014)
– The Colder War, Katusa (2014)
– The Oligarchs, Hoffman (2002)
– Red Plenty, Suppford (2012)
– Inside the Soviet Army, Suvorov (1983)
– Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn (1974)
– Magnetic Mountain, Kotkin (1995)
– A Failed Empire, Kubok (2007)
– National Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State, Bessinger (2002)
– The 33 Strategies of War, Greene (2007)
The Myth Of The 20th Century
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I will also recommend The Invention of Russia, Ostrovsky (2015)
Very good description of events in the collapse of Soviet Union. Here in Finland Russia is our neighbor, so I knew almost all you said, but it was nice to recap, to refresh the information, and because in repetition the same information impacts changed and improved information field, so it has different effects this time. In the same way Americans are likely to know more about events and things in Mexico than Finns, who know on average about Mexico only large illegal emigration; drug mafias, drug production, drug trade and drug wars; something about Maya history; Mexican food (spicy delicious food, beans, tacos, quesadillas, burritos, tasteless and watery Mexican beers, which pretend to contain alcohol, etc.); and desert sceneries.
Perhaps you could make a special program about power transfer in the former Soviet Union, about its rich details; winning methods; wily and legal schemes; dirty and cleaner deals; use of old and new connections; shady, criminal and more virtuous personalities; etc.? The program could answer how power was transferred to new or seemingly new entities; how new power structures were designed, planned and formed; how the new power structures struggled to increase, maintain and defend their power; how much of the new power was a continuum of the old power, and how much of it was created on the spot; how large and what kind were the foreign influences on the power transfer; etc. You outlined these to some extent, but there is so much useful material there, that it could warrant a new program.
Great suggestions and thanks for listening. We hope to do another episode on Russia (very hard not to considering its geopolitical significance.) Kippis.