Collapse¶
Metadata¶
- Author: V. M. Zubok
- ASIN: B09HKL3NC3
- ISBN: 0300257309
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09HKL3NC3
- Kindle link
Highlights¶
The oft-repeated explanations about the resistance of the Party, the military-industrial complex, and other “lobbies,” are not convincing. Scholars who studied the Soviet economy concluded that the Soviet economic system was destroyed not by its structural faults, but by Gorbachev-era reforms. The purposeful as well as unintended destruction of the Soviet economy, along with its finances, may be considered the best candidate as a principal cause of Soviet disintegration. — location: 336 ^ref-45311
The oft-repeated explanations about the resistance of the Party, the military-industrial complex, and other “lobbies,” are not convincing. Scholars who studied the Soviet economy concluded that the Soviet economic system was destroyed not by its structural faults, but by Gorbachev-era reforms. The purposeful as well as unintended destruction of the Soviet economy, along with its finances, may be considered the best candidate as a principal cause of Soviet — location: 336 ^ref-63687
Gorbachev and his reform-minded entourage transformed the conservative reforms from above into a revolutionary gamble and ultimately removed the critical props on which the Soviet system and state were resting. — location: 453 ^ref-34750
Surprisingly, the list did not include the pressing issues that Andropov had raised about Soviet macroeconomic stability: the need to reduce the import of food, restore the balance of trade, crack down on the shadow economy, and discipline the labor force. Gorbachev’s notes did not contain any diagnosis of the economic and financial problems plaguing the Soviet Union. — location: 691 ^ref-38089
This was another example of how a sudden corrective measure, even well justified, could lead to inevitable economic collapse. — location: 721 ^ref-57983
workers of the old plants acted conservatively and resisted innovations. Much of the expensive Western equipment was never put to use at the old plants and factories. — location: 737 ^ref-62307
Lenin: he used the crisis to jump to sweeping conclusions: the entire old system was deeply sick and contaminated. The crisis demanded another revolution. His main message was that the USSR was a country on the brink; during the previous fifteen years the state and the people had lived beyond their means and learned awful habits. — location: 768 ^ref-9772
The Soviet state could spend many billions of beznal money for financing big projects, and yet the inflation of cash—and prices of consumer goods and services—remained more or less under control. — location: 860 ^ref-47602
profits from state enterprises could not be translated into cash. — location: 862 ^ref-3248
Cooperatives, credited by their own banks, began to buy resources and goods within the state economy from state enterprises at state-fixed prices. Then they sold those goods at higher market prices or exported them abroad, at a profit of 500 and even more percent. — location: 912 ^ref-27049
“What possessed him to think he could overcome Russian political, economic, and social patterns dating back centuries in a few short years: — location: 920 ^ref-60495
Placing a super-parliament at the top of the political system during a period of fundamental reforms was risky and impractical. — location: 992 ^ref-55154
Soviets, which had for decades only rubber-stamped the Politburo decisions, suddenly assumed both legislative and executive responsibilities—more than those institutions could possibly bear. — location: 993 ^ref-11893
“He really needed advice, the opinion of others,” recalled the Politburo member Vitaly Vorotnikov, “yet only to the extent it allowed him to make [others] follow his position and his idea.” — location: 1005 ^ref-29004
he often did not finish his arguments with a specific choice of action. This created an appearance of consensus-seeking, but also left room for later denial if there was too much dissent. — location: 1007 ^ref-55908
he subjected Yeltsin to enforced treatment in a Party hospital, where doctors treated him with powerful injections, as if he was in a psychiatric hospital. This was a traumatic experience that Yeltsin would never forgive or forget. He subsequently recovered from his breakdown. At the Party Conference in June 1988, he even humbly asked for forgiveness, but then once again criticized Gorbachev’s perestroika for its lack of radicalism. — location: 1058 ^ref-29955
Ligachev approved of the article. It was published with the stamp of a Party-approved directive to ideological cadres. This episode can be considered as probably the last chance to reroute Soviet reforms in the direction envisaged by Andropov. — location: 1074 ^ref-24388
Finally, he exclaimed: “Who am I for you? The Tsar? Or Stalin?” He was clearly getting frustrated with Soviet people just as they were getting disheartened with him. — location: 1085 ^ref-57309
Between 800,000 and 900,000 Party officials would be sacked within a year: the biggest purge of Party cadres since Stalin, — location: 1092 ^ref-61172
Twelve out of twenty departments of the central Party apparatus, the political brain of the entire Soviet political-economic system, were to be disbanded. — location: 1094 ^ref-13749
Vitaly Vorotnikov asked who would be able to carry the burden of governance if the Party relinquished it. Gorbachev dodged the question. — location: 1097 ^ref-58305
The delegates, after some debates, sanctioned Gorbachev’s right to become chairman of the future Supreme Soviet, while remaining head of the Party. The Party elite rubber-stamped the most radical shift of power since the time of Stalin. — location: 1110 ^ref-43177
Gorbachev made a historic miscalculation. At the end of 1988, he moved to dismantle the Party apparatus as the only tool that could possibly keep reforms and the entire country under control. — location: 1114 ^ref-55041
a mix of his neo-Leninist hubris, breathtaking idealism, and abhorrence of nuclear confrontation. — location: 1135 ^ref-5407
Washington cracked down on Toshiba, when in 1987 the Japanese corporation agreed to sell modern computer equipment to Moscow; the contract was canceled. — location: 1164 ^ref-51728
For Gorbachev, the relationship with foreigners, especially Western leaders, became a cultural and psychological necessity. — location: 1175 ^ref-55955
One would expect that the General Secretary, bent on reforming the Soviet economy, would take with him on Western trips economists, planners, directors of military industries, bankers, and other technocrats. Instead, Gorbachev’s huge entourage consisted mostly of journalists, social scientists, writers, theater directors, filmmakers, and other cultural figures. — location: 1181 ^ref-16958
Eastern European countries gravitated towards Western countries, above all West Germany, and had no desire to share what they obtained there with the Soviet “big brother.” — location: 1222 ^ref-19292
decades later, Gorbachev still nursed hard feelings about those in the West who had misjudged or ignored his good intentions. But he made an exception for Ronald Reagan. — location: 1295 ^ref-16432
Andropov, recalls his aide Arkady Volsky, was obsessed with the idea of downplaying the role of nationalities in the constitutional structures of the Soviet Union. — location: 1333 ^ref-57938
“We came up with forty-one states. We finished the project, with all proper charts, but by that time [Andropov] got very ill.” The idea of radical constitutional reform was shelved. Volsky was convinced that Andropov could have pushed reform down the throats of the republican elites, at least to a certain extent. — location: 1343 ^ref-9471
“Which god do you have in mind? For us Lenin is the only god in these matters. If he had managed to rescue the [correct policy] on nationalities from Stalin, we would not be in this situation.” At the time of Lenin’s death, the Soviet Union had 5,200 national territorial entities. In Gorbachev’s eyes, the “national” intelligentsia were not a threat, but rather an important ally of his perestroika program. — location: 1357 ^ref-56336
His recipe, however, was to create “people’s fronts,” and informal associations of the “national” intelligentsia in the republics “to support perestroika.”36 The future would soon show that those “pre-emptive” initiatives amounted to adding oil to the fire. — location: 1392 ^ref-49836
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