Its why they defeated the nazis, who had a 50-100 year industrialization lead when the USSR started doing a command economy. The USSR also ended up liberalizing, especially in its last decade, creating the circumstances for a coup that resulted in balkanization and massively decreased living standards.
And all Eastern European countries experience explosive growth post communism?
The USSR killed 80-ish percent of the nazi troops, and suffered 26 million casualties, mostly civilians exterminated by the nazis. They were mainly responsible for the victory and suffered the heaviest losses, including a lot of the lower level communist organization whose absence lead to the bureaucratic centralization (that Stalin opposed heavily before his death) that let corruption gradually take over the project.
Yeah, when you organize your army based on politics and not on, you know, military capability, you end up sucking at war and need to make it up in numbers. You ignore intelligence of imminent invasion you let hundreds of thousands of troops get encircled and begging the Yankees for resources.
Why would I need to seriously argue against what is essentially tropes, including the asiatic hordes trope? Your argument speaks for itself.
Compare the size of the soviet army at the start of the war to the size of the French and German armies. Now compare the Soviet delaying actions to the invasion of France.
They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.
That’s the nature of Authoritarian regimes. Not very working class of them.
They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.
You are mistaking the movie enemy at the gates for a history lesson, or are absorbing myths that ultimately originate with that movie… During particularly desperate times troops would have to split rifles during training. General order 227 created penal detachments for officers who kept ordering retreats without cause, and created blocking units to turn back retreating units. They weren’t machine gunning conscripts in the back.
Also even if not one step back was as US propaganda claims, every step back allowed the nazis more population to exterminate or enslave. The Soviets lost 19 million civilians, exterminated by the nazis.
They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.
Enemy at the Gates is not a documentary, it’s a propaganda film. In true fact while the Soviets did have a large number of conscripts and did suffer supply issues early in the war, at no point were they sending under-equipped battalions into the front line to die for no reason, and the thing about shooting those who retreated only applied to officers who ordered a retreat without proper cause (you’ll find that every other army in World War 2 had a similar protocol).
Today’s national income and GDP accounting formats are compiled in keeping with this anticlassical reaction depicting the FIRE [Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate] sector and its allied rent-seeking sectors as an addition to national income, not a subtrahend. Interest, rents, and monopoly prices all are counted as earnings—as if all income is earned as intrinsic parts of industrial capitalism, not predatory extraction as overhead property and financial claims.
When the socialist states privatized what had been public—which was nearly everything—and sold them at fire sale prices to the neocolonial capitalists of the imperial core, that would have been included in the GPD as well. What did that get them but a new class of local oligarchs? Just bonkers.
If you compare the GDP of suddenly collapsed, suddenly capitalist states—that were being actively pillaged by the Global North—to their GDP 30 years later, of course line go up. But that’s a very different comparison to their situations pre-collapse.
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Its why they defeated the nazis, who had a 50-100 year industrialization lead when the USSR started doing a command economy. The USSR also ended up liberalizing, especially in its last decade, creating the circumstances for a coup that resulted in balkanization and massively decreased living standards.
This is counterfactual
I thought a massive international effort defeated the nazis, including strategic bombing, embargos and lend-lease. Weird.
The USSR killed 80-ish percent of the nazi troops, and suffered 26 million casualties, mostly civilians exterminated by the nazis. They were mainly responsible for the victory and suffered the heaviest losses, including a lot of the lower level communist organization whose absence lead to the bureaucratic centralization (that Stalin opposed heavily before his death) that let corruption gradually take over the project.
Yeah, when you organize your army based on politics and not on, you know, military capability, you end up sucking at war and need to make it up in numbers. You ignore intelligence of imminent invasion you let hundreds of thousands of troops get encircled and begging the Yankees for resources.
Consider not learning your ww2 history from pop culture
So, no argument at all? Just a downvote and an ad-hominem? I’m disappointed…
Why would I need to seriously argue against what is essentially tropes, including the asiatic hordes trope? Your argument speaks for itself.
Compare the size of the soviet army at the start of the war to the size of the French and German armies. Now compare the Soviet delaying actions to the invasion of France.
No idea what tropes you talking about, those are history book facts. Embarrassing, but facts.
They defeated the Nazis by throwing conscripts into a meat grinder regardless of whether they even had a weapon, and by threatening to shoot them if they tried to retreat.
That’s the nature of Authoritarian regimes. Not very working class of them.
You are mistaking the movie enemy at the gates for a history lesson, or are absorbing myths that ultimately originate with that movie… During particularly desperate times troops would have to split rifles during training. General order 227 created penal detachments for officers who kept ordering retreats without cause, and created blocking units to turn back retreating units. They weren’t machine gunning conscripts in the back.
Also even if not one step back was as US propaganda claims, every step back allowed the nazis more population to exterminate or enslave. The Soviets lost 19 million civilians, exterminated by the nazis.
Enemy at the Gates is not a documentary, it’s a propaganda film. In true fact while the Soviets did have a large number of conscripts and did suffer supply issues early in the war, at no point were they sending under-equipped battalions into the front line to die for no reason, and the thing about shooting those who retreated only applied to officers who ordered a retreat without proper cause (you’ll find that every other army in World War 2 had a similar protocol).
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You live in a world of pure fantasy.
Cool feels. The facts are that GDP has grown more than 1000% (not a typo) in the 30 years post communism.
Again, fantasy.
Who calculated the GPD of a command-driven, non-capitalist state, and how did they do it? It’s incomparable using such a metric: apples & oranges.
And regardless, GDP is a garbage metric. All sorts of unproductive income is included, things that are not part of the real economy.
Finance Capitalism versus Industrial Capitalism: The Rentier Resurgence and Takeover
When the socialist states privatized what had been public—which was nearly everything—and sold them at fire sale prices to the neocolonial capitalists of the imperial core, that would have been included in the GPD as well. What did that get them but a new class of local oligarchs? Just bonkers.
If you compare the GDP of suddenly collapsed, suddenly capitalist states—that were being actively pillaged by the Global North—to their GDP 30 years later, of course line go up. But that’s a very different comparison to their situations pre-collapse.
Is any metric that’s unfavorable immediately garbage? Life expectancy? Number of political prisoners? HDI?