Chernobyl & the Fall of the USSR

[DGuller]

  Did you read the link you provided?  Soviet military dead by nationality is 66% Russian, the second higher is Ukrainian with 15%.  The Soviet Union preferred ethnic Russians to make the majority of most of it's military units.

Yeah, I did read it, and I also interpreted correctly.  It's 63% of military dead, first of all.  Second of all, Russians also made up 57% of all Soviet people, so again Russian casualties weren't that disproportionate.

[Razgovory]

Were did you find the percentage of Russians making up all Soviet citizens?

[DGuller]

Were did you find the percentage of Russians making up all Soviet citizens?

It's right there in one of the tables.

[Razgovory]

Oh.

[Razgovory]

Well I suppose that settles it.  I'll concede to what ever DGuller was saying.  Defeated again.

[Martinus]

It definitely was a massive embarassment for the regime so I would say it has contributed.

[The Minsky Moment]

Soviet economic performance in the 50s and 60s was pretty respectable.  Yes there were horrible inefficiencies in capital allocation, and innovation lagged in certain areas, but that is also true of China today.  The extensive economic policy eventually hit a ceiling by the late 60s.  However, the stagnation was masked for a time by the huge run-up in oil prices - the Soviet Union tranformed itself from a heavy industrial powerhouse to a big Slavic oil sheikhdom.  CdM and Raz are mistaken to the extent they are claiming that failure to upgrade the fields was the key problem in the Soviet era.  In fact, production ramped up enormously in the Brezhnev era, as the western Siberian fields first came on line.  Production hit a peak around 1980 but stayed steady throughout the Gorbachev period to the very end.  The problem was not production levels, but price.  The bottom fell out of the oil market in the 1980s, and state revenues collapsed.  This was forseen by Andropov hence the tentative moves towards reform, and when the crash came in the mid-80s, Gorbachev was forced to accelerate the perestroika reforms.

[Martinus]

Chernobyl did contribute indirectly to the Fall of USSR by creating an aura of distrust on Gorbatchev's reform policy, by pinpointing that glasnost wouldn't be total in that the Soviet government would still keep hiding even big, collectively lethal environmental hazards on its frontstep to protect its hide, and that the level of bureaucratic mismanagement and amateurism was so much higher than expected, that it could become life-threatening in itself.

Yeah. It was Soviet Union's "necklace affair".

[The Minsky Moment]

BTW for those interested in the subject of the Soviet collapse, I would recommend Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000.  Short, and a pretty breezy read.

[Razgovory]

Soviet economic performance in the 50s and 60s was pretty respectable.  Yes there were horrible inefficiencies in capital allocation, and innovation lagged in certain areas, but that is also true of China today.  The extensive economic policy eventually hit a ceiling by the late 60s.  However, the stagnation was masked for a time by the huge run-up in oil prices - the Soviet Union tranformed itself from a heavy industrial powerhouse to a big Slavic oil sheikhdom.  CdM and Raz are mistaken to the extent they are claiming that failure to upgrade the fields was the key problem in the Soviet era.  In fact, production ramped up enormously in the Brezhnev era, as the western Siberian fields first came on line.  Production hit a peak around 1980 but stayed steady throughout the Gorbachev period to the very end.  The problem was not production levels, but price.  The bottom fell out of the oil market in the 1980s, and state revenues collapsed.  This was forseen by Andropov hence the tentative moves towards reform, and when the crash came in the mid-80s, Gorbachev was forced to accelerate the perestroika reforms.

Man, you guys are just not cutting me any breaks today.

[crazy canuck]

BTW for those interested in the subject of the Soviet collapse, I would recommend Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000.  Short, and a pretty breezy read.

Thanks for the recommendation

[The Minsky Moment]

Man, you guys are just not cutting me any breaks today.

It wasn't a bad guess.  Underinvestment and technological lags were big causes of thepost-Soviet period problems in the industry, problems which continue to this day.

[DGuller]

What about my other point:  did Soviet territory have to disintegrate along with their economy, or was this not inevitable?  Apart from the Baltic countries, it's hard to think of a former Soviet republic that benefited from the breakup.

[derspiess]

Man, you guys are just not cutting me any breaks today.

I'm taking it easy on you

[derspiess]

What about my other point:  did Soviet territory have to disintegrate along with their economy, or was this not inevitable?  Apart from the Baltic countries, it's hard to think of a former Soviet republic that benefited from the breakup.

Azerbaijan?  Georgia?

Anyway the ones who wanted to stay close to Russia have, and have enjoyed whatever supposed benefits in doing so.