Did the Soviet Union EVER Recover from WW2? 

The next Battlestorm Stalingrad video will be out next Monday! Hanson’s “The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Economy: An Economic History of the USSR 1945 - 1991 (The Postwar World).” is a great book on this topic. I come to slightly different conclusions from Hanson, but he’s still a recommended source. Another great source is Higg’s “Depression, War, and Cold War”, which discusses the USA during the aftermath of WW2, showing why the Great Depression only came to a halt in 1945.

My family lived in USSR, and all you told was true, everyone had money, but shops were empty. However, now they complain about shops being full, but it's hard to get money.

"State educated Marxist romancers," I like that, this phrase has been taxed for use by the collective.

Ronald Reagan was reportedly surprised and shocked in January 1981 when getting his first briefing on the Soviets and the Soviet economy and remarked “I had no idea they were doing so badly”. This of course 10 years before the collapse.

My history teacher in China once told us that back in the 90s a bunch of Chinese merchants would go to the Russian border to sell several boxes of toothpastes and the Russian would give them an airplane or a bunch of army motorcycles, since Russia back then had almost little to no light industry, only heavy industry.

I absolutely love that you actually cite from the sources you list. Many channels from what I've noticed, if they even bother putting their sources in, rarely add direct citations.

I have a Russian friend, when he was young (born in 1996), he lived with his grandparents in rural Russia. From his description, nothing has changed since the start of the 20th century. ( no electricity, no running water etc ...) He couldn't get out at night because of wolves. WOLVES.

I visited Severmorsk (the military city next to Murmanske) in 1995 in a Canadian warship to mark the 50th Anniversary of Victory in Europe. Russian sailors were jamming hotdogs in their pockets to take home when we hosted a BBQ on our jetty after a ball hockey game with them. We brought up a lot more food from our fridges for them after we saw this.

I grew up in provincial city in USSR in 1980s. Can confirm, the economy sucked. We were lucky in that my grandparents got a flat as WW2 veterans, so we considered it "good" when we had 2 of my grandparents, my parents, my brother and me share a tiny 2 bedroom flat. There was basically no food variety, our TV black and white (bough on black market), and our "vacations" consisted of going to the forests to hunt for mushrooms.

I worked with an engineer who had fled during Cold War. He spoke of how hard it was to design products since all plans had to be submitted with plans of how to switch back to military products within 24 hours.

I dont know what drives you to do this but this stuff is the only thing keeping me sane at home Keep up the amazing work

A 70 year old Slovakian man I know remembers the occasional communist police raids on his house looking for illegal hidden wealth. I recall a reporter in 1970’s Moscow telling about shortages and how people would get in any queue that was forming even without knowing what it was for - also the reaction of a Russian visiting the US in 1980 and first hearing about grain sales to his country: “That’s impossible the USSR feeds the world!”.

Spent a couple months in Far East Russia (Siberia, just above China) in 1996 in a city of 300,000 or 600,000 people. (I forget) Everything was exotic and foreign so it took me a while to notice the almost total absence of old men. I only realized I hadn't been seeing any when I was walking down a city street and saw a white haired gentleman and was almost stopped in tracks. Took me a while to figure out why I was so struck by him. It was that, despite being in a very crowded, large city where I came in daily contact with hundreds or thousands of people, I hadn't seen an old man for weeks. TONS of old women, they were everywhere but all the old men had been killed in one fashion or another long before.

In the early '70s I met a man in Yugoslavia, a Dalmatian, who served in the Austro-Hungarian army in WW1. He spent part of his time in the army on the Bosphorus counting the grain ships exiting the Black Sea. He said it was a constant parade. "And now how many?" he said. "The grain ships are going the other way now!"

Hi TiK, just to support this, while studying Soviet Cold War politics I read a few accounts (including Khrushchev, though he is about as reliable as a German General) which stated that by the early 60s the leadership recognised that they were economically trapped: on one hand the population could see the lack of consumer goods and they needed to start producing them; on the other their industry (and reading between the lines their strategic self-concept) was not capable of producing them, and there was no capacity to do so without taking production away from elsewhere.

Dude, the Soviet economy was at the core, a wartime economy that was unable to transition to anything apart from what Stalin's blueprint, had prioritized. We all need to understand that WW2 had seriously traumatized and shaped the Soviet psyche. They refused to be caught unprepared, by a western block that appeared poised to strike it. Military goods received the highest priority. People were expected to cope with economic hardship. The economy since the Bolshevik Revolution was always geared toward empowering the state and weakening the family.

I can remember in the 70's the US was using grain shipments to get concessions in arms talks from the Soviets. And the Soviets made concessions.

As a Finn, my dad always remembers fondly the time the Soviet Union was our neighbour instead of modern Russia. After the war, trade between Finland and the Soviet Union was really beneficial for Finland. We would trade them by Western standards mediocre heavy industry goods which for the Soviets was a major source of foreign technology. After the Soviet collapse, there was no good market for Finnish goods that were only okay by say Swedish or German standards which created a pretty heavy shock for our economy. I always found my dad's opinion about the matter fairly odd, given how the Soviet Union was the biggest threat for our independence and existence.

Speaking of recovery, David Glantz's wife is recovering from several serious infections. She is recovering, but thoughts and prayers are never wasted. :)

I can definitely tell you that Soviet demographics never recovered from WWII. Russia's population today is permanently smaller thanks to losing 1/6th of its entire population (and a substantially higher amount of child-rearing aged men and women) in WWII and the purges/famines that preceded it.

Professor Maltsev passed away in January 2023. I'm pleased to have met him when he visited South Africa in 2017, and smiled at hearing his name mentioned here. What a character he was; bought and sold 80 automobiles in his first ten years of living in the US upon defecting. Most of them lemons, but he just loved the ability to acquire and dispose of entire cars on his whim, something only senior soviet politicians could do.

Another factor is the inherent inefficiency of centrally planned economy. The incentives for factory directors are different than in a capitalist economy. It resulted in factories hoarding everything: machinery, input materials, even extra workers to deal with spikes in demand. They would also prefer to make machine parts, etc. in-house, since outside supply was unreliable. Overall this resulted in USSR using about 3 times as much energy as USA per unit of goods. The planners lamented that their country had everything, from natural resources to great mathematicians and engineers, but the economy just didn't work.

I was born in ex yugoslavia and I remember USSR citizens trying to smuggle stuff and buy anything, they payed in gold, US dollars or german marks. ;)

My grandmother was born in 1942 in South Africa. She remembers they had rationing well into the 1950's as a result of the war's deprivations. TBH It'd be interesting to investigate the relatively autarkic economy of South Africa post-1961.

In terms of population, no. Edit, removed the “I guess” because no, the USSR and the now independent republics have not recovered.

A better question is whether Germany (and indeed everyone else), ever did recover from WW1.

One should point out that the British economy also did not recover from WW II until way into the 1960's.

The USSR didn't recover from the collectivisation of agriculture in the 1930s. They were importing grain in large amounts by the 1970s.

The term Kulak was used broadly to label anyone who went against Lenin's collectivzation policy. It initially included anyone who owned 8 acres of land, but was used to include anyone who happened to have more than their neighbor.

Essentially, thinking you can centrally plan every interaction and aspect of an economy is like thinking you can do a better job of consciously regulating every homeostatic process in your body than having your body systems do them automatically, sort of like how every individual interacts autonomously in an economy.

I grew up during the Cold War. We were told that we were fight a near peer that was close to our economy. After the Berlin Wall fell, we found out the economy they were closest to was Belgium.

There's a channel called Ushanka Show that talks about growing up in the late 70s and 80s in the Soviet Union. It's pretty fascinating to hear some of his stories. He moved to the US in the 90s so he has a pretty unique perspective from both sides.

It's a very complicated question, with more than 1 answer. Yes, Soviet manpower was impaired. Yes, the Soviet sphere of influence was too large to effectively manage. Yes, maintaining the balance of power with NATO used massive resources. But, comparing the pre WW2 Soviet economy to the post WW2 economy shows that the post WW2 economy was much stronger. However by Western standards, the economy was very weak, as the bulk of the Soviet GDP was absorbed by the military and modernization projects. This is also seen in pre and post war China, one could successfully argue that China didn't recover from WW2 until the 1990's. So, this really just sums up the difference between the newly emerging communist vs the established democratic systems.

I met a Ukrainian man who left Ukrain somewhere in the 80s or early 90s. He said that a major road - basically a freeway - was still diverting around a shell crater in the road that was never fixed. Dirt track instead of fixing a hole. That's communism.

I don't think the question is "Did the Soviet Union ever recover from WW2 ?" but instead "Did the Soviet Union ever recover from WW1?" The answer is "NO!" The horrific crimes of Lenin and his Bolshevik murderers began when WW1 ended. When Lenin died in 1924, Stalin magnified the brutal oppression, the genocide, the ruthless and cruel enslavement of the Russian people. Victory in 1945 might have won some decades of peace, but in 2022 we're back at Square One again. All these decades later, Russia is once again controlled by another ruthless, cruel, murdering Bolshevik Commissar named Vladimir Putin. Putin has turned the clock back 100 years to Lenin's era, with his idol Stalin as his mentor and inspiration. God help us all.

I didn't live in the Soviet period but I always assumed it wasn't this bad purely through seeing the leftovers of the era all around me as I grew up: old Soviet furniture, old electronics, old gas stoves, old apartment blocks and cars on the street etc. So in my logic if you can afford a flat with a bed, table and a TV: life ain't bad... Now that I am older I am so sure TBH... Up until you realise that woodgrain TV cost a 2 day trip and 5 months of wages, I later heard of cars being just money sinks (hence the stupendous price of 5 and a half grand for a car they could have reasonably sold for a grand) and how the government made good chunks of the currency unusable: TWICE. But if anything it just shows how shyte the 90s government was with everything folding in on itself left right and centre which kinda explains the love communism has: it's not what was, it's in comparison to what immediately followed.

Russian parents of school friends in the 1970s told me about their fixation with preserves, mostly vegetables, stored in 2 litre glass jars that were hung outside apartment kitchen windows - most of the year round it was cold enough ! Pickled this, pickled that seemed to be their first priority. Also even tiny plots had gardens for vegetables or fruit that were mostly stored.

Is the real question has the Soviet Union ever really recovered from becoming the Soviet Union.?

World War 2 seriously damaged the Soviets. But Stalin’s pre-war purges gave Hitler a fantastic head start. As TIK says, if Hitler had supported the Russian peasants they’d have happily helped him destroy the Red Army. They absolutely hated Stalin for his purges and famines.

Best ending ever! "Comrade, the economy doesn't provide for us!" "Well comrade, it's sticks to tanks."

If Khruschev accuses Stalin of anything it is only because he was personally doing exactly that himself. And he was in charge of Ukraine during "Holodomor", when dispatched food resources from Moscow were stupidly mismanaged.

There was even a joke: ,,Why did the Soviet Union start importing grain in the 1980s? Because the last of the Tsars left the stocks "only" for 70 years."

Yes, War is costly indeed. The British Empire also didnt recover from it after all...

I used to work for an import company out of W. Germany as a sales/warehouse manager. Yes, before reunification. We had an exclusive arrangement with E. Germany for certain products. Musical instruments, knick knacks and a few other products. They would send a half dozen representatives over every 6 months. They each would carry 3 suitcases. 1 half filled, the other 2 empty. The first thing they wanted to do when they got of the plane? Disney! They would stand among the thousands of people, and saw Disney is only for the rich people! My boss got tired of it one visit and just waved his arm and said "yes, look at all the rich people"! The next thing they did was fill their suitcases with shopping. Sometimes leaving the garbage they brought behind.

To begin with, Soviet Union barely recovered from its own inception - Bolshevik revolution... especially in terms of population and _agriculture_, not to mention few other necessities. Today's Russia GDP per capita is laughable - comparable to Polish. And it is not that strange, as many people in SU mentioned that they first eaten fully during Brhrezniev era.... also: controlled socialists economies actually had FASTER recovery during first few years after wars, but lost to West in the long run - for obvious reasons.

But was this mainly a problem with socialism or with Russia? Tsarist Russia did not develop a free market economy either. They abolished serfdom in the 1860ies, but they did not get free farmers except for pockets here and there, and it has been said that Russia was the only country where factories were run by nobles and serfs, as opposed to factory owners and laborers, in the late 19th century. An exaggeration, I am sure, but it does seem to have some hold to it. Russia was entering the age of industrialization still partially stuck in feudalism and merkantilism in so many ways.

I think the biggest issue was the resistance to change. The reason why capitalism works so well is because we keep tweaking it all the time with regulations, de-regulations. there is some central planing, there are some subsidies,, anti-trust laws, breaking of monopoly... etc. USSR was experiencing a constant economic crisis... and they just rolled along with it for decades.

I lived in Italy for about four years, starting in 1969, to 1973. My Dad was stationed at Aviano AFB for these four years, and we lived nearby in Budoia, Italy. I noticed a lot of road construction, in major cities, that later I figured out, was not just simple road maintenance, but rather they were still rebuilding bomb damage from WW2. So, they were still in the process of fixing up cities as late as 1969, from the massive war damage!

Wrong sir! Stalin himself told us there was butter! We just.... Couldn't find any..... But it was there!!!! Somewhere.....

07:07: "statisticians not daring to challenge ....."; the census statisticians under Stalin did actually get it (literally) in the neck, when they produced a census that indicated that the population had dropped as a result of the famines. They weren't just told to come back again with acceptable figures - they were shot.

A Finn told me his country knew they needed to keep good relations with the Soviet Union so they sold things to the soviets . But there was nothing they could buy with Roubles ..so they bought the only thing they could from the Soviets, Military equipment. This is why about 1/3 of their military used Soviet equipment. And was some of that gold from Spain?

I visited the Soviet Bloc in 1980, which of course was hard to do at that time. I saw many buildings that still had war damage. I was a little bit surprised. Also they seemed to have a lack of heavy equipment. For example, I would see crews of 50 workman to pick up a train rail, rather than machinery.

The 'loss' is always the opportunity cost of what you could have done.

Good video. I think it’s common knowledge that they never recovered in a demographic sense, but I never heard about the economics of it

Damn, that cocky look in the end! TIK is proud of himself, as he should be)

Just catching up on your channel and came across this video. In college, I did a course on post-war Japan and I recall reading that it took Japan until 1960 to return to its 1937 GDP. I can easily believe that the Soviet economy took much longer to recover.

Reminds me of a USSR nail factory whose manager was berated and threatened for its low output but then it suddenly won national awards - alas the output was measured in tons and the manager had switched all production to just 12"" nails and nothing else.

The slogan will no longer be "stick to tanks". Instead, now it is "stick to Tankies"

As a born citizen of USSR I confirm this is accurate. To add insult to injury, much of the military equipment (I don't know exactly how much), produced after WW2, that Soviet citizens (largely against their will) sacrificed so much for, was later used in multiple civil wars around the collapsing and then former USSR, including Russia -Ukraine war today.

Very interesting video! I wonder if the USSR would have fallen sooner without WW2? Even if their economy was stagnating or falling they gained a lot of territory they could exploit in the war. And a lot of lend-lease equipment.

Thanks for the update on Battlestorm Stalingrad TIK. I have to confess, that battle has been a lifelong obsession of mine for many decades. This video is excellent as usual. I read a book a few years back (shame on me, I don't remember it's name!), That looked in detail at every Soviet leader from Lenin through to Gorbachev. The author made a compelling argument that economically, socially, and even spiritually they never even came close to recovering from the German invasion. He makes a compelling case that the main reason for the fall of the Soviet Union (albeit indirectly), was Operation Barbarossa. How ironic is it that 50 years after his death Hitler finally achieved one of his main objectives!!!

Interesting, my father was born in 1947 and he and my grandfather observed that the US economy didn’t recover from the Depression until the early 1950’s. The US wasn’t even flattened during the war the way the USSR and Europe were and it still took a while. I would argue that it was access to the superior western financial system along with Cold War deficit spending* which did the trick. The Eastern Bloc always had trouble reliably accessing hard currency throughout the 20th century to facilitate reinvestment.

People in Cuba now have worse standards of living than before Castro.

No matter who you are you can't just walk away from over 27 million casualties.

So, the old graphic of a T-34 tank up on end with caption, "this tank farm in Ukraine is a classic example of land misuse", wasn't far off the mark reflecting the chart you showed and its discussion.

Hey TIK, After the second WW many famous German generals blame Hitler for losing the war. They also mention that the soviets won because they only relied on out numbering the Germans in every battle. Was wondering if you could debunk these statements and discuss if they are true or not. Thanks.

I grew up in a county in the southern United States that was the site of a major battle in the American Civil War. There was a Confederate cemetery at the end of our street with many thousands of graves and a plantation house with blood stains still on the floors from when it was used as a field hospital in the 1860s. The population and economy of that county didn't recover to pre-Civil War levels until the 1980s and now it's the wealthiest county in the state.

Just a counterargument to what you said at 25:20 about people not caring about farmers being ready or not : I think it depends on the culture you're talking about, as a Frenchman I know for a fact that harvests are talked about on national news every year, especially the grape harvest to know if this year will be a good year for wines or not. Though I doubt Russians cared about harvests to know if the vodka would be good this year...

The US old Aircraft Hangers (and other dormitory buildings) left behind in East Anglia, England. (Where Iam from) were sold to Farmers that used them to rare & breed chickens & Turkeys in intensified indoor farming inside these large Sheds

In 2090 TIKs grandson will be making a holotube entitled "how capitalism saved us from CV19"

As a military brat I was able to travel extensively in both Western and Eastern Europe. Was on a West German swim team. We went to a meet in West Berlin when I was 17 yo (swam in the same pool as the 1936 Olympics). Anyhoooo - we were allowed to go into East Berlin (since we had Military Dependent ID cards) - we were seen as near gods by the East Germans. I traded a pair of blue jeans for 2 Goose down comforters (think the jeans cost like $10 from the BX). My dad told me to take an extra pair with me and to see what i could get for them. A few East Germans wanted my tennis shoes (cant even remember the brand) for who knows what - if I had had another pair with me would have gladly traded them. The comforters were super high quality - best comforters EVER! Recently got rid of them a move a go - but they were the best. Those comforters would be several hundred $ today…

I worked in Russia for a couple months in 1996. It was SO rare to see a man with grey/white hair. There were tons of old women, "babushkas" but there were almost zero old men. They had all been killed in WWII or the gulags afterwards. The men were very much not "manly." There was an underlying current of empty machismo but there was almost no substance there. I really searched hard to understand why. I think it's because any man with any backbone or manly force got killed because he was a threat to the Communist party or local apparatchiks. And the smart men learned to hide their inner competency and force to keep from getting killed. After a lifetime of dropping your shoulders and bowing your neck just to stay alive, it's hard to break the habit and take up your mantle of potency.

im not saying communism specially in russia was anything stellar( im from czechoslovakia so we had it rather good compared to them) but hearing this criticism comparing communism in eastern europe in 80s to world war conditions is rather funny( specially when its coming from ppl in the west having not a single experience of living a day under communist system) and such exaggeration invites defenders of communism. communism was bad enough as it was without the need of over the top criticism( same as capitalism is good enough- fairly and moderately regulated one i mean- to survive pointing out its flaws and hardships- what it has as every other system) soviet union and ppl in it( same as rest of eastern europe) was deffo better off in 60s and 70s than during or before the war. But if you say conditions in russia during its transition in 90s( and ukraine since 90s) were comparable to world war and 3rd world conditions then id agree with you.

I'm not an expert. But in my opinion again a very clear, substantiated and supported by many independent sources documentary. Excellent recap of the entire sovjet economy.

Never knew how relaxing it was to watch Tik with some Scotch on the side. Night time, everything's quiet, so i just light my cigarette and listen through my headphones to his authorative voice. Life's good.

Never mind the Soviet economy! The UK economy, world standing, power, empire, navy, manufacturing, EVERYTHING, never recovered from WWII, we here on the UK literally sacrificed our future to defeat Nazism.

There's a big and long story about each production and business in USSR and Russia, but nothing really changed after the soviets came and went away. Specifically for the agriculture - it wasn't the government who managed it in USSR for the most part, the private joint-stock companies that owned land and worked on it -you might heard of it - they were called Kolkhoz. Kolkhoz had shareholders(non-government) and an "elected" top management. These companies were selling the grain to a government trade monopoly and were relying on credits from the Governmental banks. Kolkhoz in fact reproduced the same systems that existed before: - After the wars in 17th-18th century the Russian government had lots of lands in eastern Europe where not many people lived(survived the wars). The government was establishing the administration there and filled it with people from the nearby territories. People didn't owe the land- they were working. This lasted until peasants started demanding the land privatization. - Since the 1840th and 1860th the land was sold to peasants, but in debt from the government bank. But as peasants were illiterate, to pay debt and manage sells, they were organized into communities with a head from the government administration. So in addition to the sells management, the administration and now community head had to deal also with people loans to a bank. Peasants were working and paying debt, until they realized that there's no way to pay debt as government controls the transport, sales price. Then peasants didn't want to pay the debt anymore and as it was a government bank, they wanted to destroy the bank and the Russia itself, and get the land. That turned to a revolt(part of the revolt force) in 1905 and further in 1917. - After Russia was destroyed and USSR was established, the peasants got the land, but then they quickly realized that nobody buys the grain and they need an old community head who manages everything, and reliable buyer. So the Kolkhoz companies were organized, that had the same "elected" heads who sold grain to the same fellows in a "new" government, while the Kolkhoz companies were taking the credits in Govenment banks and were a credit slave, as peasants in the past. Everything came back to where it started. I believe there were lots of famines during the 18th century, as government either didn't control the population numbers and food production, or it just used famine as incentive for people to move and develop new lands(which people didn't owe). In 1940th the western corporations came to USSR and started building factories, cities. I believe they used the famine to get people from the countryside to cities where there was no famine at the same time. This worked - even being the Kolkhoz members they ran to cities, builds and factories. The Kolkhoz heads were the key figures to produce the famine as they knew the production, demand and supply and was controlling the sale and storage. In USSR the agriculture profits were shared among many parties, except the people themselves: Kolkhoz heads, government management. It's not an incident that many of them were already rich people with relative abroad when the union collapsed.

If you want to see something frightening study the Russian demographic curve. Every 20 years or so they have an inverse spike. The children of those born in 1920-1930 are more or less nonexistent. Their would be fathers died during the war (so did many of that generations mothers). It's not merely a failure to economically recover, it's much more serious: a semi succesful genocide. Russia's permafucked, it's not entirely their fault, but lots of aspects of Russian culture caused and excarbate their population problem.

A better question would be did the Soviet Union recover from the October Revolution, Lenin, Communism, Stalin, and Stalin's purges, pogroms, etc.

Since Russia's population development is still weirdly wavey, because so many people of a specific age group died, can you really ever actually "recover" from any war, especially of such magnitude? I mean your development may increase your wealth or even population to a bigger than pre-war level, but that still would likely not be the level it would have without the war.

I liked your reff to underground goods music. Read that the demand for rock n roll music and the efforts to make home made photographs ( including stripping public telephones for components) was a major mindset shift that helped bring down communism.

I can recommend 'Red Plenty' by Francis Spufford as an original read on the subject of Soviet economics. Rather than looking at statistics, it explains how the system worked (or didn't work) & the consequences of not having market prices by telling stories. it's a great read...

Talking about all these food shortages makes me feel hungry 🙉

Dear TIK. I enjoy your videos and think that you are doing a great job in your WW2 pieces. However, while I agree with a lot of what you say about the soviet system and the socialist economy, I do think you have a somewhat distorted idea of the realities of life in the late soviet period. I know that because I actually grew up and lived there in the 1970s and 1980s. It definitely was no paradise, but the reality was that most people had a low but bearable standard of life, had state-provided apartments with central heating, an electric or gas stove, a TV (soviet made), etc. However, there was still a significant number of those who lived in “communal apartments” or various dormitories - I don’t know the figures, but think this maybe 15-20% of the population, mainly young workers or single elderly people. About 10% of the population owned a car. There was free healthcare (poor quality, but universal), other social services. That is why many people of my generation and older remember those times as the “good old days”. Food shortages did exist, but there was no hunger. In fact, there were numerous jokes about people’s refrigerators being full despite empty shelves in stores (what is also an exaggeration, there actually was food in stores, though often in limited quantity and of poor quality). For example - big lines for bread in rural villages were often linked to the fact that people actually used bread (due to its subsidized prices) to feed livestock. There was a difference in the levels of consumption in different parts of the country, but nowhere did people actually go hungry. And yes, there were basically two economies in the country - the official socialist economy and the “second” economy, which was not just the “black market”, but also included functioning “farmers markets” where people sold what they were able to produce on their personal plots of land, some limited forms for entrepreneurship (outside of capital cities) and so on. Again, this was no paradise, but for those who lived in the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s these were “good times”. As for the attention in the media to a year’s harvest - this was due to the general focus of the media on the “development of the socialist economy”, not due to popular interest in such figures. Sincerely yours, Andre Kamenshikov

its hard to recover from 30 million lives lost,especially young men who would have contributed to the work force and wouldnt leave a family behind on state's care

OK, this is impressive TIK. I reformed from being a socialist to a free market liberal in my twenties and this is one of the best argued condemnations of socialism I have ever seen. Check Mate

'Tank' you for the video TIK. Hopefully, you stay healthy and can keep providing these informative, enjoyable videos. :)

yay! someone is finally realizing what really went on. people would not believe how bad things were over there.

Given that supermarket shelves are currently empty, this is very aptly timed, TIK.

I was born in East Germany. The production numbers where headlines every time, everybody knew it was propaganda and nobody gave a shit.

Economics is not your thing TIK...

Forgive the necro comment, but towards the middle you point out how people in market economies wouldn't notice unless there's a massive crop failure or factory fire. I would point out that there have been multiple fires at food production plants, meatpacking factories, that sort of thing, and there's basically been nothing mentioned in the news.

The tragedy is not that so many suffered but that they did so avoidably and easily avoidably.

I was expecting an intelligent analysis of the stated subject. Not some cold war, anti Soviet Union rant. It is 2020, not 1967.

Looking at things as they are now, demographically:Nope, Financially: Only if you take away the corruption, Production: Nope, they are at the same level as 1939.

brilliant work my friend! now compare it to w. Germany and it's "Wirtschaftswunder" to see, how the western system is prior to the eastern system back in the days and even now!

I would argue that if it wasn't for foolish American corporations investing in the Soviet Union in the 1920s-1930s, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and Lend-Lease, the Soviet Union would have collapsed not long after Stalin's death, if not before. The Soviet economic model was completely unworkable and largely depended on stealing existing technology from the West to stay afloat. Oil later allowed the Soviet Union to keep itself going for a couple more decades, but this also ended up failing due to declining oil prices in the 80s. In short, the Soviet economy was doomed to fail, and it was only a combination of lucky factors that prolonged its existence. Still, the fact that the Soviet Union only existed for 70 years is a sign that it wasn't built to last.

Your reference to bakeries reminded me of a report on them in the devastated Eastern Soviet area. There was a shortage of large bakeries as they had been destroyed in the war and it took years to rebuild them. Sounds strange to say but it was not only rebuilding the ovens etc but involved training the bakers, establishing the supply and distribution networks that went with each one.

Ty Tik for a great upload, I knew a polish guy who told me that people would queue up for hours just to buy a single but brand new razor blade. Another who's farther was high in the state had no problems because he could travel to Sweden and buy anything they needed. Thanks again you do a great job.

Great stuff. Don’t stick to tanks because people who think conflict is not driven by economics but is purely ideological are ... well, dreamers.