The film is using episodes filmed mainly at the Kremlin, Soviet Union's headquarters which enable to have a glance to world's most well-known political kitchen. Director TOOMAS LEPP, author and producer JUHAN AARE. Eesti Kultuurfilm 2006
You know, when they forced Khruschev out, he sat down and wrote two letters to his successor. He said - "When you get yourself into a situation you can't get out of, open the first letter, and you'll be safe. When you get yourself into another situation you can't get out of, open the second letter". Soon enough, he gets into a tight situation, and he opens the first letter. It says - "Blame it all on me". So he blames it all on the old guy, and it worked like a charm. When he got himself into a second situation, he opened the second letter. It said - "Sit down, and write two letters".
This documentary should be called how Estonia acheived its independence, not the collapse of the soviet union. The events in the batic states, though important in their own right, were but a sidenote to the really important stuff happening in Moscow.
Sor Alb, you are 100% correct! While the chronology of events that occurred in the Baltic States were a very significant factor and/or catalyst leading to the implosion and demise of the Soviet Union (including the crippling of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), it should also be understood that; a) During and after the attempted coup d'etat of August 19/1991, both the Communist "hawks" on one side and Mikhail Gorbachev's Administration on the other side became discredited in the eyes of most Soviet citizens as both were accused of being incompetent and corrupt, b) Gorbachev fancied himself as a peace-maker and not as a war monger. Therefore, he rejected the option of using force to prevent any potential "bloodbath" as well as any further disintegration of the USSR and instead wrongfully believed that he had the ability to negotiate a "new" peace with the Soviet Republics by decentralizing the USSR, c) (Note: This is where the documentary made a major error by totally ignoring the vital role that Ukraine as the second most powerful Union Republic played in the dissolution of the Soviet Union). So, in essence, the "Genie" (AKA the Union Republics) escaped from its bottle (AKA the CPSU/USSR) and with that, the destruction of the Soviet Russian Empire.
Well, I'd argue the Baltic states were one of the key reasons behind why the Soviets collapsed. The revolutions of 1989 already shook the soviets to its core, but they weren't directly part of the Union. The Baltic States, as members of the Soviet Union, drumming up independence at the same time only added to the fuel for independence in other Soviet states. The 1989 revolutions spread one by one, and when Ukraine also decided to call it quits, the union was finished. There was no point to continue on when the second biggest republic of the Union quit.
@@romandawydiak4476 Yeah, Ukraine's role in the fall of the soviet union is often underestimated. After the baltic states, the stans were on their way out, and Azerbaijian was also way out the door. Many communists still believed that the Soviet experiment could continue as Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Ukraine's large population calling for independence at the same time meant that there was no hope left for the Soviets to continue existing.
@@romandawydiak4476 Yeah, I my self thought so too.. too much Baltic, too little other Soviet Republics. Ukraine was a cornerstone as her lands were voluntarily forced or forcedly volunteered in the 20s then. And with such a large state seceeding from USSR there was no USSR anymore. Ukraine and Kazakhstan were , one could say, the Non-Russian heavyweights within the USSR. Why the need for Baltic States anyway? If they go independent, it is just a needle by size. Secesseion of the Baltics wouldn't have thrown USSR in disarray. It's like to go crazy because some cake crumb falls off the Soviet table. If a fat slice like Ukraine is gone you better start to worry.
@@yuchenchen8012 Invalid argument, on this occasion the size of brain, bravery and motivation had a higher effect than a size of land. Since when the amount of land is a problem to Kremlius? Estonians should be recognised for the impact their example of determination had. It's the hardest to be the first to bring the change.
@@lomparti thats the problem i always have with people who lose their minds whenever the candidate they dont like wins the presidency. they act like the entire world is coming to the end, as if the president is some almighty king who decides & chooses everything, who lives and dies. fucking local & state elections & laws effect you more than the president does, and you never hear people freaking out about those.
I never knew that the Molotov-Ribentrop agreement's secret annex included the annexation of Baltic states by the USSR. Every time i red about or heard something about it, the main point of this secret part of the Pact was the agreement to carve out Poland between the Third Reich and the USSR. I wasn't aware of other significant points in it that talked about the annexation of Baltic and the invasion of Finland. It's always nice to learn something new about the topic or an event that is considered to be the general knowledge. Well at least general knowledge to an educated person or to a person that's willing to learn and absorb new ideas.
@@chrisa2612 Sure. The Voting Rights Act wasn't signed until 1965, before that black people couldn't even vote in some states. The idea of ever having a black man in the oval office must've seemed pretty unimaginable at the time.
Does this film was sponsored by Estonian? Somehow it seems that YES. Other baltic countries also played big role in this collapse. For me this film was not very objective.
The fact is.... During the collapse of the Soviet union, only one old bolshevik was alive to see the demise. His name was Lazar kaganovich. He was the last surviving Old Bolshevik from the time of Vladimir Lenin & was in the inner circle of Joseph Stalin along with Vyacheslav Molotov (the guy behind Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact )
52:10 them asking where they will show the footage and their excitement when they hear "Estonia" honestly breaks my heart now. The Russian people went from being free to being ruled by, let's face it, a dictator -- once again. "Let's be friends.", that's what people want, not conflicts.
For these who don't remember: Lithuania declared Re-Establishment of independence on March 11, 1990; Latvia declared Re-Establishment of independence on May 4, 1990; Estonia declared Re-Establishment of independence on August 20, 1991.
yeah and estonia declared sovereignty on nov 16 1988 its all a comment section game of "first!!!" but it doesnt matter, it was an unified action, estonia couldn't do it without the other baltic states, the baltic states couldnt do it without moscows weakness, moscow wouldnt have been weak if it wasnt for the international state of things... and so on. but the republics wanting freedom worked together fantastically, all these actions a'la baltic chain, were gigantic in showing unity of the baltics against moscow.
Darius A, no one cares, lol You did not establish anything, you were just released by Russians, just like you were leashed by them before. Till next time, lol
@John Anthony Saburao Unless you can change that history before it even happens! On a side note, many African empires and kingdoms were able to prosper and survive far longer than any other civilizations around the world. Of course, this was before the rest of the world (mainly the Europeans and Arabs) started to invade the continent and enslaved most of the populace.
Sad he isnt mentioned in Google search much at all. He had the smoking gun and refused to put it away. Bravo. The people of Estonia must have been terrified of the wrath of the Soviets.
I had tears in my eyes watching this video. I'm Polish and pact between Hitler and Stalin impacted my country immensely. Thank you friends from Estonia.
In the middle of 1987 in Tallinn, Estonia, it was not the first students' demonstration against Soviet policy, but the second. The first one took place in December of 1986 in Almaty, Kazakhstan. That demonstration was suppressed by the military troops brought from Ryazan', Russia, and many students were killed.
"Everything the Communists told us about Communism turned out to be false. But everything the Communists told us about Capitalism turned out to be true."
As the old saying goes, "anyone who accepts Communist propaganda at face value, or makes false equivalencies between Communist dictatorships and Western democracies, is a totalitarian criminal."
My Mother being from the Ukraine remebers when the Soviet Union collapse watching it happen on tv My Mother said it would eventually happen and she was right and also said Her country The Ukraine was considered the bread basket of the Soviet Union My Mother Died in 2019 and we took her home to be buried in her home country I will miss her Love you mom you are where you belong
As many people are complaining that it is focused on Estonia - the original title was actually "Eestlased Kremlis" ("Estonians in the Kremlin"). The English title is misleading, but likely not many people would watch it with the original title... Yet, it is more informative than most of the docs created by big companies (and made with much smaller budget). Check out "The Soviet Story"; as it was made in Latvia, a lot of the footage is Latvian; it's just natural with the available budget, contacts and other options.
I never realised the seeds of their independence lay in those secret clauses in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. I read a whole book on the pact for a history project back in the early 90s but never knew its contemporary significance. Thank you for putting this online.
What about polish german non-aggression pact signed in january 26 1934 by Josef Pilsudski in Poland with vos Germán counterpart hans-adolfvons Moltke,7 year before Rivventrop-molotov, the polish already knew that the german interest was Russialand
The secrecy, denial, and distortion of the pact today, is how Putin's regime is still holding on. Most Russians dont even know about the pact, and those who do adopt the distorted version of it, which completely justifies it.
Brilliant film, watching this unfold as a teenager in California was astounding. We could not believe that the USSR was just fading away. This film puts beautiful faces to the brave deeds, and incredible efforts that brought about Freedom.
@@miguelborges3125 LOL you're using a term on me that is used almost globally to refer to people who blindly follow liberal Democratic govts🤣 calm down boy
I got news for you fake news has existed since long before this. “Everything they believe will be a lie and then we will know our campaign is complete.” William J Casey 1981
now the media's only purpose is the propagation of brainwashing falsehoods... All of this to consolidate the power of corporations and twisted political parties...
Maybe you noticed the TV NEWS almost in the end of the video. It was called AK and it flickered and exposed eye symbol. Also Gorbachev and kallas are both freemasons. Don't get fooled... It was controlled by same criminal secret sects as today.
Oh jesus fucking christ, every single roach is claiming to have single-handed destroyed it. U.S Chernobyl disaster wartime economy since Stalin Poles Perestroika Afghans Alcohol prohibition and now this. who is gonna be the fucking next...
Putin says the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. I'd say the rise of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.
It is amazing how Gorbachev is smiling and laughing while people talk about dismantling the country. I try to imagine Brejnev or Khrushchev in the same situation...or Stalin....OMG...
@@jamescromarty1455 There still existed old school guys. There existed operative plans in the spirit of Stalin. The trains were ready, hundreds of thousands of pairs of handcuffs were stored and waited for the X hour. It might have happened. Blood might have been shed. Lives could have been destroyed.
Great documentary. Even though I remember that time well, I did not realize the importance of the secret pact in the chain of events leading to the break up of USSR.
and this is just recent history and so many events .... if you will learn history of each european country counting back 1000 yeasr you would be next Einstein
I think the producers of this vid are also responsible for; The power of Nightmares, The manufacture of consent, Bitter lake, and Hypernormalisation. I think.
Thank you for uploading this video, it clears alot of things up for me, I grew up during the collapse of the S.U. but was too young to really know what happened.
I watched the whole thing and have a better idea of the situation but many more questions than answers. It also seems very heavily focused on Estonia and I was hoping to learn more(or anything) about the resolution of Germany as well. Suffice to say, education on this topic is taught to us in the West but in a very cursory manner.
Everytime I see Gorbachev I keep picturing the scene from the movie "Naked Gun" of the guy grabbing his head in a head lock and trying to wipe off the birthmark on his head with a rag thinking it was a stain. LMFAO
Gorvachov was a mother. Can you imagine today if a separatist region of China were to look for its independence and have the passivity and approval for meeting of Xi?..Can you imagine that?..Unthinkable, with a strong leader. But possible with a mother like Gorbi.
42:59 Where is the image of the three political figures taken from? The text is in Romanian, and it seems to me to be some painting in a church and I wonder where could that be. I could pay a visit to that place
I never knew Estonia's perseverance was one of the engines that powered the downfall of USSR. This is to prove that nobody can truly ever defeat a united people. As a Romanian who had to suffer because of the Communism, I give thanks to the Baltic people, whom I can consider to be my friends, for the good they indirectly did to my life. It would have been a drastically different live, should Communism have continued.
The damn Bolsheviks claimed to be athiests to hid her blood lusts to Gods people everyehere.They were Satanists and proved it starting in old Soviet Union. To paraphrase Reagan:Putin before you retire, tear down that Vile Lenin tomb and bury his evil remains in some unmarked hole. How can his body be still there while this POS was the man who gave the orders too butcher theCzars family and servants? Destroy that vile symbol of Pure evil Mr. President .Now!!
A member of the Estonian delegate spoke to Gorbachev: "It is the issue of discrimination...but everything is decided by an official in high office." Isn't it the same with the current EU? Everything is decided by the unelected technocrats? The EU is USSR EUSS - European Union of Soviet Socialist
No it's not.. You poor British airheads were free to join this successful union & still free to leave. Notice the days with ongoing special treatment of you lazy nutters along with loads of subventions will finish too. Shut up with your unsubstantiated nonsense and Sail on 👋🙌
ffs you have a whole European Parliament, of course they will employ technical experts for safety standards etc. Every government does. YOU ARE A CLEVER KREMLIN TROLL! KUDOS!
@@mynamejeb8743 The problem with the collapse of Communism is that nobody was held accountable like Nazi refugees. The cost is now that they are spread around the world without a single problem for them. They were once all rounded up in one place but now they are spread around the world and specially concentrated in D.C. in the USA. Now things that were once so much forbidden in the West as terrorism is now part of politics with even Communist Parties in a lot of countries. People were way less brainwashed by politics before 2012. It happened an eerie boom of politics that took over the world not for the better I guess. People are also getting increasingly more domesticated in such a way that is unbearable to talk with most of them. A gazelle would look like a prey close to them. They are ready for any authority to do anything with them. People also don't have self beliefs... they always believe in what "everybody else" already believes and just follows. So they don't know what really is right or wrong inherently, truly in its reality... they just consider what "most people" considers already, so when they don't know what "most people" considers already, they are stuck in a pit completely clueless about the morality of such thing. This level of collectivism and lack of individualism is detrimental to society as a whole. It's dangerous. Plus, Civilization is way more prone to fall this way. *Even science can be politicized now!* We are losing culture as a whole and replacing it with politics... a dystopian political culture that knows to care only about this. It became the life's purpose of many people now when before we had more nuanced interests and actual intra-cultures that were lost in a mere 15 years leaving the whole scenario way more plain and boring to the point of the designs of the cars become the same thing over a decade! The world is way more boring now and people have their whole attentions free to politics as politics that was always boring before became way more interesting now. See??
@@mynamejeb8743 The whole social justice thing was lost a long time ago and became only a mere orchestra, a show. It's devastatingly disappointing the whole stupidity of people of believing this crude cheap show called politics is true! If they wanted just votes they should just do a single constant campaign of encouraging the people to vote no matter which side. But what they really want is to indirectly control the amount of votes from each side so they don't ever need to rig elections with fake votes. The voting system is legit, but the brainwashing is SO EFFECTIVE to the minuscule level where they can keep it 51% against 49% constantly every single election switching just a little amount of people engaged in politics to vote. Since I was a kid I looked at these percentages and told myself they know just how much proportion of amount of political propaganda from one side to the other is necessary to reach these numbers of people voting without having to rig the elections! It's genius! Or maybe not! But you get the point. The proportion of votes always show that both candidates half won all of the times, but just because one number is higher the candidate is considered 100% winner instead of just 51%. This is the invisible dance of democracy. As long as people believe that the politicians are in true opposition fighting against each other it works because there are sides to vote. But taking democracy out, the playing members and the leaders they represent are always the same. Democracy gives a lot of security due to its dynamics because anything else would be dictatorship. Let's say we live in a "very dynamic dictatorship"...
There went the Russian colonial empire: 30 years after the dismantling of the British, French, Belgian..... colonial empires in 1961-62. So ended the era of European colonial history over other non-European (and even European) peoples. That left only colonial empire of the Serbs (euphemistically called Yugoslavia) to fall apart bloodily from 1991-2006.
Informative documentary. Good to see the backstory and chronology. I was in my early 30s during these events and I remember that the world, as we knew it, changed within a few months. Thank you.
Very well done. I think now historians are emphasizing that the cost of the Soviet military buildup, the cost of the Afghan war, and the cost of Chernobyl were eventually just too much for the Soviet economy which was very fragile anyway.
I remember that my mom was an ussr citizen and when the ussr collapsed alot of people were shocked, TV channels were closed or something..., alot of people were confused ,after that, the crimes started alot and cops were confused and it was hard to take controle that time, and i heard alot of people said that there were good times,so i started to became curios and interested, anyways i think ussr had a good and bad things and it had alot of talented people... but ussr was a worthful country.
@KAY EM yeah well communists were a lot poorer than the western people, which is why they tried to flee from the east to the west. So yeah sorry captitalism>communism
Maybe the USSR leaders were powerful but as a country the people were impoverished and held in captivity to a bureaucratic nightmare. It is a huge overstatement calling it one of the most powerful empires the world had ever known. It had bombs but it was economically and moral, utterly bankrupted. Persian, Roman, Chinese, England, Macedonia those where Empires, Russia was a wanta be.
Ok, the conclusion part was so stupid. Peaceful disintegration of the Soviet Empire? War in Grozny, Massacred Azerbaijanis by armenia, Abkhazia, Ossetia, Transnistria right when it was disintegrating. Today the war in Ukraine, seriously this documentary is very Estonia-centrical (which is totally fine as it focuses on Estonia) , it should have conlcuded like "phew- not many casualties here, let's now act like we are Nordic"
It was peaceful. The movements for independent republics were a consequence of Gorbachev's liberalization policies, not their cause. Most people didn't want independent republics. In a March 1991 referendum, most had voted to stay in a reformed Union that respected individual and national rights. Only the Baltic states, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia had held their own referendums and had overwhelmingly voted for independence.
From _Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945_ by Tony Judt: "The disappearance of the Soviet Union was a remarkable affair, unparalleled in modern history. There was no foreign war, no bloody revolution, no natural catastrophe. A large industrial state -- a military superpower -- simply collapsed: its authority drained away, its institutions evaporated. The unraveling of the USSR was not altogether free of violence, as we have seen in Lithuania and the Caucasus; and there would be more fighting in some of the independent republics in the coming years. But for the most part the world's largest country departed the stage almost without protest. To describe this as a bloodless retreat from Empire is surely accurate; but it hardly begins to capture the unanticipated ease of the whole process." books.google.nl/books?id=aU8laRbSvrMC&pg=PA657
Kristina S. Are you trying to prove that most people actually liked the Soviet Union? The fact that a bit of free speech allowed by Gorbachev opened up a world of dissent proves the opposite.
+Nick Savage Most of the population didn't dislike the USSR enough to want it gone. That's why most voted to stay in a reformed Soviet Union, that would respect individual and national rights.
+Nick Savage Most Central Asians liked the USSR. These nations had no history of independence, they were created in the 1920s and 1930s by nationalists supported by the Soviet regime, and also received massive economic support from Russia and other European republics. There was a movement to make Russia independent from the USSR, these people believed that the Soviet regime was destroying Russian culture and that Central Asia was an economic drain on Russia. But in Central Asia there were no pro-independence movements. "Central Asia, and Kyrgyzstan, did not launch an independence movement from the USSR, instead the USSR/Russia removed itself from Central Asia. The result of Soviet/Russian colonization was that the collapse of the USSR was an about and unexpected end to membership in what most residents regarded as a legitimate political community. Unlike the Baltics or Eastern Europe, or Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan along with other Central Asian states, did not want to leave the USSR. The ambivalence, even reluctance, with which Kyrgyzstan greeted the Soviet Union's collapse is directly related to the Soviet contribution in modernizing Kyrgyzstan and in nurturing, if only unintentionally, the beginnings of a Kyrgyz national identity. In a March 17, 1991, referendum (nine months prior to the official end of the USSR) the Central Asians overwhelmingly voted to remain part of the USSR. The population of Kyrgyzstan today is not one that looks back to a heroic resistance or a daring independence movement. There are no democratic leaders in Kyrgyzstan since there was no movement for freedom, independence, and democracy. The resulting post-Soviet population generally feels abandoned and years for the Soviet past. With no goal, no struggle, no clear vision of the future, anarchy is one likely resulting state of affairs. *The population of Kyrgyzstan is one that did not want to leave the USSR, and today overwhelmingly agrees that life was much better during Soviet times than today because there was certainty, security, and jobs."* books.google.nl/books?id=jGTXJ65Z2j4C&pg=PA97
@@kelvinbremont1341 it started with the Baltic Republics but it was Gorbachev who allowed meetings and agreements with them to start the process. If the Soviet Union and Gorbachev still wanted the Soviet Union it would have continued to exist. The truth is they wanted better economic opportunity with the WEST. Russia is still alive and well and they now have the same national anthem as they had in the Soviet Union which was selected by Stalin after WWII. Putin brought it back after Yelstan had changed it.
ultonian63 The Estonian language does have some words that derive from German (when German nobles lived in Livonia) but mostly our language is related a lot more to Finnish, due to both languages being in the Finno-Ugric language group.
@@hbtm_434 Sure HBTM, I'm aware of the German influence (eg loss = Schloss, amet = Amt, kunst = Kunst) but I'm sure that someone who knew German and looked at a piece of Estonian text wouldn't conclude that the language looked Germanic.
The dissolution of the USSR started before 1989, blowing up in 1953 in Berlin, 1956 in Poland and later in Hungary (which was the bloody one!) and Prague in 1968. These events led to Solidarity and the brave Poles to carry it through to the end. With the Pope on board and a clear zeal to be free , it still took a great deal of lucky twists and turns , as if scripted by a higher power . The USSR was just plain inefficient, a nation of bureaucrats , deeply rooted among the social lines.
Its almost orgasmic to find something, like this, that is so informative and well done about a time in history that most of us THINK we know about. Yet I did not know about any of this. lol Brilliant film.
I didn’t know about how the Estonians used the secret protocols of the Non-Aggression Pact (though I did know about those protocols) to leverage their independence. But I did remember the human chain across the three Baltic States.
@Jake Johansson Sorry about calling you a Moron, it was meant for someone else. I guess that makes me a Moron. Anyway, I think it's just a word game here. State Duma is what I considered their Congress. Russia's State of Duma appears to be closely made up of members very similar to the members of Congress of the U.S.
A more or less non-violent end to an empire that had required about 300,000 direct casualties and about as 450,000 military personnel dead from disease to come into being (according to Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis; source- Wikipedia). Good documentary. Eye opener to the Baltic situation in the late 80's.
And just think if Russia adopted American version of democracy after ww2 they could of very well been the richest most powerful country today fighting for the number 1 spot with USA.
Adding some clarifications to the content discussed, it is urgent to point out that two countries took man to outer space during the last century, but only one of them still took man to the moon and gave the world the Internet and cell phones. The “success” of Stalin - the man who used to boast of having taken the U.S.S.R "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just one generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence. In an attempt to reform a decadent regime, Gorbachev proceeded more quickly with the process of political openness in the hope of removing the predictable resistance that the Soviet bureaucracy would create to economic reform measures, as was fully proven by the failed coup attempt. in the USSR in August 1991 - which ended up precipitating the final crisis of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR itself. Having restored several freedoms (creed, expression, organization, party, etc.) that had been abolished in his country since the time of Vladimir Lenin, Gorbachev's opening process can be defined as a kind of attempt to "deleninize" the U.S.S.R. While Gorbachev went ahead with his policy of "one step forward" (towards capitalism) and two steps back (back to socialism), his Chinese parallel - Deng Xiaoping - adopted a logic diametrically opposed to that of Gorbachev: he prioritized the achievement of economic prosperity (adopting capitalism in practice) precisely to delay any attempt at political opening, as was evident with the acceleration of the economy. reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre. It is important to note that it was Karl Marx himself who, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, discerned the scenario in which the conditions for a social revolution process are formed, describing it as follows: “At a certain stage in its development, the material productive forces of society contradict existing production relations or - which is just their legal expression - with the property relations in which they have operated until then. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into fetters of them. So, it is a time of social revolution. '* By rejecting the pursuit of profit maximization as an instrument to stimulate innovation, socialist countries ended up condemning themselves to obsolescence. Thus, they lost the chance to incorporate the productivity gains made possible by technological progress. That is why the capitalist countries managed to provide a greater rise in the standard of living of their population, even without pursuing the egalitarian ideal. Therefore, until the “final crisis of socialism” (to paraphrase K. Marx's own definitions once again), it was only a matter of time. But religious fanatics do not give up on their faith, even against the indisputable proof of the facts, which completely refute it! What has always happened to human society since the time of chipped stone is that technological development does not require human beings to dedicate themselves to certain activities, which start to be carried out in a more intensive way, with increased productivity of decline in the contingent of hand. -employed labor, eliminating certain jobs with the aid of the developed technology. But the jobs eliminated are offset by the increased employment of labor in more technologically developed sectors. This is basically what happened when the advent of the Industrial Revolution helped to increase the productivity of the extractive and agricultural sector - notably from the advent of agro-industry - while reducing the need for the employment of human labor in these sectors, which makes up the primary sector of the economy. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution moved the economically active population to the secondary sector of the economy (handicrafts, industry and manufacturing). This process was first noticed by the Austrian economist Joseph Alois Schumepeter, who defined it as a kind of "creative destruction" - that is: technological progress destroys job opportunities in some sectors, but also creates new opportunities in other sectors! The problem is that Schumpeter was a pessimist, who detested the Soviet regime, but strongly believed that he embodied the "future of humanity". Schumpeter did not realize that he had found the key to explain why capitalism does not self-destruct in an immense crisis of overproduction, as K. Marx predicted it would happen: instead, it evolves, creating the conditions for the overcoming of technological civilization. industrial and the subsequent advent of a technological civilization of a post-industrial character, in the same way as the Industrial Revolution had already done with the agricultural or pre-industrial civilization. Therefore, we can conclude that from the invention of the first chipped stone tools to artificial intelligence and space travel, human history is not driven by a notorious and highly questionable "class struggle", but by technological progress: since it discovered how handling fire and producing tools, including the wheel, human evolution has become more technological and less biological, unlike other animals. The main reason for this phenomenon is that, with the help of the technology we have created, the human race has gradually become less subject to the limitations imposed by nature. It was by obstructing this mechanism of human evolution - disregarding the importance of maximizing profit in an industrial technological society - that the so-called "socialist mode of production" proved unable not only to compete with capitalism, but even to survive. Therefore, it is easy to deduce that this is a mere question of TIME until the so-called "21st century socialism" in Venezuela ends up following the same path as its counterpart of the last century. However, if there are still economic reforms, it is possible that it will survive for some time. To paraphrase Marx once again, it can be said with certainty that socialism is a system full of contradictions, which bears the germ of its own destruction: it is the system that digs its own grave! * Reproduced according to MARX, K. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, organized by Florestan Fernandes and published under the title K. Marx: Teoria e processo histórico da revolução social, In Marx & Engels, Great Social Scientists Collection , História, vol. 36. São Paulo: Ática, 1983. p. 232. Edição comemorativa do centenário da morte de Karl Marx. Obs .: Adaptation made from a text of my authorship published in issue nº 72 of the Magazine of the Brazilian Association of Intellectual Property - RABPI in September 2014.
phenomenal piece. learned so much. ILL BET ANYTHING RUSSIANS TODAY ABSOLUTELY HATE THIS DOCUMENTARY AND LOOK BACK ON THIS PERIOD IN HISTORY WITH A SOME SHAME. I WONDER... PUTIN SURE WOULD FEEL THAT WAY. FANTSTIC FILM.
Who's here after watching HBO's Chernobyl? (I don't like such stupid comments 'whos here in 2019' but here I just want to see how many people got interested in Soviet Union history after the show)
I m here after watching chernobyl. I ve been binge watching chernobyl videos on youtube lately and this has popped up. Chernobyl may have been one of the causes of the fall of soviet union because it exposed the mass deficiencies in soviet infastructure
In the USA it was quite a mental shift to take this in...for my entire life, there'd been this looming USSR threat, or so we thought, and then it was suddenly just gone.
Death of Soviet Union was a disaster. Suddenly they had tariffs, divided infrastructure, divided agriculture and industrial base. Excluding Baltic states, USSR should have devolved into an EU style association with Kremlin controlling all shared infrastructure from national power grid to boarder controls for the new states as the CIS with teeth. Each state should have been a laboratory of prosperity and freedom. Potential was huge! You can't smash, overnight, a 70 year old system without great hardship and war. The break up needed to be managed but Gorbachev was too weak. The EU is no Empire but multinational and USSR needed to shift slowly. "Freedom" hurt most everyone outside major cities. Later, the CIS could have merged or partnered with EU
I would say that the beginning of the end was the Chernobyl disaster. During this episode the glasnost policy was tested and the international community developed a hard line against Soviet secrecy. Near the end it was Gorbachev himself who was promoting openness and truth, and we all know that the USSR was a house of cards.
It certainly helped. So did Afghanistan. There was a widespread unwillingness to serve either Soviet army or civil defense since blood was shed and radiation poisoning was caught just due to mismanagement of idiotic leaders made possible by the regime.
The USSR was "made in the USA". It was an extremely useful and profitable Wall Street investment. The majority of the Bolsheviks were Americans that spoke russian, and trained in small arms and terrorism in NYC under the eye of the leader Leon Trotsky, who lived in Manhattan luxury apartment and traveled in a limousine provided by his Wall St sponsors. En-route to Russia, Trotsky was imprisoned by the Canadian governments...........for 3 months the US state department, the President and Wall St luminaries lobbied to have Trotsky released which eventually succeeded. During the 1920's through to 1945 the US government allowed expertise and technology to be provided to the USSR...........only the gigantic 1941 lend lease program of aid to the USSR saved it from certain defeat at the most critical phase of the war. US supplies were crucial in alleviating shortages and boosting production in the gigantic armaments industries of the USSR that had existed since the 1930's deep in the far east, at places like Magnitorsk and Chelyabinsk.
I've leafed through a couple of books that discussed the breakup of the USSR mostly written in the late-70s. However, it is generally accepted that these authors got lucky with their predictions. There really isn't an exact reason the USSR couldn't have lasted for quite a while longer. It had major structural problems and had reached a point where reforms would have likely broken the thing apart to some extent (unless of course, the reforms were much more radical than what Gorbi went for) but if they had maintained the contours of the old Stalinist system they could have puttered on for god knows how many years. Alternatively, the USSR could easily have continued as a loose federation with pro-market and democratic reforms. The USSR could have even taken the route of China and kept a Stalinist structure with market reforms. ...I genuinely think that without the august coup the USSR would have continued to exist in some form or another. At least in name. You have to realize that just a decade earlier the Soviet Union was a very stable system albeit with major structural problems.
The USSR almost did survive, of sorts. Ironically, the August Coup was meant to save the USSR, but in actuality doomed it. Most of the Republics were in the process of drafting a new treaty that would have kept much of the old Soviet structure together, including the name (sorta). However, the coup gave local leaders the justification to declare independence and secure their own local power structure.
Seeing how the former Soviet states are after the collapse of the USSR, it would probably have been better to keep it going. Putin would have never risen to power if everyone was afraid of ruining the system defined by the New Union Treaty
Actually, the market system itself failed in 1929. The only thing that kept capitalism on life support was the government regulations against heedless speculation, and bubble forming. Remember that.
