Collapse

What Hacker News says

1. ajcpMay 2026
   The comment you are replying to is correct. The Soviet Union had massive amounts of resources and capital (both human and economic) to be able to develop and support technical innovations. The wider-Soviet bloc itself was of such a scale as to be able to completely support their own divergent technologies and innovations. The higher education systems themselves were sufficient to provide and foster the talent, even if they were overly-politicized.

   Of issue, especially as time went on, was the overly-centralized nature of national resource and economic strategy and planning. Especially ESPECIALLY constraining was the dual-circuit monetary system of its economy, which literally prevented half of its "capital" to follow innovation or market forces outside of centralized allocation.

   I highly recommend the book Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok

   Show morethread
2. ajcpFeb 2025
   Can't recommend 'Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union' by Vladislav M Zubok enough. An absolute page-turner that makes this super clear.
   thread
3. bryikAug 2022
   To anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union" by Vladislav M. Zubok. This comment reminded me of one of my notes:

   Near the end of the book, George HW Bush tries to convince the US government to provide economic aid to stabilize the fledgeling Russian state but this fails. Earlier in the book there is talk of a "Grand Bargain", a theory that for $100 billion the US could convert the USSR from an enemy into a friend similar to how the Marshall Plan and Berlin Airlift converted the Germans into close US allies. Japan is another example of this. After WW2, instead of razing Japan and Germany as Rome did to Carthage, the US raised them from their knees. It helped rebuild and rehabilitate these countries.

   There was no Marshall Plan for Russia. Many of the Russian politicians and economists expected significant economic aid from the West. This aid did not materialize, at least not in the form and magnitude that was expected. The transition from state socialism to capitalist market economy was traumatic; during the USSR the poverty rate was 30%, after the collapse the poverty rate was 80%. The average lifespan of a Russian man was 66 during the USSR, after the collapse it was around 55.

   The loss of super power status, of territory, and of economic strength created significant political backlash in the years following the collapse. These conditions promoted nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism which Putin used to seize control. Russia does not have a cultural history of democracy so maybe this was inevitable, but perhaps greater Western support would have avoided it?

   Show morethread
4. walnutclosefarmApr 2022
   Collapse, The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok is an excellent political and economic history of the end of the Soviet Union. It isn't long on technical details of the kind the posted article refers to, but covers the personalities, goals, strategies in the political and economic areas very thoroughly (and is unsparing of both the leadership and actors in the former Soviet Union, the Eastern European nations, and the West).
   Show morethread