> Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe:
This paper admits that Imperial Russia growth was just as good or better then Soviet growth. They state:
> Japanese growth was based on institutional modernization that exceeded anything imaginedby the Tsars. Without a comparable institutional revolution, Russia would have languished.
This is a pretty absurd statement that assumes the conclusion. Under the Tsars multiple massive institutional changes happened multiple time, and often in the 19th century. Literally just a few years before WW1 the Tsars enacted the largest land reform program in world history that would have absolutely exploded land productivity.
Yes of course Russia had to continue to reform, but so did Japan and so did the Soviet Union.
I would argue not killing millions of your most productive farmers, put 100s of your intellectuals into labor camps, enacting genocide on multiple nations, declaring global war on the rest of the world would be a benefit.
The paper makes a whole lot of other highly questionable claims.
> I argue that industrial development would have been almost asfast had the five year plans been carried out within the frame work of the NEP–but it none-the-less nudged up the growth rate.
This claim is incredibly questionable. If you actually read the documentation from that time, actually what the people in charge of the Soviet Union knew, was that those things were not independent.
The massive export of grain is what allowed the massive import of foreign machine tools, factory designs and a million other things. The Soviets literally took food away from starving farmers, put it on trains, shipped it to Germany and got amazing high quality machine tools back ON THE SAME TRAIN that were vital for industrialization.
During the NEP they wanted to do the same thing, and they tried, but unfortunately for them the Red Army was parading down Red Square on bicycles and they literally couldn't.
The paper doesn't substantiate these claims on how equal industrialization would have been possible without collectivization.
I could go on, there is so much questionable things in the paper. Honestly I feel slightly discussion by their treatment (or non treatment) of multi-million people starving in the period that they are discussing.
>This is a pretty absurd statement that assumes the conclusion. Under the Tsars multiple massive institutional changes happened multiple time, and often in the 19th century. Literally just a few years before WW1 the Tsars enacted the largest land reform program in world history that would have absolutely exploded land productivity.
You do realize that tsarist Russia was largely an agrarian society that was lagging far behind industrialized nations of the time, yes? I hope you also realize that the whole reason the revolution was possible was due to mass famines and horrific working conditions that radicalized the population into taking action.
Any revolutionary period will necessarily be turbulent. However, it's sheer absurdity to argue against the gains that were rapidly made in USSR and the quality of life improvements that followed within decades. USSR demonstrates that communism was able to achieve nearly a hundred years of progress under capitalism in the western countries in mere decades while also having some of the most progressive working conditions at the time.
> You do realize that tsarist Russia was largely an agrarian society that was lagging far behind industrialized nations of the time, yes?
Russia did better then literally every other empire. Yes it lagged behind Britain, France, Germany and the US but it industrial output growth was outpacing Austria-Hungary.
Compared to other Eurasian Empires, Safavid, Qing and the Ottoman they did amazingly.
And if you actually study WW1 history in detail, you would see Russian industrial output was pretty amazing in WW1. Cut of from all its allies far more then in WW1 they produced an amazing amount of industrial capacity. In fact much of the Soviet success in the 20s is build on that infrastructure.
Russia during this time also built the longest railroad in history.
And saying 'its an agrarian society' is hardly a negative, in fact, by many measures Germany was too. What you are simply ignoring is my point about the largest land reform program in history.
> I hope you also realize that the whole reason the revolution was possible was due to mass famines and horrific working conditions that radicalized the population into taking action.
Nonsense, the revolution was possible because of WW1 and the demilitarization of the autocracy The last large famine had been decades ago and Russia was the most success agricultural country in the world
Germany also had a revolution, failure in war and the collapse of political authority tends to have that effect. The were also multiple revolutions in Austria-Hungary.
You had the three large Eastern and Central European empires collapse. What actually made the Communist revolution stick in Russia is that they had one year to consolidate power in the industrial core of Russia.
> However, it's sheer absurdity to argue against the gains that were rapidly made in USSR and the quality of life improvements that followed within decades.
Multiple million people starved to death in the early 20s and multiple million people starved to death in the late 30s. Millions of people were put into labor camps.
Of course if you don't count those people because they are dead or in the labor camp, then by the 30s they made some gains. But lets not ignore the 10-00k of people who were basically forced work and died in large soviet industrialization.
But again, you have yet to show that this would not have happened under the alternative regime. As literally every statistical model would tell you that it would have.
> USSR demonstrates that communism was able to achieve nearly a hundred years of progress under capitalism in the western countries in mere decades while also having some of the most progressive working conditions at the time.
Again, you are repeating all the typical communist myths. The idea that Imperial Russia was some backwards country from the middle ages while within 10 years after the revolution Soviet Union was some paradise. This is not the case, Imperial Russia was one of the industrial super powers of the world, they had a war economy that basically without allied help fought against the Ottoman, Austria-Hungary and Germany at the same time on a war front that was about 10x larger then the front Britain and France fought on.
In the 20s the NEP basically reactivate that industrial capacity and it took until the late 20s for farm productivity to reach leaves of before. Then it took millions of people to starve to death and more to be malnourished for the Soviet government to buy technology and tools from the West to build up industrial capacity. A fact that you consistently ignore.
The idea that working conditions were progressive under Stalin are frankly absurd. Go read about how the White Sea–Baltic Canal was built and tell me about progressive working conditions. And from 1917 to 1954 is almost have the existence of Soviet Union. And while after that things did improve somewhat, by the late 70s economic growth had stagnated for the most part and the Soviet Union elites all preferred Western import for most of their consumption.
Many countries that were technologically behind managed to have rapid growth in the last century and most of those started from far less industrial capacity compared to Soviet Union. And most didn't have massive amounts of oil and natural resources to exploit either.
>Russia did better then literally every other empire. Yes it lagged behind Britain, France, Germany and the US but it industrial output growth was outpacing Austria-Hungary.
Better in what sense exactly? It certainly wasn't doing well in terms of quality of life for general population, and neither were any of the major capitalist powers. It's also a fact that Soviets built most of the infrastructure with 10 year plans.
>And saying 'its an agrarian society' is hardly a negative, in fact, by many measures Germany was too. What you are simply ignoring is my point about the largest land reform program in history.
I'm not ignoring your point, I just think it's nonsensical.
>Nonsense, the revolution was possible because of WW1 and the demilitarization of the autocracy The last large famine had been decades ago and Russia was the most success agricultural country in the world
WW1 played a role, but claiming that living conditions did not is the hieght of absurdity.
>Multiple million people starved to death in the early 20s and multiple million people starved to death in the late 30s. Millions of people were put into labor camps.
Millions of people starve under capitalism today. Around 20 million people die each year under capitalism from starvation, lack of healthcare, and so forth. US currently has the highest prison population in the world, higher than USSR had under Stalin. Prisoners in US are routinely used as slave labor.
>Again, you are repeating all the typical communist myths.
"myths"
>The idea that Imperial Russia was some backwards country from the middle ages while within 10 years after the revolution Soviet Union was some paradise.
Have you actually lived in the Soviet union, because I have and I know what life there was actually like. It's also quite telling that the quality of life has dropped significantly after transition to capitalism in the 90s.
It's quite telling that you're fixating on the turbulent period right after the revolution as opposed to years after WW2 where quality of life continued to improve rapidly with every decade.
Go take a look at what happened under capitalist regimes during 19th century and start of the 20th century. The atrocities like the Irish Famine, British adventures in India, and slave trade are just some of the highlights of the horrors, and many of those horrors continue happening today.
> * https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50...
This paper admits that Imperial Russia growth was just as good or better then Soviet growth. They state:
> Japanese growth was based on institutional modernization that exceeded anything imaginedby the Tsars. Without a comparable institutional revolution, Russia would have languished.
This is a pretty absurd statement that assumes the conclusion. Under the Tsars multiple massive institutional changes happened multiple time, and often in the 19th century. Literally just a few years before WW1 the Tsars enacted the largest land reform program in world history that would have absolutely exploded land productivity.
Yes of course Russia had to continue to reform, but so did Japan and so did the Soviet Union.
I would argue not killing millions of your most productive farmers, put 100s of your intellectuals into labor camps, enacting genocide on multiple nations, declaring global war on the rest of the world would be a benefit.
The paper makes a whole lot of other highly questionable claims.
> I argue that industrial development would have been almost asfast had the five year plans been carried out within the frame work of the NEP–but it none-the-less nudged up the growth rate.
This claim is incredibly questionable. If you actually read the documentation from that time, actually what the people in charge of the Soviet Union knew, was that those things were not independent.
The massive export of grain is what allowed the massive import of foreign machine tools, factory designs and a million other things. The Soviets literally took food away from starving farmers, put it on trains, shipped it to Germany and got amazing high quality machine tools back ON THE SAME TRAIN that were vital for industrialization.
During the NEP they wanted to do the same thing, and they tried, but unfortunately for them the Red Army was parading down Red Square on bicycles and they literally couldn't.
The paper doesn't substantiate these claims on how equal industrialization would have been possible without collectivization.
I could go on, there is so much questionable things in the paper. Honestly I feel slightly discussion by their treatment (or non treatment) of multi-million people starving in the period that they are discussing.
> https://www.jstor.org/stable/2672986?seq=1
I can't event take this paper seriously.