I read many of the posts, a lot of good points.
Race: Soviet population and also the population of the Russian Empire was primarily Europid slavic speakers but also included millions of turkic, mongolic/tungusic and Caucasic peoples in the central asian, north asian and caucasian (mountain) regions.
I do not think this was a major factor.
Language: as it follows from various races, there were various languages too; turkic, tungusic, uralic (the original inhabitants of the areas in Western Russia), mongolic North & south caucasian languages and of course slavic; if memory serves right.
Even though before Stalin the soviets did not see russian as something special they did recognize possibility of using russian as a common language.
I think language was an important factor especially in the baltics, caucasus, and central asia; and without much surprise these parts aren't part of current russia (in spite of being part of the Russian empire and the SU)
Ideology includes a variety such as economic models molded into ideologies (capitalism, communism) wherein authorities expect a group/people to laughably adhere to one. (Does PRC adhere to one? Nope, it creates and modifies as it suits the situation)
Economic ideology: I am less concerned about tags "communism" and "capitalism" but more about flexibility, the SU economy was not such and therefore could not hold together and/or perform/compete with changing times. Fail.
Ideology of course also includes religion.
Religion: Russian empire was orthodox xtian, with areas in the west containing significant percentage of Western xtians (catholics, protestants) and caucasus and central asia containing majority muslim populations.
Siberian regions were over the previous century successfully xtianized by the Russian empire.
The soviet union initially suppressed religion but towards its end, eased its grip on religion.
The soviet union tried to remove previous religious ideologies and tried to introduce a new ideology of atheism.
The soviets did not have enough energy and time to completely erase previous religious ideologies.
To sum, religion also played a part imo.
Soviet idea of parting people into "republics": Another factor in my opinion is creation of 14 other "republics" which theoretically had the "right" to secede from the union; was a unnecessary move and hinders natural amalgamation of people based on economic realities, if at all such a thing were to happen.
I bet present day Russia would have been larger (would include eastern half of UKR, most of BEL, Northern and NWestern parts of KZK) if this policy of creating "republics" was not done by the early soviets.
Disturbance in AFG: Another factor, which alone would not have caused something as drastic as collapse of SU but placed stress on the SU.
This factor was a US engineered idea based on earlier principles of prometheism, a polish idea.
The idea being that creating disturbances in minority inside a country especially in its periphery (JK, Checheniya) or creating disturbances in border countries (AFG) so that target state would pour resources into stabilizing situation.
In terms of leaders, I would place blame on the early leaders (lenin) for creating bad models but the bigger blame on Mike and Yeltsin.
A man with inept policy making and leadership skills and who had zero conviction in his duties (M. Gorbashev) and the drunk retard who can't dance for shit; voila dissolution.
I believe all these factors hit the USSR within close vicinity of each, a time AT which the initial enthusiasm and zeal of the USSR was waning, a time BY which the USSR hadn't yet created its own unique ID and subsequently Mr. Gorb and Mr. Yelt did the honors.
PS: Might have left out some points and might have posted in a disorganized manner.
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I think while the whole world watched the cold war, only China learned from it. It incorporated the strengths of both the American and the Russian model into its own system, which I believe will be the paradigm of the future. Unlike Russia, China has no ideological baggage and understands the importance of business and unlike US it does not glorify unrestricted and autophagous "freedoms". Technologically, China is doing everything it can to get ahead; and while we may mock them right now, we must not forget that stealing is exactly how the American techno-industrial hegemon grew in its infancy. The deep state in China is the government itself and hence, they are secured on that front.
India on the other hand, drew all the wrong lessons from the Cold-War. From, the disastrous and non-pragmatic NAM, to the idiotic and idealistic idea of Unity in Diversity.
Do you think anything other than UiD will work in India?
If so how to implement this?
Also I think Western "freedoms" are not exactly what they claim to be and so the West ain't actually free.
@Razor
Let me first start by saying that this topic deserves a much more detailed post, but for the time being let me start with a few points, about which I have thought a lot:
1. First of all , no way Gorbachev's decision though poorly implemented and at the wrong time was the main contributor to the collapse, it was a small mistake amongst many great mistakes. It was Afghanistan which was the point of no return for the Soviets, had it not been Glasnost and Prestroika of Gorbachev, it'd have been something else.
2. So why did USSR fail, to even come close to answering such a question is beyond me, but here is my take:
1. USSR peaked early, by which I mean, no one ever matched Lenin's brilliance again, Stalin if you read about him long enough finally amounts to a street thug, though a world class one, he was inhumanely tough, had little imagination, led by fear instead of inspiration' i.e- Germans planted some misinformation and he purged most of the General staff and almost lost the war, including someone like Tuckhavesky on whose concept of deep defense they later reversed the German offensive.
Each Gen. Sec. afterwards was simply less competent. Now compare it to PRC, they had their greatest leader in Den Xiao Ping, not in Mao who was just a brilliant Psychopath born in the times of chaos and took advantage. Mao concentrated power and others used that power to create something that is unimiganible, because PRC of today is anything but communist, infact they are the greatest capitalists world has ever seen, the only novelty is that, rather then letting their public live the unsustainable and ultimately counterproductive way Americans live, they use the capital gained by purest capitalistic ways to further their militiary and economic might (
at the heights of cold war USSR was spending something like 30% of its GDP on defense, while China gets away with 3% and has begun matching US, it is an indicator of howi nefficient Soviet system was), and that's why they survive and prosper where USSR failed, and that's why barring truly catastrophic luck or a debt crisis, they will make U.S. kneel, I only hope that we as a nation don't get trampled in the process.
P.S-- If the discussion progresses, then there is much more to be said
Good points; would like to hear more. Go through my points too; not too well organized, sorry.
Also you may not agree with many but thats what I like.
