On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Adam Kessler wrote:
> Unfortunately this stuff is pretty typical of what one finds here--all this
> tendentious "analysis" and stale sloganeering. Just one point: Surely
> Germany and Japan suffered as much dath and destruction in WWII as the
> U.S.S.R. Yet they recovered quickly and achieved high living standards for
> their people. (I await a convoluted Marxoid response to these facts)
>
Death and destruction in WII was just one of the factors that Andy had
mentioned. Another important factor (just one of many others) was that at
the time of the revolution Russia was more or less a feudal society with
little industrial development or even the resources - capital, skills,
education - for rapid economic development. And don't forget that the
kind of support which Japan and Germany recieved from the capitalist
countries in the immediate aftermath of the world war was just not
available to the USSR.
D.Parthasarathy