s_sanderson <SKSANDER@grove.iup.edu> wrote:
>If the Soviet Union and other Soviet-style systems had made such great
>accomplishments, then why did they collapse and give way to something
>different? I suppose their defenders will claim that this was the result
of
>Western constraints. That may provide some of the answer, but not most.
Their
>internal deficiencies were glaring also.
>>>>That's interesting -- how so -- The stagnation of the Brezhnev era ,
perhaps Gorbachev's Glasnost' policy?
I sort of recall massive popular
>reaction against the state socialist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989.
>>>>> Since Ivan the Terrible very few leaders in Russia have got to retire.
Many have been killed in coups. The exceptions to this in Soviet history are
Khrushchev and Gorbachev -- they stepped aside which is the smart thing to
do when the Russia people moblize.
That
>tells us what most members of these societies thought about their
>accomplishments.
>>>>Perhaps, it had nothing to do with the successes or failures of Soviet
leadership.
Andrew Hund
http://cwolf.uaa.alaska.edu/~asajh/Soc/