Would you rather live in the Soviet system or the American?

[The Nihilistic view]

This is like asking if I would rather get sipilis or Gonorrhoea.

[Constantinopolis]

It's a bit of a silly comparison, because the Soviet system ceased to exist more than 20 years ago. Obviously it's not a fair comparison to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in the Soviet Union in 1988, so we have to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in an imaginary Soviet Union that lasted until 2014. And there are many things that we simply don't know about that imaginary present-day Soviet Union. For example, what would be their policy on the internet? Did the Soviet economy start growing quickly again in the 1990s or 2000s, like it had in the 50s and 60s, or has it been stuck in a 1980s-style stagnation for the past 25 years? Did they continue the slow trend towards greater freedom of expression that they had in the last few decades of the USSR, so that by 2014 the Soviet Union is allowing a lot more free speech than it did in the 80s? Or was that trend stopped or reversed?

etc. etc. etc.

The Soviet Union in 2014 would certainly NOT be identical to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It would be different in some ways. And since we can't be sure of how it would be different, it's hard to compare that imaginary present-day USSR with the present-day United States.

Having said that, however, the Soviet system had some massive advantages over the American one in terms of the services and benefits available to working class people. Not only free health care and education (including college and beyond), but also a guaranteed job (and therefore zero unemployment), an almost-free apartment provided by the state (i.e. an apartment with extremely low rent), and so on. The only major disadvantages were that you couldn't get rich and you couldn't openly oppose communism. But since I am certain I can never get rich anyway, and I have no desire to oppose communism, they're not really "disadvantages" to me.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

I wouldn't mind living in the Soviet system for a bit, just to see what it was like.

Shit. It was pure shit.

Not from the descriptions I've heard of it. There is general agreement that living in America is better, but few people say that living in the Soviet Union was completely awful. A few common threads included:

-"Personal" freedom of speech - You couldn't criticize the state, but you could say what you wanted about pretty much anybody else. You could cuss out your boss if you wanted and nobody would care.

-Solidarity - Even if it was basically a joint alliance against the state, people worked together, and tended to get along. If you asked somebody in your town/city for a favor, you could generally count on getting some help. All that "comrade" stuff wasn't just a phrase people used.

A few people have mentioned "Lenin Friday," which was basically a weekly general cleaning of your town/city. Everybody got brooms, shovels, rakes, whatever, and went out to clean things up. It wasn't strictly mandated by law, although the local babushkas would often enforce it with the iron fist of social pressure.

-Welfare - Ultra-cheap housing is often cited, the equivalent of five to ten modern US dollars a month in the 80s. Sure, you generally didn't have a NICE apartment, but homelessness wasn't a big issue, at least outside of Moscow, which has always had issues with its ginormous population.

Further, the controlled economy meant that prices and inflation were both generally stable.

-Job security - The big one for a lot of people. You would always have a job. This one, personally, hits home pretty hard for me. In the Soviet Union, I'd probably have a cushy bureaucratic job thanks to my college education. In the modern US...well, I'm just one of a million out of work college kids.


I'm not going to argue whether or not these things were all actually true, but they're the impressions I've gathered on various forums, articles and from a few live discussions over the years.

[Atlanticatia]

It's a bit of a silly comparison, because the Soviet system ceased to exist more than 20 years ago. Obviously it's not a fair comparison to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in the Soviet Union in 1988, so we have to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in an imaginary Soviet Union that lasted until 2014. And there are many things that we simply don't know about that imaginary present-day Soviet Union. For example, what would be their policy on the internet? Did the Soviet economy start growing quickly again in the 1990s or 2000s, like it had in the 50s and 60s, or has it been stuck in a 1980s-style stagnation for the past 25 years? Did they continue the slow trend towards greater freedom of expression that they had in the last few decades of the USSR, so that by 2014 the Soviet Union is allowing a lot more free speech than it did in the 80s? Or was that trend stopped or reversed?

etc. etc. etc.

The Soviet Union in 2014 would certainly NOT be identical to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It would be different in some ways. And since we can't be sure of how it would be different, it's hard to compare that imaginary present-day USSR with the present-day United States.

Having said that, however, the Soviet system had some massive advantages over the American one in terms of the services and benefits available to working class people. Not only free health care and education (including college and beyond), but also a guaranteed job (and therefore zero unemployment), an almost-free apartment provided by the state (i.e. an apartment with extremely low rent), and so on. The only major disadvantages were that you couldn't get rich and you couldn't openly oppose communism. But since I am certain I can never get rich anyway, and I have no desire to oppose communism, they're not really "disadvantages" to me.

One question I have for you - and other people who identify as communists - is why can't these objectives be satisfied with social democracy? Like, a Norway on steroids. Norway already has nearly nonexistent poverty, high standards of living, low income inequality, very little unemployment(which could arguably be ended by creating a public sector job-bank type situation), subsidized housing, free education at all levels, etc. And it's a democracy/multi-party state. What would be accomplished by making, say, Norway into a socialist state?

[Constantinopolis]

I'd rather have healthcare, myself.

I'd like healthcare too, but in the US I can say that the government should change shit. Not so in the USSR.

That's incorrect. You could say that the government should change shit in the USSR. What you couldn't say was that they should switch to capitalism, or abandon Marxism-Leninism as the ruling ideology, or call them un-democratic. But you could say that they should make better cars, or reform the school system, or build different-looking houses or apartment buildings, etc. In other words, non-ideological criticism was perfectly fine, at least after Stalin's death in 1953. They weren't very likely to actually listen to your non-ideological criticism, but you wouldn't get into any trouble either.

With their dogmatic acceptance of bs science, I doubt your healthcare would be any better than visiting a witchdoctor.

Uh, what? Soviet healthcare was top-notch by the standards of its time. Even today, in my country, people tend to prefer going to older doctors that were trained before the fall, because they're usually a lot better than the younger doctors trained after 1990s.

The "bs science" to which you refer was almost entirely a problem of the Stalin era, and never extended to more than a handful of topics.

[Big Brain City]

My life would worsen under Soviet rule, if for the criticism of the government.
Otherwise, maybe it would be better. I have no real idea. Hell, who does?

[Fenexia]

I'd like healthcare too, but in the US I can say that the government should change shit. Not so in the USSR.

That's incorrect. You could say that the government should change shit in the USSR. What you couldn't say was that they should switch to capitalism, or abandon Marxism-Leninism as the ruling ideology, or call them un-democratic. But you could say that they should make better cars, or reform the school system, or build different-looking houses or apartment buildings, etc. In other words, non-ideological criticism was perfectly fine, at least after Stalin's death in 1953. They weren't very likely to actually listen to your non-ideological criticism, but you wouldn't get into any trouble either.

With their dogmatic acceptance of bs science, I doubt your healthcare would be any better than visiting a witchdoctor.

Uh, what? Soviet healthcare was top-notch by the standards of its time. Even today, in my country, people tend to prefer going to older doctors that were trained before the fall, because they're usually a lot better than the younger doctors trained after 1990s.

The "bs science" to which you refer was almost entirely a problem of the Stalin era, and never extended to more than a handful of topics.

and what exactly is your country?

[The Grey Wolf]

Guess I'll have to settle for the basic rights of free thought and self-expression.

I'd rather have healthcare, myself.

Fairly certain that with where my sympathies lay, the Soviets would probably send me to the psikhushka. Universal healthcare isn't going to be shit when I'm so doped up on drugs I can't read or write.

[Arglorand]

Doing better under? Easily American.

Would prefer to live under? Soviet. Because the Soviet system at least proved susceptible to being brought down.

[Threlizdun]

Easily the American system, considering I possess significantly more political freedoms, have greater capacity for artistic expression, and have lesser reasons to fear what will happen to me because of my sexual orientation and gender identity.

[Valkalan]

It's a bit of a silly comparison, because the Soviet system ceased to exist more than 20 years ago. Obviously it's not a fair comparison to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in the Soviet Union in 1988, so we have to compare life in the United States in 2014 with life in an imaginary Soviet Union that lasted until 2014. And there are many things that we simply don't know about that imaginary present-day Soviet Union. For example, what would be their policy on the internet? Did the Soviet economy start growing quickly again in the 1990s or 2000s, like it had in the 50s and 60s, or has it been stuck in a 1980s-style stagnation for the past 25 years? Did they continue the slow trend towards greater freedom of expression that they had in the last few decades of the USSR, so that by 2014 the Soviet Union is allowing a lot more free speech than it did in the 80s? Or was that trend stopped or reversed?

etc. etc. etc.

The Soviet Union in 2014 would certainly NOT be identical to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. It would be different in some ways. And since we can't be sure of how it would be different, it's hard to compare that imaginary present-day USSR with the present-day United States.

Having said that, however, the Soviet system had some massive advantages over the American one in terms of the services and benefits available to working class people. Not only free health care and education (including college and beyond), but also a guaranteed job (and therefore zero unemployment), an almost-free apartment provided by the state (i.e. an apartment with extremely low rent), and so on. The only major disadvantages were that you couldn't get rich and you couldn't openly oppose communism. But since I am certain I can never get rich anyway, and I have no desire to oppose communism, they're not really "disadvantages" to me.

More likely a "modern" USSR would be more repressive than it was in the 1980s. Consider the reasons for its disintegration. The peoples of the many former Soviet republics voted to become independent. If the USSR would have chosen to remained unified, it would have to deal with secessionist movements in the manner that is familiar to them, repression. In the end, the modern soviet state would likely be similar to China both in political modus operandi and economic management.

[Benuty]

I like the pension system, and the healthcare, but then I also like having the benefits of expression, and political freedom.

[Rebellious Fishermen]

America all the way.

[Constantinopolis]

One question I have for you - and other people who identify as communists - is why can't these objectives be satisfied with social democracy? Like, a Norway on steroids. Norway already has nearly nonexistent poverty, high standards of living, low income inequality, very little unemployment(which could arguably be ended by creating a public sector job-bank type situation), subsidized housing, free education at all levels, etc. And it's a democracy/multi-party state. What would be accomplished by making, say, Norway into a socialist state?

For the most part, it's not that I oppose social democracy, it's that I don't consider it an option that is actually on the table for the vast majority of countries. Yeah, Norway is great, but how do you propose to turn other countries into Norway?

Social democracy was not achieved by people fighting for social democracy, it was historically achieved by people who were trying to get full socialism but were forced by circumstances to compromise and settle for social democracy instead. The system that you see in places like Norway or Sweden was created as the result of a unique balance-of-power between socialists and capitalists, which simply cannot be intentionally reproduced elsewhere. You can't intentionally set things up so that socialists and capitalists are precisely evenly matched and have to compromise and create social democracy. Things may turn out that way, but you can't aim for it in advance.

Besides, the thing about social democracy is that it is inherently unstable. You don't just need a balance of power to create it, you also need a balance of power (between unions and corporations) to maintain it. Social democracy requires high taxes and regulations on capitalists. They do not like this, and constantly work to undermine it. So you need a balancing force - like the unions - to keep them in check. But if this delicate balance tips too far in favour of the capitalists for whatever reason - as it seems to be doing in Scandinavia today, due to globalization and declining union membership - you can easily lose social democracy and fall into neoliberal capitalism instead. And then good luck getting it back.

In brief: social democracy is great, but you can only get it by sheer luck, and then you have to preserve a delicate power balance in order to maintain it.

[Constantinopolis]

Shit. It was pure shit.

Not from the descriptions I've heard of it. There is general agreement that living in America is better, but few people say that living in the Soviet Union was completely awful. A few common threads included:

-"Personal" freedom of speech - You couldn't criticize the state, but you could say what you wanted about pretty much anybody else. You could cuss out your boss if you wanted and nobody would care.

-Solidarity - Even if it was basically a joint alliance against the state, people worked together, and tended to get along. If you asked somebody in your town/city for a favor, you could generally count on getting some help. All that "comrade" stuff wasn't just a phrase people used.

A few people have mentioned "Lenin Friday," which was basically a weekly general cleaning of your town/city. Everybody got brooms, shovels, rakes, whatever, and went out to clean things up. It wasn't strictly mandated by law, although the local babushkas would often enforce it with the iron fist of social pressure.

-Welfare - Ultra-cheap housing is often cited, the equivalent of five to ten modern US dollars a month in the 80s. Sure, you generally didn't have a NICE apartment, but homelessness wasn't a big issue, at least outside of Moscow, which has always had issues with its ginormous population.

Further, the controlled economy meant that prices and inflation were both generally stable.

-Job security - The big one for a lot of people. You would always have a job. This one, personally, hits home pretty hard for me. In the Soviet Union, I'd probably have a cushy bureaucratic job thanks to my college education. In the modern US...well, I'm just one of a million out of work college kids.

I'm not going to argue whether or not these things were all actually true, but they're the impressions I've gathered on various forums, articles and from a few live discussions over the years.

This is very true, and job security is indeed the big one for most people - bigger than free healthcare and education, certainly. In places where housing is very expensive today, the ultra-cheap housing of the Soviet system is considered a very big point in its favour, as well.

Basically, if you want to sum it all up, the main advantage of the Soviet system is that you didn't have money problems. Not having enough money was almost never an issue, and finding a way to make money was also never an issue (due to the aforementioned job security). You had other problems, sure, but not money problems.

More likely a "modern" USSR would be more repressive than it was in the 1980s. Consider the reasons for its disintegration. The peoples of the many former Soviet republics voted to become independent. If the USSR would have chosen to remained unified, it would have to deal with secessionist movements in the manner that is familiar to them, repression.

But the Soviet Union was getting gradually less repressive for the last several decades of its existence, and yet, until Gorbachev, it never had a serious problem with secessionist movements. Gorbachev lifted too many restrictions too quickly. A gradual easing of repression, combined with other improvements, could have easily led to a situation where the various SSRs demanded more autonomy but not outright independence.

In the end, the modern soviet state would likely be similar to China both in political modus operandi and economic management.

Yes, I agree that this was a strong possibility, but then the USSR wouldn't have the Soviet system any more. It would have a different kind of system - namely Chinese-style capitalism.

So, for the purpose of the exercise in this thread, we are assuming that the Soviet Union lasted until 2014 and did NOT switch to an entirely different kind of economic system, like China did.

[Murkwood]

Looks like 15 people haven't read A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich...

[Bojikami]

I would gladly live in the glorious days of the motherland.

[Hladgos]

I'd rather live in America. We're surprisingly more progressive than Russia.

[Norstal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Soviet_Union

Can you give examples from that era from that article about people being punished for criticism?

East Germany's Stasi?

And no, let's not pretend East Germany was not under Soviet influence.

[Margno]

As much as I dislike the American system,

(it's a lot)

I dislike forced labor camps and disappearances in the middle of the night by political dissidents more. Also not so keen on breadlines.

[Zurkerx]

The American System of course.

[Valaran]

While I'm certainly not saying the American system is perfect (it isn't, and no system is) it is eminently preferable to the Soviet system.

[Paixao]

Well... despite being leftist and very much in favour of universal healthcare, housing, education and a job... The question is whether I'd be better off in the Soviet or American systems. Given that my parents are comfortably middle class, and I attended private schools for all of my education, I'd have to say I'd probably have been better off in the American system (as my quality of life would remain similar).

That said, if I was from a less fortunate background, the Soviet system seems like it might've been the better choice (nonwithstanding Russian culture etc)

[Paixao]

Can you give examples from that era from that article about people being punished for criticism?

East Germany's Stasi?

And no, let's not pretend East Germany was not under Soviet influence.

I've heard plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who were there before the wall came down (native Germans and visitors alike) that as long as you kept it behind closed doors you were fine to speak your mind. You just had to avoid saying it to strangers and certainly not put say it in a public forum.

[Avenio]

Nobody knows what the Soviet Union would look like in modern times. The USSR kicked the bucket a little under 30 years ago, after all. A lot's changed since then.

It would probably have many of the same amenities as now, such as internet (that would be a big one).

Considering the crippled state of Soviet computer science beginning in the 1960's, I really doubt that.

During my recent stay in Moscow I was told several different variations on the following anecdote. Japanese experts were invited to assess the state of Soviet electronics and computer technology, and to tell their hosts how long it would take for the Soviet Union to catch up to Japan. “We thought you were behind us 15 or 20 years,” the Japanese experts responded, “But now we have come to the conclusion that it is forever.”

A professor in Moscow told me that in the 1940s an All-Union competition was held to produce the best lighter for comrade Stalin’s pipe. “At that time, several hundred factories participated in the competition,” he said. “A similar competition to produce a personal computer for comrade Gorbachev today could not even be announced. It would be difficult to find one single factory which would be able to produce a modern and reliable one.”

The professor clearly was right. Personal computers are practically not being produced in the Soviet Union today. An article in a central newspaper last year said it would be necessary to increase the quality of the design by a factor of at least 20 to 25 (sic!) to be able to put a PC on the market.

Gorbachev said in a recent speech that Soviet industry is producing unsatisfactory computers. “We have to look the truth in the eyes,” he said.

I think the truth is even worse. During my stay in the Soviet Union last year, I did not see even one Soviet-made personal computer. Scientists from several institutes told me that the prototypes of a small computer produced in their workshops were taken and demonstrated for the Central Committee to show that the situation is not so bad.

Seven months after my visit, the situation became even worse. On January 27, 1988, the Soviet Literaturnaya Gazeta devoted an entire page to the problems of the Soviet PC. The title? “Tommorrow Will Be Too Late.” Here are some quotes taken from the article: " “it is a catastrophe. No more and no less.”" “The situation is threatening.”" “It is a tragedy in all respects:in scientific progress and cultural development, in education where we were not a long time ago ahead. . . the gap is widening and we risk to lose a place among countries—leaders of the world community.”

“We have no choice: either computers—and a future, or without computers—and without a future.”

In fact, computers are a problem for the entire Soviet bloc. The attempt to create a PC in Soviet bloc countries has not been successful. The situation is more than desperate. In the scientific institutes of East Germany there is often only one old-fashioned personal computer (an 8-bit Sinclair Spectrum with 64K of RAM) for every 10 to 15 scientists. No one in the West would buy such an old-fashioned PC today. Sometimes these scientists must wait a week or more before they get a turn to use the computer for a few hours. Senior scientists there receive only 1,000 sheets of printer paper per year. In Hungary, PCs are being assembled almost entirely from imported parts.

I recently was looking through a volume of conference proceedings compiled from camera-ready manuscripts. The differences in the quality of the typesetting were striking. Papers from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries were produced using techniques far more primitive than those of Africa and Asia.

No wonder the scientific institutes in the Soviet bloc are trying to get Western computers by any and all means. In spite of the Western embargo on such technology, large computers continue to be imported or smuggled into Soviet bloc countries every year. A Western colleague once told me his lab had just purchased a new VAX mainframe very cheaply and had gotten a good price for the old VAX. Why? The embargo on the old VAX had been lifted, and the supplier was anxious to sell them for exorbitant prices in the East.

During my stay, I visited the computer laboratory of a school in Novosibirsk, where the children ranged in age from 13-18 years. It has not a single PC. A few terminals are connected by direct telephone lines to an old Hewlett-Packard computer at the local affiliate of the Academy of Sciences. A Polish made printer, looking like a prehistoric monster, is able to print (capital letters only) in the Roman and Cyrillic alphabets. Except that it is permanently out of order.

The teacher told me the lab serves 150 to 200 senior pupils and several dozen pupils from the so-called “scientific circle”—students chosen to receive extra training in science. That means that four or five terminals serve some 300 people. The children learn to program in BASIC, ALGOL, FORTRAN and PASCAL. “The last language we are teaching only theoretically,” the teacher said. “We do not have a single computer where we could test it.” The teacher showed me a collection of programs written by the students. They were interesting, and they testify to the students’ knowledge and lively interest.

But why, I asked, are they stored in a box and written on cards cut out from a notebook? The teacher didn’t understand the question. “Wouldn’t it be more natural to have them stored in the computer?” I asked.

A very young boy came to help. “The memory is not big enough,” he said.

“How big is your memory?” I asked. We struggled to find a common language to describe memory size. After some discussion, I learned that the computer had 1 megabyte of memory.

During my trip, I carried a portable Toshiba 1100 Plus PC. It weighed 4 kilos and had at least 2 megabytes of memory. Thus, my little Toshiba had a memory twice as large as—and could process data much faster than—the one being used by 300 students in Novosibirsk.

Culture shock indeed. My shock only grew when, hours later, I shared my experience with a friend. “You have to take into account that the school you visited is a very privileged one,” he said. “You will hardly find, in computer technology, a betterequipped school in the whole Soviet Union.”

Another characteristic of Soviet backwardness is that only Western computer languages are used. Programming is done in Roman characters, which naturally leads to further complications for the production and installation of terminals, printers and keyboards. Soviet scientists obviously have given up any attempt to develop their own programming language using the Cyrillic alphabet. Thus, Soviet backwardness in software is even greater than in hardware, but it is not yet felt so much. Our colleagues in the East will understand their lack of software sophistication only when they have at their disposal more modern and faster computers.

When I told my Soviet colleagues about the rapid development of computer technology in the West—about CRAY supercomputers, laser printers, worldwide computer networks, electronic mail, modem communication between home and office, access to hundreds of data bases, instant exchange of letters and articles with colleagues the world over—they shook their heads in disbelief.

They couldn’t grasp it—from either the technical or political point of view. The restrictions on the ability of Soviet scientists to travel abroad, correspond with Western scientists, exchange information, and discuss joint projects are absurd and counterproductive. They make effective use of modern computers, as well as the integration of Soviet scientists into the international scientific enterprise, entirely impossible.

Janouch, who spent more than a decade in the Soviet Union, is former head of the department of theoretical nuclear physics at the Institute of Nuclear Research in Prague. He now works at the Research In- stitute of Physics, Freskativagen 24, S-104 05, Stockholm 50. For an account of his visit with Andrei Sakharov and Yelena Bonner, see THE SCIENTIST, October 19, 1987, p.15.