\nThroughout most of the 20th century, the soviet union was scared to meaningfully help it’s allies bc it had been birthed in trauma of western invasion & that threat had been held above its head throughout its life. And then it died.
China decided instead to subject its ppl to the capitalist market in order to build production, so that it could have enough resources & productive capacity so as to not need to worry about the west’s hegemony. So far that seems to be paying off better than the soviet strategy.
did the Soviet Union not build production? did it not out-produce Germany, for example, even while relocating half of its factories and rebuilding them?
I mean in terms of\u00a0\u201cremaining in existence\u201d the PRC is doing considerably better than the USSR, but it\u2019s also maintaining a much more sane military profile, no imitation space shuttle project here.
the issue of the Soviet Union was would it be able to expand the three legs of “military capacity” (so it wouldn’t be overwhelmed), “quality of life” (so its population wouldn’t defect) and “productive capacity” (to keep up on producing the first two)
And how the parts held up was in the 80s the USSR was challenged on 1) with the Reagan buildup/SSDI, on 2) by successive failed harvests threatening meat consumption and border regions getting their bluejeans/rock & roll standards raised while 3) relied on them earning Deutchemarks to buy German tooling and they realized this was drawing their advanced (East German) sector in as a periphery of capitalism
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