Thirty years ago, the Soviet Union, a big and powerful country, suddenly disintegrated without foreign invasion and special natural changes, which shocked the world.
In this regard, while exploring the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union, we should also be prepared for danger in times of peace and earnestly learn the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the thirties of the last century, after the period of stagnation of the Great Depression, the USSR caught up with the last train of development.
The Soviets at that time were very proud, after all, the capitalists on the American side were depressed, and the industrialization on our Soviet side suddenly rose, which was all the benefits of the Stalin model.
But instead of being frustrated by Western economists, they applied this Soviet model of state intervention to capitalism. Like the later Keynesianism and Roosevelt's New Deal, they are typical cases of capitalism relying on state regulation.
Of course, Stalin himself was well aware of the shortcomings of the Stalinist model.
In order to maintain the absolute status of the Soviet Union, the Soviet government built the post-war international system through international conferences such as the Tehran Conference and the Yalta Conference. What is the essence of this international system, that is, the Soviet Union is the author of this system, and everyone must follow this rule.
This was a set of proposals that Stalin considered diplomatically, and his whole idea was to abandon the world revolution.
You see, the French Communist Party was very powerful in those years, mastering 500,000 armed forces, and the Italian Communist Party also mastered 200,000 armed forces. However, in order to seek reconciliation with the Western world, Stalin offered to ask the French Republic and the Italian Communist Party to give up their armed forces and join the Western coalition government. Moreover, the CPC was about to seize power, and Stalin's failure to do so led to the abortion of the revolutionary cause.
By 1946, the Soviet Union had indeed embarked on a new path of development. The reformers of the Soviet Union, represented by the Leningrad faction, proposed to learn from Western experience and take a development path suited to their national conditions.
But then things were also clear. With Zhdanov's death, the Leningradists suffered a fatal blow, and almost all of their backbone leaders were lost.
As a result, by 1952, almost all Eastern European countries had embarked on the path of Soviet development. And Stalin completely lost the opportunity for reform.
Immediately after Stalin's death, the foreign policy of the USSR changed. Malenkov delivered a peace speech on the benefits of world peace, and the meaning was very clear: the Korean War is coming to an end, and everyone is making concerted efforts to build it.
Later, Khrushchev used many means to get rid of Malenkov and Beria. Then secret reports were made, which plunged the entire Soviet Union into ideological confusion. As a direct consequence of this incident, Khrushchev's prestige ceased to exist, and by 1964, a coup d'état had taken place within the Soviet Union and Khrushchev had been ousted.
Then came the Brezhnev era.
Presumably to show legitimacy, many of Brezhnev's economic policies continued the Stalinist system, and the Soviet Union basically returned to its original path.
And Brezhnev was in power for 20 years, making the Soviet system more and more rigid, more and more bureaucratic. So by the time Gorbachev came to power, he couldn't change it at all if he wanted to reform.
Some people have been blaming Gorbachev for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the problem is that the shortcomings of the Soviet model have accumulated so hard that Gorbachev alone could not carry out reforms.
What does that mean today? It was the CPSU that did not seize the opportunity well during its 74 years in power. In other words, when it was possible to carry out reforms, it seized the opportunity and gave up.
Of course, there are various reasons for this, such as the theoretical problems within the Soviet Union, the problems of the traditional concepts of cadres, and the problems of political struggle within the Soviet Union, all of which are important factors affecting the reform of the Soviet Union.
At this point, we can come to such a conclusion. The reason why the Soviet model did not get out of the predicament is that it did not change its shortcomings and did not seize the opportunity to carry out timely reforms, which is a very alarming lesson!