How great powers fall

Around 1991, there were three major world powers: the United States, China, and the Soviet Union. The latter two were socialist, had withstood the devastating destruction of two World Wars and the endless blockade, sabotage, and attrition of the Cold War. Both had risen from abject poverty to superpower status, achieving unprecedented levels of social and technological advancement, and yet one of them dissolved.

A crucial problem in political theory is determining how a world power can disintegrate without having been militarily defeated by external forces and without even suffering a civil war. The hypotheses that could be put forward are then reduced to the majority will of its population, economic failure, or the failure of its leadership.

Let us examine the hypothesis of the will of the people. In March 1991, a referendum was held on the preservation of the USSR. Eighty percent of the population participated; 76,4% voted in favor of preservation and 21,4% against it. Certainly, the Soviet Union was the historical aggregation of several nationalities, such as the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, or Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova; separatist movements existed in many of them. But these were not necessarily in the majority: in the aforementioned 1991 referendum, 83% of Ukrainians voted for preservation and only 16% against (Higinio Polo, El Viejo Topo, Rebelión, January 10, 2012).
These figures do not support the idea of ​​a widespread social and economic failure of the union. An impoverished population rarely supports, with majorities of more than three-quarters, a system that is supposedly failing them.

In previous texts, I compiled data that refutes a supposed economic or social failure of the Soviet Union. In this one, we follow the meticulous research of Pasqualina Curcio, “Dismantling the fallacy of the economic, social, and political 'failure' of socialism in the USSR” (papelesdesociedad.info/).

Let's consider the issue of economic growth. Using precise figures and charts, Pasqualina Curcio concludes that “between 1917 and 1991, the Russian economy experienced continuous growth. Per capita production increased by 378%. The highest levels of production were recorded in the late 80s. It was after the dissolution of the USSR that a decline in production began. Between 1991 and 1998, the Russian economy contracted by 45%.” This growth occurred despite two World Wars and the uninterrupted Cold War blockade.

Thus, Curcio cites the report prepared in December 1982 by Henry Rowen, Chairman of the CIA National Security Council, and published by the Joint Committee on Economic Affairs of the U.S. Congress, which states: “The Soviet economy is highly self-sufficient and is far from experiencing a collapse.” This study also indicated that “the USSR experienced continuous economic growth and an improvement in the standard of living of its population during the last thirty years.” The study highlights the Soviet economy's ability to maintain its viability in the absence of imports. Let's look at some examples.

During the Great Depression, unemployment in the United States reached 23%; while at that time in the USSR there was full employment, a situation that lasted until 1988.

The Soviet Union was the first country in which free education was established at all levels, including university.
In a report published in 1963, the World Health Organization acknowledged that for the Soviets, medical services, both preventive and curative, were free and served the entire population.

In 1920, life expectancy in the Soviet Union was 40 years. Thanks to the expansion of public healthcare, by the late 1980s it had risen to 69,4 years. The female mortality rate reached its lowest level in the late 1980s, at 119 women per thousand; but since 1991 it has risen by 62% in five years.

By 1980, Soviet per capita food consumption was higher than that of the United States, except for meat, which was offset by higher fish consumption. Calorie intake was also higher than that of Europe, Spain, and the United States, reaching 3.500 kilocalories per capita per day in 1989, before falling to 2.800 kilocalories per day after 1991, a limit considered the minimum by the UN's FAO.
Health care and improved nutrition resulted in an increase in the average height of the Soviet citizen, which rose from 1,57 centimeters before the Revolution to 1,75 in 1978, before falling to 1,67 in 2008.

These indicators do not reflect social or economic failure: they mark milestones that most capitalist economies have not yet reached. The dissolution, imposed against the will of the people by the political elite, has made the effects of all neoliberal adjustments felt since 1991. In a previous work, I pointed out that GDP fell by 19%; the standard of living by 49%; industrial production by 46%; investment by 25%; public debt increased by 11%; and poverty by 40%. Life expectancy fell to its lowest level. A study in The Lancet recorded more than 4 million premature deaths (“The effect of rapid privatization on mortality in mono-industrial towns in post-Soviet Russia: a retrospective cohort study.” The Lancet Public Health, May 1, 2017).

The preceding data points to the third potential cause of dissolution: the failure of the leadership. Leon Trotsky in *The Revolution Betrayed*, James Burnham in *The Revolution of the Executives*, Milovan Djilas in *The New Class*, and Michael Voslensky in *The Nomenklatura: Privileges in the USSR*, denounced the fact that in the Soviet Union, part of the Communist Party had become a privileged political class whose members renounced the socialist ideal to become property owners instead of administrators. Sometimes internal betrayal achieves what all the powers of the world have failed to accomplish. Sometimes, the leadership simply proves unfit for its people.