Soviet Style Economics is Insane and Here's Why.

Dynosaur - 2021-12-03

I thought you would have like 2 million subscribers until I looked at the number and realised you only had around 120. I hope you get more subscribes because you have very good content.

M A - 2022-04-05

I think in videos like these it is very important to emphasize that rulers who tried to reform the feudal system were often assassinated.

People who live in comfortable modern-day societies and judge people of the past have no clue how difficult it was to change even the most obvious societal injustices.

For most of history, a reformist ruler was literally putting his life on the line

Jakub Kovar - 2022-07-13

Also interesting is how people in USSR used to steal from their employers. We used to have saying in Slovakia “Who is not stealing is stealing from his family”. My grandpa built a whole tractor from parts he got this way lol

Kilgore Trout - 2022-10-03

I was about to do a lazy video about the Soviet economy without actually doing any research and using rehashed US propaganda talking points from back in the 60s, but Casual Scholar beat me to it.
Now I now even less after watching it.Good job.

S Starklite - 2022-10-19

I began this wondering how you would handle it and, like I expected, you failed.
It failed mostly because USA forced them to fail in so many ways, but also many other reasons forced them to fail!
1) The +200 years leading up to 1917 had a huge reason that eventually caused it to fail, their insane system of oligarchs made their existence have so much difficulty to overcome made it extremely difficult to succeed, unless you think “everyone was on board with Socialism and Communism” which they weren’t, they had that to fight all the time! The previous +200 years didn’t just disappear, having no effect!
2) They had a lot of catching up to do from the previous +200 years which didn’t happen easily! +200 years!
3) They had very poor communication and transportation: no cars or trains or phones! That’s huge! It can’t be overlooked and brushed aside easily like you all do!
4) Even America didn’t know the best way to farm and produce food, AND still doesn’t! We should farm vertically, using less land! A bunch of small farms is ridiculously backwards! And big corporations operations are also wrong!
5) And maybe this should be FIRST: USA wouldn’t do business with them hoping to force them to fail! And that worked as planned! Imagine if USSR could have bought anything they needed from USA! What a difference it would have made for them, but no!
6) Many nations have been trying to be COMMUNIST but USA said NO and started many wars, teaching torture, assassinations and lots more, killing millions of people worldwide! See ROGUE STATE by Wm Blum and many others at Third World Traveler! (I repeat: many nations wanted communism! Why? Because they could SEE how much poverty was caused by USA capitalism!)
6) They started out very poor, that had a huge impact!
7) Across USSR they’ve ALWAYS had bad crops and FAMINES every 5-10 years! EVERY 5-10 YEARS,
8) They had a Civil War and 2 World Wars! Can you imagine how hard that made life???
Wars destroy land, and kill workers and farmers, and how difficult it must have been to just get people back to farming, probably the old fashioned way because everything had been destroyed! Especially after WW ONE before perfect communication and transportation, they were still way behind!
9) Just the simple fact that it had never been tried before, and knowledge was lacking by everyone, even in America!

And I’ll bet there were many other reasons but that’s enough for now!
Now if USA had been trying Communism at the same time, we would have succeeded, AND THEY would have succeeded! And today there would be NO POVERTY on Earth! Because Communism is and soon will be God’s PERFECT WAY! To help destroy capitalism DO NOT BUY ANYTHING from corporations! They’re brainwashing people with ADVERTISEMENTS to BUY more junk, to give ALL PROFITS to the few RICHEST people, while letting BILLIONS STARVE TO DEATH WORLDWIDE!
DO NOT BUY ANYTHING😂 EXCEPT BARE NECESSITIES TO HELP END WORLD POVERTY!!!!!!!
WE must destroy USA capitalism ASAP! Get it???!!!!

You should try making this one again, Casual Scholar!

Teutonicterror 03 - 2022-10-01

12:23 First of all, a "broad coalition of working and lower class" couldn´t exist in russia, because there was only a tiny working class and because most people still lived as illiterate farmers, who didn´t care about politics, because they didn´t had the capabilities to even understand it. So no russian party had the support of such a coalition, because it couldn´t exist. Secondly, the socialist party had a lot of support among the small industrial proletariat of the bigger cities. Thirdly, again, in the west, there was also just a tiny minority, that ruled the nations, there wasn´t a "built in mechanism" to prevent totalitarianism either, it occured quite frequently as well. And again, the bourgeoisie "democracies" of the 19th century weren´t really democratic and oppressed the working class. There were of course attempts by "broad coalitions of working and lower class" (aka socialists) to change this as much as possible and create real democracy, and this eventually lead to some reforms, but it is stupid to claim, that western industrial capitalism had some built in anti-autocracy mechanism and russia didn´t.
12:41 No, not at all the same as the one they had destroyed, not at all. A political party consisting of many members who didn´t get there by birthright, didn´t own large swaths of land or viewed the nation itself as their personal property and actually had at least some degree of democratic processes, is completely different from an absolutist monarchy.
12:48 Whaaat? A political party, that represents only one political ideology and doesn´t let followers of other ideologies join? Whaaat? Mh, sounds familiar, where have I heard this before? Oh yes, fucking everywhere, because that´s how political parties work. The Democrats and the GOP aren´t allowing communists to join their ranks either (and at least the Dems don´t allow Nazis to join them), because parties are an organisation, in which people of the same political believe organise themselves.
12:52 "Socialist Utopia" is a completely nonsensical term, Marx and Engels wrote multiple books, in which they explained, why past ideas of socialism were indeed utopian, but the modern industrial socialism isn´t.
13:00 Again, hugely oversimplified explanation of war communism, to a degree that it´s almost wrong.
13:20, well not war communism had decreased agricultural output, but instead war did, but ok.
13:58 again, huge oversimplification. The soviet economic system was very complex and complicated, way to complex to just describe it with "all was commanded from above", that´s just not true. Regional and local planning plaid a great role in economic planning and it was more a system of different stages of economic planning heavily intertwined with each other creating detailed plans based on huge amounts of collected data, not just "commanded from above".
14:12 Ok, better, still pretty oversimplified. And "Minor" negotiations, what kind of framing is that?
15:38 Not all farmers were forced, many joined the Kolkhozes voluntarily, yes, some others had to be forced, mostly the comparably rich owners of bigger parts of land. Not the ideal way to deal with it, I´ll admit that, but still, collectivisation was at some point neccessary and it was better for the USSR in the long run. And it didn´t lead to the death of 12 million people, where´d you got that number from? Usually, the Holodomor is seen as a result of the collectivisation efforts, but it had a bunch of other reasons (Kulaks burning crops instead of handing them over to the communities, the idiotic principle of Lyssenkoism, natural disasters, etc.) and the death toll of Holodomor is usually estimated to be between 3 and 7 million people, not 12. Such idiotic numbers are given by guys like Robert Conquest, who can´t really be taken seriously, he completely ignored modern sources and still claims, his estimates from 50 years ago, which are often purely based on the statements of russian dissidents, are the true numbers.
16:04 That´s just wrong. Farmers did get a bonus, when they exceeded the production goals in the plan and to some extent, trade of excessive goods was still allowed or at least tolerated even under Stalin.
16:23 Oh come on, that´s literally propagandistic nonsense. No, you don´t have the freedom to work anywhere you want, theoretically you have, yes, but in practice you are limited by geographical, financial, and a bunch of other factors. If you´re for example born in a dying coal miner city, or as a part of the POC-community of Detroit, you´ll have it pretty hard to find a job anyways, and even if you do, it´s gonna be a low-wage one, so it´s pretty unlikely that either you or your family will ever have enough money, to move somewhere else, where better jobs are. Besides, changing your job in such a situation would be pretty risky, if you live paycheck by paycheck, three months without job could literally mean death for you. And what about african or south american nations for example, don´t make the foolish mistake to talk only about the anglo-american world, when talking about capitalism (I mean, it´s already to late, even your history lessen was very anglocentric), capitalism exists outside of america as well, and hundreds millions of people have absolutely no choice when it comes to their jobs, because there are no fucking jobs where they live. If one has to send his child to work on Cocoa plantations instead of school, in order to have enough food today, how will this kid ever have the freedom to choose, where to work? And "anywhere else that will hire you", well, that´s also kind of a problem, if economy isn´t rolling, nobody will hire anyone. Nah, "Freedom to chose your job" is absolutely limited under capitalism, it exists for the wealthier part of society, but for most people in the world it has never existed. Besides, you can choose what profession to pursue under socialism as well, it´s not like the government will force 8th graders to become steel workers, if they need to. Under capitalism, markets, which in most cases means your local monopolists, decide what jobs are needed and will hire accordingly, under socialism the economic plan does this. If there are no steel workers needed in Detroit, then nobody will offer to train new steel workers and people in Detroit will not become steel workers, but learn something different instead, and if there is no need for steel workers in Havanna, the economic planning committee and regional production managers will not offer to train new steel workers in Havanna, what´s the big difference there?
16:28 If you "work smarter and harder" your boss will just take the surplus value and secretly laugh at you for being such an obedient fool. Fucking hell, this guy can´t have worked a day in his life, if he really believes, that working harder will get you promotions and increased wages. No, the only thing, that has historically ever lead to higher real wages, was workers organising and demanding them, threatening the bourgeoisie with strikes and violence, if their demands are not met. That´s what helps. Not "working harder" for a boss who will hapily take every bit of free labour he can get. Fucking naive.
16:43 There were bonuses for exceeding the plan. But he´s right, those bonuses weren´t that usefull, since money was never really a problem in the USSR. This is a problem of the USSR specifically though, because it focused so extremly on heavy industry and military. Could be changed in future socialist societies, especially, if they would start at a higher level of industrialisation as the USSR and not have to spend as much for a cold war against a way mightier and older nation

Sacralny Nomad - 2022-04-16

If you want to really understand how crazy Soviet economy was, consider this. My grandfather used to be an engineer at a factory and they had two assembly lines that all they did was when there was no work to be done one line would assemble a tractor frame and then the other line would disassemble it. And they'd just keep cycling through 3 frames worth of parts over and over untill more work came in and those workers became needed for an actual work. Or how every buhgalteria (financing department? Don't know how to call it in English) would have 10-20 people working there when all it needs was ~5 people so everyone would just do actual work for an hour or two and spend the rest of the day drinking tea and gossiping about love life of people from other departments.

Михаил Мёдин - 2022-07-05

I'd argue that the video is mostly on point, even though a lot of factors were left out for the sake of short video format. However, the ending kind of really lacks the much needed details, since gorbachev wasn't necessarily the first to try and didn't really have the goal in mind of instilling societal "freedoms" in SU. Good video nonetheless.

Steampunk Terminator - 2022-05-24

actually when talking about built to last here in America we did the exact same thing with cars up until some point in the 90s where all cars from all brands were build far more solid with literally everything made with steel (except the seats obviously) so u can say older cars were the civilian equivalent of a tank as skidding sideways into a tree would barely damage an older car as opposed to moders cars which wrap all the way around a tree or telephone pole they hit. believe me I've seen modern cars wrapped around a tree hell even split in two in some cases

Teutonicterror 03 - 2022-10-01

16:57 A few things here: First of all, prices and output where somewhat correlated, it´s not like the economic planners just ignored the latter and decided, that bread should cost 50 ct a pound because they felt like it that day. Look, an economic plan can, unlike markets, also take political goals into consideration. That means, where a market would lead to a huge number of empty flats, because it is more profitable to leave them empty until someone is willing to pay extraordinarly high wages, a plan could take the political goal of giving everyone an affordable flat into consideration. That doesn´t mean, that the plan and thus the prices are completely ignoring actual output, that´s stupid, but a government can do certain things, to keep stuff, especially necessities like food and housing, affordable for everyone even though a market would say otherwise. Flats in the GDR for example were extremely cheap, despite the fact, that there was a constant shortage of them. The government solved this problem, by providing flats to those first, who needed them the most. This meant, that in the worst case, one had to wait a few months or even two or three years, until they got a flat, but everyone had one, homelessnes didn´t exist, and rent was so incredibly cheap, a nice sunday in a restaurant was more expensive than your monthly rent. Now, again, the eastern block nations focused heavily on heavy industry and eastern europe was always less developed than the west, which meant, that they didn´t had the capacities to provide enough consumer goods, but that´s a problem specific to them, in a future socialist society, with enough industrial capacities to build enough houses and produce enough cars, they could be extremely cheap, like in the east, but also produced in sufficient numbers. The problem of a socialist economy isn´t that planners don´t determine prices exactly like a market would do, the whole idea behind a planned society is, that they shouldn´t do that, the problem (at least in the case of the USSR) was, that planners never had much to plan with, that the political landscape in the USSR sometimes prohibited a better way to plan, and that everything, especially in the beginning, was highly experimental. Nobdy had ever done a planned economy before, the soviet economists were basically like the first european discoverers, they didn´t really had a clue what they were doing because they were the first to do it, and thus they had to experimented a lot. By the 50s, they had more or less created a functioning system, but the lethargy of the political system, especially in the 70s, prevented the neccesary reforms from happening. But all of this doesn´t mean, that a planned economy automatically fails, because prices aren´t determined by markets anymore, that´s absolutely stupid.
Besides, what about things like Uber? They lose money year after year, but as long as their investors invest more, they can keep prices on an extremely low level, lower than "what the market would determine". What about Amazon, they´re basically a monopoly, if they change the wages of their workers, that affects prices around the world greatly. The prices on the market are not determined by some mystical guiding hand that keeps everything in balance either, they´re determined by economical actors. So yeah, agan "perfectly balanced market prices, that lead to economic stability vs. unrealistic planned prices, that are disconnected from reality", that´s a stupid myth that can be debunked within 5 minutes.
17:35 The reasons, that per person productivity were lower, has much more to do with the technical advantage of the west, if a worker operates a more modern machine, his per person producitvity will of course be higher. I already explained, why there are no incentives to work harder in a capitalist society (except if you´re really naive). Same might have been true for the USSR, but still, it´s again a stupid myth, that the west won the cold war, because there was more incentive to work harder. There wasn´t. I mean, studies have shown, that the average office worker in the US spends a little over 8h in office, but works only 6 of those ours. But yeah, of course the US won the cold war, because of the incentives for the average worker, to work as hard as possible, incentives like... the naive hope to get a raise if you work yourself to death? Fucking hell, how can this guy not see, how stupid all of this is?
19:41 What the fuck do you mean by "to much workers"? There isn´t such a thing as "to much workers", if there is no profit motive. Bruh, you´re thinking in capitalist terms while talking about a socialist economy. As long as you can pay those workers (and in a socialist economy, you can always do that) they will be hired. If there are more workers in a factory than are needed to produce the desired output, cool, that´s less work for the individual worker. Again, such a thing as "to much workers" doesn´t exist under socialism, you can only have to much workers, if you´re trying to make a profit, which you don´t do under socialism, all you´re trying to do under socialism, is balance out the plans.
20:10 Again, this had a lot to do with technology, and little with what you´re talking about. Better technology means less workers required for the same output. And the US had better technology. Besides, as I already mentioned, more workers ideally meant less work for the individual. Let´s say the goal was to produce 1000 pairs of shoes, the factory had exactly enough leather, and it would theoretically need 10 workers working 8 hours to do that, but it had 16 workers instead. In a capitalist economy, this would be inefficient, in a socialist economy, this would mean less work for the individual worker. Paying them was never a problem and a profit motive didn´t exist. You really are talking about a socialist economy, like a die-hard capitalist would.
20:30 You do know, that enterprise managers could be fired, right? If an enterprise manager got new Equipment, and output still stayed the same for the next few years, this could´ve aroused some suspicion, don´t you think? And "arousing suspicion" was usually not something people wanted to do in the USSR.
21:22 Yes, but that´s hugely oversimplified again. The main reason for the lack of innovation wasn´t the planned economy itself, but a bunch of other factors: The soviet union was behind on technological advancement from the beginning (as Stalin said, they were behind 50 or 100 years in 1931), and only managed to catch up in a few areas the political leaders deemed important (which often were propagandistically usefull, but didn´t had much use for economic development), the inability to reform in the 70s also had to a large extent political and not economic reasons. During that time, a bunch of very old and incompetent dudes ruled the USSR, who were neither interested in, nor able to succesfully reforming the economy, instead they relied on the high oil prices keeping the economy afloat. Main problem here wasn´t a system of inefficient planning, but rather a static and oppressive political system. Something that, again, could be done differently in the future. Having more democratic structures and holding leaders accountable to the people could certainly improve things a lot.
21:28 Again, propagandistic nonsense, even if you create some great invention, you have to have money, in order to make money. None of these "self-made millionairs" are selfmade. Property rights are only good for those, who have a lot of property.

Ok, so to conclude, this video is a bunch of half-knowledge, mixed with some capitalist propaganda and a few false causal relations that never existed. I didn´t expect much, since this is just another of those clickbait-hobby-political-stuff-channels, and they are never good, they´re for 8th graders and dumb people who want to feel smart without actually having to do any research. But this was worse than I expected

litneyloxan - 2022-09-08

The amount of “Great Depressions” we’ve been through at this point and more and more of us younger people can’t find meaningful work or affordable housing and likely never will with the economic problems older generations dump on us.

Daniel - 2022-03-25

The analysis of the feudal system and how that indirectly led to such a long time of no technological developments was so well explained. You gained a subscriber just for that!

The Moment of Truth - 2022-09-07

16:40 this is a myth, I worked jobs 12-16 shifts, and when my health collapsed my employer just replaced me with another worker and the business would keep doing that with all of us while paying minimum wage for years. That was in New Zealand. Capitalism is no different than Soviet Socialism in exploitation of the workers. What matters is the gain of whichever entity works the workers.

Chris Math - 2022-09-19

Well, medieval peasants paying heavy taxes might be a bit of an overstatement. While the tax might have been locally infalted (peasants have succesfully brought their liege to court a few times over this issue), it was not as terrible as paying the majority of what produced. For the majority of peasants that would have meant giving up what seeds they needed to plant crops next year. Of course the life was harsh (particularly for modern people) and unfair but it was no way as brutal as it is commonly believed to be. Peasants were the backbone of feudalism - without them, there would be no food.
The peasants were also given protection by the Lord. Another example of peaseants going to court against their lieges and winning. Feudalism centered around both duty and obligation. And yes, there were still exceptions where it did not work as well, and many peasants certainly weren't happy with that arrangement.
Also, lives of peasants did improve. Since noble landowners lost prominence, since epidemids lead to shortage of labourers (uh...good luck, I guess, if you survived) and since technological and material progress made farming more effective.

sえbえlbうb - 2022-07-11

I think you're wrong on Tsars during the 18th-19th century. There were some real western-philes that tried to modernize Russia during that time. It was the old nobility that tried to curtail this process. For example they tried several attempts on Peter I 's life over his reform mentality

Jose Jaquez - 2022-10-01

"people could now profit from discovering new inventions or processes without fear of someone stealing their ideas".......wtf .... Have you ever read even 1, just 1, any history book at all?

redmanticore - 2022-07-03

fun fact: those 2 capitalist societies that had access to the Soviet economy faired well. India and Finland did. well, India was more communist, and bureaucratic than Finland, so their GDP didn't grow that much. finland had quite the surge in GDP through the soviet years. That's why Finnish boomers remember old soviet as good times, but now new Russia is clearly bad in comparison to the old. our economy was like 90% of from soviet, now maybe 6% with the new Russia? they really didn't want to continue the old ways.




"Finland became part of the Western European trade-liberalization movement by joining the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Bretton Woods agreement in 1948, becoming a member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) two years later, and joining Finnefta (an agreement between the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) and Finland) in 1961. The government chose not to receive Marshall Aid because of the world political situation. Bilateral trade agreements with the Soviet Union started in 1947 and continued until 1991. Tariffs were eased and imports from market economies were liberated from 1957. Exports and imports, which had stayed at internationally high levels during the interwar years, only slowly returned to the earlier relative levels.

The investment rate climbed to new levels soon after world war II under a government policy favoring investments and it remained at this very high level until the end of the 1980s.

GDP growth was 4.9 percent and GDP per capita 4.3 percent from 1950–1973 – matching the rapid pace of many other European countries.


The oil crises of the 1970s put the Finnish economy under pressure. Although the oil reserves of the main supplier, the Soviet Union, showed no signs of running out, the price increased in line with world market prices. This was a source of devastating inflation in Finland. On the other hand, it was possible to increase exports under the terms of the bilateral trade agreement with the Soviet Union. This boosted export demand and helped Finland to avoid the high and sustained unemployment that plagued Western Europe.

Economic growth in the 1980s was somewhat better than in most Western economies, and at the end of the 1980s Finland caught up with the sluggishly-growing Swedish GDP per capita for the first time. In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet trade, the Western European recession, and problems in adjusting to the new liberal order of international capital movement led the Finnish economy into a depression that was worse than that of the 1930s. GDP fell by over 10 percent in three years, and unemployment rose to 18 percent. The banking crisis triggered a profound structural change in the Finnish financial sector. The economy revived again to a brisk growth rate of 3.6 percent in 1994-2005: GDP growth was 2.5 percent and GDP per capita 2.1 percent between 1973 and 2005."

Jay Learned - 2022-07-16

One of my History PhD minor fields was Soviet history. The details of this thesis are new to me, but the evidence is solid; I found only minor points with which to take issue. As an American living in rank-heavy China, I am pondering the flaws of hierarchal or extractative systems. They can grow rapidly early on (North Korea grew faster than South Korea until 1970), but seem destined to run out of steam, as there is little incentive to create or modernize. He highlights the importance of power in this dynamic, how Russian leaders chose economic stagnation over industrialization, because of its implications on power. Culture also plays a role. Nice food for thought.

kriegsmaschine - 2022-08-08

The American industrial class has a track record of aiding the nation's communist competitors. Stalin's planned economy, from the manufacture of tanks and planes to agriculture, could never have functioned without direct help from American firms. (S. McMeekin, Stalin's War)

a arias - 2022-07-26

I just found your channel and so far I like your content quite a bit. I just want to point out a "minor" mistake: I couldn't find extractative on google at all! I guess you meant extractive. Also in the graph at 3:52 you wrote "extractatice" (not even extractative). thanks for the great content!

Daniel Lassander - 2021-10-29

One minor point i think should be added here, is that a lot of the industrialization of the USSR came from other countries, namely the western capitalist countries. They didnt have the know-how nor the engineers at the time to expand their industrialization as almost everyone was stuck working at a farm, so what they did was they sold off wheat and other food stuffs which they did have, and spend that money on hiring people from the capitalist countries that had the know-how the engineers etc etc, so they could grow their economy for them.

There is a very interesting historical examination of this but i cant for the life of me remember by whom, he examined the USSR's growing industrialization and how well it was linked with hiring people from other countries. And nearly all of their expanding economy at the start came from hiring people from capitalist countries, but it slowly changed over time as they gained the know-how and grew their numbers of engineers.

Ri Nima - 2022-06-27

I was half expecting some left wing communist nut to tell me how great communism was and then blame the West for its failure but you actually did a very decent job in analyzing the system in a neutral and objective way. Well done!

Ivan Attak - 2022-07-07

The narrator greatly undermines the development of Russian economy from 1870s to 1913. According to A. Gerschenkron, Russian industrial growth was at average 6.45% per year from 1885 to 1913.
From 1907 to 1913, Russia was the FASTEST growing economy in in the world, with growth rate of 7.5% per year.
Even aside from that, it is inadequate to call Nicolas II an incopetent czar. His reign was a period of rapid liberalisation, democratic change, technological progress and economic reform. His main fault was lack of efficient anti-revolutionary propaganda or state ideology, which lead to success of socialist populism.
Retrospectively, Nicolas II was slandered in bolshevik history literature in order to justify the start of Civil War and the following socialist reign, especially Stalin's bloody industrialisation. Their pessimistic point of view is now entrenched both in russian and western history works. Modern economic history studies, such as Guriev's, don't back the general point of view at all. In fact, they are very optimistic about the perspectives of czarist Russia in post-war world.

Ice Cold - 2022-07-08

I remember that I have heard that in 1914 Germany decided to support the austrains in invading serbia to provoke a war with Russia, because supposedly the germans had estimated that if Russia kept industrializing unmolested, they would have become the most powerful military in the world by 1917.

But after seeing your video all the way up to 11:00 more or less, I gotta wonder how realistic this was.
Cuz sure, Russia had the resources and size to potentially become an industrial juggernaut, but by introducing me to the concept of creative destruction you made me realize that... I mean... wouldn't russia collapse before 1917 if it kept industrializing? the growth of a middle class would eventually add pressure to transform Russia in, to the very least, a constitutional monarchy, something that Nicholas, after dismantling the Duma, was very clearly not gonna agree to. Best case scenario Nicholas ends up in front of a shooting squad and a new dynasty takes power and agrees to make it into a constitutional monarchy, plenty of european nations went that way, worst case scenario, a communist takeover just like it happened, which again would have been such a messy process germany would probably have been able to just walk it's way into St. Petesburg by then without firing a shot.

Přemysl Šedý - 2022-07-15

Another lesser fact know in the west. After 1945, the USSR was using east european countries as its collonies. These countries had to support extremely uneffective soviet economy and had to cooperate in so called Comecon(RVHP in czech) which caused, that more modern countries such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia or Hungary, had to support the worse ones. This caused another degradation of the economical growth.

Antoine Dellisse - 2022-01-06

Babe it's 2am. Time to watch a half-hour long documentary

Ryan Francis - 2022-07-28

The Russian economy and productivity was growing year on year in the early 20th century; it was one of the reasons Germany was so intent on fighting them as soon as possible.

Tommy Flowers - 2022-08-29

Having demands from the higher-ups that managers need to increase production output with the same number of input every year, and management not wanting to overshoot those targets for fear of making things more difficult in future years is not a problem specific with communist economics. I guess you've never worked for a large western corporation before.

SPQR - 2022-07-15

Excellent analysis! Good job dear author! Also, Russian have they saying "sometimes you have to change everything, if you want everything to remain as it was". I think it's the best description of what had happened after the October Revolution. The tsar had been replaced by the red tsar.

jeff archibald - 2022-06-24

I was in Russia after the fall. At one place there was a 15 hp electric motor running a little time card machine.

Just Haw - 2022-06-17

Loved the video, but there's a lot of context that's been left out. around the late 12:00 minute mark you begin to explain that the Bolshevik party begins to become "tyrannical" and over controlling. Though in many ways this is true and I in no way claim that the early Soviet government was without faults, there's a lot that has to be considered. A very young Soviet Union faced incredible amounts of attempted destabilization by wester powers, as well as opposing factions right at home (White Army). The USSR from the moment it came into existence found itself constantly threatened, you bring this up in quoting Stalin on his speech about the 5 year plan. If you take this into consideration a tight "tyrannical" government with trust issues begins to make more and more sense. This doesn't mean in any way that actions taken were not at fault or completely justifiable, but no person can always be right especially when you have the weight of a country on your shoulders.

My second point is on the topic of incentives. around the 16:00 minute mark you talk about a lack of incentives for workers in the USSR. When taking pay into consideration the sound of a flat un-increasing or decreasing pay sounds unfavorable, this leaves a lot out of context. A common misunderstanding about being paid in the USSR is that not everyone was paid the same wage. The way it would actually work is a worker was paid by the value of their labor, meaning for example a rocket scientist or a factory worker was not paid the same wage as someone who worked as a janitor. Now this may also sound incredibly unfair but you must keep in mind that these wages were not impossible to live on and things like bills, education costs, and housing costs are all tossed out the window and simply provided for you, and even in the cases where workers rented housing, rent was such an incredibly low amount that it wouldn't take even up to 5% of your pay where as today it takes many unfortunate workers up to 70% of their pay. Which brings me back to the point of the incentives you speak of in your video, and why I would like to share that that may not be completely true. With things like housing pay, education costs, etc. out of the way workers had their earned pay to spend however they pleased (if said item was available, again another admitted fault), and apart from money workers had the time to pursue what made them happy. One example of this was after the dissolution of the Russian Empire under the Tsar, there was an explosion of talent in music's and arts now that workers weren't constantly toiling away in the fields.

There's a lot I would continue to comment on but I'm tired and no one wants to read an essay on a youtube video lol.
Overall I loved the video man, Its hard to find people who are willing to look at and talk about Russian history who aren't biased out of their god damn minds and simply aim to shit on the history as much as possible. I wish you much growth on your channel as its cool enjoyable content.

dkeith45 - 2022-09-03

For more interesting info on what it was like to live in the USSR, check out Sergei's channel 'Ushanka Show'. His videos on what it was like to live in the USSR as a Ukrainian born in Kiev in 1971 are great. He's currently a resident of the USA in Michigan. Sadly he as a terrible case of TDS. But his videos on life in the USSR are great. One is, 'They steal everything' about the culture in the USSR of stealing from your work place. Thus the best job in the USSR was a waiter or waitress as you could steal food and booze to resell on the black market. The worst job was an engineer who would only be able to steal pencils and paper. Theft was so bad, those who had cars, even the police had to remove the windshield wipers and keep them in the trunk otherwise they'd be stolen. They were only reinstalled on a rainy day.

JC - 2022-07-12

One major contributor to the USSR's downfall is that after the death of Stalin in 1953, the murderous "Great purges" ended allowing population to rise. Many people that worked themselves to death in the 20s and 30s were 'purged'' in the late 30s, including unfortunately 75%++ of the USSR's Army and Naval Officers which is why the Soviet Union was so unprepared for WWII.

Bjørn Max Hansen - 2022-06-10

This is why it could be interesting to see if France had gone communist in the 1920's and instituted a similar model in their society. Maybe it would have worked since France had progressed the same way as other western European countries in terms of the feudalism issue.

Boss Attack - 2022-07-11

Honestly, this video is kind of an embarrassment and lacks basic knowledge of Russian history, communism, and central planning. It's a video from a capitalist perspective attempting to explain Soviet economics based on pop-history they learned from Western capitalists seeking to justify the status quo of capitalism.

EDIT:

And I say this as someone that doesn't believe in communism but more social-democracy. The people communists tend to hate most, lol.

Alexandr Radecký - 2022-06-12

One of the many misconceptions about the communisty economies was the right to have a job. There were no such thing, instead there was a duty to work. So the state could leave you jobless of force you to do a job somewhere not in the city you live, not in your specialization and for some pennies you couldn't live from. This was a common way how to deal in some "soft" way with dissidents in the communist Czechoslovakia.

James Francese - 2022-05-31

I think it’s strange that all these “Soviet economics breakdown” videos eventually lay bare a family of high-concept assumptions that capitalism is inherently successful when implemented correctly (despite many dramatic and deadly historical failures of capitalist economies on the record), but that the failures of communist economics are a consequence of communism being implemented correctly, rather than incorrectly. I find such accounts almost meaningless, and not providing a comparative analysis at all; instead, all we get is a stereotypical ideological framing of fragmented historical information. Too bad.

Scott M Wilhelms - 2022-07-11

Think it's safe to say that Stalin never missed a meal unlike the farmers in the fields. 😒

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Clark Kotte - 2022-05-14

I'm honestly curious about where you got the fixed wages thing? Yes, that was the case in certain times, in a few primary sourcea, pqy rates and their change over time increased. Look at for example Behind the Urals.

Janusz Krysztofiak - 2022-06-06

Actually, the so-called "second serfdom" in the eastern (tightening of control over serfs) part of Europe did not have result in centralized absolute power as in Russia. In Poland, it led to... weakening of the royal power to the benefit of nobility. Nobles empowered by increased ownership over their serfs, and high demand for their produce in the 16th century got strong enough to widen their political powers at the expense of the king and burghers. Generally, Poland transformed into a sort of a republic: nobles elected, impeached kings. At the local level, nobles ran a sort of self-governing bodies, which voted on local affairs and delegated members to the country's parliament/diet (naturally only composed of nobles). Peasants were reduced to slavery: not only were they unable to leave the land without permission but there were cases of trading them like livestock and they could not appeal to royal courts - their lord was their judge and master of their lives. Burghers and cities started to vegetate due to unfavorable laws enacted by the nobility. The next stage of the system was an anarchic oligarchy: a dozen of rich noble families accumulated so much wealth, that they could raise private armies and buy the votes of poorer nobles - unlike elsewhere, nobility was numerous in Poland and amounted to even 5-10% of the population, so it was stratified economically, many did not own any estate altogether, the only things differentiating them from peasants being personal freedom and political rights. Under the shock of the first partition, some top families pushed for reforms, so the last stage was a proper, "English-like" constitutional monarchy when the national constitution was adopted in 1791. Alas, the extractive second-serfdom could also end up with a constitutional monarchy. The reasons why Russia has almost always been a tyranny are more complex.

John Meyer - 2022-06-20

On your section, "East Vs West European Economic History," I think it's significantly less black and white than you make it out to be. There were a lot of other circumstances than the Black Death that affected how Eastern European economics shaped up. Allow me to take Poland as an example. The first wave of the Black Death (1348-1349) put enormous stress on the szlachta (Polish nobility), a pressure that was dangerously compounded by the second wave of the Black Death (1360-1361). Similar to English peasants, Polish serfs had taken advantage of the chaos to achieve greater rights and better employment. The second wave of the Black Death also triggered a famine, in 1362.

The pressure was too much, causing rebellious sentiments from the uproarious serfs. They began demanding the extension of "the German Law" (a collection of very nice benefits and privileges granted to German immigrants in Poland, a number exceeding 200,000 thanks to the Drang Nach Osten ) to all Polish serfs. King Kazimierz, wishing to suppress in any case the power of the szlachta with his clerical allies, extended the German Law to the peasants, opening grain storehouses, asking only for work on public projects in exchange for grain. As a result, for a brief period in the fourteenth century, Poland was the equal of western European countries in the rights that its citizens enjoyed, not a nation of serfdom, but a nation with a villein (peasant) economy nearly identical to that found in the Germanies.

Unfortunately, this status did not last, but not because of the reasons you suggest. Polish peasants were indeed highly organized, as demonstrated by their successful "rebellion" in 1362 to attain "the German Law." The szlachta had been weakened by the plague, and in its aftermath, the Polish peasantry and even the Polish clergy were more powerful. In relation to the Black Death, Poland was just as dynamic as the Western kingdoms in its responses. King Kazimierz was brilliant in his attempts at weakening the szlachta, and by his death in 1370 had driven their influence to an all time low (thanks in large part to [1] extension of the German Law, and [2] executing Maćko Borkowicz, leader of a noble rebellion desiring Wielkopolska separatism). The szlachta called Kazimierz, "King of the Peasants," decrying his support for the common people over them, as Kazimierz repeatedly limited szlachta power, even seizing their land for the crown as often as he could.

It is due to an unfortunate series of coincidences that the szlachta returned to eminence and the Polish peasants lost their newly attained privileges. (1) King Kazimierz died at the age of 60, having reigned only 37 years. (2) He died without an heir, his repeated attempts to sire one ending in failure. (3) When it became apparent that Poland might not have an heir, Kazimierz was forced to declare King Louis of Hungary (his nephew) as his heir in the case of his not being able to produce one. (4) When King Louis ascended to the Polish throne, he was unfamiliar with the extremely dicey political situation surrounding the king, szlachta, clergy, and peasants. The slimy szlachta began reversing the political climate in their favor, taking advantage of King Louis’ confusion of and unfamiliarity with the workings of Polish politics. They clamored him during his brief stay in Poland, overwhelming him with their perspective, and finally, they succeeded.

In 1370, the same year Kazimierz died, they got King Louis to sign the Act of Koszyce, which reverted and even expanded the power of the szlachta over the peasantry as it was in Kazimierz's day. The szlachta used the Seymiki (regional legislatures) thereafter to abolish the German Law and restore serfdom. King Louis ran out of Poland with his tail between his legs, staying only long enough to bury his uncle and be crowned king, fleeing back to Hungary with the Polish crown, scepter, sword, and other royal insignia. For the rest of his reign, he ruled Poland in absentia, which gave the szlachta additional advantages in reverting the situation and expanding their powers and privileges. The szlachta retained dominance over Poland from then until the Partition.

In conclusion, the situation was nowhere near as static as you made it out to be, at least in Poland (I suspect that, if other Eastern European countries were examined, however, similar conclusions might be reached). The Black Death did trigger changes, but due to the unique political climate and circumstances surrounding King Kazimierz's death, these changes did not survive.

Karma - 2022-07-20

"You're the one to destroy the extractive economy, not join them!"

Дониер Эргашев - 2022-07-13

"To understand Soviet economy we must go back to Romans". Holy shit that deep dive

Jason Haven - 2022-05-02

16:40 this is absolutely not true. Most significant pay raises are self-made as they come from when people start new jobs, not employers giving current employees raises hence why they discourage salary discussions amongst employees

Milan Acs - 2022-06-28

A fascinating topic and very well presented. Great video.

pocketdynamo - 2022-06-08

I have to strongly disagree with the notion that, in feudalism, the king had near absolute power. Quite the contrary. Absolutism was revolutionary to feudalism. Other than absolutism, feudalism was characterized by weak kings and strong lords. The land wasn't owned by the kings, but by the lords who may have pledged allegiance to the king - but may also conspire, rebel or lead war against him. The king was usually a lord himself with his own domain, but that wasn't even necessarily the case. In feudalism, kings were often travelling all the time, simply to visit their vassals and ensure their loyalty. The abundance of wars during this time stemed directly from the weakness of the king compared to the lords. Many kings didn't have the means to actually assert their power over the lords. Feudalism was basically a power vacuum that no single ruler was strong enough to fill, and the middle ages were characterised by the centuries long struggle to change that.

All of that changed gradually, in France over the course of many centuries. The result was absolutism, which was very different to feudalism and frred up the ressources formerly bound by warfare to now push economical development.

DUNGEONTNT MINECRAFT - 2022-06-19

An interesting thing to know is that this is a Soviet thing, other socialist contrys had defarant ways of working. And many had prety Good incentives but it is also safe to assume that they had good incentives because of what happened in the USSR 🤔

gameover - 2022-08-28

An extractative, non-inclusive system did evolve in the west too. But it works through different mechanisms (for now). Instead of the government forcing us work in our jobs, we do it because our system got very good at creating stuff that are in high demand. We might have to work hard for a month and a half to buy our dream phone or computer, that in many cases cots more than what we can afford. Then we pay through the nose for owning that stuff and buying for example virtual weaponry for our character in our online game, or buying a new computer because the old one cannot run the new OS, or a new hardware, because the new OS does not have the driver for our old stuff, or a new phone because youtube or android tweaked its software so that it trips up older hardware. While we buy new stuff every 1-5 years most of the time we do the same stuff that could be done on 20 year old system anyway. This is exacerbated by the increasing scientific illiteracy, when for example, you see well payed people with law degrees proudly present their newest purchase, the air cooler, that while cots much less than an AC it also contradicts the second law of thermodynamics and instead of cooling the room it in fact increases temperature, because it obviously has no way to transfer the heat outside the room.
So our system also has lots of inefficiencies, but that might lead to using up natural resources in an increasing rate, rather than limiting the system like in the soviet example.

lazarus921 - 2022-03-27

6:49 bubonic plague didn't kill as many in eastern Europe as it did in western. So labour scarcity was not as serious to cause societal changes. That was the main reason, not lords being more oppressive.

Travis Jones - 2022-05-31

Russia had industrialization in the 19th and early 20th century - nothing on the scale of the West, but it did exist. Russia began producing its own mass manufactured textiles in the 1820s and was even exporting them to China by the end of that century. Lenin was smuggled into Petrograd after the Tsar had abdicated and handed control to the Provisional Government. Following this first revolution in 1917 (not the October Revolution), the troops were given some degree of self-rule, which proved to be catastrophic and played into the designs of the revolutionaries. In 1913, St. Petersburg was one of the most prosperous cities in Europe and even had things like running water in new buildings. The Russian Empires wealth had also built cities like Riga and Odessa, which had become one of the world's largest grain-exporting ports in the 1870s. Marxist-Leninism differed from Marx'es original communism in promoting the idea of anti-imperialism, which was a key component of Soviet foreign policy in places like Africa, Asia and Latin America, winning them many allies.