Chapter 90 Chapter 16 The Fall of Socialism 2

2 Deng's new line in China was nothing less than the most frank and open admission that the structure of "socialism in reality" needed major revision.Besides China, when the world entered the 1980s from the 1970s, all the systems in the world that claimed to be socialist obviously had a huge problem.I saw that the Soviet-style economic momentum gradually slowed down, and all the important growth figures that could be calculated also decreased gradually with each five-year plan after 1970: gross national product, industrial products, agricultural production, capital investment, real average income , are all true.Even if it is not in the process of real degeneration, the Soviet economy is showing weakness after all, and it is like a bull.What's more, instead of becoming an industrial giant in world trade, the Soviet Union retreated in the international market.Back in 1960, its exports were mainly mechanical equipment, means of transportation, and metals and their products; by 1985, it was mainly energy (53%, namely oil and natural gas).On the contrary, almost 60% of its imported goods today are machinery and metals, etc., as well as industrial consumer products (SSSR, 1987pp. 15-17, 32-33).In other words, the status of the Soviet Union has become like a colony specializing in the production of natural resources to provide energy for other more advanced industrial economies-in fact, the latter are mainly its own vassal states in the West, especially Czechoslovakia and the German Democratic Republic Mainly.Then the industries of the two countries can also rely on the unlimited and undemanding market supply of the Soviet Union, and there is no need to make major improvements to make up for their own shortcomings.

In fact, by the 1970s, the socialist countries not only lagged behind economically, but even general social indicators, such as the death rate, stopped shrinking. This dealt a severe blow to the confidence in socialism—because according to the spirit of socialism, it The quality of life of ordinary people should be improved through social justice without disproportionate reliance on their ability to generate wealth.The average life expectancy at birth in the Soviet Union, Poland, and Hungary barely budged—indeed, it declined—in the two decades before the collapse of communism.This is a matter of serious contemplation, as average life expectancy is rising in most other countries at the same time (it is worth noting that even Cuba, and some Communist Asian countries for which data is available, are at growing). In 1969, people in Austria, Finland, and Poland had the same life expectancy (70.1 years) on average; but in 1989, the life expectancy of Poland was 4 years less than that of Austria and Poland.Perhaps this means that the living are healthier—as demographers think—but that is only because sick people who would continue to be alive in a capitalist country would die in a socialist country (Riley 1991) .Reformers everywhere, including in the Soviet Union, were dismayed by this trend (World Band Atlas, 1990, pp. 6-9 and World Tables, 1991, passim).

At this time, there was another visible phenomenon that reflected the decay of the Soviet system, namely the emergence of the term "privileged class" (nomenk latura) (a name that seems to have been conveyed to the West through dissident writing).Until then, Communist Party cadres—the backbone of the ruling system in Lenin's state—had been respected abroad, and enjoyed somewhat begrudging envy.Although the national opposition of its defeated opponents, such as the Trotskyites in the Soviet Union or De Geras in Yugoslavia, have pointed out that this team is also a potential danger of bureaucratic corruption.However, in the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, the general opinion in the West—especially the United States—believed that the secret magic weapon of communism’s global advancement lay in the Communist Party’s strict organizational system and its complete indifference to factionalism and selflessness. The contingent of selfless cadres faithfully carried out the party's "line" (Fainsod, 1956; Brzezinski, 1962; Duverger, 1927).

But on the other hand, the term "privileged class" (this term was almost unknown before 1980, only appearing in the vocabulary of the CPSU administrative system), just hints at the self-interested bureaucracy of the Brezhnev era. The weak point of the system: a mixture of incompetence and corruption.In fact, the situation is becoming more and more obvious that the operation of the Soviet Union itself is indeed carried out in a system full of selfishness and fraud, using backdoors, soliciting connections, and taking care of its own people. With the exception of Hungary, after the Prague Spring, the socialist countries in Europe were discouraged and in fact gave up their serious reform efforts.As for the occasional attempts to return to the old path of centrally planned economies, either in the Stalinist style (as in Romania under Ceausescu) or in the Maoist style, substituting spiritual strength and moral enthusiasm for economic theory (as in Cass Trow), whose consequences are best left unmentioned here.The Brezhnev era was finally dubbed a "period of stagnation" by reformers because his regime simply abandoned any serious attempt to restore an economy that was apparently in decline.It is much easier to buy wheat on the world market to feed the people than to try to solve agricultural production problems at home.Greasing this rusty economic engine with ubiquitous bribery and corruption is easier than cleaning and recalibrating—not to mention replacing the entire machine.What will happen in the future, who knows?At least for the moment, it is obviously more important to keep consumers happy - at worst, not to make them too unhappy.So in the first half of the 1970s, Soviet residents probably felt that life was good, at least, much better than at any other time in their memory.

The most troublesome problem of "socialism in reality" in Europe is that the socialist world at this time is not like the Soviet Union between the two wars. It can stay outside the world economy, so it is also immune to the "Great Depression" ".Now that it is more and more involved with the outside world, it cannot escape the economic shock of the 1970s.Europe's "actually socialist" economy, as well as the Soviet Union, plus parts of the Third World, became the real victims of the great crisis after the golden age; Came out the hard way without any major hits (at least until the early '90s).This is indeed the greatest irony of history.In fact, until the early 1990s, some countries, such as West Germany and Japan, sprinted all the way without faltering at all.In contrast, "real socialist" countries not only have to face their own increasingly difficult institutional problems, but also have to deal with the problematic and constantly changing world outside; part.The situation may be explained by the ambiguous example of the international oil crisis.A crisis changed the world energy market after 1973. As for its impact, it is extremely ambiguous because there are both positive and negative aspects.Under pressure from a global cartel of oil producers - the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - oil prices, which were extremely cheap at the time (in real terms, have even fallen since the war), nearly skyrocketed in 1973 4 times, and after the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s, triple jump again.The increase is beyond imagination: in 1970, the price of a barrel of oil was 2.53 US dollars, and by the late 1980s, it had reached about 41 US dollars per barrel.

The oil crisis on one side is obviously a blessing to the other side. There are two advantages: For oil producing areas including the Soviet Union, black oil has turned into black gold, just like a lottery ticket that guarantees weekly winnings. With little effort, millions of banknotes rolled in.For a while, the Soviet Union, with its pockets bulging, could not only save the trouble of economic reform, but also rely on oil revenue to pay for its increasing imports from the West.In the 10 years from 1970 to 1980, the Soviet Union's total exports to developed countries jumped from less than 19% of its total exports to 32% (SSSR, 1987 p.32).Some people believe that it was because of this unexpected wealth that the Brezhnev regime was eager to compete with the United States in the mid-1970s when the revolutionary wave swept across the third world again ( see Chapter 15); and because of this, it plunged headlong into a suicidal arms race (Maksimenko, 1991).

Another opportunity brought about by the oil crisis is that the petrodollars that continue to flow outward from the billionaire oil-producing countries (these countries usually have very small populations) are now in the hands of the international banking system, in the form of loans, waiting Anyone who wants to borrow money asks.Among the developing countries, few countries could resist this temptation, so they stretched out their hands and stuffed huge sums of money into their pockets, which finally triggered the worldwide debt crisis in the early 1980s.As for the socialist countries that succumbed to the wind of money—most notably Poland and Hungary—the money seemed like a godsend, investing not only in stimulating growth, but also in improving people's living standards.

However, these phenomena only exacerbated the crisis of the 1980s, because the socialist economic system - exemplified by the high-spending Poland - was simply inelastic and incapable of exploiting this resource.In response to rising oil prices, oil consumption in Western European countries was reduced by 40% (1973-1985), but in Eastern Europe during the same period, it was only reduced by a little over 20%.The difference between the two is very clear (Kollo, 1990 p. 39).Production costs in the Soviet Union skyrocketed, Romania's oil fields dried up, and economical use of energy became increasingly difficult.By the early 1980s, Eastern Europe was mired in a severe energy crisis, which in turn caused extreme shortages of food and manufactured goods (except for countries such as Hungary, which were in high debt, rising inflation, and low real wages).This is what "real socialism" faces as it enters what will ultimately prove to be its final decade.The only way to rescue this crisis is to go back to Stalin's old way and strictly implement central orders and constraints-at least in places where "central planning" still works (but in countries such as Hungary and Poland, central planning has long been not working).This old method, in the period from 1981 to 1984, did have some effect, and the debt was generally reduced by 35% to 70% (except for Poland and Hungary).For a while, it seemed to ignite the illusion that the momentum of economic growth could be restored without fundamental reforms.The result was a "Great Leap 'Retreat', a resurgence of the debt crisis, and an increasingly bleak economic outlook" (Kollo, p. 41). This was the situation in the Soviet Union when Gorbachev came to power.