Re: The Collapse of the Soviet Union
1.) In 1978 I took a Political Affairs class at a local junior college with a professor (the name escapes me) who had led a very traveled life and had friends/contacts living in the old Soviet Union. Toward the end of the course this professor spent a day making predictions of what he saw as trends in the world. One of those was that the Soviet Union would not last the century. Of course, we (the students) stated our disbelief and asked how. “Jeans” was his one word answer. He then went on to explain that in the Soviet Union one of the most coveted possessions was a pair of jeans, American blue jeans. That smugglers were selling them at five-ten times their value. Of course there was Soviet-made copies available, but the citizens wanted the real McCoy, the American-made. In fact, they wanted anything made in America. Despite all the state propaganda, the people of the Soviet Union knew that America was the land of wealth and prosperity. They would see some piece about some disaster in America and notice all the cars in the streets, how well fed the Americans looked, the clothes they were wearing, etc. They knew that the ‘truth’ about America was a lie. And they wanted to live that ‘lie’. “How can a system survive when its citizens wish for the life like the citizens of the sworn enemy?” The professor went on the expand on how the Soviet economy worked and how everything was in short supply, that one could bypass the lines and rationing with bribes, that the system was ranked with corruption and waste, that eventually the house of cards would collapse. Time has proven him wise. He made several other predictions: Brazil becoming the powerhouse in South America, the EU forming but eventually breaking apart due to the reluctance of the wealthy nations willing to foot the bill for the poor ones in Europe, and the breakup of Canada (my favorite). He thought that Quebec would declare its independence thereby causing the Western Provinces to secede and ask for admittance into the Union, the United States of America Union that is. So far that prediction hasn’t come true.
2.) My grandfather(then his late eighties) traveled twice to the Soviet Union during the mid-1980s. After his first trip he came back and personally saw that the Soviet people stood in line for everything, including toilet paper. “What are we so afraid of? They can’t even get enough toilet paper to their own people.” A man that had lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression didn’t think the Soviet Union would last long either.