Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2006-12-04/closing-collapse-gap-ussr-was-better-prepared-collapse-us/

by krutulis • 6 years ago

71 83 6 years ago

cpr• 6 years ago

Orlov is a very interesting character who's written a lot about societal collapse, having lived through the Soviet version. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer))

I've read some of his books (The Five Stages of Collapse, e.g.) and there's a lot of food for thought.

He's now spending his time designing and building "unsinkable" houseboats.

His thinkpieces, which in the past were quite worthwhile, are now behind a paywall at

vasilipupkin4• 6 years ago

yeah, except it's nonsense, Soviet Union was completely unprepared for collapse. It couldn't even survive Chernobyl.

flohofwoe2• 6 years ago

East German here, so I don't know all that much of the details of Soviet society before the collapse (but my guess is that the situation wasn't all that different in all former socialist countries).

I would agree that the (East German) state and government was entirely unprepared for its own collapse.

But maybe the people were better prepared because they've been living at the brink of collapse for most of their lives. Shortages of one sort or the other were a normal occurance, you learned quickly to not depend too much on the state, but on family and other people. So when the state "disappeared" people more or less just went on with their business.

And at least in the GDR there was definitely a growing feeling that this couldn't go on for much longer during the 80's, which may have created a "subconscious preparedness".

And of course the "collapse of the GDR" wasn't an "apocalypse-style collapse", but in typical German fashion it was happening very orderly and predictable once the ball was rolling. And (here's a controversial opinion) even though many people had their lives turned upside down in the 90's, lost their job, had to emigrate into the "Golden West", even with all that... being poor in the reunited Germany still was a better life than being "rich" in East Germany (whatever that meant, because there was not much to buy for money anyway).

I'm not sure how people in "the West" would have dealt with its own collapse if the sides had been reversed. Maybe we'll learn in the near future though.

jotm• 6 years ago

This "life always on the brink" preparedness is a major part of what's keeping poor European countries poor.

Everybody distrusts the government, they rely on each other, learn to do things themselves so they don't rely on others. So, money doesn't exchange hands, taxes don't get paid, GDP doesn't grow, more money doesn't get printed.

This is all in a very interconnected world with a mostly free economy, so outsiders just come and buy up everything because at the end of the day, money matters.

Instead of preparing for collapse, how about preparing for being united in work and life and start trusting and depending on each other more.

userulluipeste3• 6 years ago

"there was definitely a growing feeling that this couldn't go on for much longer during the 80's"

I heard stories and I'm inclined to believe that it may as well have been just the feeling of later generations. As I understood, people expected things to relapse to previous order since before the WW2, a sentiment shared both by former rich hoping, and by former poor afraid of loosing their benefits. As time passed, all of them gradually accepted things as normal, and the expectation for change was carried on only by following younger generations. I also think that people in North Korea may have had the same feeling for an impending change, especially hearing of USSR collapse, yet that didn't count for much.

Robotbeat3• 6 years ago

Chernobyl wasn't the cause of Soviet Union collapse. Arguably, the over-reach in Afghanistan was more important.

vasilipupkin4• 6 years ago

Chernobyl cost enormous amounts of money and Soviet Union collapsed shortly after, in part because it simply ran out of money dealing with Chernobyl

Hokusai• 6 years ago

Without agreeing with many points, the main thesis is true but just for one point: XXI century economies are less resilient to isolation than in previous centuries.

We live in a more complex society and countries need each other more than before. Communication is cheap, transport is cheap so it makes sense to rely on other for your own need.

So, this lack of preparedness is true for USA, but also for many countries in Europe, and Asia. The more complex the society the more fragile it is to disruption.

Is it solvable? Yes. Local renewable energy is a good example of reduction on distribution complexity. There is more knowledge involved, but there is less countries participant in the complexity.

To stop believing in politics seems worse advice ever, thou. It seems more a receipt for collapse than a solution to be more resilient.

"Took 10 years to recover"

Has Russia recovered? That also needs more probe. To be better that you were 10 years ago is not synonym of being recovered. Russia is just less chaotic, maybe.

twomoretime• 6 years ago

Has Russia recovered?

Was there anything to recover? Sure they beat everyone to space but the economy wasn't exactly roaring. My family tells me you didn't really have any kind of choice when you lined up to "shop" for groceries, and you had to know someone from the store to get anything good (better meat, rare sweets like jam) before stocks ran out.

That's arguably something else to consider in this comparison. Yes we may have a further distance to go to recover to the US historic norm, but even under a collapse we may be closer to ensuring basic survival and even comfort than immediately post collapse Russia.

userulluipeste3• 6 years ago

"even under a collapse we may be closer to ensuring basic survival and even comfort than immediately post collapse Russia"

One of Orlov's points though is that there is a difference in tolerance levels (i.e. Russians were more accustomed to hardships). Thus the question ought to be, even with an assured higher level of comfort compared to the USSR collapse, will people handle well enough a hypothetical US collapse?

luckylion• 6 years ago

There's likely a difference between rural and urban parts of the same country as well in terms of preparedness. The less-prepared countries will likely also have very unevenly distributed population densities.

mc32• 6 years ago

Very good point. Russia is a good example of this. Despite our economic embargoes / sanctions the majority of the population goes on without a beat. Some in big cities surely miss some things, but overall the Obama and Trump sanctions get shrugged off. China would suffer a lot more if the same sanctions were imposed.

nopriorarrests3• 6 years ago

Russia totally recovered by any metric you can pick, from household income to average life expectancy. Heck, moscow in 80's looked like dumpster fire. Now it looks like a proper european capital city.

EDIT: to prove my point, russian life expectancy from fed -- https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=qTgj

Spooky23• 6 years ago

Russia isn't the Soviet Union. And Moscow isn't the provinces.

I'm not dumping on Russia, but it's easy to look at the shiny place and forget about the other parts. If you were a time traveller from 1985, NYC looks like a magical fairy-land (at least on the surface). But Syracuse, NY or Utica, NY... not so much.

humaniania2• 6 years ago

Corruption? That one seems pretttty important. https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/05/31/russias-o...

Robotbeat3• 6 years ago

In space industry prowess, it continues a slow decline (although they had a more robust system to begin with, so it has been managed fairly well).

humaniania2• 6 years ago

Freedom? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices

sacks2k2• 6 years ago

When human life is meaningless and you don't have to make decisions around a pesky constitution and citizen rights, it's really easy to be prepared for anything.

crankylinuxuser• 6 years ago

Are you talking about the US, or the USSR?

ltbarcly33• 6 years ago

This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. They'll enforce policies that cause starvation and deprivation, often without even realizing they are doing so - there is no way for information to flow efficiently, and regional authorities only answer to the central authority and not at all to the people in their administrative area so they hide bad news.

People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where central planning led to success, after all they mobilized the entire country for war and eventually won. However, the entire Soviet army was destroyed multiple times. Putting on a Russian army uniform was basically the same as suicide. The rest of the world didn't have the power to force their citizens into certain death, and as a result they thought harder and were able to find ways to fight the war without 90% casualty rates and having entire divisions destroyed to the last man.

Having to answer to your citizens leads you to be more prepared and more responsive to problems, not less.

sacks2k2• 6 years ago

"This is the opposite of what is true. When you have no rights and no constitution, the people who have control will use that control to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else."

This was my point. The only reason the USSR is better 'prepared' for anything is because they can make choices that countries like the US can't, at the expense of human lives.

"People use the USSR in WW2 as an example of where central planning led to success"

This is a good example of success in a country that doesn't care about human life.

USSR total deaths in WW2: 24 million United States: 418,000

I think we agree.

TomMckenny• 6 years ago

Another perhaps core issue is whether the party in power gets there by majority will or is there due to legalisms, archaic power distribution and voter suppression. The party that people didn't vote for is not likely to run anything in their interest.

aidenn0• 6 years ago

1. It's disingenuous to suggest that a party that regularly exceeds 45% of the popular vote is the party that people "didn't vote for"

2. The military boondoggles have continued uninterrupted since the collapse of the USSR almost regardless of who is in charge. G.W. Bush ran on a platform of not getting involved in foreign entanglements the way Clinton did, then Obama ran on a platform of not getting out of the entanglements that Bush got us into!

pmiller23• 6 years ago

Re: military boondoggles, the US has been at war for over 222 years of its existence, at least in the sense that it was involved in at least one war in each of 222 different years since 1776: https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473

pmiller23• 6 years ago

I know you’re referring to Bush v. Gore and the 2016 electoral / popular vote inversion, both of which benefited Republicans. We’re there any scenarios in recent history of the sort that benefited Democrats? I can’t think of any.

That said, the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College. This can be done either by Constitutional amendment, or by the agreement of a certain number of states [0].

What it wouldn’t fix is the huge body of campaign and election law and regulations that make it so there will always be exactly 2 major parties, starting with first past the post voting [1]. While Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem [2] practically guarantees we will have some paradoxical outcomes if we have 3 or more parties, even if we eliminate first past the post, I believe first past the post is one of the most anti-democratic practices we have in this country.

Finally, while this isn’t really a hard fact, it seems to me that parliamentary forms of government tend to last longer than presidential governments. Changing this in the US would be near impossible, requiring a Constitutional amendment, but it seems to me it is our best hope of lasting another 200 years.

—-

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

pdonis2• 6 years ago

the solution to both of these is to abandon the Electoral College

This would certainly benefit the Democrats, but I don't see it as a "solution". It would give states without large urban areas even less political leverage than they have now. Presidential campaigns would not even bother visiting most states, since locking up enough votes in large urban areas (all of which are solidly Democratic) would be sufficient to win the election all by itself.

The purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a slim 51% majority of the country from running roughshod over the rest. It is serving that purpose.

epicureanideal• 6 years ago

Except that the electoral college was designed for a purpose, and that purpose might still be valid in the view of some people. A lot of Republicans for example, for similar reasons to why it was created in the first place.

Also, do you have any data points for presidential governments lasting less long than parliamentary governments?

ltbarcly33• 6 years ago

"This too will pass" -Captain Obvious

The US will eventually suffer a collapse, that seems like a safe bet. Then it will probably recover, become dominant again (at least somewhat), and collapse again. If we look at Rome, that cycle could continue for 500 years or more.

Wondering who is 'prepared' for a collapse is a weird way to think about it. If you are capable of taking steps to prepare for a collapse -- you wouldn't suffer a collapse.

huffmsa• 6 years ago

The US at the federal level, maybe.

But it'll likely just fracture into smaller regional Nations made up of the states.

Worst case, it's 50 separate nations.

Especially now that we'll likely see a shift back towards state level autonomy, with the federal government's bungling of the SARS2 pandemic.

The US is decentralized to begin with, the USSR was not. Decentralized systems fare better in collapse situations.

AnimalMuppet• 6 years ago

Corollary: Pay attention to elections to state offices, not just to national ones. They can matter.

hash8723• 6 years ago

I dunno, seems a little overly dramatic. Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded- Britain, Spain, Portugal, etc. This seems much more likely, especially as budget issues prevent the US from deploying the same overwhelming military power all over the globe. America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you- when push comes to shove, we'll always fund Social Security over another aircraft carrier or 30,000 troops in South Korea. So, a slow fadeout seems way, way more likely. Plus, declining birth rates & declining business dynamism.

The states that actually collapse are the more rigid, authoritarian ones like the USSR or the Ottoman Empire. Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.

No offense but I have to roll my eyes a bit at these disaster fetishists. Orlov is apparently a foreign-born one, but we have tens of thousands of domestic ones here in the states, this is a very old belief system. (Hell, my parents were back to the land hippies fleeing Nixon & the imminent nuclear apocalypse!)

traes• 6 years ago

Previous world powers didn't collapse, they just faded-

Rome?

VWWHFSfQ• 6 years ago

The Roman Empire, in its various forms, lasted for 1000 years.

dodobirdlord• 6 years ago

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire (the western half) took centuries. The eastern half of the empire took an additional thousand years or so to follow a similar trajectory.

zozbot2342• 6 years ago

Our countries may not be authoritarian but they're certainly rigid in the sense of having a huge amount of accumulated "technical debt" in their social organization, that by definition is simply not amenable to gradual change. A collapse of some sort is then the only feasible form of restructuring, and is a natural consequence of such circumstances especially given outside stressors. So I would definitely not put it beyond the realm of possibility.

pfraze• 6 years ago

I do agree that the US is rigid in its thinking. We accumulated a lot of wealth in the mid-20th century and a lot of national policy debates are around how that wealth is distributed rather than about undertaking new national ventures to bring in significant new wealth. It's understandable to a degree - we have a lot to risk by taking big national projects - but it feeds into our distribution problems because we want to be capitalist but we don't have enough new frontiers for capitalism to create opportunities for the younger generations.

I'd argue we're in a preservative/cost-cutting mindset rather than a generative/competitive mindset, which can be seen reflected in anti-trust policies. The philosophy has been to focus anti-trust around consumer benefit (eg lower prices) rather than to ensure competitive markets. We're more concerned with consumers' purchasing power than producers' opportunities.

rumanator2• 6 years ago

America already spends more of its federal budget on entitlements than the military, contrary to what progressives will tell you

Do you have a source that supports your statement?

MattGaiser• 6 years ago

Here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...

Der_Einzige• 6 years ago

It's common knowledge. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid alone account for more than half of the total federal budget (before covid)

Progressives will tell you that these are expensive programs. Progressive wants to significantly cut the military, and replace medicare/medicaid with a single-payer universal system which would be far cheaper. They also want higher taxes to help fund these programs and redistribute wealth from the wealthy to the poor.

eel• 6 years ago

The raw data can be gathered from congress.gov, but here's a summary graphic for 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...

It depends on your definitions of entitlements and military, but for example, social security spending was at $1.0 trillion compared to $676 billion for defense.

hash8723• 6 years ago

If this helps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#M...

manfredo• 6 years ago

This isn't just by a small margin. Both Social Security and Health and Human Services are close to twice the amount spent on defense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget

munificent2• 6 years ago

Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.

That's exactly what we're seeing right now with COVID-19. Since Trump and his troop of baboons have done nothing but throw their own poop around, state governors have stepped up to provide executive leadership. The US has never looked more like a union of independent states to me than it has in the past couple of months.

rplst8• 6 years ago

In some ways, this could be considered beneficial. There are multiple layers to our government and can be a check on each others' power.

zelon883• 6 years ago

Plus the US has one advantage that previous stable empires didn't have- federalism, a decentralized system. Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.

The fed gets it's money from GDP producing states. There are far more GDP draining states the further inland you go. If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch which is the only one that really matters during such conditions.

rmrfstar• 6 years ago

Care to name these "GDP draining states"?

hash8723• 6 years ago

Eh, I don't really agree with that. All the states really need are a paramilitary branch- the state police, local police, and maybe the local National Guard. You need rough men with guns to stop looting, bandits, etc.- and they'd probably do some bad stuff as well, but I mean that's the most fundamental level of civilization: the guys with guns. Judicial branch is quite a bit further up there on a Maslow-like hierarchy.

Plus the red states mostly grow their own food, which would be pretty huge

frank2• 6 years ago

If those states don't get federal funds, they will not be able to have a functioning judicial branch

Your phrase "GDP draining" probably refers to the fact that some states receive more in federal services than their population pays in federal taxes, which has nothing to do with whether such a state will be able to continue to fund and administer its own "state" court.

Most matters, e.g., most murder trials, are adjudicated in the 50 state courts, not in the US federal court. When OJ Simpson was put on trial for the murders of Ron Goldman and Nichole Brown Simpson, for example, he was put on trial in a state court.

neffy• 6 years ago

If one was to be brutally fair about this, those so called "GDP" draining states, otherwise known as the Farmers who not only feed the USA but also sell half of their crop abroad, would be far better off as separate countries, with their own currencies and local banks to provide lending, rather than being the source of financial flows that prop up places like New York city.

And in this putative local warlord future that you're imagining for the US, I rather suspect ownership of food production will matter quite a lot.

SamReidHughes• 6 years ago

This is total nonsense. It gets more of its money from states with more profitable companies and high paid employees. Those are individuals, not states, and it’s a measure of how much surplus value they can capture, not production.

empath75• 6 years ago

The UK itself didn't collapse, but the end of the British Empire resulted in an unbelievable amount of war and violence as they withdrew -- the Indian partition alone had up to 2 million deaths.

Even in an emergency, we'd just see power shift to local state leaders.

It would not be unheard of for those local state leaders to go to war with each other -- they've done it once before, after all. The point is that once power centers fail, the consequences aren't predictable.

routerl• 6 years ago

Portugal absolutely collapsed, due to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Voltaire wrote about this[1]. The Portuguese Empire couldn't cope with the near total destruction of their capital, and never recovered. During the Napoleonic wars, the emperial court moved to Brazil and, basically, hid. They were a shadow of themselves.

The United Kingdom, similarly, collapsed, under the weight of two world wars. Europe as a whole was devastated, and the whole world started to coalesce around the only remaining global powers.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Po%C3%A8me_sur_le_d%C3%A9sas...

jrumbut• 6 years ago

It's so funny how widespread those beliefs about oil were. I would have guessed that by now we would be paying $300/bbl and everyone would know that the end of oil was near.

It's hard to predict the future!

knolax• 6 years ago

The entire thing seems tongue in cheek to me. Not sure if it had any serious message.

yters• 6 years ago

I wonder if the different economic system had anything to do with USSR's collapse? And perhaps US collapse becomes more likely as we change economic systems?

For example, communists killed and imprisoned all the kulaks (land owning farming class) to create their collective farms. Shortly thereafter the USSR was hit with devastating famine. Similar series of events happened in China under Mao. Coincidence or causation? If the latter, is this indicative of the nature of the USSR economy and perhaps provides insight into why it collapsed?

unnouinceput• 6 years ago

I have a saying in my country, it translates roughly like this:

"Horsed don't die when dogs want/wish".

Original is "Nu mor caii cand vor cainii"

_7fvc• 6 years ago

The US is a federation of states. It has already fallen apart in some ways in this crisis. Power and decision making are shifting to local states. I think the trend will intensify. The biggest threat to the US is probably secession. That has not happened since the Civil War. Since then, it has become even more unified. It's hard to see how states can leave the Union now. Being able to shift power between local and federal is a strength of the US political system. At international level, the US alliance may fade away.

I guess China would fall apart next. It's a country that's stitched together by force and propaganda. It doesn't seem to have the ability to shift its internal borders. So its collapse would be more dramatic than the US.

theandrewbailey• 6 years ago

In the first 100 years or so, the power in the US was more with states than the federal government. In the past 100 years, there has been an incredible accumulation of federal power. The balance is creeping back the original norm, with a long way to go before secession.

bobmcbobface• 6 years ago

This idea of US collapse, as framed seems deeply silly, for a number of reasons.

1. This isn't really the US we are talking about, its the Western economic system

2. Things 'collapse' in different ways. A slow collapse looks more like a transition. Most things don't collapse anywhere near as quickly as the USSR for obvious reasons.

Closing The Collapse Gap: The USSR was better prepared than the US (2006)

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