>From: "Grant Lee" <grantlee at iinet.net.au>
>
>Yep. Somewhere in _The Short Twentieth Century_, Hobsbawm says that by the
>time Stalin died, the USSR had become totally self-sufficient and barely
>traded with the rest of the world. (He also says its relative economic
>decline during the 70s and 80s was caused by the Politburo becoming too
>reliant on oil exports --- and by extension on global commodity prices.)
In Russia today, it is sometimes argued that perestroika would have succeeded if it had started in the Brezhnev Era (also known as the era of zastoi, "stagnation"), but that the country was too comfortanle living off high oil prices to make the necessary reforms. Later, it was too late.
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