OK, this is more reasonable. Stalinism was popular overall, and attained at least grudging acquiescence of much of the population -- a substantial majority, probably -- even in the 30s, as long as you were not in the collectivization zones. The GPW gave it a big boost, granted more in the nature of Russian/Soviet nationalism and patriotism than socialist solidarity. As living standards` improved through the mid-80s, the overall legitimacy of the regime was enhanced. It only started to fall precipitously when the nomenklatura defected from the idea of the USSR and socialism in the later years of perestroika, and even then a poll done shortly before the breakup showed that 75% +/- of the whole Soviet population favored keeping the country together. And Hillel does overstate the degree of discontent. But discontent there was, sometimes to the point of insurrection.
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> My point addressed only his apparent attribution of
> a
> total opposition of the population to the
> bureaucracy,
> which is false, and I would guess arises from an
> uncritcal appropriation of what Trotsky said about
> conditions in the Soviet Union ("the bureaucracy"
> vs.
> "the masses"). I do not know enough about his other
> views to have an opinion, and in any case have very
> serious doubts that the Soviet system was capable of
> doing more than it did (broadly speaking). I don't
> think "democratizing" it would have done much,
> though,
> if that were all that was done.
>
> --- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > Chris Doss points out an error in Ticktin's view
> > that the Soviet population ever offered any
> > political opposition to the bureaucracy. But that
> > does not take away from the fact that Ticktin
> > pointed out the utter depletion of the Soviet
> > Union's economic dynamic when both the regimes
> > apologists and its cold war critics were colluding
> > in a massive overestimation of the quality of
> Soviet
> > industrialisation, the latter uncritically
> > reproducing the former's quantitative output
> > figures.
> >
> > Only Ticktin, as far as I can see, anticipated the
> > economic collapse of the Soviet Union, and deduced
> > it from the economy's central failing - that it
> had
> > abolished the market without creating an
> alternative
> > economic regulator. 'Planning' in the USSR
> remained
> > an empty letter because the bureaucracy distrusted
> > the populace too much to put them in charge of the
> > plan. And Ticktin worked out that the Soviet
> economy
> > had run out of steam 1973, in his essay, 'Towards
> a
> > Political Economy of the USSR', when everyone else
> > was lauding, or bemoaning Soviet success.
> >
> > Nostalgia for Brezhnev says very little about what
> > happened then, and everything about how people
> feel
> now.> ___________________________________
> >
>
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