On Thu, 18 Aug 2011, SA wrote:
> I think that's exactly what's *not* true. There was no collapse on the
> horizon in the USSR. It was a case of stagnation and slow decline. If
> deep economic problems automatically produce radical reform to
> revitalize the system, where's North Korea's Gorbachev? Their problems
> are a hundred times worse than the USSR's.
Korea is being propped up by divided outsiders. That sort of arrangement kept the Ottoman Empire going for centuries. But the SU and China were not. Stagnation would have led to palpable crisis within decades. There was a reason the CC was serious about reforming the system -- they had to. They essentially had our crisis of the 70s plus the crisis of Vietnam plus the crisis of Bretton Woods all at the same time. (The latter stemming from oil prices that plummetted from their record 1980 highs to their 1986 lows and then stayed there. That helped the US but was killer for the SU.)
Michael