While the twentieth-century Cold War nuclear stand-off lasted, its outcome was a subject of speculative fiction and, as such, was discussed by time travelers in Poul Anderson's "Wildcat" (1958):
"'Same old standoff.'
"'I wonder how long it can last?' murmured Polansky.
"'Not much longer,' said Olson. 'Read your history.'" (p. 16)
Wrong. History said nothing about Mutually Assured Destruction. What happened was that deterrence prevented World War III but the arms race bankrupted the USSR.
What would have happened if, instead of stockpiling nuclear weapons, the USSR had used those same resources for positive, peaceful purposes?
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't quite agree. At the time Anderson wrote "Wildcat," pessimism like that of Olson was quite reasonable. The US and USSR came perilously close to exchanging nuclear strikes during the Cuban Missile Crisis, until Khruschev backed down. What Olson meant was that in the past rivalries between the great powers had always eventually ended in wars. The Peace of the Mushroom Cloud due to MAD was not to become plain till about 1980.
And it was impossible for the USSR to become TRULY peaceful given its ideological preconditions and the internal contradictions imposed by the nonsense of a socialist command economy. Either the USSR would triumph or, if it did not dare to make a bid for world empire by using nukes, it would collapse.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes. My wishful thinking about peaceful policies in the USSR would have required a completely different leadership there. Any potential alternative leaders were persecuted and exterminated.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It was impossible for such alternative leaders to rise to power and pursuing policies opposite to those of Lenin, Stalin, and their successors without also first rejecting Marxism for Russia.
Ad astra! Sean
The Soviet system, like most, more or less guaranteed that anyone who got to the top would be a certain type of person, committed to the system and its goals.
Gorbachev was a -partial- exception; he genuinely thought he could reform the post-Stalinist USSR. But he wanted to preserve the USSR and make it a superpower again; he just picked an insanely risky way to do it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your first paragraph: Exactly, of course! And that meant men committed to the USSR eventually conquering the world--by means short of risking ultimate ruin.'
Second paragraph: Again, I agree. Gorbachev's attempts at reform undermined and subverted the only sources of legitimacy the USSR could claim. The rest, as they say, was history!
Ad astra! Sean
As an aside: to work at all well, Stalin’s system required Stalin’s methods. But high Stalinism was unsustainable - literally, since the Terror resulted in a declining population, and socioculturally, since it required that the nomenklatura, the ruling class, be kept in a state of continual fear.
Once Stalin was dead and Beria was killed, the nomenklatura asserted its desire for a quiet life. That meant the system descended ideeper and deeper into stasis, stagnation and corruption, since terror had been the only thing counteracting those tendencies.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Iow, while many in the Politburo, the Central Committee, and the nomenklatura might still believe in Marxism and the desirability of conquering the world for it, they were no longer willing to use the EXTREME methods needed for achieving/advancing that goal. So the USSR sank into that stasis, corruption, stagnation, and general incompetence.
Marxism has been a TOTAL disaster for Russia. In almost every way the Russia of 1914 was vastly better off than the Russia of today.
Ad astra! Sean
I think that the Poliburo believed only in its own collective self-preservation. It was not interested in the self-emancipation of the working class.
Kaor, Paul!
I have to at least partly disagree. The grim men who succeeded Stalin certainly wanted to feather their own nests, but I don't think they had all come to privately disbelieve in Marxism. The system Lenin and Stalin set up made it IMPERATIVE for all who hoped to rise to steep themselves in the Marxist scriptures and to believe in Marxism like a religion. To do otherwise would cause painful psychological discomfort. Also, considering all the blood they had helped to shed as the tools of Stalin, they had to believe in SOMETHING they could claim made their atrocities excusable.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Whatever they believed, the emancipation of workers throughout the world could not possibly be accomplished by the Russian, or any other state, conquering all others. Workers would not welcome invaders as liberators but would resist them as oppressors.
Paul.
Ah, but “the workers have no country”, according to the scriptures...
Indeed...
Kaor, Paul!
And your comments, as Stirling also pointed out, shows up one of the many fallacies and absurdities of Marxism. The fact that "workers" would fight to defend their countries if they were attacked even by so called "liberators" shows that national and local loyalties means more to them than "the workers have no country."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Because so called liberators are not in fact liberators! The imposition of a brutal dictatorship is no way the fulfillment of any philosophy of emancipation. People either free themselves or they are not freed.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree that only people can free themselves or not free themselves. And I don't believe Marxism has anything good to offer us.
Ad astra! Sean
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