Thursday, May 29, 2014
Living in the Soviet Union during the Cold War
During the Cold War, the standard of living in the USSR was abysmal. The government put a large portion of its money into the military, instead of its economy. To quote a wise man, they were: "Choosing guns over butter." There was a consistent lack of consumer goods, and the people would have queue for hours, and spent inordinate amount of money on those consumer goods. The wait time to buy a car was seven years. Inflation was also an issue. A 32 cent bar of soap could cost as much as $1.60. It took years, but in 1990, Gorbachev introduced a market economy. What would you have done if you were in Gorbachev's position?
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I would have done many of the same things he did, but then again its hard to fix everyone's mistakes when every other leader before you was purposefully screwing up and making things worse just for their benefit.
ReplyDeleteI think Gorbachev's only option was to introduce a market economy. There was so many things wrong with the Soviet Union economy that the only way to some what improve it was to introduce a market economy. I also think Gorbachev had to do this because the people were getting more frustrated with the economy and they would project their anger to the person who was in charge which would be Gorbachev even though the Soviet Union was a mess before he took power.
ReplyDeleteAlso if he had thought of opening up free trade areas and began trading with the U.S. he probably could have kept the communist party in power. Even if the trade with the U.S. was just for food, it could have made a big difference to how the people thought of the communist party around this time.
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