A House Built on Sand: The fall of the Soviet Union

"But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."  Matthew 7:26

Just finished reading a fine book, "Collapse the Fall of the Soviet Union" by Vladislav M. Zubok, about the shocking collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  I was a witness to this historic event.  I never imagined that a giant like the Soviet Union would fall in my lifetime.  I recall, in the 1960s, there was a hysteria about the US being attacked by the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons.  People worried about it on a daily basis.  At the suggestion of President Kennedy, many had underground shelters, preparing for it; it was a scary time.  The leader of the Soviet Union until 1964 was Nikita Khrushchev, the very evil looking and threatening person. He threatened to destroy the US from within.  Remember the Cuban Missile Crisis?  The Soviets were threatening.  They came within 90 miles of our shores. They were on the march.

As most events, they don't happen in a vacuum.  The Soviet Union was started after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the World War I.  It lasted 73 years.  The reasons are many and varied and it takes a book such as the one mentioned to explain it in detail.  Suffice it to say that Socialism and Communism have been proven to be a bankrupt system.  This book gives detailed analysis of how it developed.  Not only for the tyrannical rule and the suppression of its people but because basic economics just do not work well in such a system.  As the book describes, the communists had no idea how economics work.  The Soviet Union was a deck of cards waiting for the wind to blow them down.  

Many have speculated, and rightly so, in my view, that President Reagan and his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) had a lot to do with the fall of the Soviets; the author does not share this belief.  However, the seeds of its own destruction had been present since 1918.  By the mid 1980s the Soviet economy was in shambles.  They could not compete with the US; not militarily and certainly not economically. The Nobel laureate, and great American economist, Milton Friedman explains why a free market is ideal. Click here for this short answer (three minutes).  In short, free markets operate the best and are more efficient.  In order to have free markets you need freedom.  The Soviet Union had none of these, so the fall was very predictable.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, recognized that the Soviet Union was nearly bankrupt and could not stand on its own economically.  He was a committed communist and follower of Vladimir Lenin.  He proposed changing the Soviet economy into a free market economy.  He could not make it happen.  He proposed giving the 16 Soviet republics more autonomy and freedom.  Once he did this it opened a Pandora's box.  All the republics wanted to be free and independent.  He could not keep the genie in the bottle. Finally, in the fall of 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

With the Russian war on Ukraine that is currently going on, you get a glimpse of the Russian designs on Ukraine from before the fall of the Soviet Union.  The evil Vladimir Putin has been planning on the rape of Ukraine since he took power in 1998.  Written by a Russian insider, the book is a compelling story, with much drama and personal sacrifice by many who took part.  Highly recommended for history buffs.

No Pasaràn

 Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, I posted a comment on my Facebook page about the world needing to come to the aid of the Ukrainians.  A relative of mine from Italy posted a response to the effect that he did not believe that war was the answer and that the Russian people need to decide who leads them.  In other words, the usual hackneyed call of "war is not the answer."  Well, I agree, war is never the answer.  I participated in a war in Vietnam in the 1960s.  I know first hand what war is.  So what do you do when some hoodlums break into your house with guns with the intent of killing you and your family and taking your property?  Do you just say, I'm against war and violence?  What did the Europeans do when they were attacked by Adolf Hitler in World War II?  Do you not defend yourself?

In an interview with CNN and a piece in the Italian Daily newspaper, Corriere Della Sera, former Russian Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, explains the mind set of Vladimir Putin, the insane tyrant of Russia.  Khodorkovsky explains that Putin only understands force, negotiations or diplomacy are useless. He knows Putin like no one else.  He was a close associate of his until he displeased him somehow.  He was arrested and spent 10 years in a Russian prison.  

Putin is not an isolated case.  Diplomacy was tried by the Europeans in 1938 with Hitler when the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proclaimed "peace in our time" when they let him have part of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland.  Hitler invaded the rest of Europe shortly thereafter.  Was "war is not the answer" then? There are dozens of other examples.  In short, "war is not the answer" is a fool's response to violence.

Before Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte tried to conquer all of Europe for France.  Should the Europeans have responded with "war is not the answer?  There comes a time when mindless phrases such as "war is not the answer" cannot be used because it represents wishful thinking and not based on reality.