Modern Russia Ananlysis
Looking throughout the history of Russia, it is shocking to realize how many regime changes and economic statuses the country went through just within a century. Beginning with tsars and serfs, skipping into communism and supposed equality, but being cut short with purges and mass class cleansing, rising to the second most powerful country in the world, only to shatter into an unnoticed and economically crumbled nation.
There is much debate on why exactly the Soviet Union had failed as a socialistically communist nation; ranging from poor living conditions, to corruption in the central government and lack of freedoms, to unbalanced and failing economy.
The first, and possibly the biggest reason why the USSR had failed were because of the unequal and ineffective balance of power. According to the structure of the Soviet Government, the power was to be appointed by the common people and to be built up from the bottom up, all the way to the Politburo and Council of Ministers. However, most of that had failed causing the Secretariat to place his own supporters into the committees and councils; thus, creating a constant battle to higher positions. A classic example of that would be Stalin’s rivalry with Trotsky. With Lenin’s death, the fight for leadership between Stalin and Trotsky would be a long battle. Stalin slowly, and behind-the-scenes, built up power by creating relationships and connections in the State government, armed forces, and the secret police. When Stalin gathered enough power and support within the Party and the Politburo, he knew that he could not only dismiss Trotsky as an opponent, but also send him away into exile. This constant fear that Stalin had of others becoming stronger and more powerful then him trickled down to the common man, causing millions of people to become victims of the gulag. A mass wave of purges turned the party on itself revealing the corruption, hidden rivalries, and oppositions. Thus, in order to exclude any possibility of an enemy’s success, they created allegations and forced the accused to pay for them. One of Stalin’s famous sayings was “Death solves all problems, no man, no problems”. Even after Stalin, this constant battle for higher positions is very easy to trace. Thus, heavy corruption within the government was a colossal barrier in the advancement of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and later causing the wrecking of it.
Another example of the unequal and ineffective balance of power is that members of the Politburo and the Central Executive Committee were not willing to make any major changes. First, there was a large generation gap after the Stalin years. By 1980, more then 75% of the party members had joined after Stalin’s death; however, all of the members of the politburo were at least in their 60’s. Thus, because the party members were so much younger, they wanted to see a change in the regime, but that was not fully possible with such