Thread by @jpop_el_jefe

#OTD in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took over as the leader of the USSR. During his term, he would make numerous ill-fated attempts to reform the moribund system, but only accelerated its decline. Thus, his reign ended with the disintegration of the very USSR he sought to preserve.

Both his admirers and haters portray this as some sort of unnatural historical turn, wherein a single leader took over and dismantled what was otherwise a functional system. I'll give you a *very* small taste of what he inherited. What happened afterwards should surprise no one.

The Soviet economy had been in a state of gradual decline for decades. The system established by Stalin in the late 1920s had gone virtually unchanged in terms of basic substance. This soon came to be incompatible with a modern high-tech economy.

By the 1980s, growth rates had entered into a permanent decline. Shortages were becoming ubiquitous, and consumer standards of living were in decline. This in turn bred disillusionment, absenteeism and apathy. Outside observers began to notice that not all was well in the USSR.

Health was also suffering. The centralized system was proving incompatible with the modern needs. People were also turning to the bottle to scape life's hardships. Life expectancy was declining and infant mortality rising.

The food situation was abysmal. 3% of private land produced 30% of agricultural goods. 25% of the average crop rotted in the fields. 25% of the Soviet workforce in agriculture could not feed the nation. Compare that to 3% of the American workforce producing vast surpluses.

On top of all these problems, nationalism was growing under the surface in the republics. The idea of a "Soviet people" never gelled. As conditions worsened, people began challenging the police state more. The fault lines that would break the country apart were becoming visible.

On top of this, a wave of economically-motivated strikes was breaking out, often jibing with nationality protests. None of this posed a threat to the regime yet, but if things got bad enough, it might. Soviet leaders feared most of all a local version of the Polish *Solidarity. *

Clearly, this was a system in dire need of reform. But even contemporaries knew that reform would be quite dangerous. The economy was simply so distorted that any change would make things worse, at least in the short run. This observation from 1983 basically predicts the future.

The Soviets faced a choice of not reforming and letting these problems fester until they explodes, or trying to reform and tearing their entire system apart. This was the situation Gorbachev inherited. All the problems that would lead to his country's downfall were visible.