Just a reminder that no matter how bad things get, this too shall pass
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Happy Soviet Union Collapse DayPerry de Havilland (Prague) · Asian affairs · European affairs · International affairs · Russia · Totalitarianism · Ukraine December 26th, 2025 |
 17 comments to Happy Soviet Union Collapse DayLeave a Reply |
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As a young man during the Cold War, I never, ever thought I would outlive the Soviet Union. I always assumed either it would outlive me – or that we would die together.
Indeed it is a fantastic day to commemorate, Gorby had resigned on 25th December and IiRC one of the Central Asian Soviet republics had not seceded from the USSR for the last 11 days of the USSR’s existence, I think it was Kazakstan, but it was still a sovereign entity with notional command of nukes.
And it was a remarkably and thankfully peaceful collapse, only 3 (still too many) died in the Moscow coup that August. Although many died in conflicts, Armenia’s fight for survival, Georgia and Moldova spring to mind, it was remarkably peaceful.
So why doesn’t the EU go three better and dissolve itself peacefully?
It was indeed an excellent day. And even Mr Putin, a murderer who served the Marxist system all his life, has to admit that Marxism is nonsense – as if he did not admit that most Russians would laugh at him.
That is progress.
Indeed all these countries are better today than they were – better than they have been since before the First World War (it would be very hard to get back to that level of relatively limited government, and high culture).
Mr Ed – as you know Armenia was betrayed (and not for the first time in its sad history) – partly by its own current government, which had a touching (or rather “touched” – deluded) view of what the West was like – which, sadly, did not correspond with reality.
As for the European Union – well it is not Classical Marxism, it is more of a Corporate State mess – and, yes, Mussolini was not as bad as “Lenin” or “Stalin” (and not as bad as Adolf Hitler with his weird racial socialism – based on “Race Science” which did not understand genetics and was not science at all, Adolf Hitler was to the study of biology what Karl Marx was to the study of economics and history – i.e. a delusional maniac), but (as you point out) the Corporate Statism of the European Union is hardly good – and the European Union certainly does need to go.
The difference between Russia and China is that the Russian regime admits that Marxism is false – and the Chinese regime does not.
“So what – they are both dictatorships, and they both murder people”.
Yes indeed – but it is still an important difference.
The “Double Think” required in China, between a semi capitalist (and the Western nations are only semi capitalist as well) economy, and an official ideology which praises Marxism and, indeed, has, even on its currency, pictures of Mao (perhaps the largest scale mass murderer in history – and also a person who ordered everyone to try and make steel in their backyards, and had a campaign to kill birds, thus creating a plague of insects – i.e. Mao-was-BONKERS) is extreme.
Mr Putin is best understood as a criminal – a gang boss like Al Capone. He is in charge of a vast country because it fell apart – and he took advantage, later betraying (and often murdering) people who had helped him.
The leadership of the People’s Republic of China is in a different (and far worse) place mentally – and, therefore, are far more dangerous.
As for the United Kingdom – the mathematics is brutal.
For example….
A nation of some 70 million people with only a bit over thousand hospital beds, in 1948 (when the charitable hospitals, and so on, were stolen) there were almost half a million hospital beds – and the population was only about 45 million people (and was younger).
Britain also imports raw materials and food – more than it has ever done in the past.
And it is imports manufacturing goods as-well (yes – as well, it, net, IMPORTS manufactured goods – as well as raw materials and food).
And then there is the Credit Bubble City of London – no point me going through all that again (many people here have explained what a mess it is – how it is based on Magic Pixie Dust which, unfortunately, does-not-exist).
Russia and all the countries whose flags are in the photograph will survive – at least they will survive if they get their fertility up, which Mr Putin has had 25 years to do in Russia, and has utterly FAILED to achieve. Outside the shiny cities Russia, the real Russia of villages and small towns, is dying. Russia desperately needs different leadership – leadership that will destroy the “Social and Cultural Reform” that has led to the collapse of the traditional family, and, thereby, led to a collapse in fertility.
But Britain?
No – the United Kingdom has no chance.
The numbers are brutal – the logic of the mathematics is inescapable.
And, do not forget, the nation is now (due to insane immigration policies over decades – and due to the natural increase, births, of the new populations) divided – divided between ethnic groups (who do NOT “have so much in common”), especially in the big cities, but even in the small towns now.
When the economy collapses (and it is when – not if) these groups will tear each to pieces.
No wonder the establishment (including the head of it) is so rattled – and goes on so much about how Diversity is our Strength.
They are not stupid (at least not that stupid) – they know what is coming and they are horrified, and I can understand that.
Indeed I share their horror – perhaps if I was in their position, I would lie as well. Desperately trying to keep things going for a bit longer.
One must also remember the “banality of evil”.
The evil of someone like the ideological fanatic “Lenin” is obvious – so is the evil of a criminal Al Capone type such as Mr Putin (well obvious unless you are Mr Tucker Carlson).
But there is a banal evil – an evil of “I am just doing my job”.
For example, as recently as the 1930s the average British doctor would have died rather than harm their patient – literally, you could have held a pistol to their head and they would have looked you in the eye and said “do your worst – for I defy you”.
But during Covid most doctors (in this and other Western nations) did NOT prescribe medicines whose Early use could have saved the lives of their patients.
And they, later, pushed Covid “vaccines” that were nothing of the kind – that were not vaccines, that were toxic rubbish.
Why?
Because “I will get into trouble if I do not obey. I am only doing my job – you would do the same in my place”.
And perhaps that is true – God help us all.
Fat lot of good the ending of the Soviet Union did the West. The actual people of the West I mean. Having no concrete example of the failure of socialism to point at meant all the fellow travellers that infest Western society just had to wait until everyone had forgotten and then start to disseminate their poison again. In the meantime they busied themselves undermining the West in other ways – environmentalism, mass immigration and general culture disintegration.
I don’t know what the EU phrase for GULAG is, but I suspect that those in Brussels still have faith in it to correct the actions of the peasants through intimidation. Y’all will have to convince them otherwise.
Subotai Bahadur
Jim – sadly so.
Subotai Bahadur – yes – indeed having “Hate Speech” laws is a condition of being part of the European Union.
Tyranny is not optional for “member states” – it is compulsory.
And that tyranny will become more and more extreme as economic conditions collapse.
This is also true of the United Kingdom – which did not get Independence from the European Union, it got “Brexit” (a term without meaning).
A part of the anti-communist coalition in the west during the Cold war was the non-Stalinist left. So a sizable and influential part of the western left wouldn’t have seen the collapse of the Soviet Union as a refutation of socialism per se, just a refutation of the Stalinist type.
Also, the 1960s and onwards radical left, the 68ers and their heirs, were also not of the Soviet type in the main, and it was these leftists that went onto take over most institutions in the west. In Britain, the miners strike was perhaps the last hurrah of the Stalinist left. I don’t think it’s a shock that the most influential post-Cold war PM has been the ex-Trotksyist Tony Blair, who seemed to see, perhaps rightly, that the end of the Cold war was a massive opportunity for the left, at least for those not too saddened by the demise of the USSR.
Martin.
The modern left that dominate the West via “Critical Theory” (what is sometimes called “Woke” doctrine) were not anti Soviet – not really.
It is true that Stalin denounced the Frankfurt School interpretation of Marxism (which is where “Critical Theory” comes from – it comes from the Frankfurt School interpretation of Marxism) – but these German, American and British “Woke” Marxists always hated the West far more than they disliked the Soviet Union.
And the same is true of the Italian Marxist Gramsci and his associates and followers – in their long march through the institutions.
They also hated the West far more than they disliked this or that aspect of the Soviet Union.
The Marxists who really turned against the Soviet Union – stopped being Marxists, of any faction.
For example, Harry Marks.
For me, the happiest day of 1991 was not the “official” collapse of the Soviet Union, but the day that the coup failed. I can still remember the excitement of hearing about it from BBC News; and of telling my boss in the afternoon at tea break; and, later, telling a junior colleague from Hungary, and watching a later edition of BBC News with him.
All things shall pass but if you’re living in the pits is still sucks.
Snorri Godhi – excellent point Sir.
willful knowledge – yes indeed, all things pass because we die – “life is shit – and then we die” as the saying has it.
Sometimes all we can hope for is that the dying does not take too long and is not too painful and debilitating.
Many people wish to die – but fear the process of dying. And also do not want to give other people the problem of dealing with the body and so on.
It is all difficult.
That’s what they said in 500 CE. 1000 years later things, in fact, did get better.
“But there is a banal evil – an evil of “I am just doing my job”.”
Of course by that definition, banal good also exists.
A joke from the 1980s USSR…
(I told it to a Soviet emigré, who roared laughing.)
In the year 2000, a man sits down in a café in Moscow. A waiter asks him “What can I get you?”
The man says “Coffee, a roll, and a copy of PRAVDA.”
The waiter says “I’ll get you coffee and a roll, but Communism has been overthrown and PRAVDA doesn’t come out any more.”
The waiter brings the man coffee and a roll, and the man says “You forgot my copy of PRAVDA.”
The waiter says “Communism has been overthrown and PRAVDA doesn’t come out any more.”
A few minutes later, the man signals to the waiter, and says “Waiter, what about the copy of PRAVDA?”
The waiter says “Communism has been overthrown and PRAVDA doesn’t come out any more. How many times must I say it?”
And the man says “I want to hear it again. And again. And again…“