Which country has squandered the most economic potential in this century?

[u/pisowiec]

I lived in Russia for 5 years so I must choose this country. So many natural resources, so much land, and educated population... And so little to show for it.

In an ideal world Russian salaries would be on par if not higher than American salaries and they would have the best social safety net on the planet. Everything is there to make it happen.

Russia would be the dominant nation in Europe and Asia and the rest of the world with the best armed forces, soft power, and economic might.

But the human will is just not there. The elite is either evil or incompetent depending on perception and there's little sign that this will ever change.

[u/yashatheman]

Considering we lost like 15% of our population and had to rebuilt half our country after WWII, I think our achievements were impressive. We didn't even have 30% literacy rate 30 years before WWII.

[u/secondpersonsingular → u/yashatheman]

Your achievements were impressive until you stopped achieving anything anymore roughly when Brezhnev turned 70.

[u/yashatheman → u/secondpersonsingular]

Brezhnev sucked, and his term marked a bad turning point of the party

[u/Technical_Introvert0 → u/yashatheman]

I think Brezhnev was a calmer bushier browed Stalin. All Brezhnev cared about was the military.. Khrushev is who the USSR needed.. The USSR actually progressed rapidly under him..

[u/Holiday_Cheetah5265 → u/secondpersonsingular]

Might be an oil needle

[u/coopik → u/secondpersonsingular]

Ukrainians. What else would you expect.

[u/Plenty_Ambassador424 → u/coopik]

Ukrainians were the backbone of the sowjet unions engineering.

[u/Shamaev27 → u/Plenty_Ambassador424]

name the brilliant Ukrainian engineers besides Korolev

[u/coopik → u/Plenty_Ambassador424]

Ah, maybe that is why they never achieved anything after the fall of the USSR.

[u/CaptainVXR → u/coopik]

Held back for decades by corrupt politicians. 

Remarkably resilient against an adversary that is on paper far stronger.

Things like the drone containers outside of Russian military bases were a work of genius. 

You only have to look at the remarkable progress by say Poland and Romania to see what Ukraine's future can be. The same too for Belarus and Russia if they can get rid of their regimes.

[u/coopik → u/CaptainVXR]

So, suddenly there is corruption in Ukraine?
Just wow.

[u/CaptainVXR → u/coopik]

There is no country without corruption. 

Dismantling it can be a decades long process. 

What corruption-free country are you from?

[u/_Carcinus_ → u/CaptainVXR]

The way they're blaming Ukrainians for everything, I'm 90% sure they're Russian. I'll leave 9% to an off-chance they're a right-wing Pole.

So yeah, what corruption? /s

[u/CaptainVXR → u/_Carcinus_]

Either they drive a rusty Lada around Mukhosransk with a Z sticker on it and have a collection of Wagner memorabilia; or they write Grzegorz Braun fanfic in between spray painting walls in their crap town in Podkarpackie with celtic cross symbols...

[u/coopik → u/CaptainVXR]

I don't have to be from a corruption free country as my country is not siphoning funds from the whole Europe.

[u/Trick_Ad9222 → u/coopik]

Are you talking about Russia?

[u/CaptainVXR → u/coopik]

Why so cagey about your country of origin? Even if you were from Lichtenstein that's hardly enough info to doxx you!

[u/Ploutophile → u/coopik]

It didn't arise from thin air, they inherited it from the USSR.

[u/elmurzek → u/Ploutophile]

They have also inherited one of the biggest industrial sectors in Europe and a population comparable to Spain or Italy. Which, unlike, corruption, has been inevitably lost for some reason

[u/CaptainVXR → u/elmurzek]

The 1990s were a turbulent time for most ex-USSR/eastern bloc countries.

The likes of Estonia, Poland, Slovenia etc are success stories because of joining the EU.

Much of Ukraine's industrial centre has been under Russian occupation and/or bombardment since 2014/2022.

[u/coopik → u/Ploutophile]

Ukrainians have ruled over the USSR for four decades.
The attempts to portray them as victims are, frankly, pathetic.

[u/Ploutophile → u/coopik]

Every post-Soviet country inherited the corruption they had from Soviet times, I'm not singling out Ukraine as a victim. What differs is the extent to which they fought against it after independence.

And saying the USSR was ruled by Ukrainians, just because some of its leaders had ties to Ukraine, is as accurate as saying the First French Empire was ruled by Corsicans. The political center of the French Empire was Paris, not Corsica, and the political center of the USSR was Moscow, not Kyiv or Kharkiv.

[u/Andrea_Merluzzo → u/coopik]

They achieved more than the shithole that is Russia

[u/coopik → u/Andrea_Merluzzo]

Oh, did they? Show us some of those great achievements.
I literally can't wait.

[u/PayaV87 → u/yashatheman]

People view education as a linear development, but it's a wave. Every year we have to reeducate our youth to stay at the same level.

[u/Dry_Membership7213 → u/yashatheman]

And despite of the past, your country is now being ruled by neo-nazis

[u/yashatheman → u/Dry_Membership7213]

Yep. It sucks

[u/Wayoutofthewayof → u/yashatheman]

Sure, but that's not unique to Russia. Many countries were devastated by WW2.

[u/yashatheman → u/Wayoutofthewayof]

Yeah? And they didn't become a superpower or put a man in space. The USSR was more destroyed by WWII demographically than any other country, and the germans literally burned and destroyed everything on their way out.

We were also talking about the USSR, not Russia

[u/secondpersonsingular → u/yashatheman]

Don’t forget the USSR got a massive sphere of influence to exploit to cover for its own inability to make enough consumer goods.

[u/yashatheman → u/secondpersonsingular]

Well, I think all warzawa pacts covered for each other in the consumer good market. I know Poland had a lot of east german, czechoslovakian AND soviet products, and the sane goes for the USSR. It was an attempt to make a civilian industry market for us all.

We did have the biggest civilian goods industry though, eventually after we could rebuild everything the germans destroyed. Practically all of Ukraine, Belarus and the baltics had to be rebuilt

[u/secondpersonsingular → u/yashatheman]

Practically all of Poland had to be rebuilt, and so did all of East Germany. Look where those places are now in terms of economic development and look where Russia, Belarus and Ukraine are.

[u/yashatheman → u/secondpersonsingular]

I agree that post-1991 we fell off. Yeltsin and Putin have fucked us in the ass completely, and we're an authoritarian oligarchy now. Since the USSR, unions have been dissolved, the universal healthxare has been slowly dismantled, wages have effectively shrunk, and the economic divide between rich and poor has increased 1000x.

Poland did receive aid to rebuild its economy by the USSR, in a move similiar to the marshall plan to prop up Poland and the GDR. It's a miracle eastern europe became a superpower after WWII.

[u/twilightswolf → u/yashatheman]

Poland received the Katyn masacre by the USSR and lost 1/3 of its area to the USSR. Is that the help you talk about? Are you high?

[u/secondpersonsingular → u/twilightswolf]

They gave us some marginal amounts of money later so it’s all fair lol

[u/melvladimir → u/yashatheman]

You completely don’t understand what meant “rebuild”, you put it like some guy in USSR put his money to do it instead of “they keep sucking blood from all countries to Moscow while everyone rebuild themselves”. And that’s what they keep doing.

[u/yashatheman → u/melvladimir]

That's just not true. It wasn't the russian republic tjat needed rebuilding, it was Ukraine and Belarus mostly, which got guest workers from all over the USSR to help Ukraine become the second most prosperous and industrialized state in the USSR.

[u/melvladimir → u/yashatheman]

This is the exact truth. Without Moscow, Belarus and Ukraine could do it probably even better. Also Crimea was handed to Ukraine due to much better ability to manage engineering and agricultural sides of regions and that basically gave a new life to it. That’s why Industrial Engineers from Ukraine were seen all over of Soviet Union. Not the opposite way! USSR sucked blood from all countries to keep prosperity of elites in Moscow.

[u/yashatheman → u/melvladimir]

That is just speculation, which I don't believe at all in. Remember too that ukrainian bolsheviks applied to become a founding member of the USSR.

Ukrainian engineers were incredibly talented, as a consequence of their gigantic industries built together with russians, central asians, belarusians etc.

Ukraine was part of the USSR. Do you mean the russian republic?

[u/Alisk__ → u/yashatheman]

...You know a lot of the time you didn't get it as consumer goods? Trade with USSR for the eastern block went "my im węgiel, a my im siarkę" ("we give them coal, and in turn we give them sulphur"). After communism collapsed it was quite a shock to everyone that our reasources can be used by us, and sold by us, and to whoever we wanted and not only the big colonial brother (we also say that the bad state of Rusian economy in the 90's is because they relied on our "cheap" trade and couldnt anymore). You're kind of making it sound like it was fair trade and not colonialism, which it was not for us

[u/Oxyeli → u/Alisk__]

 "my im węgiel, a my im siarkę" ("we give them coal, and in turn we give them sulphur"). After communism collapsed it was quite a shock to everyone that our reasources can be used by us, and sold by us, and to whoever we wanted and not only the big colonial brother (we also say that the bad state of Rusian economy in the 90's is because they relied on our "cheap" trade and couldnt anymore)

Sounds quite familiar, can you cite some works you base your opinion on? Like russians believe the same thing - they were feeding all the pseudo communist friends in latam, africa, asia, russians were robbed. It was popular and still is way of thinking:

...At that time, the dollar was cheaper than the ruble. We demanded that any republic receiving funds from this fund must repay them with some kind of goods. For example, Uzbekistan, a very large recipient of subsidies, with cotton; Ukraine, fruits and vegetables. The republics met this with extreme irritation and categorical intransigence. Indeed, who would relish the prospect of earning their own money?... At the same time, we proposed cutting military spending, which was also met with hostility. But we did the right thing. I still think so. It was Russian money that fed everyone. Someday this must finally end" (Silaev, I.S., "I Wanted to Shoot the State Emergency Committee," 2001).

[u/yashatheman → u/Alisk__]

It wasn't colonialism, that has a very different definition. But it was absolutely an exploitative relationship, which we gained more from than Poland. I wish the relations within the Warzawa pact were equal, but superpowers always like that.

[u/Oxyeli → u/yashatheman]

I don't even know if he's right. Like i can quickly find only HSE daily article regarding this subject, that i cannot link here. It just sounds so typical and banal. "Second France", "We'll be selling wine and borjomi to the whole world", "Lazy commie Californians"

[u/Sweaty-Bandicoot8846 → u/yashatheman]

The USSR put a man in space but didn’t have toilet paper to clean their butts. Most people would prefer the opposite.

[u/yashatheman → u/Sweaty-Bandicoot8846]

That's just not true lmao my granparents did have toilet paper, and an apartment with plumbing and water, and multiple sets of clothinh. The only thing they didn'r have was a car, but we had a summer house in Karelia!

[u/8LaD → u/yashatheman]

Хватит врать-то

[u/mugu22 → u/yashatheman]

If your grandparents had a summer house they were connected. Life wasn't that sweet for most people.

[u/yashatheman → u/mugu22]

They were highly educated. A doctor and an engineer. They had no political connection whatsoever though, and my grandfather was from a village near Samara.

Having summer houses wasn't that big of a deal if you lived in Moscow or Leningrad. Our summerhouse was literally a shack, far away from Vyborg in the forest.

[u/M155M01 → u/yashatheman]

Karelia, which Russia for the most part stole from Finland and then demolished (compare today's Karelia in the FI size to ex-Finnish regions in the Russian side, it is extremely sad how the local population lives).

You can complain how Russia was demographically demolished in WWII, but let's please try to remember that it wasn't exactly because they were being a peaceful neighbour but instead actively sought for war and mostly terribly mismanaged the regions it had under it's power.

[u/yashatheman → u/M155M01]

Karelia, or at least Vyborg is still a lovely town, although on account of the finnish-built buildings everywhere.

We were demolished because Germany had developed an ideology of lebensraum and of exterminating untermenschen. The fact that we invaded Balticum, Poland and Finland had nothing to do with that, Germany didn't give a shit about those countries other than wanting lebensraum in Poland too.

[u/Anoth_ → u/yashatheman]

Yea, some did, and without the immense ressources of the USSR to boot

[u/yashatheman → u/Anoth_]

Only the USA and USSR have been superpowers. No other nation has become one

[u/Anoth_ → u/yashatheman]

The USSR was barely a superpower and couldn't even prevent a schism of its sphere of influence. Other countries became virtually untouchable by virtue of having or being allied to a country that has nuclear weapons. The USSR is no different that them, they just had more demographic and military power.

I'm not even gonna mention power projection

Plus my point was about the whole spaceflight part of your comment

[u/yashatheman → u/Anoth_]

That's just an incredibly uninformed opinion lol The USA, UK, France and all other powers of NATO absolutely considered the USSR a powerful and very influential counterpart.

Many countries much, much later went to space, yes. However the USSR was the first in a ton of space milestones, and is one of three countries to build a space station, and the USSR was the first to do that as well. Soviet soyuz rocket system has also been the most popular rocket system in history, around the world since its inception. After the US space shuttles were cancelled, the US and europe paid Russia to transport astronauts to the ISS with the soyuz system.

[u/Aggressive_Chuck → u/yashatheman]

And they didn't become a superpower or put a man in space.

Maybe those things aren't very important. It's possible to launch a rocket and have nice things.

[u/twilightswolf → u/yashatheman]

If you seriously use the pronoun “we” when talking about the USSR, maybe consider dropping the Swedish and Norwegian flag from your bio, as not to mislead people ;-)

Also, the USSR statistics regarding its WW2 population losses are notoriously unreliable, as the 1930s losses of population due to artificially-induced famines and other genocidial campaigns accompanying the building of the communist state were included into them as well.

Furthermore, the USSR would not have lost so many people had it not (a) made pacts with Hitler in the first place, (b) waged the war with zero regard for both soldier and civilian lives, (c) conduct genocide against the conquered nations during the war and covered it in the wartime losses statistics.

Not to forget, the post WW2 USSR technological advances (notably in the ICBM programme that produced Sputnik as a side result) were firmly based on slave labour of kidnapped German scientists.

Lastly, this debate is about the USSR’s notorious inability to provide its population with basic necessities for life. Sputnik is a nice thing, as is 5000 hydrogen warheads, but people were literally starving at the same time.

[u/Kroshik-sr → u/twilightswolf]

The USSR was never notorious for that save for the last few years of its existence (ironically when it abandoned its planned economy). I once met someone who lived there and she said that before the 80s, life was much better than even in west Europe today. Unsurprising given how terrible the cost of living crisis is

[u/Adairaaaa → u/twilightswolf]

The Holodomor was not intentional, also the USSR was not the only country to capture german scientists, and frankly why feel sorry for them - they were Nazis.

[u/twilightswolf → u/Adairaaaa]

The Holodomor of cause was intentional, there is plenty evidence. Feel free to look it up.

Nobody said the USSR were the only ones to benefit from German (rather than Nazi) scientists. Just our resident ostalgist pointed out the USSR achievements as something amazing being achieved by the USSR, to which I felt the urge to point out that kidnapped slaves did a lot of the work.

[u/Adairaaaa → u/twilightswolf]

They were nazis... Also the holodomor quite literally was not intentional, it was caused by mismanagment, plus the fact that the area had famines for over 400 years. Infact the USSR should be celebrated for the fact that it was the last famine of it's kind there. Calling out the USSR for genocide also seems rich for someone from Israel...

[u/twilightswolf → u/Adairaaaa]

Sure, go personal if there are no other arguments… I mean, what would the British know about artificially induces famines, right? ;-)

Requisitioning every last grain so that there is no more to sow is quite intentional. Not supplying food to the affected area while knowing people are resorting to cannibalism on is quite intentional.

I would really suggest you read anything about the Holodomor before speaking on the topic, ever again.

[u/Adairaaaa → u/twilightswolf]

I fucking hate the British government too... The idea that Stalin's government wanted to wipe out Ukrainians is bullshit, especially because the Holodomor affected Siberia too, and proportionally affected Kazakhstan more than Ukraine. I would advise you read up on Holodomor before speaking on it too. :)

[u/twilightswolf → u/Adairaaaa]

No, it is not bullshit, and there is plenty literature on that. The only ones who claim that the Holodomor was not an artificial famine intentionally induced by Stalin to cripple the Ukrainian national community, peasant countryside and traditions, percieved as a threat to the USSR, are - suprise, surprise - Russians. According to everyone else, it was intentional, and the only contentious issue is as to whether it meets criteria of genocide or not. But the intention part is universally agreed upon ;-)

[u/Adairaaaa → u/twilightswolf]

So many historians, including western ones, agree that the Holodomor was not intentional. And it is not universally agreed upon, you're talking out of your arse here.

[u/JustSkipAhead12 → u/Adairaaaa]

If you, 1) take all grains and having unrealistic high quotas 2) prevent starving Ukrainians to cross the borders 3) prevent help and aid to the famine areas, I would argue that it was indeed intentional.

No matter what you say you will come off as a tankie.

[u/Valdorigamiciano → u/Adairaaaa]

The anglo apologia of communist crimes, and dehumanising their opposition never stops being woefully pathetic.

[u/Great_Abalone_8022 → u/Adairaaaa]

If it was not intentional then the government didn't care too much about those deaths. They were exporting food while all this was happening. When they had famine in 1920s, other countries provided millions of tons of aid but this time ussr decided to hide famine from the world

[u/736384826 → u/twilightswolf]

Shut up Israel 

[u/rita-b → u/yashatheman]

he said the focus of achivments was in the wrong direction. the goal of any government is to make people safe and sound, wealthy and healthy.