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The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) – a workers' and peasants' state – lasted a mere seventy years. It has been gone for a quarter of a century.
Existing socialist states face many of the same external pressures that the Soviet Union faced; future socialist states will too. In addition to interference from the imperialist world, the socialist experiments thus far have faced a number of internal how to maintain economic growth in the face of constantly changing needs and expectations; how to maintain revolutionary momentum through the second, third and fourth generations of the revolution; how to balance a revolutionary internationalist foreign policy with the need to maintain peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world; how to avoid economic and diplomatic isolation and to take advantage of the latest global developments in science and technology.
In trying to locate solutions to such problems, the details of the Soviet collapse constitute some of the most important historical data we have available. The more our movement can learn about the Soviet experience, the better prepared we will be to prevent historic reverses and defeats in future, and the better equipped we will be to develop a compelling, convincing vision of socialism that is relevant in the here and now.
Carlos Martinez goes back to the legacy of the USSR, traces the lessons to be learned from this crucial socialist experiment and provides a challenging narrative of its collapse.
CARLOS MARTINEZ is an activist, writer and musician based in London. He runs the political history blog Invent the Future. His major interests are the history of 'actually existing socialism' and strategies for challenging imperialism and building socialism in the 21st century.
Existing socialist states face many of the same external pressures that the Soviet Union faced; future socialist states will too. In addition to interference from the imperialist world, the socialist experiments thus far have faced a number of internal how to maintain economic growth in the face of constantly changing needs and expectations; how to maintain revolutionary momentum through the second, third and fourth generations of the revolution; how to balance a revolutionary internationalist foreign policy with the need to maintain peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world; how to avoid economic and diplomatic isolation and to take advantage of the latest global developments in science and technology.
In trying to locate solutions to such problems, the details of the Soviet collapse constitute some of the most important historical data we have available. The more our movement can learn about the Soviet experience, the better prepared we will be to prevent historic reverses and defeats in future, and the better equipped we will be to develop a compelling, convincing vision of socialism that is relevant in the here and now.
Carlos Martinez goes back to the legacy of the USSR, traces the lessons to be learned from this crucial socialist experiment and provides a challenging narrative of its collapse.
CARLOS MARTINEZ is an activist, writer and musician based in London. He runs the political history blog Invent the Future. His major interests are the history of 'actually existing socialism' and strategies for challenging imperialism and building socialism in the 21st century.
173 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 20, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
January 1, 2021
Probably the single best summary I've read of the overthrow of the USSR. Martinez explains the complex set of factors that lead to the breakup of the Soviet Union in an extremely accessible manner. This book cuts through all the bullshit American triumphalism we get fed about "the collapse of communism" and gets right to the heart of what happened. Highly recommended.
November 22, 2022
Best concise, easily readable overview I’ve read on the collapse of the USSR.
The book starts out by identifying some important contributions made by the USSR, like how:
1. The USSR made capitalist nations more susceptible to giving concessions to their own workers (like increased welfarism, higher wages, better educational opportunities, etc.): “of course, workers fought for these rights, but their bargaining position was significantly boosted by the existence of a far-reaching system of rights and social insurance in the socialist world” (p. 17)
2. The USSR improved the living conditions of its own citizens drastically. Their wages increased by a factor of 3.7 times between 1940-1980 (compared to the wages of workers in capitalist nations which actually decreased in the 1970s and 1980s). Housing, food, medicine, and transportation of the average citizen was heavily subsidized; these expenses cost the citizens of the USSR about 15% of their wages, while in the United States these expenses ate up around 50% of the average citizens’ wages. It also provided free education for all citizens.
3. The USSR combated anti-semitism (5.2% of the communist party was Jewish compared to only 1% of the population being Jewish) and constitutionally established equal rights for women. By 1970 83% of women in the USSR were in the workforce compared to only 55% in the United States, and over 40% of the scientists in the USSR were female. “According to Szymanski, in 1970, there were more women physicians in the USSR than throughout the rest of the world, with about 20 times more than in the US” (p. 28)
4. The USSR provided pivital assistance to socialist and national liberation movements across the world. Just ask Fidel: “Without the existence of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s socialist revolution would have been impossible… without the existence of the Soviet Union, the imperialists would have strangled any national-liberation revolution in Latin America… Had the Soviet Union not existed, the imperialists would not even have had to resort to weapons. They would have strangled such a revolution with hunger.”(p. 30) or Mao: “If the Soviet Union did not exist, if there were no victory of the Anti-Fascist Second World War and no defeat of Japanese imperialism, . . . if there were no sum-total of these things, could we have won victory? Obviously not” (p. 31)
Next, the book delves into the economic issues:
From 1928-1970 the economy of the USSR was growing at an unprecedented rate (in that time frame it was the second fastest growing economy in the world only behind Japan) while also not having to endure the boom and bust cycles that plague the capitalist system. Lots of this economy was based around exporting huge amounts of fossil fuels that the Soviet Union sat on. These made up for its shortcomings, like lack of farming land, which had to be overcome through imports. By the 1970s quantities of fossil fuels dwindled and new sources of fossil fuels had to be opened up (meaning new refineries, transportation networks, etc had to be built). Due to these rising costs of further extraction the economy began to slow.
Another massive issue was that Soviet labor was unskilled and unproductive. At the start of mass industrialization they were a peasant society with a small proletariat and had lost millions of their youngest workers (20+ million total) due to the Nazi invasion and subsequent genocide. To combat this lack of efficient labor they had massive amounts of people work in unspecialized factories that produced many different things (Per person labor efficiency was low so they circumvented this by having more people work each job). By the 1970s this inefficient labor force had become a hindrance to further growth, so per capita productive output needed to be raised. Labor productivity per person could be increased by a few ways: the workers could work harder, the system of production can be reorganized to make it more efficient, and another is to invest in technology that allows machines to do more work. All of these proved difficult to say the least.
Let's start with changing the system of production : The Soviet central planning system had done a fantastic job at industrializing the USSR. After the death and destruction of World War 2 an emphasis was placed on providing more consumer goods to Soviet citizens as a way to ease their pain and trauma. The central production system functioned well when there was a relatively few number of consumer goods being produced. As these goods were produced more and more the system of production became too complex for the centralized system to keep up with (a linear increase in consumer goods led to an exponential increase in complexity added to the system).
Getting the workers to work harder also proved difficult. People worked less hard in the USSR because they were not properly incentivized. In capitalism the incentive to work hard is literally to stay alive. You work hard enough not to get fired, because being fired means you are not being paid wages. No wages means you eventually will not be able to purchase your basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter and you risk death by poverty and starvation. Under socialism housing, food, and employment were all guaranteed so there would not be a risk of losing out on the most basic of human needs. Although workers could be inclined to work harder at the beginning of the revolution while the creative and liberating forces of the revolution were still fresh and new, these forces/feelings tend to diminish with time over the course of several generations.
The Soviets lagged behind the capitalist world in computing technology. This was mainly because, on the ground level, the risk of switching to computer based systems was not compensated with an equivalent reward for more efficient production, and therefore risk averse managers refused to enact sweeping changes. The USSR also had difficulty obtaining computer technology due to the embargo placed on them by the United States which was intended to stop the USSR from obtaining some of the capitalists worlds’ more advanced technology. “The US integration in and dominance of the world market meant it was able to command vastly greater resources. . . . An emerging socialist society must participate in the international division of labour in order to survive and then prosper. . . . The Soviet Union could compete with the most advanced capitalist powers individually. But it could not compete when it cut itself off from world markets and they collaborated within world markets. ” (p. 62)
Because of these issues the USSR had poor consumer goods and services. Producers faced no competition (all producers were just implementers of the central plan rather than competitive entrepreneurs) and were incentivized to maximize the number of goods they produced rather than produce high quality goods. Both of these had the effect of making USSR consumer goods poor quality. Poor quality along with shortages and high wages lead to people buying and selling on a black market.
Economic stagnation lead to 2 problems:
1. General dissatisfaction towards socialism amongst the masses, making them less likely to defend it against counterrevolution
2. Increased pressure to reform towards a market driven economy, especially from sellers on the black market who stood to gain massive profits if markets were opened up
The book starts out by identifying some important contributions made by the USSR, like how:
1. The USSR made capitalist nations more susceptible to giving concessions to their own workers (like increased welfarism, higher wages, better educational opportunities, etc.): “of course, workers fought for these rights, but their bargaining position was significantly boosted by the existence of a far-reaching system of rights and social insurance in the socialist world” (p. 17)
2. The USSR improved the living conditions of its own citizens drastically. Their wages increased by a factor of 3.7 times between 1940-1980 (compared to the wages of workers in capitalist nations which actually decreased in the 1970s and 1980s). Housing, food, medicine, and transportation of the average citizen was heavily subsidized; these expenses cost the citizens of the USSR about 15% of their wages, while in the United States these expenses ate up around 50% of the average citizens’ wages. It also provided free education for all citizens.
3. The USSR combated anti-semitism (5.2% of the communist party was Jewish compared to only 1% of the population being Jewish) and constitutionally established equal rights for women. By 1970 83% of women in the USSR were in the workforce compared to only 55% in the United States, and over 40% of the scientists in the USSR were female. “According to Szymanski, in 1970, there were more women physicians in the USSR than throughout the rest of the world, with about 20 times more than in the US” (p. 28)
4. The USSR provided pivital assistance to socialist and national liberation movements across the world. Just ask Fidel: “Without the existence of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s socialist revolution would have been impossible… without the existence of the Soviet Union, the imperialists would have strangled any national-liberation revolution in Latin America… Had the Soviet Union not existed, the imperialists would not even have had to resort to weapons. They would have strangled such a revolution with hunger.”(p. 30) or Mao: “If the Soviet Union did not exist, if there were no victory of the Anti-Fascist Second World War and no defeat of Japanese imperialism, . . . if there were no sum-total of these things, could we have won victory? Obviously not” (p. 31)
Next, the book delves into the economic issues:
From 1928-1970 the economy of the USSR was growing at an unprecedented rate (in that time frame it was the second fastest growing economy in the world only behind Japan) while also not having to endure the boom and bust cycles that plague the capitalist system. Lots of this economy was based around exporting huge amounts of fossil fuels that the Soviet Union sat on. These made up for its shortcomings, like lack of farming land, which had to be overcome through imports. By the 1970s quantities of fossil fuels dwindled and new sources of fossil fuels had to be opened up (meaning new refineries, transportation networks, etc had to be built). Due to these rising costs of further extraction the economy began to slow.
Another massive issue was that Soviet labor was unskilled and unproductive. At the start of mass industrialization they were a peasant society with a small proletariat and had lost millions of their youngest workers (20+ million total) due to the Nazi invasion and subsequent genocide. To combat this lack of efficient labor they had massive amounts of people work in unspecialized factories that produced many different things (Per person labor efficiency was low so they circumvented this by having more people work each job). By the 1970s this inefficient labor force had become a hindrance to further growth, so per capita productive output needed to be raised. Labor productivity per person could be increased by a few ways: the workers could work harder, the system of production can be reorganized to make it more efficient, and another is to invest in technology that allows machines to do more work. All of these proved difficult to say the least.
Let's start with changing the system of production : The Soviet central planning system had done a fantastic job at industrializing the USSR. After the death and destruction of World War 2 an emphasis was placed on providing more consumer goods to Soviet citizens as a way to ease their pain and trauma. The central production system functioned well when there was a relatively few number of consumer goods being produced. As these goods were produced more and more the system of production became too complex for the centralized system to keep up with (a linear increase in consumer goods led to an exponential increase in complexity added to the system).
Getting the workers to work harder also proved difficult. People worked less hard in the USSR because they were not properly incentivized. In capitalism the incentive to work hard is literally to stay alive. You work hard enough not to get fired, because being fired means you are not being paid wages. No wages means you eventually will not be able to purchase your basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter and you risk death by poverty and starvation. Under socialism housing, food, and employment were all guaranteed so there would not be a risk of losing out on the most basic of human needs. Although workers could be inclined to work harder at the beginning of the revolution while the creative and liberating forces of the revolution were still fresh and new, these forces/feelings tend to diminish with time over the course of several generations.
The Soviets lagged behind the capitalist world in computing technology. This was mainly because, on the ground level, the risk of switching to computer based systems was not compensated with an equivalent reward for more efficient production, and therefore risk averse managers refused to enact sweeping changes. The USSR also had difficulty obtaining computer technology due to the embargo placed on them by the United States which was intended to stop the USSR from obtaining some of the capitalists worlds’ more advanced technology. “The US integration in and dominance of the world market meant it was able to command vastly greater resources. . . . An emerging socialist society must participate in the international division of labour in order to survive and then prosper. . . . The Soviet Union could compete with the most advanced capitalist powers individually. But it could not compete when it cut itself off from world markets and they collaborated within world markets. ” (p. 62)
Because of these issues the USSR had poor consumer goods and services. Producers faced no competition (all producers were just implementers of the central plan rather than competitive entrepreneurs) and were incentivized to maximize the number of goods they produced rather than produce high quality goods. Both of these had the effect of making USSR consumer goods poor quality. Poor quality along with shortages and high wages lead to people buying and selling on a black market.
Economic stagnation lead to 2 problems:
1. General dissatisfaction towards socialism amongst the masses, making them less likely to defend it against counterrevolution
2. Increased pressure to reform towards a market driven economy, especially from sellers on the black market who stood to gain massive profits if markets were opened up
December 15, 2021
An analysis with pronounced Chinese characteristics.
I knew Carlos' pro-PRC line from his Youtube channel and his appearances on some other shows, so I wasn't surprised to see epigraphs and quotes by Deng Xiaoping and Xi Xinping in a Marxist book about the collapse of a socialist country. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the Chinese communists under Deng and his successors turned the country into a cheap labour pool for the imperialist capital for the next 40 years, promoted billionaires, and still managed to be true to Marxism-Leninism.
Coming back to the main subject of the book, the collapse of the Soviet Union, I believe the author did a good job pointing out the basic factors of the collapse: i. Ideological problems, ii. Technological backwardness, iii. Economic bottlenecks, iv. Imperialist pressure and propaganda. One can see that by the end of the 1960s USSR found itself having to deal with an even more complex world of production problems whose socialist solutions needed flexible, innovative minds with a sense of communist ethics, and a better planning based on a digitalised infrastructure. The USSR needed "a revolution in a revolution" but left with various failed attempts to create another breakthrough. My personal conviction is that the CPSU's strict emphasis on and purism about the correct line of Marxism-Leninism stifled the people's capacity for innovative training and scared them off from making risky moves outside the established orthodoxy.
Despite his convincing analysis of the collapse, however, I believe Carlos' pro-China prejudices may have blinded him to a couple of important details: 1) In the 1970s the Sino-Soviet split reached to such an extent that a Sino-US counterrevolutionary pact arose against the USSR and various national liberation movements such as in Angola. China practically armed and trained counter-revolutionary militants based on its analysis of USSR as an empire. 2) Chinese and Vietnamese "market" reforms of the 1980s, beyond being "incredibly sophisticated means," played a role in crushing the third world's faith in the planned, socialist economy and basically functioned to legitimise capitalism for the masses. That the author chose to overlook this aspect of the Chinese role in the collapse of the USSR is a big gap in the reasoning of the book.
Altogether it was a smooth read with a lot of good points. The bibliography too is worth to check.
I knew Carlos' pro-PRC line from his Youtube channel and his appearances on some other shows, so I wasn't surprised to see epigraphs and quotes by Deng Xiaoping and Xi Xinping in a Marxist book about the collapse of a socialist country. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that the Chinese communists under Deng and his successors turned the country into a cheap labour pool for the imperialist capital for the next 40 years, promoted billionaires, and still managed to be true to Marxism-Leninism.
Coming back to the main subject of the book, the collapse of the Soviet Union, I believe the author did a good job pointing out the basic factors of the collapse: i. Ideological problems, ii. Technological backwardness, iii. Economic bottlenecks, iv. Imperialist pressure and propaganda. One can see that by the end of the 1960s USSR found itself having to deal with an even more complex world of production problems whose socialist solutions needed flexible, innovative minds with a sense of communist ethics, and a better planning based on a digitalised infrastructure. The USSR needed "a revolution in a revolution" but left with various failed attempts to create another breakthrough. My personal conviction is that the CPSU's strict emphasis on and purism about the correct line of Marxism-Leninism stifled the people's capacity for innovative training and scared them off from making risky moves outside the established orthodoxy.
Despite his convincing analysis of the collapse, however, I believe Carlos' pro-China prejudices may have blinded him to a couple of important details: 1) In the 1970s the Sino-Soviet split reached to such an extent that a Sino-US counterrevolutionary pact arose against the USSR and various national liberation movements such as in Angola. China practically armed and trained counter-revolutionary militants based on its analysis of USSR as an empire. 2) Chinese and Vietnamese "market" reforms of the 1980s, beyond being "incredibly sophisticated means," played a role in crushing the third world's faith in the planned, socialist economy and basically functioned to legitimise capitalism for the masses. That the author chose to overlook this aspect of the Chinese role in the collapse of the USSR is a big gap in the reasoning of the book.
Altogether it was a smooth read with a lot of good points. The bibliography too is worth to check.
December 23, 2025
Excellent primer on the maelstrom of reasons that led to the fall of the USSR. Material reasons, along with ideological. Internal reasons, and external. Probably will be my number one recommendation for someone wanting to learn about the era. It’s a little too slight perhaps, but it is clear and concise and cutting through the noise surrounding this topic is probably more important than me personally wanting more information stuffed in this slim volume!
April 29, 2020
Concise and incredibly informative. Covers the history from right after WW2 up until the very end and outlines the very specific course the USSR took between those two points and how it could have been avoided.
September 9, 2022
A must-read book which *actually* goes into the various factors - economic, political, ideological, military and cultural - that contributed to the collapse of the USSR, in contrast to liberal clichés like 'totalitarianism of the one-party system' which doesn't really explain much, since there still exist one-party socialist states which survived the collapse and are faring relatively well. Reading this book has only reaffirmed my faith in the socialist movement and further strengthened it. The fall of the USSR is only a temporary setback for the global socialist movement and is all the more reason to learn from its drawbacks as well as the actual factors which gave rise to them in the first place.
Here's the link to purchase the book if you're interested:
https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/p...
It's also available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
Here's the link to purchase the book if you're interested:
https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/p...
It's also available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
August 18, 2024
A fantastic primer on a subject that grows more, not less, urgently relevant with every passing year. This summation of the reasons behind the collapse of the soviet union is easy to follow and, on the whole, very persuasive. Empirically rich (will arm you with 'gotcha' stats for days) and sufficiently broad in its historical analysis, you will get excellent preliminary answers that can be pursued in more detail through other sources. The book also accidentally (or perhaps not) helps one understand why China has taken the roads it has (though I don't think the author means to argue that there is only one viable route to socialism). A wonderful book for anyone who has asked themselves why this once great power no longer exists.
August 23, 2025
Reading this along with Parenti’s Black Shirts and Reds filled in a lot of missing gaps for me wrt the downfall of the USSR.
Growing up in the US after the collapse of the USSR, this is a part of history I didn’t know a lot about - most of what I had learned was also not taught from a socialist perspective.
Martinez includes lots of footnotes that I’ll be curious to look into later, also.
Growing up in the US after the collapse of the USSR, this is a part of history I didn’t know a lot about - most of what I had learned was also not taught from a socialist perspective.
Martinez includes lots of footnotes that I’ll be curious to look into later, also.
January 31, 2025
1992 başında tarihe karışmış olan Sovyetler Birliği hakkında, sistemin sona erişi ve buna giden yolu belli bir bakış açısıyla kendi içinde tutarlı şekilde anlatan, kısa ama yoğun bir kitap. Yazarın tüm tez ve düşüncelerine katılmak zorunda değilsiniz kuşkusuz ama yazdıklarının sistematik bir düşünce silsilesi ve tarihsel olgularla desteklendiğini kabul etmeliyiz. Konunun meraklılarına öneririm.
April 19, 2022
A must-read book for those willing to understand the real causes of the fall of the USSR.
Also very interesting for those in search of examples of how western imperialists destroy social progress throughout the world.
(read in Shanghai, China)
Also very interesting for those in search of examples of how western imperialists destroy social progress throughout the world.
(read in Shanghai, China)
April 4, 2024
Such a well done way of explaining the collapse of the Soviet Union and the many factors that played a role in it.
April 30, 2024
really fantastic and easy to read introduction to “what went wrong” with the soviet union. the book was short and quick and the whole thing felt like an essay in style which was nice. reading it made me realize how lacking my historical knowledge still is & it offered a nice springboard for further research.
October 31, 2025
Zorlu bir alanda titiz ve objektif ilerleyen, diğer yandan da toplumcu bir bakışı hep koruyan bir eser.
İkinci kez okudum. Kısa olmasına rağmen bu alandaki en güçlü eserlerden biri.
İkinci kez okudum. Kısa olmasına rağmen bu alandaki en güçlü eserlerden biri.
February 4, 2024
Great book that describes the issues that the Soviet people faced in maintaining their socialist experiment. By no means a comprehensive look into each issue that lead to the USSR's collapse, but a useful starting point to get the broad strokes. I recommend this book to any socialist looking to understand the issues the Soviet Union faced!
November 1, 2024
A great and short book about where the soviet union went wrong and where it went well. Gorbachev's reforms were so wrong and stupid that I am starting to believe he was never a communist to begin with. The book's final chapters are also very good as they contrast the soviet union to the states that were created with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a great achievement and offered an alternative economic system and for that reason, it had to be destroyed.
October 5, 2023
A brief account of the possible reason for downfall of USSR from a left perspective. It also has a critical analysis of Gorbachev's approach towards reform. While Prestoika and Glasnost made him darling of collective west but he cannot be liked in former USSR as his inept handling of reform and its execution eventually led to disintegration of a proud nation and it heaped utold misery on proud citizens of USSR.
Its a good lesson for all leaders including in corporate world that unless structural reform is handeled properly it can go out of control. No country can survive if it condmens its past and find faults with it.
Its a good lesson for all leaders including in corporate world that unless structural reform is handeled properly it can go out of control. No country can survive if it condmens its past and find faults with it.
March 14, 2022
Or the quest to build the better Gulag, the one that would last for one thousand years.
October 16, 2022
A great overview of the history and causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union. My only complaint is it couldve spent more time analyzing the “lessons” as promised in the title
November 3, 2022
Informative and doesn’t assume lots of background/ pre-requisite knowledge.
January 4, 2025
Too front heavy, too little info about Gorbachev and Yeltsin all things considered. Funny analysis of Afghanistan but it was fine. Good info and data, wish there was more of that.
May 12, 2025
A weak analysis on the dissolution of the Soviet Union. If anything, this book shows that the problem was the socialist economic structure, and it cannot work in the long run, while this, I believe, is not the author's intention. Examples he provide basically prove that there are inherent problems in the socialist economic model.
The book also argues that the problems of the USSR started in the 1970s, which is also misleading, because most of the problems embedded in the 1970s were inherited by the formative periods of the Soviet Union, that is, 1920s and 1930s.
The book also argues that the problems of the USSR started in the 1970s, which is also misleading, because most of the problems embedded in the 1970s were inherited by the formative periods of the Soviet Union, that is, 1920s and 1930s.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews