Category talk:Predictions of Soviet collapse
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[edit] Requested move
| Proposal : | Predictions of Soviet collapse → Predictions of Soviet collapse |
| Rationale : | |
| Proposer : | Travb |
[edit] Survey and discussion
Please add * Support or * Oppose followed by a brief explanation, then sign your vote using "~~~~".
- Comment : "Cold-War groups" seems more woolly than "Organizations and people", so I'm inclined to oppose... David Kernow 01:58, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose : There are individuals who fit this category now; changing it to "Cold-War groups" would make them no longer fit. I don't see that anything would be gained by this. -Syberghost 18:41, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
- Support : I changed the name to a shorter one.Travb 08:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Organizations and people who predicted the collapse of the USSR
[edit] Emmanuel Todd
Emmanuel Todd was not an anomaly at least one organization and one other person wrote a book predicting the fall of the USSR:
[edit] RAND
From the book Cahn, Anne H. (September, 1998). Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271017910:
In 1968 Egon Neuberger predicted that "[t]he centrally planned economy eventually would meet its demise, because of its demonstrably growing ineffectiveness as a system for managing a modernizing economy in a rapidly changing world."20
NOTE 20. Egon Neuberger, "The Legacies of Central Planning," RM 5530-PR, Rand, June 1968, quoted in Gertrude E. Schroeder, "Reflections on Economic Sovietology," Post-Soviet Affairs 11 (July–September 1995): 197–234.
[edit] Andrei Amalrik
From the book Cahn, Anne H. (September, 1998). Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0271017910:
By 1976, lots of information was also available about the political and social factors within the Soviet Union. Prominent dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote:
There is another powerful factor which works against the chance of any kind of peaceful reconstruction and which is equally negative for all levels of society: this is the extreme isolation in which the regime has placed both society and itself. This isolation has not only separated the regime from society, and all sectors of society from each other, but also put the country in extreme isolation from the rest of the world. This isolation has created for all—from the bureaucratic elite to the lowest social levels—an almost surrealistic picture of the world and of their place in it. Yet the longer this state of affairs helps to perpetuate the status quo, the more rapid and decisive will be its collapse when confrontation with reality becomes inevitable.
Amalrik predicted the collapse of the regime would occur between 1980 and 1985.27
NOTE 27. Andrei Amalrik, Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984? (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 33.
[edit] Charles de Gaulle
"Only a handful of thinkers, ranging from Charles de Gaulle to the Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik, foretold the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, and even they saw it as likely to happen as a result of disastrous wars with China or pressures from the Muslim Soviet states of Central Asia." From:[1]
[edit] Raymond Aron
"I know of only one person who came close to getting it right: Raymond Aron, the French philosopher and liberal anti-Communist. In a talk on the Soviet threat that I heard him give in the 1980s at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, he reminded the audience of Machiavelli's observation in "The Prince" that "all armed prophets have conquered and all unarmed ones failed.
"But what happens, Aron asked, if the prophet, having conquered and then ruled by force of arms, loses faith in his own prophecy? In the answer to that question, Aron suggested, lay the key to understanding the future of the Soviet Union." From:[2]
[edit] Smenavekhites
Smenavekhites admonished its members to return to Russia predicting that the Soviet Union would not last and would give way to a revival of Russian nationalism.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 188
[edit] Karl Kautsky
Shortly after the (Soviet) revolution , Bertrand Russell and Rosa Luxemburg, supporters of revolution second to none, wrote with deep regret that it was impossible that the Bolsheviks would succeed in building the kind of society they professed to believe in. Kautsky and the Mensheviks predicted even more emphatically that the whole experiment would end in disaster.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 188
[edit] Samizdat
Various essays published in samizdat in the early 1970s were on similar lines, some quite specifically predicting the end of the Soviet empire.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 188
[edit] Konrad Adenauer
Western statesmen from Adenauer to Reagan predicted the downfall of the Soviet empire.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] Ronald Reagan
Western statesmen from Adenauer to Reagan predicted the downfall of the Soviet empire.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews from 1979 onward discussed the possibility, indeed likelihood, of the breakup of the Soviet Empire.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] Klaus Mehnert
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews from 1979 onward discussed the possibility, indeed likelihood, of the breakup of the Soviet Empire, and there were dozens of similar statements, now forgotten, made all over the Western world. Klaus Mehnert referred to the advanced ideological exhaustion of the Soviet Union
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] Bernard Levin
Bernard Levin drew attention in 1992 to his prophetic article originally published in the Times of London in September 1977, in which an uncannily accurate prediction of the appearance of new faces in the Politburo was made, resulting in radical but peaceful political change.15
15. Bernard Levin, in National Interest, Spring 1993, 64-65.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] Mensheviks
Shortly after the (Soviet) revolution , Bertrand Russell and Rosa Luxemburg, supporters of revolution second to none, wrote with deep regret that it was impossible that the Bolsheviks would succeed in building the kind of society they professed to believe in. Kautsky and the Mensheviks predicted even more emphatically that the whole experiment would end in disaster.
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 188
[edit] Problems of Communism (journal)
"Various articles that appeared in professional journals such as Problems of Communism and Survey dealt with the decay and the possible downfall of the Soviet regime."
Laqueur, Walter (1996). The Dream that Failed : Reflections on the Soviet Union. USA: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0195102827. p. 187
[edit] To add
Survey journal, a professional journal (p 187) Footnotes 11-16, p 223 key word "Bernard Levin"
Signed:Travb 14:49, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Józef Piłsudski
The roles of Piłsudski and Edmund Charaszkiewicz are presented in my article on "Prometheism," based chiefly on the latter's papers.
The Promethean project was conceived by Piłsudski as one element in a two-pronged strategy to secure Poland against Russia by engineering the Russian Empire's — later, the Soviet Union's — disintegration, while building a "Międzymorze," or "Between-Seas," federation, embracing Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, as a modern counterpart to the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Neither of these two plans came to fruition at the time. Międzymorze died with the signing of the 1921 Peace of Riga. But both initiatives have offspring of a sort in the rise of the European Union and the demise of the Soviet Union. logologist|Talk 14:22, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why limit to post-World War II?
Moved from: Talk:Mensheviks and Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#Category:Organizations_and_people_who_predicted_the_collapse_of_the_USSR
[edit] Moved from: Talk:Mensheviks
...Well, it is certainly true that the Mensheviks predicted that Lenin's experiment would collapse (see, e.g., Sukhanov's account where he confronts Kamenev on October 25, 1917), but so did everybody else in 1917-1922 or thereabouts. Shouldn't we limit the category to a later period, when the USSR looked stable, to make it more useful? Ahasuerus 14:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
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- I don't know. I was thinking about that too. But when is the cut off? Travb 14:53, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
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- I would think that any predictions made during the Russian Civil War in 1918-1920 or the uprisings and famines in 1921-1922 would be too common to be notable. Then we have the famous intra-Party infighting in 1923-1927, although otherwise the regime looked fairly stable. Then the deterioration of the economy in 1928-1929, which led to the upheavals of 1930-1933, with more rebellions, famine, etc. Then we have a more stable economy in 1934-1939, but on the other hand, the Great Purge is under way from late 1934 on, the eradication of the old Bolshevik elite, accounts of gigantic conspiracies, etc. And then it's WWII time, with stunning Soviet defeats in 1941-1942.
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- So I guess anything pre-1945 would be of questionable notability. Hm, which reminds me that back in 1951 Collier's Weekly dedicated a whole issue to the "coming nuclear war with the USSR", which predicted a Soviet defeat after 2 years of fighting, an occupation of the former Soviet Union by UN forces and a re-establishment of democracy under UN auspices. I should probably dig it up and add it to the Colliers article. Ahasuerus 15:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Moved from: User talk:Travb
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- Got it! Point your browser of choice to http://www.norfacad.pvt.k12.va.us/fac_staff/~rezelman/research.htm , search for "Collier" and check out the cover of the October 27, 1951 issue :) Ahasuerus 04:58, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Moved from: Categories_for_deletion
...In a conversation with User:Ahasuerus we agreed to limit the time period to post world war 2, since before WW2 so many people thought that the USSR would collapse that it makes the category unwieldly. Maybe the title: Cold-War groups which predicted the collapse of the USSR? What do you think? "Predicted a Soviet collapse", which KonradWallenrod suggested is a great suggestion, but maybe not precise enough.... Travb 04:31, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Why limit to post-World War II? Why not just be selective in terms of the quality of the individuals or organizations making the predictions? KonradWallenrod 05:46, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Response to KonradWallenrod first posted here
thanks for your great suggestions, I agree, that we should be selective in terms of the quality of the individuals.
Andrei Amalrik and Emmanuel Todd definatly are the best canidates for the list. Please see this category's talk page for the reason why each person is on the list.
For example, I hesitated to include Ronald Reagan but included him only because I included Konrad Adenauer, who I am not familar with his writings.
I have already asked the German wikipedia to please expand on what exactly Klaus Mehnert wrote.
I created three pages just so that I could add them this category, Klaus Mehnert, Smenavekhites, and Problems of Communism (journal).
I wrote the staff of Problems of Communism (journal) to find the article which predicted the fall.
I will attempt to find all of the articles which "predict" this.
User:Ahasuerus, (as now mentioned above) said that he found a Collier's Weekly article which we may want to include
This category is definatly a work in progress.
KonradWallenrod wrote: "Why limit to post-World War II?" See User:Ahasuerus's response, above. Signed:Travb 07:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Keep the article. It's an important historiographical debate with numerous articles and books. It's important for several reasons--as John Gaddis argues, international relations theory is thin gruel if it can't make reasonable predictions. Rjensen 01:38, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
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- Cold-War groups which predicted the collapse of the USSR done.Travb 20:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
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