Why did we lose the Cold War?
If in 1980-84 the national income of the USSR grew by 19%, then in the USA this growth barely reached six. Labor productivity has increased by 14% over the same years. In the United States, this figure was only 3% over the years. At the same time, years like 1980 and 1982 in America were not years of growth, but of a fall. So, in 1980 the decline in production was 3,6%, and in 1982 - 8,2%. Industrial production in our country during the XI five-year plan (1981-86) increased by 18%, while in America this growth was only 13%. And, most importantly, real incomes per capita have increased by 9% in our country, while in the USA they have decreased by 1983%. In 66, the national income of the USSR was 80% of the American one. The volume of industrial production was 21% of the American one. The share of the USSR in world industrial production was 3%. Nowadays, the share of all the countries of the former USSR, including Russia, is only about 2,86%. In terms of pig iron production, our country surpassed the United States by 2,14 times, and in terms of steel - by XNUMX times. Yes, in some indicators the United States was ahead of us, but in most of them, as can be seen from the table below, compiled, by the way, according to the CIA, We were ahead of the United States.
INDICATOR |
CCCP |
USA |
| Grain production | 211 million tons | 281 mt |
| Milk production | 103 million tons | 65 mt |
| Potato production | 76 million tons | 16 mt |
| Oil production | 11,9 million barrels / day | 8,3 million barrels / day |
| Gas production | 25,7 trillion cubic feet | 17,1 trillion. cc feet |
| Coal mining | 517 mt | 760 mt |
| Iron production | 162 mt | 81 mt |
| Cement production | 128 mln. | 63,9 mln. |
| Aluminum production | 3,0 mln. | 3,3 mln. |
| Medium production | 1,0 mln. | 1,6 mln. |
| Iron Ore Mining | 114 mln. | 44 mln. |
| Bauxite mining | 7,7 mln. | 0,5 mln. |
| Car production | 1,3 ppm | 7,1 million pcs. |
| Truck production | 0,9 ppm | 3,8 million pcs. |
| Housing construction | 12 sq. M. meters | 20 sq. M. meters |
| Gold mining | 10,6 million tons oz | 5,0 million tonnes. |
Maybe the gap in the standard of living between Them and Us is to blame?
And this is also not true. According to objective indicators, our standard of living was no lower than in the United States. In 1983-85. a Soviet person a day consumed an average of 98,3 g of protein, and an American - 104,4 g. The difference is not that big. True, the American ate much more fat - 167,2 g against our 99,2 - but this made him an average of 20 kilograms thinner than the Russian - 71 kg against 200 pounds. On the other hand, we consumed an average of 341 kg of milk and dairy products per person per year. In America, this figure was 260 kg. Sugar consumption in the USSR was 47,2 kg per person per year, and in the USA - 28 kg.
A dollar in 1983 cost 70,7 a penny (See: Ruble to dollar and dollar to ruble from 1792 to 2010), and the average Soviet person’s salary was 165 to 75 rubles ($ 234.44) (See: Salaries in Russia and the USSR for 1853-2010 years, expressed in rubles, dollars, and kilograms of potatoes) per month. The average American's salary was then $ 1269 94 cents (See: US salaries from 1950 to 2010, expressed in dollars and liters of gasoline). It seems to be, in 5,15 times more. But the same American gave 56 cents (39,5 kopecks) for a loaf of bread, and Russian gave 13 kopecks, that is, three times more. On the phone, the Russian called for two kopecks, and the American for 25 cents (17,67 cop), that is, gave a phone call more than 8,837 times. Russian paid five kopecks for public transport, and 3-4 paid for the tram and trolleybus, depending on the region. The American for the fare gave that whole $ 1. In addition, the American paid an average of $ 6,000 per year for his student’s son, and a Russian student received 40-55 “re” per month just because he regularly attended lectures, and if he was an excellent student, he received a so-called Lenin scholarship in the amount of 75 rubles, which was 5 rubles more than the janitor’s or janitor’s salary.
To buy a private house or a cooperative apartment, a Soviet person had to have 1983 rubles in 9760, and the average housing in the United States cost $ 82 (600 rubles).
The majority of American expenses were paid for an apartment, equal in average to $ 1983 per month in 335 a year. I paid 9 rubles 61 a penny of utility bills for a two-room apartment in those years. Other Soviet citizens paid about the same amount.
Housing in those years was rented only by students or very young families. But even if I suddenly needed to rent a house, I could rent the same two-room apartment a little bit in Banny Lane for 40 rubles ($ 28), that is, 12 is cheaper than in America.
Those Americans who did not rent a house were already paying a loan for it. In 1984, with an average income of 21788 dollars per family, this same family paid 6626 dollars a year to pay off a mortgage loan, that is, more than 30% of their income. Another 20%, that is, the same family spent 4377 dollars on fuel and lubricants, and 3391 dollars - 18% - went on food.
Of all the foods in the US, only eggs were cheaper. If we have an egg of the first category cost 12 kopecks (the second category, respectively, 9,5 cop.), Then in the US a dozen eggs cost 89 cents - that is, 5,24 of our then-penny per egg. However, at the general purchasing power parity, the ruble could be equated to 5,5 dollars. That is, in fact, the dollar was not officially overvalued, but undervalued.
Why, then, did our people pay currency at six rubles per dollar? Yes, because for the currency operations in the Soviet era shot - for both the buyer and the seller, it was a risk charge. Similarly, a bottle of whiskey, which cost up to the introduction of the dry law 22 cent, jumped after its introduction to the dollar and the dollar, and in the USSR after the shooting of Rokotov, Yakovlev and Faybishenko in 1961, the price of the dollar on the black market jumped several times.
However, not everything can be compared with monetary measures. So, if a person got sick here, then medical assistance was provided to him free of charge, and his salary remained at his place of work, if, of course, he was ill for no more than six months, then he was transferred to disability and paid a pension. You say that, on the other hand, the Americans had unemployment benefits. Yes, unemployment benefits were not paid by us - those who were unemployed were imprisoned for parasitism, because everyone who wished was taken to work with their hands and feet. But, most importantly, our man did not have his main current shortage - the lack of money. On the contrary, there was so much money that there was not enough goods — industry and transport did not have time to meet effective demand. But even if we take on faith that thesis that we lived worse, this does not explain our defeat, because during the Patriotic War the Germans lived much better than we, but, nevertheless, we won the Patriotic War and won even if the allies in Europe had not landed.
Why then did we lose the Cold War?
We lost it on the ideological front. As Professor Preobrazhensky said, the devastation is not in the closets, but in the heads. Western specialists in psychological warfare managed to create devastation in the minds of Soviet citizens. The means of creating this devastation were rumors and gossip, which were not carried through the minds of toothless old women. These rumors carried the information that the West supposedly lives better than us. Anecdotes have appeared, ridiculing love for the homeland, honesty and adherence to principles. As a result, by the early 80s, young people paid 200 rubles ($ 263) for Montana jeans, which cost $ 6 in America at most, and bought dollars for 7-XNUMX rubles.officially cost 70 centsbut really 18 cop. But, most importantly, the average representative of Soviet youth began to dream of fleeing to the West and living there “as a human being”. And there was no real opposition to these rumors and gossip. It was not because there was a shortage of humanitarian personnel in the country - the very ones from which soldiers of psychological war are recruited. If national culture is strong, then the people with pitchforks and spears will defeat any opponent. If the culture cracks, then national identity is lost, and such a decayed ethnos can be taken barehanded. But there was no one to support the culture. The ideologists of the party and Komsomol apparatus were engaged in Marxist-Leninist scholasticism divorced from the present, incapable of being an ideological rival of advanced psi technologies in the era of the scientific and technological revolution.
Instead of skillfully refuting the theses of the enemy, they simply jammed the Voice of America, achieving the opposite effect - in our country they love everything that is forbidden. Central Television correspondent in the United States, Vladimir Dunaev, has never been instructed to report on the hard life of emigrants. Instead, Dunaev showed the 218-day hunger strike of Dr. Haider, who did not lose weight during these months, and Genrikh Aviezerovich Borovik made a film about Joe Maury, an unemployed man who is being evicted from 5th Avenue, one of the most expensive streets in New York. The latter, on the contrary, turned out to be an advertisement for America: "... even the homeless there wear jeans!" Interviews with disappointed returnees are also not showed, and many were not allowed to return. Therefore, when the question of whether or not the USSR was to be decided, everyone went to defend the White House, and no one went to defend the Red Kremlin.
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