Wasn’t Chernobyl the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed and wasn’t Chernobyl due to mismanagement because of wrong incentives (they had to achieve certain runtime numbers so they performed a critical test at night) one could argue were because of the Soviet socialism system?
Nope, chernobyl was a disaster but I wont call it being the reason of collapse of SU. It may have been a catalyst for sure but SU was already struggling with slow growth in its last 2-3 decades. This myth was propagated by gorbachev who was an incompetent AH.
Slower growth was a problem from circa 1975 to 1985. By the mid-80s, the Soviet economy had problems but none of them were catastrophic (and tbf, consider how various capitalist economies right now have very serious issues but those economies are not collapsing). That was the view of Western intelligence in the mid 80s btw - that there were problems but that everything was more or less fine.
A former unnamed CIA director once told historian Eric Hobsbawm that had Andropov lived another 15 years, the USSR would still be around today. I do think as late as the Andropov era, the leadership in the USSR had a good understanding of their problems and were starting to put the country on a better path. Then Andropov died and a lot of the changes made by Gorbachev and the leaders around him really threw a bunch of spanners into the works.
The book Socialism Betrayed is an excellent book if you want to understand the reasons for the collapse of the USSR (Chernobyl was not a major factor, but I wouldn’t say it had zero impact). Or, if you would prefer to read a book not written by Marxists, Revolution From Above would fit that and IIRC the authors of the later largely come to the same conclusions as the former.
Much like the collapse of the Roman Empire, it’s a very complex topic that isn’t easily boiled down into easy answers.
Wasn’t Chernobyl the main reason the Soviet Union collapsed and wasn’t Chernobyl due to mismanagement because of wrong incentives (they had to achieve certain runtime numbers so they performed a critical test at night) one could argue were because of the Soviet socialism system?
Nope, chernobyl was a disaster but I wont call it being the reason of collapse of SU. It may have been a catalyst for sure but SU was already struggling with slow growth in its last 2-3 decades. This myth was propagated by gorbachev who was an incompetent AH.
Slower growth was a problem from circa 1975 to 1985. By the mid-80s, the Soviet economy had problems but none of them were catastrophic (and tbf, consider how various capitalist economies right now have very serious issues but those economies are not collapsing). That was the view of Western intelligence in the mid 80s btw - that there were problems but that everything was more or less fine.
A former unnamed CIA director once told historian Eric Hobsbawm that had Andropov lived another 15 years, the USSR would still be around today. I do think as late as the Andropov era, the leadership in the USSR had a good understanding of their problems and were starting to put the country on a better path. Then Andropov died and a lot of the changes made by Gorbachev and the leaders around him really threw a bunch of spanners into the works.
The book Socialism Betrayed is an excellent book if you want to understand the reasons for the collapse of the USSR (Chernobyl was not a major factor, but I wouldn’t say it had zero impact). Or, if you would prefer to read a book not written by Marxists, Revolution From Above would fit that and IIRC the authors of the later largely come to the same conclusions as the former.
Much like the collapse of the Roman Empire, it’s a very complex topic that isn’t easily boiled down into easy answers.