Sarah Paine

There was too much for the Soviet government to handle.

So you could argue that the Soviet Union bankrupted itself on the Third World while ignoring its own internal Third World of nationalities whose simultaneous revolts brought down the Soviet Union.

I've got a completely different argument for you.

If you don't like all of those, I've got another one for you.

It's the economy, stupid, right?

That line.

One could argue that communism failed as an economic system.

If you look at growth statistics for the Soviet Union, they're pretty good post-World War II when they're rebuilding, but they really stagnate from the mid-'70s onward.

So for the decade preceding

Gorbachev's coming to power, Soviet growth stats were 1% to 2% lower than those of the United States, and the compounding effects of that were enormous.

What's going on?

Everyone's lying to each other.

The data that Soviets are using is garbage.

If you're working for a subunit of an enterprise, you have to lie about the inventories you have, saying you have less than you do.

And then you have to lie about what you need, saying you need more than you do, because you're worried about getting enough things.

It's not a market system where the price dictates it.

This is all about the plan.

You've got to enter the right numbers, and then you get whatever inputs you get from the centralized plan.

So everyone's lying.

They're aggregating all the lies.