Quote Originally Posted by CFH View Post
Are you saying the Soviet Union had few natural resources? Am I somehow misunderstand what you are trying to say? Because if you're trying to claim that the USSR was poor in natural resources then that might be one of the fucking dumbest things I have ever heard. They were rich in resources, but that doesn't mean that the infrastructure surrounding the extraction and exploitation of those resources was not crumbling because of a lack of funds. Also, because of their antagonistic relationship with the west, specifically the NATO countries, they were limited in regards to who they could conduct trade with. The pursuit of those resources, among other things, also led to a swift environmental degradation, which further hampered their ablility to produce.
As for the rest of your rant, it has little or nothing to do with the collapse of the USSR, or how the desire for "western freedoms" led to its demise -how did that work again?.
Reagan's policies on South America were in many cases ridiculous, I'll agree with you there.
Ummm even Dosteyevsky said Europe is built out of stone,and Russia is built of wood
They couldnt get to their own resources in the form of natural gas,which is about all they really had
Even now theyre having a hard time getting to it,most of it sits in Siberia
And oh do please,it wasnt Western "freedoms",it was western"Products",there was a huge underground trade for Western products,and even domestically produced rock bands behind the curtain like Aquarium,and Lady Pank
Ironic that a set of Levi's is probably less easy to come by in Vladivostok now then before the collapse