America’s Soviet turn

‘The United States (US) and its allies decisively won the Cold War, that strange bipolar conflict where the US and the Western democracies it was allied with faced off against the Soviet Union and its satellite states (while China bided its time).

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

By the 1980s, the gross domestic product of America and Western Europe was multiple times higher than that of the Soviet Union and its satellites.

‘The Soviets couldn’t keep up in the arms race. It pushed the nation to near-bankruptcy and triggered a catastrophic disintegration. The Union broke up into 13 countries, and its Warsaw Pact satellites petitioned to become members of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

But why did the Soviet Union get wiped out? It controlled huge land areas with ample natural resources. It had an excellent educational system, which nurtured a highly skilled workforce. (Even today Russia has a much higher percentage of graduates than the US.) It had good research & development ecosystems and roughly matched the West in terms of space programmes and weaponry. It even had deep cultural traditions that produced writers, musicians, artists, and ballet dancers.

‘The critical difference lay in contrasting political systems. The West had functional democracies, where voters could vote out bad governments. It had educational systems where students and professors could discuss awkward subjects like slavery, colonialism, racism, gender bias and political chicanery and that translated into corrective action over the decades.