OstFront Podcast

3/3 This brilliant economic strategy wasn't only the brain child of Gorbachev though it was in fact mostly penned by the economic advisor Leonid Ivanovich Abalkin, The man who transformed Russia into a market economy by destroying it's economy. He served as an advisor in both Gorbachev's and Yeltson's presidency's. This was probably one of the most important nails in the coffin for the Soviet union but well expand on the other nails later.

2/3 Gorbachev opted for some middle of the road market reforms first, but they were pretty bad and it only worsened the stagnation situation. Gorbachev allowed you to sell goods on your own if you exceed the minimum set forth by the plans of the state. He thought that everyone would make an extra profit and then invest in the development of new enterprises that would help keep the Soviet economy afloat. But in reality they just increase the boss salaries and caused the underproduction goods
because they wanted to sell goods privately to make more money and get a surplus to the enterprise revenue. Hence instead of a flourishing economy there was instead a deficit of goods because of it, they had them in fact, but just refused to sell anything which again caused the government to artificially increase prices to make up for the loss of goods but it only caused fewer things to be sold and a kind of inflationary spiral which didn't need to happen in the first place since everything people needed was just sitting in warehouses being hodled. This in turn caused the infamous food shortages and basic necessities to fall into shortages as well which caused the ever so memed on bread lines for everything to come into reality. In reality the average Soviet hadn't had to deal with such a situation at the very least since the end of the second world war.

I’ll be putting on my nnn Jazzhands gloves and doing some posts about the Finklethink on the Chechen wars and 90s Russia. Though unlike Jazzhands I’ll actually be able to give you an accurate analysis of everything without making you feel insulted to your core. Nnnnnguy