The Soviets were insanely successful: From the 1920s to 1960s they raised the USSR to space age, industrialized it to become the 2nd superpower, won a world war, upgraded citizens from village huts to apartments, from being barefoot to cars and subways.
What 'went wrong' was the economic war that Kennedy admn. started to starve the USSR of GDP by starting an arms and space race. The USSR did not bite the space race bait, but arms race was impossible to not participate. So it did. Then in the 1970s, the US started an economic warfare against the USSR with the help of its Gulf allies by manipulating oil prices. That wasn't enough either, so Reagan started another arms race. In the end all of that combined, crippled the USSR and it went bankrupt.
The US also went bankrupt, but it was able to delay it for ~15 more years by printing money and pumping it into the stock market and real estate thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar. That came crashing down in 2008. The US did some more of the same and dragged it a decade and half more and here we are, where everything is finally crashing down.
China avoided most of that economic warfare by sitting on the sidelines and taking lessons. Sometime a decade ago, it passed the threshold of being too well-rounded and large to fail. To the point that it became a driving engine of the world economy, but backed with actual goods and services instead of the financial voodoo that the US built everything on.
> Basically, is such 5 year plans a recipe for success
Yes, if your country can keep the private interests and capitalists under control. Otherwise, they derail every plan to maximize their profit by siphoning off state resources for little actual progress. Like how the last US administration's 'build back better' plan was derailed.
In 1916 the communists dud not want to take over Russia. In 1917, Lenin said they should take the opportunity to take over Russia, and wait for Germany to become a left wing government, the real revolution. This did not happen, big business at the 1933 Geheimtreffen decided to back a right wing government in Germany, and the divided left was pushed aside by a united right when the Catholic Center party signed the Enabling Act.
Russia knew from 1917 it needed political winds in the west, but they blew the other way. Continental Europe invaded Russia in 1941.
Then in 1953, Khrushchev shifted capital spending to consumer spending, one of the main blows to the Sividt economy which was humming along from 1933 to 1953.
Karl Marx basically said communist revolutions can't succeed in backwards countries, only the biggest and most advanced countries.
Good points. Though, the Soviet attempt has been extremely successful in many ways. We owe the social state we have in modern society to the Soviets succeeding in establishing all those practices and programs and showing that they can be done. In the 1930s the capital was doing incessant propaganda saying how social programs would cause a society to collapse. Soviet union proved all of them wrong and it became impossible to prevent implementation of the modern social state we have today.
Every organization can do wrong. However the state is the tool of the society, and its far better than handing things over to unaccountable, sociopathic private profiteers who stop at nothing to maximize their hoards of wealth made up of imaginary numbers that live in the voodoo-like financial system of today.
What 'went wrong' was the economic war that Kennedy admn. started to starve the USSR of GDP by starting an arms and space race. The USSR did not bite the space race bait, but arms race was impossible to not participate. So it did. Then in the 1970s, the US started an economic warfare against the USSR with the help of its Gulf allies by manipulating oil prices. That wasn't enough either, so Reagan started another arms race. In the end all of that combined, crippled the USSR and it went bankrupt.
The US also went bankrupt, but it was able to delay it for ~15 more years by printing money and pumping it into the stock market and real estate thanks to the reserve currency status of the dollar. That came crashing down in 2008. The US did some more of the same and dragged it a decade and half more and here we are, where everything is finally crashing down.
China avoided most of that economic warfare by sitting on the sidelines and taking lessons. Sometime a decade ago, it passed the threshold of being too well-rounded and large to fail. To the point that it became a driving engine of the world economy, but backed with actual goods and services instead of the financial voodoo that the US built everything on.
> Basically, is such 5 year plans a recipe for success
Yes, if your country can keep the private interests and capitalists under control. Otherwise, they derail every plan to maximize their profit by siphoning off state resources for little actual progress. Like how the last US administration's 'build back better' plan was derailed.