—“The soviet model by the 1960s was a good one to live in.”—
Agreed. Mostly. But by consumer standards not so much. By then the economies were going the opposite directions. By the 1960’s (actually ln the 1950s) it was very clear that the soviet economic model was not going to be competitive, and that the marxist argument was simply wrong about capitalism and its replacement. Hence why it has been abandoned the world over.
Any country that has to imprison its people within its boundaries to stop them from fleeing is failing a test of government.
Now, the failure of the transition (russians were not ready for it) and the evils of the bureaucracies (russian/ukrainian/belorussian) were preventable for certain. A managed transition to a mixed economy that preserved authoritarian sectors and liberated consumer sectors was necessary and possible.
But if we talk to the people involved, (and we have lots of info on that these days) the problem was they just didn’t know what to do.
This taught the Chinese what to do. They’re doing it.
Now, russians are christian not confucian and despite the remains of mongolian political ethics, byzantine political ethics, and the (damned lack of ethics of the boyars, turks, and jews) this process is continuing.
But russians NEVER EVER had a middle class. Ukrainians had a middle class until soviet conquest. Although like in russia, it was too often jewish and hostile to the native population. So the problem is replacing authoritarian bureacracy and authoritarian ethics incentives and levels of accountability with commercial incentives, ethics, and levels of accountabiilty. Especially in the JUDICIAL class – which itself must be commercial ethic.
But not making the MISTAKE OF THE WEST and handing over the military, the political system, the industrial production, the agrarian production, and the infrastructure production to the middle class.
You see that’s the issue.
My understanding at this time is the same as it has been since 2013/2014. Putin misunderstood the ukrainian revolution as the simple want of the people to follow the polish model – a model which they are more capable of than the russians. So that they could get out of poverty. And that this was constructed by the conflict russian, ukrainian oligarch, and common people’s interests. And the common people won. Although it looks like they will have to let the russified generations die off before they can fix the country just like the germans have to let the russified people die off to fix east germany.
So the transition is possible and the chinese are showing how to do it (gradually) by training a consumer, middle, and bureaucratic class while maintaining authoritarian classes (top), and socialist classes (bottom).
My understanding is that the poor are better off under authoritarian schemes and everyone is better of if the ABLE classes are freed to pursue wealth in the service of CONSUMERS.
So the military aristocracy must maintain control. But never, ever, ever give the middle(western) or lower classes (soviet) classes control of military, political, resource, industrial, and territorial assets.
In other words, the ancient tripartism of white people was and remains the optimum method of political order. All monopoly orders are bad. We must have aristocratic, market, and serf economies because in fact we are genetically distributed as aristocracy, market, and serf classes.