07-01-2021, 12:51 AM
(06-30-2021, 12:13 AM)galaxy Wrote:(06-28-2021, 06:39 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I believe that the New Economic Plan (NEP) was listed as an abortive 1T for the Soviet Union.
Where's the list?
I suggested that. Lenin recognized that his War Communism wasn't working, and if he had to revive some aspects of capitalism to make "Socialism" more effective and indeed possible in the future, so it would be. Russia started to get out of the worst of a Crisis era -- before Stalin took over and added his own madness in the name of Socialism. Then came the collectivization of Soviet agriculture and the Great Purge. Such made the USSR look like an easy conquest for Adolf Hitler, and Hitler imposed his own Crisis upon the western Soviet Union.
Crises do not solve themselves even through exhaustion. Great leaders who have some moral compass, like Lincoln, Churchill, and FDR might be unable to stop a Crisis Era, but when things start to get good they can decide that enough is enough of any mass death.
Institutions that made the waging of a Crisis war do not fade away rapidly. The conscription that made creating a large army possible remains in place. The generals from the previous war are still capable of waging war if necessary. The people who knew how to transform a civilian economy into a war machine are still in place, so businesses that could make personal automobiles before the war, tanks during the war, and personal automobiles after the war can go back to making tanks if the need arises. Refinements of military devices that appeared too late to make a difference in the war can be put into use easily.
The habits of economic and social regimentation of a 4T don't quite die in a 1T; they might simply morph into new purposes. Consider the Korean Conflict; the USA used doctrines of World War II in its conduct. Had the Commies succeeded and used southern Korea as a springboard for an invasion of Japan, then we might have had a genuine revival of a Crisis Era. America obviously did not get the sort of mad leadership that Russia got in the 1930's that could revive the ferocity of a Crisis era, which makes a great difference.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.