It was genuinely due to transition troubles. Many former Communist countries did reasonably well in transition—usually those that were close enough to the west that they could switch their trade patterns effectively and not be caught up in the mess; and you really have no way to fake life expectancy and such—which suffered a lot in the most transition-affected countries like Russia.
“That’s not even true, when you measure results Soviet Union was ran about as well as any other country. They were just ran differently.”
is revisionism of the worst kind. I think a simple but informative hypothesis is that Putin’s Russia is mostly the same place with the same institutions in charge, but sans the explicit communist ideology.
It was genuinely due to transition troubles. Many former Communist countries did reasonably well in transition—usually those that were close enough to the west that they could switch their trade patterns effectively and not be caught up in the mess; and you really have no way to fake life expectancy and such—which suffered a lot in the most transition-affected countries like Russia.
citation needed
The USSR was a dump. Saying things like
“That’s not even true, when you measure results Soviet Union was ran about as well as any other country. They were just ran differently.”
is revisionism of the worst kind. I think a simple but informative hypothesis is that Putin’s Russia is mostly the same place with the same institutions in charge, but sans the explicit communist ideology.