History is rife with "nearly"s. The USSR had to content with y’know, actually being in the middle of both world wars and suffering the material consequences. And then went on to go toe-to-toe with the golden child of capitalism (safely nestled on its distant continent, far from the material consequences of war, with all the post-war industrial economic advantages that wrought).
The US had a freakish advantage, no one should have gotten even close. And the USSR got smacked down bad through both wars. And yet, they were stiff competition. It’s like gloating that your thoroughbred greyhound barely beat out a half-blind, 3-legged street dog in a race. The fact that it was close should be your sign.
That’s a very narrow view of what happened after the second world war. URSS occupied half of the European continent. It basically was the last empire in Europe with all the resources and human capital at its disposal to do anything it wanted. Not to mention war reparations.
And it lost. The ideology wasn’t working. It took 40 years for that empire to collapse, but collapse it did because it was built on the wrong principles.
A puzzling juxtaposition, that.
What would you call the siedge of Moscow if not nearly losing?
History is rife with "nearly"s. The USSR had to content with y’know, actually being in the middle of both world wars and suffering the material consequences. And then went on to go toe-to-toe with the golden child of capitalism (safely nestled on its distant continent, far from the material consequences of war, with all the post-war industrial economic advantages that wrought).
The US had a freakish advantage, no one should have gotten even close. And the USSR got smacked down bad through both wars. And yet, they were stiff competition. It’s like gloating that your thoroughbred greyhound barely beat out a half-blind, 3-legged street dog in a race. The fact that it was close should be your sign.
That’s a very narrow view of what happened after the second world war. URSS occupied half of the European continent. It basically was the last empire in Europe with all the resources and human capital at its disposal to do anything it wanted. Not to mention war reparations.
And it lost. The ideology wasn’t working. It took 40 years for that empire to collapse, but collapse it did because it was built on the wrong principles.