Yes, they renamed it to hide the fact that the USSR originally entered the war as an aggressor in 1939 alongside the Nazis.

Hey, Moscow is to the west of Uzbekistan!

I hope Mossad pays you to be a tool

What are you talking about?

USSR. why? They are collapse,that's why.

It was always a fairy tale. Nomenclatura was the ruling class, and it wasn't going anywhere. As a matter of fact, they reinvented themselves as the masters of the new Russia.

Hi, this is an absolutely huge topic but I can try to give a reasonably concise answer (for context I'm the writer of this video and of the Soviet-themed videos on this channel). In effect, when Soviet states became independent during/after the collapse of the USSR they tried to transition from state-controlled, socialist economies to free market ones through various types of privatisation processes. However, there were broadly two issues with this. First, most ordinary Soviet citizens had never grown up in a free market economy, so were not really familiar with the concept of private property or ownership and therefore the potential benefits of them. Two, there was an assumption that creating a class of individuals with private property would encourage the development of institutions to protect property rights, for example the rule of law and a more representative political system. In reality though, these problems meant that well-connected and knowledgeable officials who controlled state-owned assets basically took advantage of the privatisation process and hoarded massive wealth for themselves (hence the oligarchs). Thus, political institutions in these countries have largely ended up protecting these individuals as they have the wealth and therefore the power, excluding those who own very little. Ukraine is a really good example of this - with the exception of Zelensky's party, pretty much every political party in the Ukrainian system remains funded or led by an oligarch and serves to advance their interests. Now, why is this corruption so difficult to get rid of? Well, in part its because of what I mentioned above (wealth = power), but its also because of how the Soviet economy operated. Basically, corruption and informality were commonplace as people sought access to goods that the inefficient Soviet economy could not provide. As such, these informal methods of economics have become pretty normalised in most post-Soviet countries and are just the standard way of doing business (with some exceptions). It is also worth noting the divergent paths of post-communist countries in Eastern Europe who were NOT in the USSR (for example, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria etc.). Their political systems were largely based on parliamentary systems due to the legacy of the interwar period, and as such their privatisation processes ended up being much more representative of the population as a whole compared to post-Soviet countries where their systems were largely presidential and thus more prone to power concentration. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - which were in the USSR but managed to successfully get rid of these legacies - their success was basically because they were so desperate to get rid of any and all legacies of Soviet rule that the entire population was far more unified in doing whatever it took to do so. In Russia, Ukraine, etc., there was significant opposition to the economic transition amid the short-term suffering caused by privatisation and price liberalisation, which played into the oligarchs' hands to help them seize control of the political system. Sorry, I said this answer would be concise but its really quite hard to summarise...hope this helped though!

@@omnidroid70 Thank you very much. I really appreciate the detailed response. That's some interesting development throughout the decades. Are there any books you would recommend for some deep diving into the failures and successes of Russian/Soviet economics? Cheers.

You need to understand Russian mentality. They are a colonial power since the times of Ivan the Terrible and they started expanding eastward. And just because they had a revolution in 1917, it doesn't mean they got rid of their mentality. They were and still are a colonial power. The magnitude of that "power" is up to debate, but the will was and still is there.

In Douglas Porch's book "Wars of Empire", Russian imperialism is unique because it is intrinsically tied to national security. Them being the largest country on earth was not because they saw potential for riches in those places but rather saw potential for security in those places...

@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 it's an argument, I think at best it tells half the story. Every empire descended from Rome has justified its imperial actions through claims of self defense because that was what Rome did. Empires that weren't descended from Rome generally found other ways to justify their actions, like the Chinese and their "Mandate of Heaven". Brits sometimes argued that their empire was necessary to keep the Royal Navy preeminent, so that it could always defend the English Channel, which was the only way to keep the massive armies of Europe at bay. The US likewise defends its current informal empire as a means of "National Security". Even the Crusades were pitched as "Defensive" actions. So again, I'm not saying that Russia didn't face a unique set of circumstances, but I question if it was truly as unique as that, when other empires made similar claims.

He did, he also set up an extremely privileged regime for Georgian SSR while deporting ethnic "minorities" from it's borders.