Corruption Scandal That Shook the USSR - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video in on the Uzbek Cotton Scandal, the corruption affair that shook the USSR in the 1980s.
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#ColdWar #USSR #Corruption #Cotton #Scandal #uzbekistan #uzbek
Sources:
Riccardo Mario Cucciolla, “Legitimation Through Self-Victimization: The Uzbek Cotton Affair and its Repression Narrative,” Cahiers du Monde Russe, Vol.58, No.4 (2017)
Gregory Gleason, “Fealty and Loyalty: Informal Authority Structures in Soviet Asia,” Soviet Studies, Vol.43, No.4 (1991)
Riccardo Mario Cucciolla, “Sharaf Rashidov and the international dimensions of Soviet Uzbekistan,” Central Asian Survey, Vol.39, No.2 (2020)
William A. Clark, “Crime and Punishment in Soviet Officialdom, 1965-90,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol.45, No.2 (1993)
Derek Edward Peterson, “When a Pound Weighed a Ton: The Cotton Scandal and Uzbek National Consciousness,” Ohio State University, Thesis (2013)
Neil Melvin, Uzbekistan: Transition to Authoritarianism on the Silk Road (Harwood Academic, 2000)
Lindt, Margarita, “How cotton led to the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Russia Beyond (2017), www.rbth.com/arts/history/201...
mytashkent.uz/2008/09/23/hlop...
NASA, earthobservatory.nasa.gov/wor...

[@greengeck0]

My Grandpa told me stories about Lithuanian SSR times in the mid 50-60's, when Kruschev was in power, he was in charge of a local collective farm near our village. One story he recalled will always stick with me. When Nikita found about corn he became obsesed about growing it in the USSR, and since Lithuania was primarily exporting food directly to Moscow they quickly received orders to produce and grow insane ammounts of corn. Given the fact that he had no clue what corn is (not really a stable crop for the region back then), they did not really know how to grow it and the seeds they were provided with were not a good fit for the soil and climate, the harvest were horrid. Food started to became a problem in the region, so to not have everyone starve or get shot by the newly renamed KGB for calling the decision by the supreme secretary stupid they began to plan 1-3 meter perimeters of corn around the totally not rye or wheat fields so when inspections happened they could not see that far back.

[@user-ng3rl4iy7g]

Arbitrary decision making is a commonly phenomena in communism countries.

[@vbrotherita]

What a testimony, thanks for sharing.

[@black10872]

It's crazy how they could order something to be done with little to no knowledge of what it takes to get a specific crop grown in massive numbers without considering the cost of growing that specific crop in massive numbers.

[@black10872]

The US can almost grow any crop on Earth. What lack in abundance is rice fields. Other than that, we have abundance in everything. Especially when it comes to corn. The entire Midwest is an endless cornfield. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, all are grown in California because of its perfect agricultural environment. Oranges, peaches, and other fruits are grown in Florida, New Jersey, and Georgia. So we can get everything all year round. The Soviet Union had that potential. However, the Soviet system was never sufficient enough to be on par with the US. A free market capitalist economy is the best way forward. A command economy is efficient to do just one thing at the cost of another thing.

[@d3nza482]

@@black10872 That's ignorant nonsense. You're comparing 21st century technology and techniques (with their own set of ecological problems) with post-WW2 Soviet states - where just seeing a tractor was the equivalent of an automated robotic farm today. Further, for the US escapades from technologically similar periods look up the dust bowl, rampant alcoholism, prohibition, even the Great Depression... and that's all just before WW2 and the idea of ecology and the realization of what pesticides were doing to the biosphere. All provided by the "free market capitalist economy". In the modern era the same system has led to destruction of individual producers in favor of corporations, further ecological devastation and continuous boom-bust cycles of the global economy. FFS, modern corn is not even edible - it has to be industrially processed into starch and high fructose corn syrup before it can be consumed. Leading to a growing pandemic of a whole range of diseases - all a product of pursuit of profit. Just the other day, there was another Nestle scandal around them adding sugar into baby formula and infant food - but only in the poor countries where regulations are not as precise. But that's nothing compared to billions who will die before we manage to fix the effects of global warming alone. Also, free market my ass. There's no such thing as a deregulated or free market. Even completely illegal "products and services" are strictly regulated. There's only regulations favoring either the producers and consumers OR the middlemen and stock market parasites. "Freeing" the economy has inevitably always resulted in huge profits for the latter, the capitalists, while impoverishing or outright destroying the working class. And even if there were... look no further than the state of US economic and other conditions BEFORE there were modern regulations. From bank crises to adulterated and outright poisonous food and "medicines".

[@befeleme]

Another such affair worth mentioning is that of the Czechoslovak army general Jan Sejna, who was involved in a similar corruption scandal involving agricultural products. He defected to the US in order to avoid prosecution, the highest ranking official to escape from Cold War Czechoslovakia.

[@stefanodadamo6809]

Obviously a hero of freedom™️ who escaped the clutches of Godless Communism™️😉

[@dmitriybozhanov2636]

Before Uzbek cotton was Fish "Ocean" network scandal, before that was a Leningrad vegetable and fruit scandal, before that was Ryazan cattle scandal... the list goes on.

[@John-vp2jq]

"Stabbed himself seven times in the chest" Is this the origin of the common Russian meme "Suicide. Two shots to the back of the head."

[@youthoughtaboutit6946]

That one’s a global meme/joke.

[@Masaham]

Russian wikipedia says 17 times... Edit: Might be all together though

[@erc9468]

Those could be quotes from Hillary Clinton

[@michaelsinger4638]

Boris Yeltsin criticizing corruption is, ironic.

[@minhng7208]

Boris is the most corrupted leader, to the point of being a traitor.

[@senpainoticeme9675]

Everyone is young once and full of idealism.

[@konstantinriumin2657]

"It should have been me! Not them!"

[@videonofan]

Maybe he took inspiration from what he saw in Uzbekistan

[@travisinthetrunk]

“Corruption Scandal That Shook the USSR” Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?

[@DavidGonzalez-jh6eh]

Corruption? That's a paddlin

[@Cookholster]

Ah another Jingles man

[@TheColdWarTV]

You better believe that's a paddlin'...

[@skeetrix5577]

​@@TheColdWarTV didn't anyone who watches johnny Harris if they saw a video this week about uzebeckisan? I could have swore he put out a video on that country and especially about it's corrupt government, specifically the presidents daughter who was taking tens of millions in bribes and literally torturing those who didn't pay up. crazy story

[@johndoe5432]

Stabbin*

[@Stakan79]

My father, as a KGB officer with a degree in economics, took part in the investigation of this corruption case.

[@janchovanec8624]

Hate to brake it to you, your father was the corrupt person. You cannot be a good person and be member of the most evil regime of all time.

[@adamromanak7605]

i read that they used Satellites to spy on the cotton fields to see if the paper worked matched the output.

[@youthoughtaboutit6946]

Out of curiosity, what did an economics degree in the USSR generally entail to earn?

[@rrai1999]

Even as an American born in '99, I heard about this one. Probably the only thing out of Uzbekistan that anyone outside of it even knows about

[@user-dl3nc4jx7k]

actually, this is an ancient land of civilizations, some cities there are several thousand years old

[@greatwolf5372]

​@user-dl3nc4jx7k Every region in the Eurasian landmass has ancient civilizations and old cities. Nothing exceptional about Uzbekistan in that regards.

[@jesseberg3271]

So Stalin personally just sat down and drew lines on a map to decide the borders of Muslim nations he knew nothing about, but tell me more about how the Soviet Union wasn't a colonial power.

[@babayaga6376]

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.

[@theotherohlourdespadua1131]

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...

[@jesseberg3271]

@@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.

[@Stone8age]

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

[@ChristopherFodor]

They weren't "nations" how you think they were

[@ralfgroh2719]

I am a devoted student of Cold War history and would like to thank you for your competent coverage of that most interesting era. Thanks, and keep it up!

[@creatoruser736]

Just think how far this would have to go. Hundreds of thousands of tons of cotton were put on the books which didn't exist. But those amounts had to go somewhere, and industries which used that cotton knew that a good chunk was non-existent. So they were in on the ruse and had to lie about their outputs, too.

[@smalltime0]

I think there was plenty of cotton, the DDR made their cars out of cotton, it was just of shitty quality. Luckily all they did was drain the Aral sea in the process, and made the world's youngest desert!

[@300guy]

There was plenty of roubles to throw up and down the line to not rock the boat, you saw that table just piled with them.

[@300guy]

@smalltime0 They, Russian and later Soviet scientists said the Aral sea was just a waste because the water just evaporated, so why not divert it for extremely water intensive agriculture. And why line the ditches with clay or concrete, just a waste of resources, so what if 90% of the water diverted was sucked into the ground or evaporated.

[@smalltime0]

@@300guy Ironically the salt being blown across the fields means the irrigated fields use even more water, why the hell anyone would go 'lets divert water flows and make a salt lake' is beyond me

[@300guy]

​@smalltime0 Short term Gains, within a 5 year plan were much more important than long-term consequences. Look at Krustchev's virgin lands initiative, definitely increased crop yields for a couple of years but without any infrastructure to support the new production a lot of it just went to waste.

[@BTScriviner]

Love these in-depth looks into the workings of the Soviet Union. 👍

[@thewaterbearer16]

Sounds like 21st CCP China’s various provinces but with land sales and real estate, with “forever growing”GDP growth targets.

[@qjtvaddict]

USA: Hold my beer

[@httm241]

as bad as the USSR corruption was it is not nearly the absolute scale of modern China

[@user-fj5wn9iq5r]

great episode like always

[@daveacbickford]

Just another spectacular video guys, absolutely love your work - this story is just a textbook example of what makes this channel special, intriguing, rarely explored elsewhere, and delivered brilliantly. Keep up the brilliant work guys 😊😊😊

[@hrvojejurak5187]

Another fine episode, sir. Love these saturday mornings

[@samkugatano1053]

Great episode!

[@shlomomarkman6374]

The "Uzbek affair" was indeed a big scandal but scandals of this type were common in the years 1978-1983. Things were on the books but not in reality and things in reality "went left" and disappeared somewhere. 20%-50% of every item disappeared before it went on the shelf and everyone stood in line for hours despite their city, town or Kolhoz being "supplied according to plan". Nobody gave a damn unless it involved military production.

[@daltonalbertin137]

Appreciate this learning!!

[@randomchannel-px6ho]

"As seemingly harmless as cotton" I think the script writers forgot about something there lmfao

[@anzaca1]

Cotton IS harmless.

[@stefanodadamo6809]

Something like "you can totally enslave people even without communism, and indeed in a capitalist economy"

[@it.snowig]

@@anzaca1the cotton industry however, not so much

[@Chungus581]

Believe it or not, responsible for 53% of violent crime in America

[@youthoughtaboutit6946]

This kind of goes into the whole object/tool vs potential uses debate.

[@markmierzejewski9534]

Great episode! Cheeses from NJ

[@kalomboC]

We shall pretend to work, so they can pretend to pay us...

[@trizvanov]

"Cotton picking" in Central Asian republics, just like potato picking in more temperate climate, was a mandatory thing that ALL high-school and university students participated in.

[@Gaben38]

I wish more people knew how truly evil Brezhnev really was.

[@SasBald]

Thanks!

[@TheColdWarTV]

Thank YOU!

[@ngsamuel747]

great video

[@Jesse_Dawg]

Please more videos on soviet corruption

[@DT-wp4hk]

Green politics in western countries

[@trizvanov]

Pick any country and you'll see a similar picture. In some, it involves invasion of other countries.

[@deltaplan996]

(1:03) The very first from left is Heydar Aliyev, the current Azeri president's father. Great video as always! Please make another about Azerbaijani SSR: - The only profitable Soviet republic, except Russian Federation. - Muslim, was tolerant towards Christians and Jews. Influenced by both Turkic and Persian ties. - Reach of natural resources, its oilfields were the Hitler's major objective in Caucasus.

[@RickRobinCagnaan]

Borat was right about Uzbekistan but... this was more nuanced than ever thought.

[@rooneytutoring]

I thought Borat was from Kazakhstan?

[@RickRobinCagnaan]

@@rooneytutoring Yeah he was.

[@ftwcrazyman]

Yes, and one of the Borat jokes is always to denigrate Uzbekistan

[@rooneytutoring]

@@ftwcrazyman thx for the clarification.

[@stevenobrien557]

​@@rooneytutoring we all know what Kazakhstan's number one problem is however the lesser known number two is Uzbekistan.

[@igoraraujo245]

What is the name of the songs you use in the background in your videos? I find them very interesting and add a little tension to the topics covered.

The most amazing thing in this video for me is the "upt to 90% Water loss" in the canal. What a waste :(

[@patrickjeffers7864]

Stabbed himself 7x in the heart...I was like wtf😮, then he said yeah the kgb did it😅

[@LeishaMorrison-tt4qo]

Liked my first watch!

[@c1carnage933]

Can you do a video on the soviet cybernetics program? 🤞🤞🤞

[@zacharydavid403]

Hell yeah, ColdWar Saturday morning . These are like my cartoons.

[@bigsarge2085]

Intriguing.

[@Numba003]

Thank you for another educational episode. I did know Uzbekistan became the cotton mill of the USSR before its collapse, but I don't think I knew much, if anything, about this specific incident. I look forward to future videos on the central Asian republics! God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)

[@yux.tn.3641]

I would love to visit Tashkent, fergana valley and see the silk road

[@sittinandthinkin]

Another reason not to allow big government to operate without checks.

[@WillN2Go1]

Once again comrade you have over produced the goals of the 5 year plan.

[@GeorgeSemel]

Cotten is a terrible fabric for people who live as far north as they do in that part of the world. It gets wet, and you run the risk of hypothermia. Never mind that farming is very, very labor-intensive and input-intensive. The corruption part of this little bit of Soviet History is minor Compared to the destruction of the Arial and a few rivers. As usual, what sounds good on paper or in Theory is more damaging than some guys just scamming a few rubles off the top; it's pretty much what the mafia does. The whole thing from the start was a criminal and murderous enterprise, Yet people to this day think it was a wonderful thing the Soviet Union- It was hell on earth, and the stealing here with cotton was really pretty tame by Soviet Communist standards. It also shows how really stupid they all were; they could have traded for cotton, got a better product, and had more economic benefits, too. Oh wait if the did that then gee's they would not be pure in their own minds. Nope they just screwed themselves right into the collapse, no matter the same bunch is doing it again in the present day. The Russians and the other people in that part of the world can't catch a break.

[@varana]

Uzbekistan is rather dry (except in the mountainous areas) and has a sufficiently warm climate. Being north, or growing the plant in general, was never the problem. The need for irrigation in and due to the arid environment, was. And while life in the Soviet Union was certainly not "wonderful", "hell on earth" is really just unnecessarily overblown and unrealistic.

[@cv990a4]

There's a great book - Berezovsky Time by Petr Aven. I can't read Russian, but I got an electronic copy and ran it through Google translate and it worked pretty well. If you want an idea of how corrupt the USSR was, man, this book is extremely revealing. Berezovksy and Aven were part of an academic institute, and Berezovsky sold academic theses to industry executives who thereby got to add academic achievements to their CV. Their biggest client was AvtoVAZ - they'd get free autoparts which they would sell. All this happening in the last decade or so of the USSR. Just corrupt as hell.

[@williamlloyd3769]

BTW, currently the Taliban is building the new, river sized Qosh Tepa Canal to irrigate northern Afghanistan. The canal is unlined and diverts water from the Amu Darya river. PS -Amu river waters four ex-USSR republics: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that are downstream of Afghanistan. Water stress will cause future issues.

[@trizvanov]

I'd no idea this was happening and really hope that the leaders of those countries are having serious discussions regarding this.

[@sekhyhybrid6701]

All the more reason for Kazakhstan to dam the western half of the Aral Sea as well.

[@mhick3333]

I had a czech friend who managed a cold storage warehouse for imported fruit and vegetables Because of mandatory quotas they ended up with Dumped inferior products that filled up thier space with stuff like light bulbs that just fell out of the socket or shoes that the soles just fell off within a couple steps , and they had to account all this stuff every month on penalty of being charged for theft of state property , he escaped eventually (whole nuther story)

[@briangasser973]

The corruption of Uzbekistan seems similar to Putin's Russia, where the president and defense minister have wealth way beyond their salary.

[@jeffreykalb9752]

"Uzbeks have been drinking my battery fluid!" "Uzbeks... the weak link in the great chain of socialism."

[@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335]

i doubt things were worse in Usbek SSR then in others. In fact it seems that they do indeed delivered most of the claimed cotton production. Saddest in all this is that all middle asian soviet republics turned into dictatorships that are simoultanously horrible and ridiculous, Borat style.

[@MouaiziaYounes]

The central Asian republics were dictatorships since their establishment during the soviet era and their situation now is just a consequence of what happened back then, in a way central Asia never really changed.

[@trizvanov]

"Middle Asian" was the term established during the colonialism and should really be abandoned

[@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335]

@@trizvanov why? it's accurate enough description of position.

[@trizvanov]

@@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335 No, not really. "Middle Asia" is a term that was invented during the colonial expansion by Russia. It is best not to be used to avoid ambiguity and colonial connotations.

[@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335]

@@trizvanov "not really"? it is LITERALLY description of position. as such not really an "invention".

[@qjtvaddict]

Cool

[@FelipeGarcia-ch3iw]

Let’s not forget how Uzbek government got the cotton in the first place. According to some investigations the Uzbek authorities went to schools and got people out of their jobs in some days just to go and harvest cotton with zero pay, in other words , forced labor, so even when the Uzbek government was having good quotas we must bear in mind that those come up with force labor in cotton fields and yes I know how uncanny that sounds. To this day the Uzbek government exploits cotton using very weird methods. And although the Uzbek government claims they have stopped doing that practice…who’s to say that regional elites are not still forcing their citizens for that

[@benjaminrichey278]

5:23 is that star lord?

[@philipbrening433]

Corruption had been a key issue in the Soviet Union dating back to the Russian Civil War and in many instances back to WWI

[@WalterReimer]

Good grief.

[@danlowe8684]

Well, I don't know how much governing Brezhnev was actually doing in his last several years. He wanted to give the title Hero of the Soviet Union to a TV actor that portrayed a fictional WW2 spy.

[@volodyadykun6490]

Ryazan miracle would be on the lies about numbers topic

[@joshuaryan1946]

You're pretty naive if you think that Soviet people didn't know the scale of this while it was going on. They were simply powerless to discuss it.

[@caterpilar]

Начало конца СССР :(

[@NickJohnCoop]

When you put all of this on top of the costs of Chernobyl and Afghanistan it amazes me that the USSR lasted as long as it did.

[@shauncameron8390]

Tyranny to compensate for the economic limitations exposed by the US's military budget.

[@Grisu19840]

Ok, I have to ask: why is there a vault boy on the desk?

[@anzaca1]

Why not?

[@deathstinger13]

isn't "the Great Patriotic War' the russian name for WWII? Is there a reason you used that name instead of World War II, the more widely known term outside of the former soviet states?

[@xandervk2371]

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

[@StandaBlabol]

The reason is simple. The WW2 has been started by nacional socialistic Germany together with international socialistic Russia + colonies known as USSR. Hitler.and Stalin attacked Poland together and later wehrmacht and red army have common victory parade in Brest. The Great patriotic war begins in 1941, when former nazi ally attacked russia and everybody pretend, that there is no history before 1941. This is the reason.

[@rockmusicman21]

Because the video is about the Soviet Union so it makes sense in that context? And i don't think only Russians called it that but all or most of the Soviet Union did as well.

[@xandervk2371]

Indeed, "Great Patriotic War" was invented in order to conceal the aggressive and occupying nature of the Soviet involvement in 1939-41.

[@krle7970]

@@xandervk2371they were demons dealing with the devil

[@cpt_bill366]

Banned in 2022!? wow

[@MrVanioko]

My dad led the investigation of this, resulting in jailing lots of top leaders.

[@Mrgunsngear]

🇺🇸

[@estebancastellino3284]

👍

[@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts]

I miss the Aral sea 😢

[@cea90]

Wtf is this background music in KZbin videos these days

[@legionofyuri]

Interesting to hear about. What causes this type of corruption to prop up in Russia/USSR anyway? The USSR and modern Russian state have two different systems of government and economics but there seems to be many parallels between the corruption of the regional communist parties then and the corruption of the oligarches today.

[@omnidroid70]

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!

[@legionofyuri]

@@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.

[@omnidroid70]

@@legionofyuri the most accessible/non-academic book I could recommend would be Chris Miller's Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, but if you're looking for something a bit more theoretical Henry Hale's Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective is an excellent look at the post-Soviet space more broadly

[@legionofyuri]

@omnidroid70 thanks! I'll check them out.

[@iDeathMaximuMII]

Corruption in a Communist State??? Color me shocked!

[@caseclosed9342]

I thought the Aral Sea lost water because Badlandschugs drank the water to spread freedom and democracy in the region. The history KZbinr DocuDubery told me that.

[@bendafyddgillard]

A fascinating and sad (for an armchair communist) episode. The destruction of the Aral Sea is a disaster by itself. It's worth noting that such unrealistic agriculture is not limited to communist countries. Almonds and even rice(!) are still grown in California, USA (for now), and Texas, USA has just been obliged to end its 20+ year experiment growing thirsty sugar cane despite having only half the required rainfall and trying to make up the difference from the Rio Grande. I suppose that's what happens whenever the primary concern is numbers on paper, and ecology is ignored.

[@akumaking1]

Corruption in communism isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

[@fluffypants]

Amazing👌

[@volodyadykun6490]

Why you have showed old division with Uzbekistan not in modern borders and then said nothing of change?

[@volodyadykun6490]

Btw you should make video on delimitation of Soviet Central Asia, if you haven't already

[@Dev_Six]

Corruption in a Socialist state? Never heard that one before.

[@kaibotski4939]

Time to report yourself to the closest reeducation center. Everyone knows the imperialist west promotes the lie of Soviet corruption.

[@BTScriviner]

Yeah, it's almost like it was a capitalist society.

[@dr.victorvs]

"Corruption" is what they called stealing from the poor in communist states. In capitalist states they simply called it "lobbying", "electoral contribution", "consumption tax", or simply "law".

[@Tupadre97]

@@BTScriviner not real commulism?

[@c1carnage933]

​@@Tupadre97 Freedom to be American with worsening standard of living?

[@celebrityrog]

Corruption and Soviet Union have the same definition but are just two different ways of saying the same thing. Holds true today with nearly all former USSR nations.

[@jamesorth6460]

You bet it's Uzbek cotton what a deal

[@user-pf6ib3ue5s]

Drained sea of Azov

[@ekmalsukarno2302]

To David and the entire Cold War crew, Please let me know once you've made videos on these following topics: - Argentina during the rule of Juan Peron (and how his political and economic legacies still affect Argentina to this day) - Thailand's on-and-off military governments and lese-majeste laws (which still occur even after the end of the Cold War) - Gastarbeiters (foreign migrant workers) in both West and East Germany - Bantustans (black homelands) in Apartheid-era South Africa - The history of Quebec's Quiet Revolution (and how it led to the secularisation of Quebec's society and government) - The history of Macau during the Cold War and how it contrasts with Hong Kong's Cold War history Thank you very much and please accept my requests.

[@ShubhamMishrabro]

I will also add india economy system of dirgism from 1950 to 1991

[@pyeitme508]

BRUH!

[@alexanderyacht6483]

Another big Soviet scandal of the early 80s was the Boris the Gypsy scandal, which involved Brezhnev's daughter Galina and a diamond smuggling ring. This scandal rocked the Kremlin to its foundations and may have caused the death of Mikhail Suslov. You should do a video on that.

[@rh9477]

“Total Communist Man” is a good honorific

[@gabrielaristoi7451]

Lets make it 3 comments.

[@markotrieste]

Politicians and managers believing in infinite growth break havoc on the environment. Luckily this cannot happen in modern days and capitalistic economies... /s

[@shauncameron8390]

While socialistic economies depend on infinite resources and cash flow wreaking havoc on the environment and the treasury often ending up adopting capitalist reforms, relying on foreign aid and/or resigning themselves to be isolated, backward and obsolete hellholes.

[@alist5554]

The way you speak is hard to understand maybe its ur mic

[@benfuller7816]

1. I’m a farmer who currently grows 4 crops cotton peanuts soybeans and corn. 2. Cotton uses the least amount of water of the 4. 3. Cotton doesn’t destroy the soil. It’s been grown in the same fields for years in end without being rotated out although now it usually is rotated regularly. 4. The current state of the Aral Sea was because of typical Soviet disregard and mismanagement. You stated yourself 90% of the water was lost before it got to the field. Whoever your agronomist is I recommend getting a new one.

[@Game_Hero]

trust me bro

[@howardsontz983]

Rashidov: The Uzbek Bernie Madoff.

[@AncientRylanor69]

rn

[@godfreecharlie]

Please do a presentation about all the different medals handed out by the Soviet Union. Rashidov seems to have collected a few but I have seen "Heros" festooned with enough medals to keep them at the bottom of Lake Baikal forever. Just how many reasons for medals do they have? Patriotic Leaves Raker to the Great Motherland? Patriotic Consumer and Tester of Russian Vodka and Vomiting While Driving....

[@nikhil1536]

Grim.

[@stefanodadamo6809]

Soviet society sank into corruption, indeed mafia-like economy, once communism as a goal was discredited after Khrushchev.

[@xandervk2371]

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.

[@Shadeem]

Russian story as old as time

[@samwill7259]

And not a SINGLE Central Asian nation got better after the fall of the USSR (Unless you count Mongolia) Which is IMPRESSIVE considering how bad the USSR was for the region

[@xandervk2371]

Mongolia was never a part of the Soviet Union, even if tightly controlled. Perhaps that's why.

[@ShubhamMishrabro]

Kazakhstan is doing good. Uzbekistan has recently started developing. Tajikistan is lost cause. Turkmenistan has recently started reforms which will take time. Kyrgyzstan is good democratically but economy is not that great

[@theotherohlourdespadua1131]

So, ignore Kazakhstan?

[@samwill7259]

@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 Didn't Kazahkstan recently rename their capital city after their dictator who ruled the country without opposition for 28 years straight?

[@samwill7259]

@@ShubhamMishrabro Kazakhstan renamed their capital city after a man who ruled unopposed for 28 years straight. I do not call that "doing good"

[@pat8988]

Cold War: Good grief, if you want this channel to be taken seriously (and it should be), then ditch the “music”. That two and a half minute stretch of the same repeating note is especially egregious. The background music interferes with comprehension.

[@timmyturner327]

Uzbekistan is the Russia of Central Asia.

[@johnjimmies8256]

Upload 9 min ago and only 2 comments...the fall off is real

[@nectanbo]

The quality is still on point though

[@TheColdWarTV]

It's a 30min episode...we encourage people to watch it first, THEN comment

[@BTScriviner]

So what you're saying is you didn't watch the video.

[@johnjimmies8256]

Its the new "first" comment

[@TheBucketSkill]

@@TheColdWarTV Bro please upload more in-depth stuff like this. I never even heard of this stuff.

[@kolera25]

What about sex scandals and abuses in the ussr? Spanish-speacking countries will learn a great deal about parrallel universes

[@dr.victorvs]

Fun fact: the perpetrator took the billions of rubles and bought a Diet Coke. He did have to dip into his savings to make up the full amount.

[@user-zi8wh3wv2q]

funny the america cotton scandal was even worse

[@nobodyherepal3292]

What cotton scandal?

[@shauncameron8390]

And when was that?

[@vrause7956]

Almost sounds like what’s going on in the US

[@insaneclownponies9599]

proof?

[@EndingSimple]

I remember what one Soviet citizen said of this time: "They pretended to pay us, so we pretended to work."