Russia

[The Beatles]

The USSR was a superpower. Yes, it tanked, but it /was/ able to keep it up remarkably long with very few natural resources and a feudal system when everyone else was busy being late-Victorian.

Communism doesn't work, but:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f41TzAa9loM

[Nuclear Raunch]

People's need for superiority is too strong for communism to work effectively.

[Yoman82]

...True. But... By brainwashing the first generation, Communism would be the supreme power in the world.

[Death]

How exactly does that work out?

[Freenhult]

...True. But... By brainwashing the first generation, Communism would be the supreme power in the world.

Thats not possible. And the defeats the whole reason to do anything. Thats a dictatorship more than anything.

Just give it up Yoman. Its not a good idea. :/

[Yoman82]

Never!
^...Dictatorship, no. It wouldn't fit into any present day category.

[Freenhult]

Yeah it would.

[Nuclear Raunch]

"In Russia, reforms that once promised to empower citizens have been derailed, with troubling implications for democratic development," said Bush, who is due to meet Putin on Wednesday ahead of this week's G8 summit in Germany.

Oh good, that should alleviate any talk of this being aimed at Russia.

[Gen. Volkov]

...True. But... By brainwashing the first generation, Communism would be the supreme power in the world.

Actually, the children of the old Soviet WERE brainwashed. And the system STILL didn't work.

Also, you know who else promoted that sort of thinking? Hitler. He was talking about Nazism. What you are talking about is a dictatorship, not true Communism.

The USSR was a superpower. Yes, it tanked, but it /was/ able to keep it up remarkably long with very few natural resources and a feudal system when everyone else was busy being late-Victorian.

How do you figure that? The USSR had huge deposits of oil, and iron too I believe. As I said earlier though, it was only the discovery of large oil deposits that allowed it to last until the late 80's/early 90's. They were teetering on the point of collapse before they found those. Without the oil, they would have collapsed in the late 60's or early 70's.

In fact, the strain of trying to keep up the arms and space race with the US was so great that there is pretty good evidence they tried to engineer a nuclear war between the US and China, which would have ended the arms race and left them on top. (Or so I've read)

Though I suppose even lasting to the late 60's would still have been pretty impressive, given that, as you said, they were still operating under what was essentially a feudal system.

[The Beatles]

Did nobody watch the YouTube?

As to USSR: Oil was discovered, but not exploited until the 90s and after the breakup, so it only benefited Russia (in a major way) and Kazakhstan (essentially). It might have saved the Soviet Union, thank goodness it didn't get a chance to.

[Devari]

I did, of course. But, I've already seen it, so I thought I'd let other people comment.

[Gen. Volkov]

As to USSR: Oil was discovered, but not exploited until the 90s and after the breakup, so it only benefited Russia (in a major way) and Kazakhstan (essentially). It might have saved the Soviet Union, thank goodness it didn't get a chance to.

Actually, before the break-up, the USSR was a leading oil exporter. After the collapse, they lost a lot of oil producing capacity. The oil companies were all state-run, and the oil wells fell into disuse and neglect when the state collapsed, when the companies were officially turned private, most were either already bankrupt or went bankrupt soon after, additionally, a lot of the old USSR wells got possessed by the countries that formed when the USSR collapsed. It wasn't until the mid-90's that they began to regain that capacity.

I did watch the YouTube, it was funny in its way, but I didn't quite get it.

[The Beatles]

Interesting. Yet it didn't save them. I read somewhere that Russia's use of its oil resources today far exceeds the USSR's at the time.

[Gen. Volkov]

Interesting.

Yeah, and interestingly enough there is a theory that an oil crisis, on top of the economic strain of keep up with the US, and the inherent inefficiencies of the Soviet system is what caused the collapse in the late 80's. They were already over-stressed, and then they had an oil crisis similar to what we had in the 70's, and it combined with everything else to bring the system down, or so the idea goes.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm

If you want to read the theory.

Yet it didn't save them.

Well, like I said, it did save them from collapsing even sooner.

I read somewhere that Russia's use of its oil resources today far exceeds the USSR's at the time.

Huh, it's certainly possible, though I had not heard that. It has been a little over decade and a half since the collapse, and a lot of Western oil companies have been investing new technology into old Russian oil fields, and also investing in developing new ones. The better efficiencies of the newer technologies and the increasing number of oil fields could certainly have led to that.

[Yoman82]

Yo! I'm not a Nazi. Communism, not racial killing!