How certain was the fall of communism and the USSR to people living in 1978(late 70s basically)

[The Banker]

I am planning to write a story set in late 1978. It is about the cold war. Today we know from foresight that thanks to the Brezhnev stagnation, the USSR was doomed to fall by the 70s and it was simply a question of how and when.
My question is 'Did people in the late 1970s period know or sense this fact'?

My question is also divided into 3 parts
1)How much did common people know about the upcoming fall of the USSR
2)How much did uncommon people like government workers, politicians and spies of western countries know about the problems and upcoming fall of the USSR
3)Did people in the late 70s sense that the communism world was about about to crumble

Like what vibe did people have in the late 70s basically
Was it a known fact that America was winning the cold war atleast by a slim margin?

 

[Lalli]

1)How much did common people know about the upcoming fall of the USSR

On the west hardly anyone commoner realised how bad situation was and surely didn't expect whole system collapsing. And Soviet commoners probably mostly knew even lesser thanks of effective propaganda and lot of hiding of things and if there was someone saying otherway he was going to gulag.

2)How much did uncommon people like government workers, politicians and spies of western countries know about the problems and upcoming fall of the USSR

Not idea about westerners but probably many even highly educated people on Soviet Union realised how bad things are.

3)Did people in the late 70s sense that the communism world was about about to crumble

I don't think that even most hard-line anti-communists expected system being near of collapse.

Like what vibe did people have in the late 70s basically
Was it a known fact that America was winning the cold war atleast by a slim margin?

I think that majority of people expected situation continuing similar to foreseeable future.

 

[Bad@logic]

Reading books written in the 1970s and the 1980s is fascinating because there really is no sense whatsoever that the Soviet system might collapse. A good example which I read not long ago was Trade and Technology in Soviet-Western Relations, a 1981 book, and one which seems well placed to note the crisis of the Soviet development model - and a very insightful book, one which astutely notices differences in Soviet usage of Western technology, its effect upon the Soviet system, and with brilliant technical detail as well as well-thought out policy proposals. But there was not the slightest hint in any of this that the Soviet Union would actually collapse, and whatever shortcomings it found in the Soviet system it assumed that competent managemnet would be able to mitigate. There were quite a military projections at the time that assumed continued Soviet growth, and CIA reports on internal Warsaw Pact stability thought that they were stable - indeed even viewed the relative Soviet retreat from direct involvement in Eastern European affairs as enhancing the legitimacy of their communist parties.

It's really astonishing to realize just how quickly and how totally Moscow's power and reach evaporated. I recall my profound moment was reading an innocuous line in a book about Estonia's post-communist transition and it mentioning Estonian opposition to Moscow's plan to build a potash mine in the country - and it suddenly hitting you that Estonia, today firmly independent, was at that time completely under the control of Moscow, and that Soviet power stretched up nearly to the Elbe. Certainly in 1978 there was no sense that this massive empire could collapse in such a rapid and abrupt fashion.

 

[Merrick]

People in the 1980s - never mind the 1970s - had basically no idea that the Soviet Union was approaching collapse. Even in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consensus view among western media commentators and government analysts was that the Warsaw Pact would continue in some form with a negotiated German reunification in maybe five years.

Prior to 1989, everyone expected the USSR would continue into the indefinite future. Sci-fi writers wrote about the Cold War continuing into the far future of interstellar colonisation. Those seeing an end were generally predicting a future of detente and peaceful co-existence, a nuclear holocaust, or the West falling to the virtues of Socialism. (Pre-1989, there were plenty of Western leftists ready to sing the praises of the Workers' Paradise).

As for people in the Soviet Union, there was little knowledge of the West (no internet, little foreign travel, censored media). The effects of the Brezhnev-ere stagnation only really started to bite in the 1980s. In the 1970s there was a general feeling that the system wasn't working as well as it should - queues and shortages were facts of life - but people were living better than their parents had in the 1950s and much better than their grandparents had in the 1930s and the State and the Communist Party were much less viciously repressive than they had been even a generation earlier. Accounts of Soviet life in the period talk of queues, grime, dingy worker flats, idiot petty officials and a general air of resigned acceptance, but no feeling that things couldn't continue.

 

[spkaca]

People in the 1980s - never mind the 1970s - had basically no idea that the Soviet Union was approaching collapse. Even in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consensus view among western media commentators and government analysts was that the Warsaw Pact would continue in some form with a negotiated German reunification in maybe five years.

Prior to 1989, everyone expected the USSR would continue into the indefinite future. Sci-fi writers wrote about the Cold War continuing into the far future of interstellar colonisation. Those seeing an end were generally predicting a future of detente and peaceful co-existence, a nuclear holocaust, or the West falling to the virtues of Socialism. (Pre-1989, there were plenty of Western leftists ready to sing the praises of the Workers' Paradise).

Very much this. I was very young at the time, but had a precocious interest in current affairs. My feeling, which I think was widely shared, was that even if the USSR was sclerotic at best, there was no way it could change. After all, as long as the people in charge didn't want to change, it couldn't happen, and since the Politburo and nomenklatura enjoyed all the privileges, why would they want to? And with hindsight, I think that Andropov and Gorbachev had been able to foresee what would happen, they would have acted differently.
Some indicators, taken from memory, as to the general consensus:
1. In 1984, the movie 2010: Odyssey 2 portrayed a USSR capable of sending a crewed spaceship to Jupiter in 2010. Ok, the first movie had showed a USA capable of reaching Jupiter by 2001, so maybe the error there was a general over-estimation of spaceflight progress.

2. In Yes Prime Minister, from the '80s, Jim Hacker at one point (I think just after becoming Prime Minister) flirts with the idea of cancelling Trident, and just trying to keep Polaris going. The following conversation ensues:
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, you ought to know that the USSR could develop a missile defence system that could stop Polaris.
Jim Hacker: By when?
Sir Humphrey: In strategic terms, any day now.
Jim Hacker: When, exactly?
Sir H: Well... 2020. But that's sooner than you think.

3. Some of the reaction to Ronald Reagan's rhetoric I think carried a sense of this assumption that the USSR was permanent. He predicted it was doomed; most people could not imagine the USSR disappearing by political means; it followed (in their minds) that if he was predicting its end, it must be because he had determined to end it the only way that could be imagined, i.e. with nuclear war. Hence I think some of the hysteria in the anti-Reagan reaction of the time.

 

[RanulfC]

The general consensus was the USSR was here to stay and the "Cold War" would continue indefinitely. We'd grown up with them and they were a part of our world view and this wasn't just the 'common' people either. Much is made that Reagan et-al "knew" that pushing the USSR would topple them but there's no evidence of that. Reagan was simply bound and determined to accelerate the rebuilding of the US military and like everyone else he was just as surprised when they broke up.

(My Mother-in-law who was German was convinced when the Wall fell that it was all a "Russian trick", four years later she was crying because she was standing in her home town in what had been East Germany for the first time since 1948. Something she never thought she would do again)

Randy

 

[Sorairo]

I recall watching a documentary by the Russian dissident vlogger Varlamov about the fall of the USSR. The vast majority of his guests (people who were not not only educated but were involved with the Soviet system) said that even in 1991, the idea that in the next year there would be no USSR was unimaginable. This was unimaginable despite just over a year ago the also seemingly invincible Warsaw Pact imploded for the very same reasons that plagued the Soviet Union at the time.

 

[ejr1963]

We had no idea it would fall any earlier than at least 30 or 40 years down the road. In 1981-82, we had an exchange student from Finland at my high school. and even he said, that he didn't think the USSR would fall for at least another 30-35 years.

 

[DougM]

The USSR lasted about 69 years, in 1978 it had about 12/13 years to go that is 18% of the entire time the USSR existed. I would contend that NO ONE in 1978 expected the fall if the USSR the way it turned out.
Yes the local population new living in the USSR sucked but that was true in 48 58 and 68 as well. In general the USSR in 78 was no worse off then it had been. And yes some folk predicted the end of the USSR, but some folks predict the end of the earth and if we happen yo get hit by a meteor today that does not mean those folks ”knew” something it just means that they got lucky.
1978 was close to the height of the cold war. The USSR was building a large navy, was designing some of the best aircraft (in relation to everyone elses) they would ever build in large numbers, they had invaded or were about to invade neighbors and in general were at the high point in their existence. And while the space race had not ended well for them they still had arguably a netter space program then the US at the time.
So frankly i dont think anyone trully expected the USSR to implode a bit over a decade later.
Go look at popular fictionn of the time. The USSR was the baddy everywhere and we would soon get books and movies about WW3 or an invation of alaska or Red Storm Rising or Hunt for Red October or Red Dawn etc.
I can also promis you that the average Joe outside the USSR didn't see any particular “weakness” in the USSR in 1978.
Heck looking back on it i am bot sure there was any more issues with the USSR in 1978 then in say the early 60s. Yes thier system sucked and was basically unsustainable in the long run but it had survived for decades and had more then a decade to go so i dont think it was realky starting yo colapse in 78. Heck it would be a couple more years before the US military would go on a building spree under Reagan. so i think you are 5-10 years from anyone trully knowing the USSR was going down. That colapse happened a lot faster then many seam to realize. And personally i think that it was as much a result of the leaders of the USSR letting it go. If you had a hard liner like a modern Stalin or there current leader I think they would have made a few more years on pure brutality and made the peaople have to truly revolt

 

[Eric C Johnson]

Funny 1978 is chosen. I lived in Berlin from June-October 1978, and my basement apartment was about 100 meters from the wire-minefield portion of the Berlin Wall. Eleven years later I was utterly stunned when the wall came down. Never thought I would see it in my lifetime.

 

[Garrison]

I am planning to write a story set in late 1978. It is about the cold war. Today we know from foresight that thanks to the Brezhnev stagnation, the USSR was doomed to fall by the 70s and it was simply a question of how and when.
My question is 'Did people in the late 1970s period know or sense this fact'?

My question is also divided into 3 parts
1)How much did common people know about the upcoming fall of the USSR
2)How much did uncommon people like government workers, politicians and spies of western countries know about the problems and upcoming fall of the USSR
3)Did people in the late 70s sense that the communism world was about about to crumble

Like what vibe did people have in the late 70s basically
Was it a known fact that America was winning the cold war atleast by a slim margin?

I think the question can be answered very simply, no one saw it coming. Even among those in the corridors of power there was no expectation of a Soviet collapse and arguably without the particular sequence of events that occurred in the 1980s it could have lumbered on for years more.

 

[RanulfC]

As a bit of an aside/background detail in the mid-to-late 80s there was a 'conspiracy' subculture in the "biblical End-Times" vein that popped up that contended that the government of the US was corrupt and 'evil' to the point where they were constantly trying to start a nuclear war of annihilation and the only thing that was consistently stopping them was the "hyper-advanced" technology of the USSR who were secretly on the Evangelical Christian End-Timers side....

Time and technology being what it was there was never any real ability to nail down where this idea came from but given the context and later propaganda....

Randy

 

[Dain]

I am planning to write a story set in late 1978. It is about the cold war. Today we know from foresight that thanks to the Brezhnev stagnation, the USSR was doomed to fall by the 70s and it was simply a question of how and when.
My question is 'Did people in the late 1970s period know or sense this fact'?

My question is also divided into 3 parts
1)How much did common people know about the upcoming fall of the USSR
2)How much did uncommon people like government workers, politicians and spies of western countries know about the problems and upcoming fall of the USSR
3)Did people in the late 70s sense that the communism world was about about to crumble

Like what vibe did people have in the late 70s basically
Was it a known fact that America was winning the cold war atleast by a slim margin?

It says something about how thorough and total the triumph of capitalism over socialism was that people now look at economic performance alone and conclude that the Soviet Union was doomed from the beginning. Back then that was not how people thought about this - alternative state ideologies like communism and fascism did not believe in the supremacy of wealth above all other factors.
Ultimately, if alle else failed, they believed in the raw power of the jackboot. Even western analysts probably assumed that the communist party would be able to stay in power by using its state apparatus to suppress any dissent regardless of economic performance.

In that vein, I think it is kind of leaning heavily on historical determism to proclaim that the Soviet Union was already irrecoverably doomed in the 70s. Trends can be turned around. It could probably have recovered from its economic malaise under better leadership.

1) How much did common people know about the upcomig fall?
They had no clue. There was probably some feeling of discontent within the Russian population about the stagnation but we should remember that after decades of unimaginable hardship Russians still were wealthier than ever before. Not only did the Russians not know how bad they were doing compared to the West, the West also only had the vaguest of ideas. The Iron Curtain made sure of that.

2) How much did politicians know?
They knew only marginally more about the economic performance of the Soviet Union than anyone else. One contributing factor to the Soviet malaise were the perverse incentives of a centrally planned economy in a totalitarian dictatorship. The central planning bureau itself could not trust the reports and statistics it was receiving, nor was its planning in any way adequate to address the actual needs of the population.
Everyone was conditioned to try to hide problems, lest they find themselves declared part of the problem, and exaggarate success - because there was constant pressure to do so by superiors looking to earn the party's favor.
The Soviets made decisions based on partly or entirely fictitious data. Since the only way to get ahead in the system was corruption, reliability also rapidly went downhill.
Western analysts probably knew about the Soviet economy falling behind but those same analysts also liked to scaremonger about the military capabilities of the Soviet military to shake loose additional funding, so I expect there was no concise reporting going on.

3) Did people in the late 70s sense anything about the upcoming collapse?
No, not at all. It was business as usual for them. The changes that saw the Soviets fall behind were too slow and gradual to be consciously perceived by random citizens. So no, the people in general had no clue, just like we today are also not able to clearly say where we are headed.

 

[RanulfC]

Oh there's an "alternate-timeline" concept: As the USSR falls apart both the US and USSR governments are like "That was so unexpected" and meanwhile all the WP and NATO allies are like "Oh no, we knew it was coming all along but you two looked to be so into the Cold War we just didn't have the heart to bring it up..."

Randy

 

[brooklyn99]

It says something about how thorough and total the triumph of capitalism over socialism was that people now look at economic performance alone and conclude that the Soviet Union was doomed from the beginning. Back then that was not how people thought about this - alternative state ideologies like communism and fascism did not believe in the supremacy of wealth above all other factors.
Ultimately, if alle else failed, they believed in the raw power of the jackboot. Even western analysts probably assumed that the communist party would be able to stay in power by using its state apparatus to suppress any dissent regardless of economic performance.

In that vein, I think it is kind of leaning heavily on historical determism to proclaim that the Soviet Union was already irrecoverably doomed in the 70s. Trends can be turned around. It could probably have recovered from its economic malaise under better leadership.

1) How much did common people know about the upcomig fall?
They had no clue. There was probably some feeling of discontent within the Russian population about the stagnation but we should remember that after decades of unimaginable hardship Russians still were wealthier than ever before. Not only did the Russians not know how bad they were doing compared to the West, the West also only had the vaguest of ideas. The Iron Curtain made sure of that.

2) How much did politicians know?
They knew only marginally more about the economic performance of the Soviet Union than anyone else. One contributing factor to the Soviet malaise was the perverse incentives of a centrally planned economy in a totalitarian dictatorship. The central planning bureau itself could not trust the reports and statistics it was receiving, nor was its planning in any way adequate to address the actual needs of the population.
Everyone was conditioned to try to hide problems, lest they find themselves declared part of the problem, and exaggarate success - because there was constant pressure to do so by superiors looking to earn the party's favor.
The Soviets made decisions based on partly or entirely fictitious data. Since the only way to get ahead in the system was corruption, reliability also rapidly went downhill.
Western analysts probably knew about the Soviet economy falling behind but those same analysts also liked to scaremonger about the military capabilities of the Soviet military to shake loose additional funding, so I expect there was no concise reporting going on.

3) Did people in the late 70s sense anything about the upcoming collapse?
No, not at all. It was business as usual for them. The changes that saw the Soviets fall behind were too slow and gradual to be consciously perceived by a random citizens. So no, the people in general had no clue, just like we today are also not able to clearly say where we are headed.

But for something that was so unexpected, it's amazing how quickly the Eastern Bloc unravelled when it began to. Within a single year (1989) all the Warsaw Pact regimes bar the USSR itself had fallen one after the other like a sort of reverse Domino Theory.

 

[LordMartinax]

This is mostly puting together what my family (mostly father, uncles and grandparents) told me. The family was what could be called well positioned in Communist Czechoslovakia, well placed medical doctors with contacts in both the Communist party and the opposition underground.

1)How much did common people know about the upcoming fall of the USSR

There were two things that really shocked people, and those were re-unification of Germany and Soviet fall. Up untill August coup, it was generally expected that USSR would remain a force to be reckoned with. In the late 70's? Not even the most diehard anti-communists really expected such a complete collapse of both the Eastern block and the USSR.

3)Did people in the late 70s sense that the communism world was about about to crumble

Was it a known fact that America was winning the cold war atleast by a slim margin?

Not really. Hell, opposite seemed true. The last decade seemed to be a real Capitalist decline. Vietnam was a defeat for the West, American leaders were either considered bad thieves (Nixon), or weak (Carter). Greek and Spanish juntas were down, and the local left might well stir them to the East, while the Shah's regime seemed ready to follow.

The West in the 70's seemed weak and the Eastern block was relatively stable. That changed with Afghanistan and Reagan. While the conflict in Afghanistan might not have broken the USSR, it shatered an image of strength. Reagan meanwhile showed that the US was back in strength (or at least managed to bullshit much better then his predecessors). By 1989, few in the puppet states believed that USSR would act to preserve the local regimes and the Americans seemed a strong alternative.

 

[RanulfC]

Personally when I joined the US military in 1979 I thought the USSR was stronger and more capable in many areas than the US/NATO.
In the early 80s I was stationed in Northern Italy and I knew and understood that I was on the 'front-line' in any conflict between the US and USSR and was training day and night to fight that conflict, knowing I was unlikely to survive it if it happened.
By the mid-80s I was sure the USSR was not as strong but was still a peer adversary to the US/NATO.
By 1992 I was standing outside on my duty station in Germany watching an ex-East German Mig-29 engaging in a mock dogfight with an American F-15 and I was scheduled to go to Prague that weekend with my wife on a sponsored tour through the US military.
(Two months later myself, my wife and her Mom were standing in her hometown in Germany which was something her Mom never expected to happen again in her lifetime. The world had changed for all us)

Randy

 

[ivanotter]

It is a fascinating topic!

I was on a school tour in 1975 (in my high school we could choose between French, Spanish and Russian). 10 days may not mean a lot, but I did notice a few things:
- Plenty of money, but not a lot to buy vs UK: plenty of things to buy but not a lot of money = same difference
- Nobody followed us around. We could go anywhere and the mood among the youth was one of hope based on improvements in living standard. and we did interact with a lot of youth our own age.

It did help that our teacher was from Hungary and with only 12 in the class we were by and large FLUENT to the extent we could read a newspaper or watch a TV programme. Some were even convinced we were a school tour from Karelen (The Russian part of Finland) based on our accent and looks.

One of the things I remember that got people in general to notice something was changing was the formation of Solidarity in Poland. The crackdown could have been worse. As it did not turn into 1968 got a few commentators to notice something amiss. As I remember it (could be wrong) the WP countries were not fully behind any crackdown. That was unusual.

... but that it could all happen this fast? nobody could have foreseen this. Changes, yes, but not collapse

 

[McAuslan_in_the_Rough]

A minor personal anecdote just outside your timeline: In 1967 my father was witnessing the celebrations of the 50-year anniversary of the October Revolutions and was wondering just what kind of a show they would put on for the 100-year anniversary.

 

[Sam R.]

What I find interesting is that the trots who viewed the Soviet Union as capitalist didn't seem to conduct the kinds of analysis that were conducted of proletarian resistance in China 1989-2002 by libertarian communists. Or if you count Solidarity (UK), or Socialisme ou Barbarie, or Autonomia, by libertarian communists of proletarian resistance in Russia 1917-1968.

In fact it seems like the only people who did forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union forecast it in the context of the collapse of capitalism (wage labour / value form) in general.