Jenny Beth Martin puts a photograph of a Soviet food line on the screen and asks Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev, a physicist and Moscow Helsinki Group dissident exiled from the Soviet Union in 1980, to explain how communism ended there. He answers with the model he built before his exile: the Soviet economy ran on taxation over 90 percent, and it was hidden. The nominal tax was 13 percent. The real tax was collected through depressed wages, because the government was the only employer and set every wage in the country. If the market value of your job was 1,000 rubles, you were paid 100 or 120, and you never felt the difference as a tax. His conclusion: over 92 percent on average.
Part of that money came back as subsidized apartments and food, but the point was control. It is not you who earns and decides; it is the government that takes everything and then decides who gets the apartment, the better food, and the better medical treatment. That system creates shortages and declines, and then comes the part that ended it. The Soviet Union was one of two superpowers and had to keep up with American military strength. When Ronald Reagan began his buildup, there was no room to take more from a people already taxed at 92 percent. The ideology withered too; a third generation stopped believing the bright future would arrive. Communism, he says, contains its own time bomb, and no army and no KGB can save it. The Politburo chose Gorbachev unanimously to reform the system and save it, not to end it. It was already past saving.
Guest: Dr. Yuri Yarim-Agaev, Soviet physicist and member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, exiled from the Soviet Union in 1980.
In this segment:
• A Soviet food line, and the question: how did it end?
• Before exile, an economic model of the Soviet system
• Taxation over 90 percent, hidden; the nominal rate was 13
• A 1,000-ruble job paid 100 or 120 rubles
• The conclusion: 92 percent on average
• The trick was control: who gets the apartment, the food, the doctor
• Reagan's buildup, and nothing left to take
• Communism's time bomb; Gorbachev was chosen to save the system
Share this with someone who thinks the state can give you something for free, then vote for liberty, for our constitutional system, and against communism. To help get out the vote: iwillsaveamerica.com. Watch the full panel, part two of the Surviving Communism series, on The Jenny Beth Show channel, and subscribe for daily analysis from Tea Party Patriots Action.
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00:00 — A Soviet food line, and the question: how did it end?
00:29 — Before exile, an economic model of the Soviet system
00:46 — Taxation over 90 percent, hidden; the nominal rate was 13
01:16 — A 1,000-ruble job paid 100 or 120 rubles
02:01 — The conclusion: 92 percent on average
02:21 — The trick was control: who gets the apartment, the food, the doctor
02:55 — It cannot last: shortages and decline
03:07 — Two superpowers, and a contest between democracy and communism
03:51 — Reagan's buildup: with 92 percent already taken, nothing left to match it
04:18 — The ideology withers; a third generation waiting for the bright future
05:29 — Communism's time bomb
05:52 — Gorbachev was chosen to save the system, not end it
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