Talk:Seweryn Bialer

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Reagan quote

The paragraph seems unnecessary. First off, contrary to what the article implies ("Bialer confidently contradicted Reagan"), Bialer's article had nothing to do with refuting what Reagan said, and in fact Reagan isn't even mentioned. Second, the vast majority of Western academics and government officials in the early-mid 80s thought the prospects of the USSR breaking up within a decade were very remote. Third, it seems to imply that Bialer was bad at analyzing Soviet affairs at best and an idiot at worst.

In reality Bialer wrote that the Soviet economy was entering into a period of trouble in the 1980s, that ethnic tensions would increase, and that the Soviet leadership would have to make hard decisions and carry out reforms if it were to avoid a crisis. He didn't anticipate Perestroika, much less the collapse of the USSR, but he was by no means presenting a rosy picture of the Soviets.

In fact one could even say that Bialer was somewhat prescient. For example, in a 1980 article ("The Politics of Stringency in the USSR") he writes: "The most probable course of development after Brezhnev's departure is the selection of an interim leader, who during a short term of two to four years in office will fail to achieve a strong position within the oligarchy and will yield to a younger leader, who will in turn require several years to consolidate his power. In this event, the earliest that one may have a strong leader is the second half of the 1980's... [the interim leader] might succeed in allying himself with a younger generation of officials whom he would introduce in large numbers into the central hierarchy."

That sounds like a pretty good prediction to me. When Brezhnev died he was succeeded by Andropov, who by various accounts made the young Gorbachev his protégé. Then Andropov died and was succeeded by Chernenko. Both Andropov and Chernenko could be seen as "interim" leaders owing to how briefly they were in power (a combined total of three years.) Then, sure enough, the younger Gorbachev came to power and consolidated his position in the latter part of the 80s, removing various Party "hardliners" from their positions.

I only bring this up to show that Bialer was clearly more competent in analyzing Soviet society than the article suggests, and that it's quite wrong to imply that he was naïve for sharing the consensus of the vast majority of people at the time on the possibility of the USSR's demise following a major economic crisis. I'm also quite sure that Reagan didn't think the USSR was going to collapse within a decade either, any more than he thought the Berlin Wall was going to be torn down two years after his famous speech on the subject. --Ismail (talk) 10:56, 29 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Another quote removed

The following was added into the article at some point: "In 1980 Bialer famously stated in Time magazine (Time, 23 June 1980) that 'the Soviet Union was the first state to be able to supply "guns and butter" simultaneously, elevating the standard of living and achieving military parity with the West'." I've removed it for the following reasons:

1. What sources call this a "famous" quote? I can't find many that even cite it. 2. The quote appears to be taken out of context, as if it was describing the USSR of 1980 and the foreseeable future. Another work (What Happened to the Soviet Union? How and Why American Sovietologists Were Caught by Surprise by Christopher I. Xenakis, p. 104) shows this isn't the case: "Bialer characterized the first decade of the Brezhnev era as 'the most successful period of Soviet international and domestic development' and a time when the USSR 'achieve[d] strategic parity with the United States' and became a superpower. Indeed, 'for the first time in its history,' the Soviet Union 'pursue[d] successfully and simultaneously a policy of guns and butter as well as growth,' he noted. Consequently, Moscow saw the 'correlation of forces' as particularly favorable during the early 1970s. But sometime in the early-to-mid 1970s, this trend began to go the other way. . . Bialer added that the 1980s would likely be a 'harsh decade' for the USSR, which could 'well pass through the worst period it has seen since the death of Stalin.' . . . 'The era of extensive Soviet development, when high rates of growth were assured through growing increments of labor and capital,' was over, Bialer said."

Ergo, I see no reason to include the quote in the article. --Ismail (talk) 21:55, 10 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]