The economy of the Soviet Union was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. The highly centralized Soviet-type economic planning was managed by the administrative-command system.
The effect was drastic. The soviet economy before the Cold War is mainly agriculture and all of a sudden when Stalin came in power, he basically changed the whole country’s economy into an industrial one. That worked but there were still many farms kept to feed the country. Most of the grain/wheat grown from these farms were used to host Stalin’s riches and to keep the “visible” economy to look like a great place and how Russia is beatiful. It made the west, “America” jealous and they started questioning their own society, the USSR contaned, food, free health care, free housing, and everyone was not hungry, or so they thought. That was only a part of the country, the other part is just filled with poverty and people were even eating their own families or others Just to stay alive. The food they grew was mainly given to the economy and the communist leader, they didn’t recive any. Now that was during the Cold War, the thing with the USSR’s goverment is that only 1 leader was controlling everything, almost every leader spent most of the economy on the military, the Arms Race, and the space race. Not a lot was going to the people. After loosing many workers from the factories in order to travel to west berlin, stalin build a barrier to prevent any from crossing to make sure his factories are still working. Now the soviet economy was broke no matter how hard they hide it. They were loosing everything until the leader by the name Mikhail Gorbachev came by and basicallly saved the whole USSR and gave the people rights to vote.
Although the French were successful in overthrowing their monarchy, eventually, a powerful dictator named Napoleon came to power. Meanwhile, the Americans were successful in creating a democratic government, which lasts to this day.
