苏联可以在冷战中获胜的5种方法（下） [美国媒体]

Five Ways the Soviet Union Could Have Wonthe Cold War

苏联可以在冷战中获胜的物种方法

1976: Operation RED DAWN
What better way to help the Americanscelebrate their bicentennial than by attacking and destroying their globalalliances and then defeating them in a no-kidding shooting war?

1976年:红色黎明行动
还有什么比攻击并摧毁他们的全球盟友，然后在一场严肃的战争中击败他们这种更好的方式来帮助美国人庆祝建国200周年呢?

It is, I admit, a pet peeve to hear youngerpeople talk about how anything in America in the twenty-first century "isjust the worst ever," a whine that instantly identifies the speaker assomeone who either did not experience, or cannot remember the 1970s. If theSoviets were going to take us down, the mid-1970s would have been the time todo it.

我承认，听到年轻人说21世纪美国的任何事情“都是有史以来最糟糕的”，这是一种让人无法忍受的抱怨。这种抱怨会立刻让人觉得说话的人要么没有经历过，要么不记得上世纪70年代。如果苏联要打倒我们，70年代中期是时候了。

Consider the Western landscape in 1976. Fortwo years, America was governed by Gerald Ford, a very nice and able man whomno one elected, and whose name at the time was inextricably linked to thepardon of his nearly impeached predecessor, Richard Nixon. Although Fordretained Nixon's secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, the Nixon-Kissingerpolicy of detente with the USSR was so widely regarded by other Americans as afailure—one that emboldened, rather than restrained Moscow—that Ford eventuallybanned the word from the White House.

想想1976年的西方景观。两年来，美国一直由杰拉尔德·福特统治，他是一个非常善良、能干的人，但没有人选举他，他的名字与他几乎被弹劾的前任理查德·尼克松的赦免密不可分。尽管福特保留了尼克松的国务卿亨利·基辛格，但尼克松和基辛格缓和与苏联关系的政策被其他美国人普遍认为是失败的——这一政策鼓励而不是限制了莫斯科——福特最终在白宫禁止了这个词。

Come to think of it, no one elected Ford'svice president, either, since Ford himself assumed that office when Nixon'snumber two, Spiro Agnew, likewise resigned in disgrace. The White House wasthus occupied by two men whose only link to the American people were someSenate confirmation hearings. (As the fictional Frank Underwood says upontaking the Veep's oath of office in the series House ofCards : "Democracy is so overrated.")

想想看，福特的副总统也是没人选的，因为尼克松的二号人物斯皮罗·阿格纽不光彩地辞职时，福特自己接任了副总统一职。因此，白宫被两个人占据，他们与美国人民唯一的联系就是一些参议院的确认听证会。(正如电视剧《纸牌屋》中虚构的弗兰克·安德伍德在副总统宣誓就职时所说:“民主被高估了。”)

Athome, the U.S. economy was a wreck. Oil embargoes and deindustrialization,among other problems, created "stagflation," the condition of highinflation, high unemployment and low-growth that is so rare we don't evenuse the word anymore. From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, interest ratesstayed startlingly high, peaking in 1980 at a breathtaking 21 percent, orroughly six times as high as they are today, placing house and car loans out ofthe reach of ordinary Americans. (Note to my students: my first student loan in1979 was at 13.5 percent, which today would be considered usury. I shed notears for you.)

在国内，美国经济是一场灾难。石油禁运和去工业化等问题造成了“滞胀”，即高通胀、高失业率和低增长的状况，这种情况非常罕见，我们甚至不再使用这个词。从20世纪70年代中期到80年代初，利率一直保持在惊人的高位，在1980年达到了惊人的21%的峰值，大约是现在的6倍，这使得普通美国人无法获得住房和汽车贷款。(给我的学生们的提醒:1979年我的第一笔学生贷款是13.5%，这在今天被认为是高利贷。所以我不会同情你们。)

Overseas, the United States had been drivenout of Vietnam in 1975 by a coalition of Communist states, including the USSR.That same year, President Ford had to fly to Brussels literally to plead withNATO to stay together. The U.S. military, the great fighting force that stormedthe beaches of France only thirty years earlier, was a hot mess, rife withdrugs and crime, and burdened by too many people whose only other optionwas jail . (One of my friends, now retired, was a company commander in theU.S. Army in Germany in this period; things were so bad that officers did notenter the barracks of the men they commanded at night without wearing asidearm.) Many men and women served with distinction in the U.S. armed forcesin the 1970s, but we couldn't pick and choose which ones would be on the frontlines if the Soviets rang the bell.

在海外，美国在1975年被包括苏联在内的GC主义国家联盟赶出越南。同年，福特总统不得不飞往布鲁塞尔，请求北约保持团结。就在30年前，强大的战斗力量攻占了法国的海滩。当时的美国军队一片混乱，充斥着毒品和犯罪，背负着太多只能选择坐牢的人的负担。(我的一个朋友，现在退休了，在这段时间是驻德国美军的连长;情况如此糟糕，以致于军官们在夜间进入他们所指挥的兵营时，都必须佩带手枪。) 上世纪70年代，许多男女军人在美国军队中服役，表现卓着，但如果苏联人按响了门铃，我们无法挑选哪些人将站在第一线。

So whynot attack? It was not beyond the Soviets to create some kind of false premise,perhaps involving their blood feud with the Germans, and to strike into theheart of Central Europe, preferably in the dead of winter. One violent, short,brutal shock, and NATO shatters like spun glass. The Americans fall back. TheGermans retreat into a house-by-house defense against the invading Soviets.(How'd that go the last time?) The Poles and East Germans, although no friendsof Russia, are fed Warsaw Pact propaganda and are led by officers who wouldn'tmind getting a little payback against the West Germans for their own reasons,and they fight.

那么为什么不进攻呢?在苏联人的控制下，他们制造了一些虚假的借口，也许可以是涉及到他们与德国人的血海深仇，并袭击了中欧的心脏地带，最好是在隆冬。一次猛烈的、短暂的、残酷的打击，北约就像玻璃一样粉碎了。美国人撤退了。德国人撤退到一个又一个防御苏联入侵的地方。(二战重演一次怎么样?)波兰人和东德人虽然不是俄罗斯的朋友，但他们受到了华沙条约组织的宣传，由那些不介意因为自己的原因而对西德人有所报复的军官领导，于是他们开战了。

The Belgians fold, the French want no partof it, the Danes and Norwegians are warned not to interfere. The Greeks andTurks, busy fighting each other since 1974, hardly notice. Only the BritishArmy of the Rhine holds on—and not for long.
America stands alone .

比利时人屈服了，法国人不想参与其中，丹麦人和挪威人被警告不要干涉。自1974年以来，希腊和土耳其一直忙于相互争斗，几乎没有注意到这一点。只有英军在莱茵河上坚守阵地——而且坚持不了多久。

But wait, you say: Ford would never haveallowed it. We'd have used nuclear weapons and taken down those invading Soviettank columns, and then let Moscow think hard about whether this was worthArmageddon.

美国是孤独的，但是等一下，你会说:福特绝不会允许。我们会使用核武器，摧毁入侵的苏联坦克纵队，然后让莫斯科好好想想，这是否值得一场世界末日。

Maybe. Or maybe, with NATO unraveling,allies deserting, and the Soviets pointing thousands of highly-accurate nuclearwarheads at North America, we'd have done what had to be done, and taken thedeal, handing over Europe to its new masters. The U.S. president, elected by noone, might not have felt he had the authority to release nuclear devastation onmillions of people who had little voice in his authority.

也许吧。或者，随着北约解体，盟国弃守，苏联将数千枚高度精确的核弹头对准北美，我们可能已经做了必须做的事情，接受了这个协议，把欧洲交给了它的新主人。这位没有任何人当选的美国总统可能不会觉得自己有权力向数百万在他的权力范围内几乎没有发言权的人释放核灾难。

And after Vietnam, the tumult of the 1960s,and the crash of the American dream in the 1970s, maybe we'd have surrenderedbecause deep down, we felt like we deserved to lose.
In 1985, a man named Grigorii Romanov madea run at becoming Soviet leader. A ghastly and vicious Soviet hawk (andapparently, an unstable alcoholic), he could well have triggered World War III andfor a time, he seemed intent on doing it. He was too late: by then, America andits allies had regained their confidence—and their strength—while the USSR lostits way, politically and militarily. As the 1970s came to an end, so did thelast clear chance at a Soviet military victory over the West.

在经历了越南战争、20世纪60年代的动荡和20世纪70年代美国梦的破灭之后，也许我们会投降，因为在内心深处，我们觉得自己应该失败。1985年，格里戈里·罗曼诺夫试图成为苏联领导人。他是一个可怕而邪恶的苏联鹰派人物(显然，他是一个不稳定的酒鬼)，他很有可能引发第三次世界大战，有一段时间，他似乎下定决心要这么做。但他已经太迟了:那时，美国及其盟友已经重拾信心——和力量——而苏联则在政治和军事上迷失了方向。随着20世纪70年代的结束，苏联对西方军事胜利的最后一次明显机会也随之结束。

1979: Lenin stays out of the jungles

1979年:列宁远离丛林

Leonid Brezhnev wasn't the brightest man.When we finally cracked open his journals, they were mostly about things likehis weight and his hunting trips. (By contrast, Ronald Reagan, long caricaturedas a dunce, wrote in a journal daily and produced a historical record ofhis administration .) Brezhnev also wasn't much of a Communist: hecollected cars and jewelry, chased girls, and generally partied hard. A Sovietjoke of that era has Brezhnev's mother surveying all of his luxuries with a worriedeye, and when her son asks what's wrong, she says: "Leonid, this is allvery nice, but what will you do if the Communists come back?"

勃列日涅夫不是最聪明的人。当我们最终打开他的日记时，大部分都是关于他的体重和他的狩猎之旅。(相比之下，长期以来被讽刺为笨蛋的罗纳德·里根却在一份日报上发表文章，创造了他的政府的历史记录。) 勃列日涅夫也不是一个十足的GC主义者:他收集汽车和珠宝，追女孩子，而且通常都很努力地参加聚会。勃列日涅夫那个时代的一个苏联笑话让勃列日涅夫的母亲忧心忡忡地打量着他所有的奢侈品，儿子问她怎么了，她说:“列昂尼德，这一切都很好，但如果GCD员们回来了，你会怎么做?”

Like most of the mediocre men who ascendedto power in the postwar Soviet Union (see "The Class of '38," above),Brezhnev believed in the Soviet system, insofar as he seemed to understand it.It had been pretty good to him, after all, and after the U.S. defeat in Vietnamand the subsequent collapse of U.S. foreign policy in the mid-1970s, he and hislieutenants led the USSR through a dramatic and ill-advised period of imperialoverextension, culminating in the disastrous decision to invade Afghanistan in1979.

勃列日涅夫和战后苏联大多数平凡人一样，在他理解的范围内，相信苏联制度。苏联对他一直很好,美国在越南的失败和随后1970年代中期的美国外交政策事件,他和他的副手领导苏联通过一个戏剧性/不明智的帝国扩张的时期,最终在1979年做出了入侵阿富汗的灾难性的决定。

Untilthat huge misstep, however, the Soviets felt they were on a roll. As Gorbachevadvisor Aleksandr Yakovlev later wrote , "the Soviet leadershipof that time acted somewhat blindly. It was sufficient, for example, for anyAfrican dictator to declare his 'socialist orientation'. . . for assistance tobe practically guaranteed." Brezhnev actually said to his inner circle atone point: "Why look, even in the jungles they want to live like Lenin!”

然而，在这一重大失误之前，苏联人一直觉得自己一帆风顺。戈尔巴乔夫的顾问亚历山大·雅克夫列夫后来写道:“当时的苏联领导层多少有些盲目。例如，任何非洲独裁者只要宣称自己的“社会主义方向”就足够了……援助就能得到实际保障。”勃列日涅夫曾经对他的核心集团说:“看，即使在丛林里，他们也要像列宁那样生活!”

Well, no, “they” didn't. But that didn'tstop the USSR from pouring money—precious hard currency they could hardlyspare—into one failing Third World project after another. In some places, thismade sense. Cuba, for example, was a Communist showplace right on the U.S.doorstep and a thorn in Washington’s side. But Ethiopia? Nicaragua? EvenGrenada, where the Soviets actually believed they were adding yet one morecountry to a nonexistent Caribbean socialist commonwealth? These werefantastically expensive vanity projects, undertaken by Soviet leaders who hadno idea how the laws of economics worked, and who did not understand that afinancial duel with the West, even one led by the down-on-its-luck UnitedStates, was a terrible idea.

然而，他们没有。但这并没有阻止苏联向一个又一个失败的第三世界项目投入他们几乎无法节省的宝贵硬通货。在某些地方，这是有道理的。例如，古巴是美国家门口的GC主义秀场，也是华盛顿的眼中钉。但是埃塞俄比亚?尼加拉瓜?即使是格林纳达，苏联人实际上认为他们正在那里为一个不存在的加勒比社会主义联邦再增加一个国家?这些都是极其昂贵的面子工程，由苏联领导人承担，他们不知道经济规律是如何运作的，也不明白与西方进行金融决斗——即使是由运气不佳的美国领导的决斗——是一个可怕的主意。

In some ways, the invasion of Afghanistanwas far worse than the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Washington waded into aslow-motion escalation that bogged us down in a war we thought, at first, wecould win. The Soviet invasion, by contrast, was completely hopeless, andthe Soviet leaders knew it before they went in . We have therecords of their meetings , and we know exactly what they said: theyworried that somehow Afghanistan (like Egypt in the 1970s) would flip and jointhe Western team. They knew an invasion wouldn’t work, but they also had noidea what else to do, so they ordered one anyway.

在某些方面，入侵阿富汗比美国卷入越南战争要糟糕得多。华盛顿陷入了一场慢动作的升级，使我们陷入了一场我们一开始以为能打赢的战争。相比之下，苏联的入侵是完全没有希望的，苏联领导人在入侵前就知道这一点。我们有他们的会议记录，我们确切地知道他们说了什么:他们担心阿富汗(就像上世纪70年代的埃及)会以某种方式转变立场，加入西方阵营。他们知道入侵是行不通的，但他们也不知道还能做什么，所以他们还是下令入侵了。

Again, the Soviet economy could afford noneof this. Most estimates of Soviet economic growth suggest that the Sovieteconomy came to a halt in the mid-1970s—in other words, just as they werefeeling their expansionist oats and, in the words of a former top Sovietpolicy advisor , "binging like drunks" on weapons. Perhaps aperiod of consolidation, reform, and internal reorganization would have been abetter idea. But that would have required that the Soviet Union at the time beled by men of vision and capability (and women, too, of whom there were none,ever, in the Soviet leadership). And since Stalin killed all those guysearlier...well, you get the idea.

再说一次，苏联经济承受不起这些。对苏联经济增长的大多数估计表明，苏联经济在20世纪70年代中期陷入停滞——换句话说，当时他们正感受着扩张主义带来的好处，用一位前苏联高级政策顾问的话来说，就是在刀尖上“像醉汉一样狂饮”。
也许一段时间的整合、改革和内部重组会是一个更好的主意。但这将要求当时的苏联由有远见和能力的男性领导(也包括女性，苏联领导人中从来没有女性)。但自从斯大林早些时候杀了那些家伙…你懂的。

1988: The China Syndrome
China does everything better, right?

1988年:中国综合症
中国做得更好，不是吗?

When protesters assembled in TienanmenSquare in 1989, China's old Reds called it"counter-revolution," and sent in the tanks. Meanwhile, theymade it clear that economic liberalization could continue everywhere else, thusoffering the Chinese people a deal: stick with us and get rich, or oppose usand get shot. Couldn't Mikhail Gorbachev have tried the same thing?

1989年，当抗议者聚集在TAM时，中国的老红军称之为“反革命”，并派出坦克。与此同时，他们明确表示，经济自由化可以在其他任何地方继续下去，从而为中国人民提供了一个交易:要么与我们站在一起致富，要么与我们对立，遭到枪击。难道米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫就不能尝试同样的事情吗?

Well, in a way, he did. Unfortunately,"in a way" pretty much describes how Gorbachev did everything duringhis brief stint as Soviet leader. He tried a little repression, and a littleliberalization, a little of this and a little of that. Western admirers hate toadmit this, but the basic problem is that Mikhail Gorbachev didn't know what hewas doing. Mentored by the men who were left after Stalin—have I mentioned theClass of '38 yet?—he was and is, to his very bones, a product of theSoviet system .

在某种程度上，他做到了。不幸的是，“在某种程度上”，这本书几乎描述了戈尔巴乔夫在其短暂的苏联领导人任期内所做的一切。他尝试了一点压抑，一点自由，一点这个，一点那个。西方的崇拜者不愿承认这一点，但问题是，米哈伊尔•戈尔巴乔夫不知道自己在做什么。在斯大林之后留下来的人的指导下，从骨子里说，他过去是，现在也是苏联体制的产物。

In fairness, by 1985, it may have been toolate for Gorbachev and for the USSR. And Gorbachev had a unique problem thatthe Chinese did not: an Eastern European alliance system chafing undersocialist oppression and mismanagement. But it is at least notionally possiblethat after the Soviet Communist Party plenum meeting of early 1987, or laterduring the 19th Party Conference in 1988, Gorbachev might have laid down thelaw: I will use force, and I will use the market, and you people out there cantake your pick of which one I use more.

公平地说，到1985年，对戈尔巴乔夫和苏联来说可能已经太晚了。戈尔巴乔夫还有中国没有遇到的独特问题:东欧联盟体系在社会主义压迫和管理不善的情况下运转不良。但它至少名义上是可行的,在1987年初,苏联GCD全会会议上,戈尔巴乔夫本可以制定法律:我将使用武力,我将接纳市场,你们可以自己选择要哪样更多点。

The problem for Gorbachev was that some of his worst enemies in the Sovietregime were also the guys in the military and the cops who'd have to get outthere and start shooting people if he gave the order. Clearly, they werewilling to do it, as they showed by killing demonstrators in the Baltics and inGeorgia, incidents over which Gorbachev now claims he had no control. (Well,who was running the place then, Mikhail Sergeevich?) Whether they were willingto do it for Gorbachev is another matter.

戈尔巴乔夫面临的问题是，他在苏联政权中的一些最大的敌人正是军队里的人和警察，如果他下了命令，他们就得出去开枪。显然，他们愿意这样做，正如他们在波罗的海国家和格鲁吉亚杀害示威者所显示的那样。戈尔巴乔夫现在声称，他无法控制这些事件。

The China temptation, both in terms of force and finances, was debated inMoscow throughout the late Soviet period, but the Kremlin didn't know how tomake it work, perhaps because it was unworkable. It required letting people inthe Soviet republics make their own market choices, while enforcing strictloyalty to a Party in which Soviet citizens years earlier had lost their faith.In the end, Gorbachev fell victim to the high-minded rhetoric of his Bolshevikpredecessors: they vowed that their federation was a voluntary association ofstates, a claim that could only stand so long as it was never tested.

苏联末期，莫斯科就军事和财政上面对中国的诱惑展开了辩论，但克里姆林宫不知道如何让这种诱惑奏效，或许是因为它行不通。它要求让苏维埃共和国的人民做出他们自己的市场选择，同时对多年前苏联公民失去信心的政党实行严格的忠诚。最终，戈尔巴乔夫成了他的布尔什维克前任的高姿态言论的牺牲品:他们发誓，他们的联邦是一个自愿的国家联盟，这一主张只有在从未经受过考验的情况下才能站得住脚。

When it came time either to open the Soviet economy, or to clamp down onSoviet dissent, Gorbachev did neither and instead invented a new office forhimself as “President of the USSR,” as though a title alone could stop thecentrifugal forces he himself had set in motion. That might explain why, whenhe ran for president of the new Russian Federation back in the 1990s, he got a whopping 386,000 votes out of the millionscast. He might be popular in the West, but the Russians know a feckless Sovietbureaucrat when they see one. It was the West’s good luck that he was on dutyas the Soviet project ground to a halt.

当（需要）开放苏联经济或镇压苏联异见人士的时候，戈尔巴乔夫两样都没做，而是以“苏联总统”的身份为自己创建了一个新办公室，似乎只有一个头衔就能阻止他自己制造的离心力。这也许可以解释为什么他在上世纪90年代竞选新俄罗斯联邦总统时，在数百万张选票中仅获得了38.6万张。他可能在西方很受欢迎，但俄罗斯人看到他时就知道他是一个软弱无能的苏联官僚。对西方而言幸运的是，当苏联的项目陷入停顿时，他在任。

In the end, I admit to my own bias here: I think the Soviet Union fellbecause the Soviet idea was as insanely unworkable as the Nazi, ImperialJapanese, Napoleonic and other dreams of imperial conquest. (U.S. policy playeda role, too, especially in determining whether the USSR collapsed inward orexploded outward.) The Soviet Union, as former Soviet officer and later Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonovonce put it, washatched by a bunch of vicious but ineffectual intellectuals who had no idea howto govern a country. Soon, they turned on each other and eventually, therevolution ate its own children.

最后，我在这里承认自己的偏见:我认为苏联解体是因为苏联的想法像纳粹、日本帝国主义、拿破仑和其他帝国征服的梦想一样疯狂而行不通。(美国的政策也发挥了作用，尤其是在决定苏联是向内解体还是向外解体方面。)正如前苏联官员、后来的俄罗斯历史学家德米特里•沃尔克戈诺夫所言，苏联是由一群邪恶且无能的知识分子孵化出来的，他们不知道如何治理一个国家。没多久，他们就互相攻击，最终，革命吞噬了自己的孩子。

I don't believe that Trotsky, or Kirov or Bukharin could have saved theSoviet Union, because the USSR was based on a lie at its very foundation. Wecan all be glad that history, and maybe a dash of divine providence, obviatedany of the alternate paths here. But we had best think about them, because weonce again face enemies overseas dedicated to the destruction of our ideas andvalues. They are not as dangerous as the old Soviet Union, but they are just ascommitted to our destruction. Fortunately for us, we've faced worse—andprevailed.

我不相信托洛茨基、基洛夫或布哈林能够拯救苏联，因为苏联建立在谎言的基础上。我们都可以高兴的是，历史，也许还有一点天意，排除了这里的任何其他道路。
但我们最好考虑一下这些问题，因为我们再次面对致力于摧毁我们的思想和价值观的海外敌人。他们不像前苏联那样危险，但他们同样致力于毁灭我们。对我们来说幸运的是，我们已经面对了更糟糕的情况——并且取得了胜利。

Kopernicus
"washatched by a bunch of vicious but ineffectual intellectuals who had no idea howto govern a country"
Sounds a lot like the currentAdministration....

“苏联是由一群邪恶且无能的知识分子孵化出来的，他们不知道如何治理一个国家。”
听起来像极了现任（美国）政府……

BluePixel
The USSR didn't win the Cold War butRussia sure did. And by "win" I mean survive. It's easy to forget forwesterners that Russia itself could have (and I dare say logically should have)faced a grim fate in the 90s; total economic collapse, civil war and fullindependence for all non-Russian nations within it. Imagine independentChechnya, Tatarstan, Finnish Karelia maybe. It could have been Yugoslavia on acontinental scale.
But Russia had some strong people still controlling it from the shadows thatprevented it and the Western Powers didn't want all the WMDs disappearing.

苏联没有赢得冷战，但俄罗斯肯定赢了。我说的“胜利”是指生存。西方人很容易忘记，在90年代，俄罗斯本身可能(我敢说在逻辑上应该)面临的严峻的命运; 经济全面崩溃，内战和所有非俄罗斯国家的完全独立。想象一下独立的车臣，鞑靼斯坦，芬兰的卡累利阿。它可能是这片大陆上的南斯拉夫。但俄罗斯仍有一些强大的人在暗中控制着它，阻止了它的发展，而且西方大国也不希望所有的大规模杀伤性武器消失。

Василий Батарейкин BluePixel
People still have unfrtunately toomany propagandistic sterotypes about Russia. They do not want to analuse andjust absorb silly replics from Paski. But here's some informaton for you:
Russia ranked 5th largest economy- World Bank | The BRICS Post
thebricspost.com›russia…5th-largest-economy-world…
Russia has overtaken Germany as the fifth largest economy in terms ofpurchasing power parity, World Bank GDP ratings reveal. The World Bank figuresshow that Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP) totalled $3.38 trillion lastyear.

人们总是宁愿相信愚蠢的对俄宣传。他们不想思考。这里有一些信息给你：
俄罗斯排名第5大经济体——世界银行
世界银行的GDP评级显示，按购买力平价计算，俄罗斯已超过德国，成为全球第五大经济体。世界银行的数据显示，俄罗斯去年的国内生产总值(GDP)为3.38万亿美元。