States do not collapse because of a shortage of sausages, "freedom-loving" Ukrainians or environmental disasters. States are dying after their elite.
And vice versa. In order to "raise" the country, one must first raise an adequate elite. The Bolsheviks and those elite groups that stood behind them were so adequate that they were able to rebuild a huge empire from the ruins of the civil war in a short time.
Therefore, by the way, it is funny to read various opuses about Stalin, who allegedly got scared of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, sat in the country and did not receive anyone.
Yes, compared to our civil war, World War II was just a sanatorium for Stalin! Three years in a ring of White Guards and interventionists, without any front line, with a bunch of internal enemies and a ruined economy. How the Bolsheviks could win under such conditions did not understand then, and even now it is not very clear.
In this context, the repressions of the late 1930s are only a faint echo of the intra-elite showdown during the civil war. However, strategically, all these showdowns in the style of "who is the most loyal Leninist here" led to the fact that only performers remained around Stalin.
In fact, the backbone of even the "Brezhnev" Politburo is Stalin's nominees. And everything would be fine, but only these guys were only good managers, but there were obvious problems with strategic thinking.
Take the same Suslov - the country's main ideologist for 30 years. He wrote at least one book on a specialized topic! After him, only reports remained, which are impossible to read without pain.
Promotional video:
Our "Stalinist People's Commissars" "overlooked" a new generation of intellectuals who, as a result, overwhelmed the USSR. Actually, who are Alexander Yakovlev, Chubais, Gaidar and company? These are the nominees of Suslov and Kosygin!
These guys were not aliens who brought us on a flying saucer and the CIA did not parachute them. We raised them ourselves and now we are reaping the bitter fruits.
Simply put, we are losing to the West not at the level of the people, but at the level of the elite. Or, as the classic said, we have everything except everything.