Soviet ideology’s global appeal collapsed when its economy stagnated

Evidence

Communist ideology appealed to people throughout the world in the 1950s and 1960s when it was associated with the economic success and military force of the Soviet Union. That appeal evaporated when the Soviet economy stagnated and was unable to maintain Soviet military strength. Western values and institutions have appealed to people from other cultures because they were seen as the source of Western power and wealth. This process has been going on for centuries. Between 1000 and 1300, as William McNeill points out, Christianity, Roman law, and other elements of Western culture were adopted by Hungarians, Poles, and Lithuanians, and this “acceptance of Western civilization was stimulated by mingled fear and admiration of the military prowess of Western princes.” As Western power declines, the ability of the West to impose Western concepts of human rights, liberalism, and democracy on other civilizations also declines and so does the attractiveness of those values to other civilizations. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 252

Categorization

• XREF: Directly echoes the Nye soft-power argument from the preceding paragraph — reinforces the causal model through a concrete historical case. — connects to: The Soviet collapse and neoliberal advance explain Jameson’s sharpening postmodern critique. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 307; Assimilationist confidence collapsed as its economic and security foundations failed — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 454; The collapse of the Soviet Union also ended the social democratic mixed-economy ideal. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 106