Preparing for War: Industrialization and the Fascist Threat — Lessons of Soviet History, Part 3
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2021
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Soviet Union survived its tumultuous first post-revolutionary years of civil war and imperialist invasion, but found itself isolated in a hostile, capitalist-dominated world. The Soviet government embarked on an all-out campaign of industrialization and collectivization that achieved a pace of economic development unparalleled in human history. But at the same time, the menace of fascism was rising, and the leadership of the Communist Party struggled through a string of shifts and policy reversals in international politics. In the end, 27 million Soviet citizens gave their lives in World War Two to defeat the Nazi war machine.
To discuss this period from the 1920s to the onset of World War II, Brian is joined by Carlos Martinez, author of “The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse,” co-founder of the No Cold War Campaign, and editor of the political analysis site Invent-The-Future.org.
This is part 3 of the series “The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union -- Lessons for Socialists.”
Watch the NEW video edition of “The Real Story” on BreakThrough News!
Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet Union changed the face of global politics. |
| 0:09.0 | We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. Welcome to this week's episode of the Real Story on the Socialist program. I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 0:51.3 | Today is our third installment of our series, The Rise and Fall of the |
| 0:56.5 | Soviet Union and the Lessons for Socialists. We'll be talking again with Carlos Martinez, author of |
| 1:03.3 | The End of the Beginning, Lessons of the Soviet Collapse. He is the co-founder of the No Cold War campaign |
| 1:10.4 | and editor of the political analysis site, |
| 1:14.4 | Inventthefuture.org. |
| 1:16.5 | Welcome to the show, Carlos. |
| 1:18.6 | Great to be back with you, Brian. |
| 1:20.3 | Carlos, I want to just recap real quick before we get into the heart of today's show, |
| 1:26.6 | what we accomplished in the first two episodes. And again, |
| 1:30.7 | we're encouraging our audience to get your book, The End of the Beginning, which is an assessment |
| 1:37.5 | of why the Soviet Union collapsed, or some of the key factors leading both to the rise of the |
| 1:43.7 | Soviet Union and eventually to its collapse. |
| 1:47.7 | And of course, we're going to cover that with you in great detail in the subsequent episode, |
| 1:53.8 | but we're kind of marching through Soviet history. |
| 1:57.3 | In the first episode, we started with the year 1917, the Russian Revolution. Why did it |
| 2:03.7 | happen? Why were there two revolutions? We also talked in that episode with you about the great |
| 2:10.7 | achievements of the Soviet Union in spite of the terrible international environment where almost all of the |
| 2:17.4 | capitalist world united to defeat |
| 2:20.0 | the Soviet Union at one time or another. In spite of all of that, the achievements, the economic, |
| 2:25.4 | political, social achievements, monumental. We talked about that in the first episode. Last |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Socialist Program, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Socialist Program and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.