“In twenty years, the USSR will be producing almost twice as much industrial output as is now produced in the entire non socialist world.”

The 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Annotation

The Third Program of the CPSU, unveiled with theatrical confidence in 1961, promised communism by 1980 and industrial supremacy well before that. By 1981, Soviet GDP sat at roughly 35–40 percent of America's alone, and the economy had entered what would later be called the era of stagnation. Khrushchev himself was ousted three years after making the speech; his targets were quietly buried, then formally abandoned under Gorbachev in 1986. The Soviet Union followed five years later.

What Actually Happened

By 1981, Soviet industrial output was nowhere near double the non-socialist world's; Soviet GDP sat at roughly 35-40 percent of America's alone. The economy had entered what historians later called the 'era of stagnation' under Brezhnev. Khrushchev, who delivered the speech, was ousted in 1964. The targets were quietly shelved, then formally abandoned under Gorbachev in 1986. The Soviet Union itself dissolved five years after that.

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1980

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“Why did I pick on the next nine years instead of the next 900 for finding a solution to the population crisis? One answer is that the world is rapidly running out of food. And famine, of course, could be one way to reach a death rate solution to the population problem. In fact, the battle to feed humanity is already lost, in the sense that we will not be able to prevent large famines in the next decade or so.”

Dr Paul R. EhrlichCulture & Society

1888

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“At present weapons are being changed every ten years, and even more frequently. In another fifteen years or so, people will use for shooting not rifles but some kind of lightning, some sort of a machine emitting a holocaustal electrical stream. Tell me: what can we invent in this line so as to surprise our neighbors? What if in fifteen years every great power will have secretly stored away one such surprise for any kind of eventuality? Alas, we are merely capable of imitating and purchasing ammunition from others, and—at best—of repairing it at home. To invent such machines we should have to have our own independent, and not purchased, science, not an imported but a free one—one that has taken root in our soil. As yet we do not possess such a science, nor do we even have a purchased one.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich DostoevskyCulture & Society

1960

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“Once we recognise this with all the clearness that the clearness of the fact itself demands we must then rise up against the 19th century. If it is evident that there was in it something extraordinary and incomparable, it is no less so that it must have suffered from certain radical vices, certain constitutional defects, when it brought into being a caste of men- the mass-man in revolt who are placing in imminent danger those very principles to which they owe their existence. If that human type continues to be master in Europe, thirty years will suffice to send our continent back to barbarism. Legislative and industrial technique will disappear with the same facility with which so many trade secrets have often disappeared.”

Jose Ortega y GassetCulture & Society