merits and demarits of ussr
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In the months following the October Revolution the original intentions of the Bolsheviks, to establish a single party state, became a reality. Since March 1918, the signing of the Brest-Litovsk agreement and the collapse of the left wing coalition, and up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Communist Party was the sole decision-maker and ideology setter in the USSR. This was a unique situation which many have attempted to explain. By virtue of its survival it must have had operational advantages. However, when taking a closer look at this system, severe weaknesses are evident. The main advantages that can be assigned to the one-party, one-ideology system are: political stability (or better described as continuity), efficiency and ability to manoeuvre quickly and reorient between different policies. The main disadvantages of such a system are the lack of checks and balances, which drives regimes to misuse and excesses of power and eventually brings about disorder and inefficiency. Furthermore, in many cases it is the features that at first glance seem to be advantages of the system, revealed to be only skin-deep advantages and actually become acute operational disadvantages.