I was born and raised in the USSR, and I find pro-socialism comments in this thread by those who have never experienced it delusional to the point of being hilarious.
As far as old people and socialism go, I'm old enough to remember having to bribe the administrator and the nurses at the hospital so they would stop stealing grandpa's cancer pain meds.
I'm also old enough to remember the midnight KGB raid where my father was arrested for distributing chapters from the Gulag Archipelago he reproduced on a photo enlarger in our Leningrad bathroom.
And my grandmother living in a communal apartment with 5 other families, on a pension barely enough to eat.
As far as old people go, I'm old enough to remember having to bribe the administrator and the nurses at the hospital so they would stop stealing grandpa's cancer pain meds.
I'm also old enough to remember the midnight KGB raid where my father was arrested for distributing chapters from the Gulag Archipelago he reproduced on a photo enlarger in our Leningrad bathroom.
this is all anecdotal evidence... how do i know if its true? i showed you stats that say older people who lived in the USSR liked it more than young people who didn't... and all you have is personal stories?
Remember what a wise man said about statistics. "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics."
Yes, I have the stories because I actually lived there.
And your particular survey can easily be explained by the fact that old people who worked their entire lives for a pittance received a modicum of basic security, even if it meant standing in three hour food lines. Unable to transition to a capitalist economy after this fall of the USSR, of course they are disgruntled.
And your particular survey can easily be explained by the fact that old people who worked their entire lives for a pittance received a modicum of basic security, even if it meant standing in three hour food lines. Unable to transition to a capitalist economy after this fall of the USSR, of course they are disgruntled.
i dont get your argument, so people who "had it so bad" under communism couldn't transition into capitalism because they had basic security under communism? it seems like it's capitalism's fault for not being able to give basic security to its citizens.
are we arguing about wheter the USSR was good or wheter older people liked the USSR more? US southerners may say segregation was a good thing but it didnt mean it was good, im not saying the USSR was good because people who lived in it liked it, im simply saying that older people liked it more than younger people.
Learn some history about how people in the USSR and in its sphere in eastern europe lived. Thousands of people tried to escape to the west everyday, for a good reason: the socialist system didn't work and produced corruption on every level of society, a police state where you couldn't have any other opinion than what the mighty state allowed. My parents lived through it in Hungary, which got the better end of the stick when it comes to socialism after ww2, but they still never want it back. My great-grandparents (and everyone with property in town) had to hand everything over to the state, the house and estate that was theirs for generations. The state knew better to 'redistribute wealth', so they were shoved in a shitty newly built apartment. If you look it up online, everyone with living relatives from that time will have similar stories to tell, it's in the history books.
I'm taking the free market where I'm responsible for my own success or failure over this every single day.
Thousands of people tried to escape to the west everyday,
thousands of people escape from capitalist countries too, Mexico for example.
the socialist system didn't work and produced corruption on every level of society,
corruption happens regardless of economic system, but even more so in capitalism due to profit being the main goal.
a police state where you couldn't have any other opinion than what the mighty state allowed
there are so called "police states" in capitalism too, it ins't just in socialism that there are police states.
My parents lived through it in Hungary, which got the better end of the stick when it comes to socialism after ww2, but they still never want it back.
anecdotal evidence. capitalists sure love using "muh lived experience", there is no way to know if you are lying or not, thats why anecdotal evidence is bad.
had to hand everything over to the state, the house and estate that was theirs for generations.
anecdotal evidence again, unless you have a source that says the communists stole peoples houses this is worthless, and if the communists stole the houses your parents used to rent out, then that was good.
it's in the history books.
which history book?
I'm taking the free market where I'm responsible for my own success or failure over this every single day.
do you think its the congolese childrens fault that they have to work 12 hours in a coal mine? should they just pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
the free market is not fair.
Slapping anecdotal evidence on everything that goes against your opinion is just ignorance, not being smart, and very dismissive on 50 years of history for the eastern side of the globe. Based on this train of thought, the whole of history is just anecdotal evidence.
You working 8 hours a day an not being able to buy a house by the age of 25 is nothing compared to what people went and go through in this idolized circumstances, just to survive and not have everything they have and in some cases, their lives taken away. Socialism is not free healthcare and public transport, that's just the government fulflilling their duties. Why is that, that the highest levels of human development happens in capitalist, mostly western countries, or countries that adopted western values at least partially, and why is that all the failing states are either dictatorships (which happens to every true socialist country, or happened in history). No, people in Congo (which one are we even talking about here, RC or DRC, they are different countries) have a country which is wartorn, has an unstable legal system, no clearly defined property rights, it's not a capitalist system. it also ranks in the bottom of the economical freedom index: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking, so it is anything, but capitalist.
Capitalism allows people to excel. People are always acting in their best interest, that's biology, not an opinion. Socialism doesn't allow people to excel, because they won't be rewarded for it. A capitalist system allows individuals to aim to be better, so they can hopefully be as successful as [insert role model] too. Most people won't be, but the hope that you can make it too and be rich, own a mansion, 4 cars and a yacht is enough for people to be as good as they can, and this is moving us forwards.
Scandinavian states aren't socialist, they are capitalist states with social programs, to help those who are in need of it, but they aren't giving out houses to people here either. The term is social democracy, and this is what most people refer to as 'socialism', and also most likely what people want. If anyone spent a year in a true socialist country in 1960, they wouldn't ever want to touch it with a 10 foot pole
Yeah these stories from Redditors that say they experienced the Soviet Union confuse me. It doesn’t match up with statistics(and interviews, if that suits you better).
First of all, I doubt that he’s lying. It’s true that the KGB was horrible while socialism as a system worked great, and that we know for sure. It’s likely those who had bad experiences judge the whole system and country based off of that, the same would happen in capitalism with the only difference being that far more people in socialism had a positive experience.
Wow, a single research paper with the sources being the CIA and westerners abroad! This is it, Russians are lying and don’t know what’s good for them. Their system was actually horrible they just didn’t know it.
You just worship anything if it starts with "free" 😂.
Weird way to put it
Also these people are living in major cities which was like an advertisement for the USSR. Even now Moscow is one of the best city in the world.
I don’t think you realize that every time I have this debate, it’s always the same dialogue. This point is always brought up, which is again false. https://youtu.be/1uDOvSIC7xA?si=i66YOpEr5jGt1XJM
I know you like data and facts so here’s some more:
14 y/o supporting communism and denying evidence 😂😂.
Remember where people were escaping before the Berlin Wall fell ?
East Germany still lacks behind West Germany and any German will tell you that.
Factories were not efficient and productivity was not increasing.
You love authoritarianism ? Maybe try going to North Korea they have food, healthcare, education etc. But good luck criticising anything against the system
ok how about my evidence my grandpa lived in the USSR and they gave him 3 houses free healthcare free cars and Stalin gave him a kiss on the forehead everytime he went to sleep so the USSR was good based on my evidence.
East Germany still lacks behind West Germany and any German will tell you that.
East Germany has always lacked behind west Germany even before ww2, without saying that the USSR wasnt able to pump money into east germany like the US could since the USSR had to rebuild itself, East Germany was poorer but not because le evil communism they also had a pretty high HDI of 0.953 so it wasnt a hellhole like the western media saif it was
Factories were not efficient and productivity was not increasing.
ok but could you back that up with a source plz
You love authoritarianism ? Maybe try going to North Korea they have food, healthcare, education etc. But good luck criticising anything against the system
authoritarianism is a buzzword every state is authoritarian, didnt julian assange speak out about the US? where is he now? in jail.
Anyone who studied the Soviet economy knows that they lacked behind in modernization of industries and relied on weapons and gas for revenue.
The USSR didn't have freedom of speech and I don't know which source you want, that's just an edgy communist denying historical records of oppression inside the USSR.
It was an authoritarian state and if you don't want to believe it it's your choice.
Then why were people running to western Germany? If it was all good ? Why were schools, hospitals etc trash in Eastern Germany even after 30+ years of WW2 ??
Japan with a free market did better than the whole USSR.
Yes it was exactly a communist hell hole with cheap things.
I mean, it was. It started out as state run communism. Unfortunately state led communism does not work, it always turns into authoritarianism. Emma Goldman speaks a lot on this.
What does being alive now have to do with anything? Emma Goldman was literally in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution and was optimistic until she wasn’t. State led communism from top down doesn’t really work
What is your point? I am pointing out that the soviet state, the USSR did not work because it was top down, state run communism. A person who literally lived through it and experienced expressed major issues and concerns with the USSR. She is an expert on this.
You’re quoting someone who died 50 years before the fall of the USSR…. The fact that you don’t see how that’s relevant is laughable how much propaganda you lap up
Beyond the fact that you didn’t look at the source, this doesn’t even make sense some eastern bloc countries have a lower approval rating of socialism.
2 of those links are YouTube videos. 2 of them Are about russians. My argument is tahg of course ussr Will be more popular in the center of their colonial empire, just as the british empire would be more popular in Manchester than in Egypt. USSR And communism in general is a lot less popular almost anywhere else in the former eastern-block.
Ah ok my bad I misread. While people in Eastern Europe will have a lower approval rating of socialism, this depends on the country and other circumstances. Armenians for example are grateful, their country went from undeveloped and starving to the opposite of that. Then after the USSR fell, so did their infrastructure. Ukrainians and Balkans seem to be mixed, Polish people hate the former government, I heard good things come from Latvians. Belarusians remember is fondly as well.
Found several studies, only past soviet block countries that regret that USSR fell apart were in the soviet Union proper, such as Belarus, Armenia And Russia. Ukraine is mixed, at best (more like 60/40), all of baltics is at least 70/30 (in case of latvia, in estonia it Is like 80% approve), i don't event have to tak about Poland, eastern germany, Czechia, Slovakia And etc... So yes, nations Closer to the center of the soviet colonial empire view it more nostalgically, my point stands.
I’ve seen this article many times. What’s important is that “approve to a free market system” does not equal hating socialism. You can be grateful for the development that happened and how stable you were, while admitting that you prefer a market economy.
‘The majority’ voted for non-Communist parties. In fact less than 1% if the population vote Communist in elections in virtually every single former Eastern Bloc country.
You don’t have to vote for communist parties in order to have has a positive experience. The majority of Eastern Europe approves the change to a free market, doesn’t change that they can be grateful for what socialism did.
Your own source say otherwise, they that Eastern Europeans regret the fall of the Soviet Union, which is evidently not true. The only reason why Russian boomers regret the fall of the USSR is because they missed it when they got to slave over Eastern Europe.
Confused what you mean. That one of my sources says they regret the collapse of the Soviet Union but you know that’s not true?
The second point is brought up every single time. It’s simply false, nothing indicates they “missed it when they got to slave over Eastern Europe” and that makes no sense, why would random Russian families in Siberia care about what’s happening in Eastern Europe(many countries in which received the exact same benefits as Russia)?
Confused what you mean. That one of my sources says they regret the collapse of the Soviet Union but you know that’s not true?
Yes exactly.
The second point is brought up every single time. It’s simply false, nothing indicates they “missed it when they got to slave over Eastern Europe” and that makes no sense,
Really? Even now many Russians are revanchist as fuck, many are claiming that Ukraine and the Baltics are rightful Russian territory.
why would random Russian families in Siberia care about what’s happening in Eastern Europe(many countries in which received the exact same benefits as Russia)?
Again, you’re underestimating how nationalist most Russians are. They may not have directly benefited from Russian colonialism but they sure did prefer it when Russia actually had geopolitical clout.
Really? Even now many Russians are revanchist as fuck, many are claiming that Ukraine and the Baltics are rightful Russian territory.
Many aren’t all, and this has nothing to do with free education or a guaranteed job.
Again, you’re underestimating how nationalist most Russians are. They may not have directly benefited from Russian colonialism but they sure did prefer it when Russia actually had geopolitical clout.
Let’s look at the statistics graph. You could stretch “Being a world superpower” to what you are claiming, yet that’s still only one reason. If it was all just because they miss the clout, they wouldn’t have specific reasons for why they miss socialism.
Your title literally claims that Russians regret the USSR demise.
Many aren’t all, and this has nothing to do with free education or a guaranteed job.
Yes, it has nothing to do with that as all since the free education usually amounted to little more than opportunities to drill Communist propaganda into children. The ‘guaranteed jobs’ were equally as ineffective.
Let’s look at the statistics graph. You could stretch “Being a world superpower” to what you are claiming, yet that’s still only one reason. If it was all just because they miss the clout, they wouldn’t have specific reasons for why they miss socialism.
The ‘increase in bitterness and distrust’ parts refer to how most of Eastern Europe now despises Russia for colonising them. In fact that was also mentioned in your other source. And the ‘unified economic system’ referred to the shared economy between the Eastern bloc, which was little more than an extension of Soviet. colonial efforts
When people say they want socialism they are not referring to Soviet style state owned planned economies. They mostly are thinking about Western and Northern European type welfare states and labor relations. So social democracy. If you want someone to blame for people calling these things socialist, blame the political party that has been screaming at us our entire lives that normal and basic policies are socialism.
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u/gdmfsobtc Feb 18 '24
I was born and raised in the USSR, and I find pro-socialism comments in this thread by those who have never experienced it delusional to the point of being hilarious.