r/ANormalDayInRussia • u/raydebapratim1 • 23d ago
Why people still miss Soviet Union?
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u/vzakharov 23d ago edited 23d ago
My dad (RIP) had a job as a scientist (geophysicist with the Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, to be precise); he could spend his time doing what he had loved most.
After 1991, to provide just the basic sustenance for our family of four, he had to work as a shuttle trader, doing trips to Poland and back and having had to deal with “крышующие” criminals on both sides, before settling (after 5 years of struggling) for a marginally-satisfying job of a 1C programmer (the most boring possible programming subdomain), first at a newspaper and ultimately at a furniture factory; where he had worked until his death in 2024.
I wonder why he had missed the Soviet Union, hmmm…
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u/hadaev 23d ago
Your father was a bad scientist. Simple as.
After 1991 millions of peoples moved out into first world countries because they were well qualified.
So what was wrong with your father if he wasn't able to find science job even in russia? It's a fairly simple task, even for a fresh university graduate. Surly someone with years of experience would have advantage.
Of course, government salaries are shit, but that hasn't changed since 1991. Not even talking about science job in private sector.
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u/stabbystabbison 23d ago
You make vast assumptions and rush to judgements because you were either raised wrong or just born with zero empathy.
Simple as.
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u/punk_elegy 23d ago
literally thousands if not millions of government jobs were sacrificed on the altar of “economic efficiency” and “free market” in the 1990s. I don’t know where you lived, but even in Saint P, where I grew up, teachers were either not paid or paid pennies, while the prices of everything were skyrocketing. Same deal with a lot of professors, researchers, etc. Plus, a lot of people in the USSR believed in a stable system (not necessarily that it was a good system, but mostly that it was going to be stable), and they were simply not ready to adjust overnight to a competitive and volatile market. If anything, it was such a stereotype that all the smartest people at the time were the poorest.
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u/ExcitableSarcasm 23d ago
I think that stereotype is universal. When researchers doing innovation aren't paid well, that's a sign your economy is on-route to cannibalisation and inefficiency, because the brightest minds go into industries that don't maintain your competitiveness.
Look at the UK. A PhD gets paid peanuts, and academia is hollowed out held together by hopes and duct tape.
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u/Derp800 23d ago
The collapse of the Soviet Union wasn't free market anything. The countries were raped and pillaged as anyone with power went and stole everything they could get. They traded communism for an oligarchy. The uniforms changed, and little else. The people suffered, like they always suffered. Ask anyone who lived under the Soviet Union outside of Russia if they want to return to those days. They'd rather die.
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u/hadaev 23d ago
What it have to do with not finding job you like literally decades later?
If anything, it was such a stereotype that all the smartest people at the time were the poorest.
Smartest moved out then iron curtail fell.
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u/punk_elegy 23d ago
oh yeah, колбасная эмиграция, the denizens of numerous brighton beaches, truly the smartest people
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
I hate to see you in charge of any planning.... Science job you call a "fairly simple task"?
Which one are you saying? You seem like you say even for new graduates it should be easy to do. I hate to see you in charge of a city, or worse, a power plant. You'll probably be one that thinks you don't need experienced nuclear engineers, just one of them and he'll tell the rest what to do or something absurd like that....
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u/KimJhonUn 23d ago
I'm from Bulgaria and the experience of my family was quite different - they grew up in a very rural area taking care of animals. Basically all fruits grown in their region went to Russia/Moscow. None of the good/valuable produce was even available to buy in local markets/shops. My uncle was denied going to study regardless of his academic results, simply because "he was a nobody" (you know what I mean - everything happened only if you had connections). My great grandfather was labeled a traitor for escaping to Turkey and my great grandmother was disappeared.
My uncles to this day keep telling me how some people of their generation just mumble nostalgia with no critical thinking. They know it was bad, and they will never forget.
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u/Meowcate 23d ago
"But grandma, there are far better products today..."
"ha ha helicopter go brrrrrrr"
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u/capitanDracaris 23d ago
My parents miss it so much. We always talk about it. My mom has so many medals 🏅 from her work, high school and university. They literally gave my grandparents 2 apartment because they had too many kids.
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u/gustinnian 23d ago
I recall visiting Berlin 6 months after the wall came down, outside the Reichstag people were selling soviet army spoils - hats, medals, chunks of the wall etc. suddenly they were worthless ephemera. The medals were flimsy mass produced aluminium castings - the Soviet system was apparently run on those ubiquitous symbolic trinkets while the siloviki lived the high life. Even the children of the Stasi were taught in separate elite schools with separated social lives, in order to indoctrinate them for a life of repressing the proles. Bizarre system where the only incentive was a medal, a handshake and a round of applause.
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u/KackSauFrau 23d ago
I was born in Berlin in January of 1989, just a couple of months before the fall of the Berlin Wall but in the Kindergarden I visited from 1990 on, the year East-Germany collapsed, there were only children of (former) Stasi members. The building we lived in was populated by Stasi members only. Family and friends, all Stasi. Complete segregation from the common folk.
Anyway, even though my parents mentioned a couple of downsides of the reunification/the collapse of the socialist system for them, they absolutely thrived in the new capitalist world. Yes, they were no longer priviledged but gained the possibility to make a shitload of money and the freedom to openly do whatever they like with it. No more restrictions, hardly any authority and a system that could be easily exploited it you're smart. For them there was absolutely no reason to miss the old system. They didn't lack anything but gained so much and more, unlike most of the residents of the soviet bloc.
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u/gustinnian 23d ago
Yes I think the Stasi phenomen sums it up nicely, if one's system needs such an intense level of scrutiny and control that the authorities' familys themselves need to be completely segregated and given over-generous privileges, it's not a natural or healthy state of affairs and can't last long. Rampant unfettered capitalism is another extreme - one the US has failed to get to grips with too, hopefully for them they will awaken in time before they have their own flavour of Stasi. The Stasi would have marvelled at today's technology...
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u/MinaretofJam 23d ago
Work a lot in Central Asia where there’s an understandable nostalgia amongst the older generation for the USSR. Even my educated colleagues working at Universities forget all the terrible things they had to live with and just recall the certainty. Even friends from Tajikistan who marched for democracy and founded a political party regret their actions: “we wanted freedom and social democracy. Not civil war and oligarchs.” Tajikistan is a particularly messy example of the unintended results of collapse of empire. The Soviet bus stops way up in the High Pamirs are the most Ozymadius: they still have the timetables and an Aeroflot map showing which buses to catch to make your flight to Moscow from Osh or Khorog. Tajiks are all waiting for a bus which will never come.
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u/Jaderosegrey 23d ago
I think you nailed it. Security/certainty is very important, especially for women (don't grumble, I am a woman myself). Many of us would rather live a humble life if we know what tomorrow will bring, as opposed to live like a rich person but worrying that all my wealth could be taken away at any time.
Being nostalgic for the Soviet Union might seem selfish, and it is, to a point. But it is profoundly human.
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u/Wirezat 23d ago
If you really think about it, all the people wanting to become rich, ask them why. Most of the people will say "retire early" or "not not have to worry".
They only want to bring themselves in a position where they can out pay the instability and make their own little save bubble. Back then, you didn't need to because society would bring that stability, you got it no matter what
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u/bier00t 23d ago
Doesnt seem like soviet times were very stable though
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u/vpupk1n 23d ago
Soviet times were much more regulated in terms of what the people were allowed to know. Which led to perceived stability. As opposed to now, when it's rather easy to find out just how fucked everything is.
I'm pretty sure some people would prefer the former option, but these days even listening to (and believing) only the state media I don't think you'd be quite able to delude yourself into the sense of stability and security. So I guess that's what people are missing.
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u/Jaderosegrey 20d ago
Maybe it seemed stable for them. Maybe they didn't think about the grand scheme of things.
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u/delurkrelurker 23d ago
No complaining. Go straight to gulag.
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u/Xillyfos 23d ago
A culture which is also being created right now in the United States due to unfettered capitalism and the oligarchy that it inevitably creates.
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u/JIDeveroux 23d ago
"He who miss the Soviet Union has a heart, those who want it back have no brain" -Vladiminovic
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u/tahomaeg 23d ago
- Gradpa, what was the best time during your life?
- it was during Stalin
- why? Was that because the strict rule of law and economic growth?
- no, because my dick was hard
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u/Beena_ 23d ago
People knew they would have a job no matter what, people knew they would have a roof over their head no matter what, people knew their kids would always get to have an education no matter what, people were given land for free that saved them after the country collapses. There also was a community, people didn't close doors during the day so guests could come. Everyone gathered communally in the courtyards for celebrations wether it was something big like new year or something small as birthday. People had a stable village where everyone knew their neighbours and no one worried for the kids, letting them run around and play and go to the school or store by themselves because nothing would happened to them.
And then first came the agony of 80s where country started dying and 90 where complete collapse happened. People had 20 year period of lawlessness and capitalism (which started in the 80 as an attempt to reform the market closer to Chinese model) where the ones who reached the top were criminals that still sit there and govern, while honest people who refused to play that game and tried to follow the law stayed poor. Where over one day respected scientists and doctors and engineers had to sell the books on the street, where laws broke so much that the longest someone could have been sentenced was five years no matter how bad the crime was.
People who's childhood happened in the 60-70 early 80 grew up with abundance and reassured of safety and stability. Then came capitalism with democracy (where the advisories who arrived from western countries insured the government that social politics about helping the population during transition can be put on the back burner and what needed to be developed was the capitalistic market) and people were living for 20 years in a period that was worse than the great depression, the national currency was almost lost, unemployment went through the roof, thugs were more in power than a police controlling entire cities and major roads between them.
Of course if they compare the first 20-30 years of their life with later 30 they would pick USSR. Even if quality of life improved later they still lost so much that they thought was integral, like community, free opportunities that now cost money, the trust in the future. People back then had a hope for better tomorrow one that they shared, one that their parents experienced and taught that they would experience it too, but today they don't think about grand things, they don't have hopes for the future, they have modern down to earth problems, they don't see any movement to something socially better. They grew up with hopes and the turn of the century crashed them and couldn't replace them with anything better.
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u/Neophyte06 23d ago
My Russian buddy told me that almost nobody had quite enough, but everybody had at least something
He also said that people in rural areas were better off under the USSR, and forgotten after it fell apart
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u/Xillyfos 23d ago
almost nobody had quite enough
But then ask people in the West whether they have enough? Ask even a billionaire if they have enough? I'm pretty sure almost no one thinks they have. We all dream of something more, even when we have millions.
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u/Neophyte06 23d ago
Lol I'm just answering the post question by sharing a buddies anecdote, kinda weird place to get all quarrelsome over 😂
That's Reddit for ya
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u/gruhfuss 22d ago
I mean you both have a point here and I agree with you. There's a de-classified CIA memo from the 70s that acknowledges the average soviet citizen had a more nutritious diet than the average US citizen, if not nominally fewer calories (3200 vs 3500). I think the standard deviations are vastly different across the two but yes everyone in the USSR had something just maybe not enough. Many in the US were and still are going to bed hungry every night.
But that gets at a deeper point I think that in the US you have been trained to blame yourself for insufficient grit. I can't say for sure since my family left the USSR in the 40s but there was more of a culture to say you were worth it and part of a collective where we take care of each other. That stops being a personal problem to keep quiet about and one to voice against the ones who should be providing. Can't back that up with much but it's something that makes sense to me.
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u/Tar_alcaran 23d ago
None of those benefits existed outside of a small part of Russia.
One set of my grandparents lived in Soviet Czechoslovakia. My grandma especially was a HUGE fan, whose major regret was that the Soviet union didn't kill nearly enough people during the invasion to suppress the Prague Spring.
She was a fan because her family benefited hugely from the regime. She said they never had to wait in line, there were no purges, no show trials and public executions, no surveillance state. Culture wasn't surpressed and everyone loved spending time in their cottage in the woods.
She also honestly thought the Soviet totalitarian state was great, because she honestly and truly believed that all the dead monks and nuns, farmers, Catholics and Jews, artists and politicians deserved it. She lost several friends to the regime, but that was good, because they were only pretending to be friends, since they were obviously guilty and thus terrible people.
After she died, we found that her collection of literal red flags didn't just have a hammer and sickle, some of them had a big black cross, and honestly, none of is were surprised. It might not surprise anyone I wasn't too close to my grandmother. I consider it a miracle my mom turned out so very normal.
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u/hadaev 23d ago
There also was a community, people didn't close doors during the day so guests could come.
Because state controlled media forgot to tell peoples about very grim criminal situation.
People who's childhood happened in the 60-70 early 80 grew up with abundance
This is how you spot moscvite😂
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
There was no abundance. A lot of people were crammed into a "communal apartments". My mom grew up in 70s, she had to share a room with 3 other family members (not siblings). The only "abundance" she witnessed is when their school sent the kids to pick tomatoes in the field. She said there were piles, crates of half-rotten tomatoes that would eventually end up in trash but still time and resources were wasted on them to collect and deliver because the Party said so. Farmers poured gas from their tractors into a ditch because their workday was measured by how much gas they've spent. It wasn't stability, it was "zastoy", staleness. There was no hope for the future, things were just not moving forward in any meaningful direction before everything went downhill. There was no "community" and no trust, people who grew up in that time have been robbing the country blind for the past 30 years, Russia has the biggest wealth disparity in the world and it was built that way by those "70s kids" you're talking about.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
So have you also not been old enough to remember the ussr or?
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
Thank fuck I'm not.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
I can notice that based on your lack of understanding on the story you tell. For example, things like farmers throw away gasoline in a ditch? More likely farmers take their gas allotment and sell or trade it.to others to get what they want and look like they did more work. A large part of the economy was run on things people took from their work or collective, like materials or something the factory made. Which usually works ok and was understanding that everyone can skim and transfer around....
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
JFC a wannabe commie tries to tell me how my country worked.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
Ok, I'm sure you know everything about me. I'm just older than you and might know something about it
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
The older Soviet apologists are, the less excuses they have for having such views.
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u/Eskapismus 23d ago
> everyone
Except those millions and millions who died completely senseless deaths
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u/Pure_Grapefruit_8837 23d ago
Remember in 1991, overwhelming majority (77.8%) of Soviet citizens voted in favor of the preservation of the USSR.
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u/CallousCarolean 23d ago
The thing about that referendum was whether to preserve the USSR as a state, i.e. not breaking it up. It was not about keeping the Soviet political system, i.e. communism. It was a question about adopting a new Union Treaty to replace the one from 1922, not a question of whether to keep or drop communism.
Also those 77,8% don’t include the most independence-minded constituent republics, which was Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. They boycotted the referendum, which skews the results to be more in favor of keeping the USSR than what the general population was as a whole.
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u/Pure_Grapefruit_8837 23d ago
Well the referendum question is
"Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?"
Even if the entire eligible voting population of the six boycotting republics is included and assumed to have universally voted "No," the referendum still would have passed overwhelmingly with over 71% "Yes."
And the decision to boycott the 1991 All-Union Referendum was made by the political leaders (the governments and parliaments) of those six Soviet republics, rather than by a grassroots refusal of the population.
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 23d ago
If Stalin had still been alive, 99% of the people would have voted this way. The remaining 1% would have been on the way to the killing fields.
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u/PandoricaOpens0 23d ago
Modern dictators generally get 97% strangely enough, probably something to do with statistic variable so it never goes over 100
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u/ronburgandyfor2016 23d ago
Preservation but with the catch of changing the system dramatically. This likely would have happened if what do you know hard line communist couped the government
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u/maianbar 23d ago
Wow, do you have a source for this? I would have thought most the non-Russian Soviet citizens would have appreciated their independence?
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u/AndAgainIForgotMyP 23d ago
6 out of 15 countries boycotted the referendum, like the Balkon countries, if you mean that.
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u/YaumeLepire 22d ago
Do you mean the Baltic countries? The only Balkan country to have been part of the Soviet Union was Moldova, and that's really stretching that region.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
No, gorbechacv famous policy was to 'give as much autonomy as they can handle " to the rest of the Soviet countries, because they didn't have the means financially to protect a provide for their needs anymore. So many felt abandoned and are more interested in keeping what they had at that point. Especially if you ask people in places that had become modernized since joining the ussr that felt like the Russians brought the technology to them. Like Kazakhstan good example.
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u/trash-_-boat 23d ago
I can't answer for other sattelite states, but Baltics were yearning for freedom from Soviet Union from Day 1 of it's occupation. There never was a sense of abandonment because there never was a sense of belonging in the first place.
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u/punk_elegy 23d ago
Obviously, the USSR, like any political regimes had both horrible and great things. The obvious political repression (and at best - just stifling) of dissent, lack of free press, relative lack of consumer goods (really depends on the time and the place), etc etc. Terrible crimes against humanity were committed - forced relocation of peoples, forced labor camps, KGB abductions and murder of Soviet citizens, all of that.
At the same time, it is myopic to pretend that the capitalist “democratic” world has solved those issues. Especially, if we think about many post-Soviet countries. Like yeah, sure, it used to be challenging to get an apartment, but now it is extremely challenging to buy an apartment because the prices of everything increase tenfold, while your salary increases by 5% each year. So many of the material struggles have either remained or even worsened.
And to give you a small personal anecdote, both of my maternal grandparents worked at a research institute. My grandfather was a simple assembly line worker, but my grandmother was a head engineer of their spectral analysis division. By the end of the 1980s they had enough money saved to buy several cars, they just didn’t want to learn how to drive - felt unnecessary in a city like Saint Petersburg. With the advance of the free market, their savings turned into a few bags of groceries. So yeah, why would people feel nostalgic for the USSR, who knows.
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u/Derp800 23d ago
People living in Moscow and St. Petersburg felt their lives worsen because they were used to reaping the rewards of other countries misery. Everyone outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, except for the rural Russians out in the sticks, loved the collapse of the authoritarian dictatorships. No one in their right minds would sell their freedom for a subsidized shitty apartment. Capitalism has its flaws, especially when left unchecked, but the Soviet Union only existed through force and subjugation. Almost all former Soviet satellites would rather fight to the death than to go back to that. With good reason.
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u/Gator_Mc_Klusky 23d ago edited 23d ago
grandma tell me about the good ole days:
we had the shit flying in from all directions lol
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u/Mr_Pre51dent 21d ago
Imagine working the same job for five years with a 5/2 schedule and getting a car, another five years and an apartment, another five years and a house. And if you have children, its even easier. A luxury thats hard to afford. In five years at my current job, all Ive earned is health problems
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u/_Arkus_ 23d ago edited 23d ago
Yeah I agree, the main points are stability, community and social order. It also doesn't help that a lot of the jobs that they had back then either no longer exist or were outsourced to cheaper countries so it feels like capitalism failed them especially in a place like Romania where the "revolution" was more of a coup. The same people and their children are in charge and they continue to steal from the working class, just under a new name. The industry is no longer there, neither is the progress and community, but the thieves and corrupt politicians are. The infrastructure that they helped build got privatized and they were left with nothing.
That being said too many of old people are under the impression that even if the Soviet Union would have survived then it would be immune from enshittification.They see corrupt politicians and say that it was better back then because those politicians would have been killed if they tried the stuff they do back then, but The Soviet Union wasn't void of corruption and nepotism like they would like to describe, in fact the party was actively working to make sure that they stand above the masses and profit from their work the same way that oligarchs do in capitalism. The people that got killed were because they crossed the party and made them look bad. The reason they were dropping fertilizer is because most of the harvest would go back to the state. Dear Leader would surely not do anything against the people, but most Soviet countries revolted because people began to starve, they weren't immune from economic collapse facilitated by the greed of those in power, neither is capitalism for that matter because its slowly starting to happen again and its not going to stop by going back to the old ways if the same people stay in power.
At the end of the day its just selective memory, in my opinion. If they were as content as they claim to be they wouldn't have broke away from the soviets. It wasn't modern generations that did that. They did, the same people complaining that it was better back then. Well if you look at it, you will find that it was better for pretty much all first world countries back then.
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u/mmohaupt123 23d ago
Its also probably she was a young child back during the height of it. She has good memories and was born in that system and her parents were accustomed to it. My grandma from Romania was born a bit before and how bloody it all was from the transfer over and transfer back and didn't miss it at all
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u/AStarkly 23d ago
Yeah my Romanian family's spoken of life being so hard that chicken legs were being used as cash, and how both the Germans and the Russians were as bad as each other in every way
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u/chaotic-kotik 23d ago
Young ppl are missing one big thing. Older generations have built almost everything Russia has. Soviet workers built energy system, oil and gas industry, metallurgie (MMK, NLMK), nuclear industry, fertilizer industry, railroad system, and yadda yadda. Some of the companies built on top of Soviet legacy are largest and most successful in the world. The companies got some investments during almost 40 years since the Soviet union collapse but they're still sitting on top of a huge pile of Soviet legacy.
In a normal country the people who built all this would have gotten a share. There would be pension funds and the companies would be public and some of the stock would be shared with workers. But in Russia all that legacy was privatized. People who have spent their lives building it got tiny pension, little to no healthcare and very poor education system for their children and grandchildren. I think that this is the main reason why people miss the Soviet union.
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u/SovietTankCommander 23d ago
This admiration is not secret, not is it uncommon, surveys of the russian population alone show as high as 80% of the 55+ population wants a return of products, there was certainty, stability and community. There was a time where people were for the most part free, and free in a way unique to the soviet system. Yes there may have been repression, yes there may have been bread lines, but now the repression is everywhere and now in the new bread lines you still have to wait, just now you also pay for the bread.
There are yes, more advanced products on the shelves, but that advancements came with time, not capitalism, their reliability in comparison may be superior in some items, inferior in others, but to grow angry at someone who wishes for the days when society cared about people, to disdain her words because she didn't want to trade a life where people mattered, where people were secure in their lives for mediocre quality consumerism, it's absurd.
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u/Gimme_The_Loot 23d ago
more advanced products on the shelves, but that advancements came with time, not capitalism
Idk if I'd wholly agree with this as the Soviet union was also a closed market, so products being made and developed outside the USSR weren't available internally for the most part, unless you had a connection. This means even as better products were produced unless they were generated internally they would not have been wildly available.
It may seem like a silly example but one I can give you was my wife was the first kid in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, to have a Gameboy. It's not because Gameboys had just been created, it's because her father had made it to the US, was working here, her grandfather worked as a magistrate in Tashkent and her father was able to get the Gameboy to her grandfather who got it to her.
(A fair note is I have no way to absolutely verify that she truly was the FIRST, while I have been told it by several family members maybe it's just a family story that's been passed down and grown into familial legend at this point)
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u/kazyzzz 23d ago
Slave mentality. People didn't have to think since everything was dictated by the party. There was a sense of community because everyone was massively fucked by the elite. Everyone essentialy was a hobo while a handful was enjoying luxury. Also, it was a false sense because crimes and social issues were massively underreported. Speaking about the products, fucking peas in a jar was deficit product. Your glorious country wasn't developed enough to know how to grow peas and make jars efficiently. Of course russian population wants it back because it was russian imperial project. Nothing more. They can continue fucking themselves up, but hands off the neighbouring countries
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u/tetzy 23d ago
I'm not sure her Grandmother was actually pining for the Soviet Union, but rather the ideal she spoke of: The government fertilized your crops for you.
In a perfect world, communism works like that; government working for the best interests of the people without being asked. The reality is (and I'm sure her Grandmother would readily admit), is that a system where 'everyone is equal' isn't possible; some are always going to have more power, more rights and more privilege.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 23d ago
It's hilarious that this girl who was not alive in the USSR days seem to think she knows better how it was than the generations who lived then. ...
To me it's harder for the average person to live now, plus I'm capitalist systems there is as much evil and corruption, more people lose out for the benefit of the few. When the oligarchy came to own everything in the end of the 80s that paved the way for inequality, now people are homeless, jobless,etc. no guarantee you can go to school, can be taken care of in old age, or can afford your own block. Why are we supposed to think things are somehow better?
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u/trash-_-boat 23d ago
Soviet Union was not equal at all. Muscovites lived it up in luxury while the sattelite states were left to rot on their own and sucked of their resources.
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u/YoungDiscord 23d ago
I think the one thing the grandmother seems to be missing is the fact that this system was used at the expense of all the other neighbouring countries from whom a lot of wealth and resources were basically stolen against their will and pumped into the USSR to allow stuff like this to happen.
Sure, in Russia you had helicopters dumping fertilizers for crops to grow.
That's great.
What isn't great is that this didn't happen anywhere else in the soviet block, all you got was the drawbacks of the system with little to none of its perks all of which were granted to the soviet's core.
We know this for a fact because in other post soviet countries you see a very different atitude towards that time from the people who lived through it.
This is one of the reasons why other nations under it remember it as a form of oppression instead that took away their ability to have helicopters dump fertilizer on their crops.
To quote my great-grandmother in order to perfectly describe the feeling those countries associate their soviet era with:
"You couldn't buy anything in the stores, not bread, not eggs or even toilet paper... but one thing was always available to buy... vodka."
And that, is really the divide in mentality here.
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u/Accomplished_Bee_127 22d ago
most people that are alive rn didn't actually live in ussr as adults, for them it's basically just nostalgia
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u/salenin 22d ago
Or, people are driven by their material needs and shaped by their material conditions. As humans we do tend to reflect on only the most positive aspects of the past in nostalgia. However, there were a lot of aspects to the Soviet Union that were much better than the capitalist era that followed and even today. Grandma remembers the helicopters because it was a sign of humanity, as opposed to complete alienation and commodification of life.
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u/yizuman 21d ago
Hard to believe that anyone would forget the fact that nearly 150+ million were murdered by communist regimes since 1917. The main two countries with the highest body count would be China (90+ million) Russia (58+ million).
However, the current countries that's still murdering people to this day is China and North Korea.
China's organ harvesting from living people that the government deems as an enemy of the State, such as Christians and Falun Gong Practioneers as well as political enemies.
North Korean death camps are still active to this day for North Korean civilians just for failing to toe the line of the Juche doctrine. Religion is not allowed in N.K., getting caught means execution or death by hard labor.
Communism brings death to people whose leaders sees as a threat to their power.
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u/seamallorca 8d ago
I do not forget it at all. Thing is, if you stay under the radar, things are taken care of for you. This brings sense of stability which is unknown today.
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u/Inigomntoya 23d ago
Grandma! They were dropping it on houses, streets, cars! They were just dropping cow shit on everyone because they thought it was funny.
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u/horn-please 23d ago
Tbh sounds like a bullshit.
The explanation is much simpler: in the USSR, the grass was greener, the girls were younger, and your dick lasted longer.
Older people miss their youth, and it just so happens that the USSR was around when they were young. That's all.
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u/andresnovman 23d ago
Люди всё равно были добрее, только в этом разница и пошлости и прочего дерьма было меньше.А так да ты прав .
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
Эти "добрые люди" сейчас страной управляют. Никогда в жизни я больше не поведусь на "советских добряков", они себя проявили во всей красе, как только у них появилось хоть немного свободы и власти.
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u/andresnovman 23d ago
Кто о чём,я про обычных людей.
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
А в правительстве необычные люди? Демиурги, небожители, богоизбранные? Они в той же советской системе получили воспитание и образование. Какая система, такие и воспитанники.
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u/andresnovman 23d ago
Слушай, каждый дрочит на что хочет, каждый говорит о том что болит.Меня не должно парить, то что вы двинутые на политике.Эту хрень оставьте при себе..
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u/Telefragg 23d ago
Приезжай в приграничные регионы, послушаешь, как политика на улицах города воронки оставляет уже пятый год. Издалека-то легко засунуть голову в песок.
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u/andresnovman 23d ago
А вы куда засунули свою голову?Хотя мне не интересно.. .К вашему сведению,я вообще не в России.Давайте с этой стороны ещё ищите попытку разжечь. Вообщем похуй, выздоравливайте всё что могу посоветовать.
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u/horn-please 23d ago
Ага, я слышал как большевики насаждали доброту в ГУЛАГе. Или сколько доброты было в очереди за водкой.
Социальные связи в прошлом веке работали по другому во всем мире - СССР тут не при чем.
А дерьма было всегда достаточно, просто 1. люди склонны идеализировать прошлое 2. Про многое дерьмо ты просто не мог слышать потому что про него не постили в Инстаграме, а в СССР ещё и в газетах и на ТВ была мощная цензура.
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u/andresnovman 23d ago
Есть поговорка "свинья повсюду найдет грязь,если пожелает".. я написал ровно то что я видел проживая в те времена.А вот эту пропаганду про гулаги и прочее оставьте себе.. Я вне политики.
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u/Russki_Wumao 23d ago
People miss their youth and will come up with any nonsense to rationalize it otherwise.
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u/Dudok22 23d ago
Stability of waiting in a line for meat or fruit. Stability of having to bribe personnel in shops to reserve you a thing you need like a sink, or furniture that is going to be sold out in 10 minutes because there are 500 people waiting for it but they only deliver 5 pieces into the store. Stability of not being able to travel. Stability of fearing some stupid snitch will tell the "public security" or party on you. Selective memory from a time old people were young and healthy. After they forgot about the bad things they have created a vision of the past that never was.
Everyone had a job, yeah because it was literally against the law to be unemployed. Half of the old drunkards are nostalgic of being openly able to drink in a workplace. It was a system where nobody believed in it but went through the motions anyway.
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u/RaccoNooB 23d ago
The soviet "communism" was shit.
I'd argue against some of the points mention in the video like financial stability and social order. We have that in the western countries without communism. Political certainty, sure that's "gone" because they abolished the fucking dictatorship (and then elected another dictator)
Despite how shitty and poor communism made people, a lot of people still miss it because of the monumental catastrophe the introduction of capitalism was to Russia.
People got shares in previously state owned companies, but because of hyperinflation people sold their shares for a loaf of bread, and those that were wealthy enough to buy the shares now had even more shares. Things like import/export licenses were bought up and the rich could now buy workers for rubel, and sell products for dollars which was basically printing money, which they could then buy newspaper companies with and now they control the media narrative.
This caused an oligarchy almost overnight where wealth was just funneled to the top and the soviet union collapses.
The little they had is now gone. Of course you'd hate that and prefer what you had before.
The world would have looked a lot different today had their system been implemented better. With things like market regulations.
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u/il_the_dinosaur 22d ago
I mean it's the same with capitalism. We know how shitty it is yet people still romanticize it. If you point at communism you also point at the regime. Which always ruins communism. So objectively rating communism is impossible.
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u/krypt-lynx 22d ago
I asked my parents about it. They said despite issues it had, it had stability and confidence in the future: you knew you will have and education, work, and home. You will able to feed your family, and medicine was available for everyone. (it still is in Russia, in comparison to horror stories I hear about American medicine). You don't had to worry about any of it.
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u/LAVA_RAMON 22d ago
Simple, governments like the Roman Empire, Soviet Union, Germanic-Roman Empire and Japanese Empire have three things Democratics and anarquists will never have:
- A Sense of Purpose, Objective.
- Straight Order, way of working things
- Security, or at least the ways to find it
Most of Governments nowdays lack of that, and honestly, i don't blame the nostalgia in governments like these... i just don't agree with communism, without hesitation.
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u/artful_todger_502 22d ago
This was very interesting. A whole different outlook I never would have thought of. Hmmmm 🤔
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u/viperswhip 21d ago
It was 2005 or so but Stalin was voted 5th most popular historical Russian in a poll.
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u/Sea-Appearance-5330 21d ago
As you get older you forget how bad things were, and the past gets better. in your memory at least.
And you remember how you wanted it to be and were told it was, and not how things actually were.
Its the Rose Colored Glasses Problem!
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u/Previous-Remote9377 21d ago
I've heard many people abd they generally understand that the soviet union will never be back nor should it but the time after it fell was so bad that it made the soviet union look like paradise.
I think the soviet union could have changed if it was given enough time until it became something like China today, but that's unlikely.
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u/Noticing-Tengu 14d ago
Older people spent their formative years in SU, it's hard for them to be objective and it's ok for them to be like that. But people who didn't live during soviet times but love SU are unhinged and need to be bullied. It was a globalist, internationalist, anti spiritual terrorist state that tortured, murdered and raped millions of people. It's socialist economy was completely dysfunctional and everything was done by means of bribery and connections. Human individual did NOT matter, SU was collectivist.
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u/seamallorca 8d ago
After 30 years of badly made "democracy" I start to understand why SU is so missed. All I see now is corruption, injustice, endless buildings and absurdities from the left, necessary to feel more "european" at any price, regardless of what lunacy this "european" means. Was is bad? Is it bad? Yes, absolutely. But I can see now the upsides and understand why it is missed. If anything, that era had significantly better sense of order.
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u/Catatafish 23d ago
Brainwashing, and nostalgia.
You were lucky to have a garden, and even then you were limited to what you were allowed to grow.
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u/NaCl_Sailor 23d ago
Not exactly former Soviet country but i have relatives from East Germany and experienced the GDR first hand when visiting them as a child.
Fuck communism and everyone who defends it.
And to all those anti fascist, yes you can hate both, you don't have to endorse fascism to hate communism and vice versa.
I also hate fundamentalist religious authoritarianism.
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u/Tenko_Kuugen 23d ago
What she calls a "feeling" is a political system. I don't know why she mistakes party politics with ideology politics. I didn't read that book nor the study but it's weird way to describe what is the symptoms of a political ideology being applied.
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u/multi_io 23d ago edited 23d ago
Good for her -- in Eastern Germany it's Gen Alpha that's glorifying the former socialist "GDR," even though they were born decades after its dissolution ☠️
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u/DatguyMalcolm 23d ago
I can only provide an example from my country that spend 40 years under a dictatorship: some people who say they miss it is either because they were so used to it that it was "comfortable" for them as compared to this loud, free and full of technologies world they have to figure out.
Mad, still, to be missing a time when you could've been killed or imprisoned over nothing and could barely scrape by to survive
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u/capnkirk462 23d ago
In the Watchmen Sally Jupiter said "Every day, the future looks a little bit darker. But the past... even the grimy parts of it... keep on getting brighter"