In 2003-04 I was deployed to Uzbekistan at Camp Stronghold Freedom, located in an old Soviet air base.
KBR employed young Uzbek women as office staff; attractive, fluent in English and dressed Western style.
But their nostalgia for the USSR which fell when they were still children was unbelievable. When I suggested that our camp could serve as a window to the West, one gal with waist length hair replied, “I want you to know one thing: I admire Josef Stalin!”
“Why, because he killed seventy million people!?”
“You need a strong hand to rule as large a country as the Soviet Union!” (she wished Uzbekistan was still part of something huge).
What else did they miss? Guaranteed employment, abundant food (?), annual Crimean vacation, the whole workers’ paradise. No Russians among them, Central Asians all, though they still spoke Russian.
One defended Alexei Stakhanov and Pavlik Morozov as heroes of the Soviet Union. The local souvenir shop sold mostly hammer-and-sickle stuff.
Go figure.
"Uzbeks - They are the weak link in the Great Chain of Socialism."
Many Russians don’t think of Stalin as a Communist, they think of him more as an “Ivan the Terrible” type. The Iron Fist that ruled the country. That doesn’t necessarily mean they want to bring back Communism.