Posted on 12/26/2017 2:40:32 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
As per a Newsweek interview with Mikhail Gorbachev:
Speaking about the current political climate in Russia, Gorbachev said that democratization “hasn't been completed”, adding that “There are some people for whom freedom is an annoyance. They don't feel good with it.”
The reason is simple: when the Soviet Union collapsed, their entire government and economy collapsed, and nobody there knew what to replace it with. Their entire society was destroyed.
Guess they loved standing in line for stuff then not have it on the shelves when they get there. In the rain. In the freezing cold.
Don’t the French look back and long for Napoleon? They conveniently forget the knock on the door, the gulags in Siberia, and the food shortages.
I visited during the post-collapse period; my guide/translator was an out-of-work KGB agent!
Things were so bad, they were getting economic advisors sent to them from BRAZIL!
I said, “I think I see your problem...”
“.....In polls taken since 1992, an average two-thirds of respondents said they lamented the collapse of the USSR, peaking at 75 percent in 2000 and dipping to 49 percent in 2012.....”
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If one polled Madison Wisconsin, similar results would have been found.
I'd post a link if I could find it. Even a younger generation who talked to an old man who survived a prison camp in Siberia I think. She wasn't sufficiently moved to be swayed by it. People tend to have the attitude that as long as I and mine didn't get (fill in the blank with the evils of communism), bread lines, puny wages, shortages for cars and such, poor workmanship, etc.,, don't seem like they are aware of it. A lot are aware, finally, of what befell the czar and his family..
It's really maddening because Putin is with the oligarchs, possibly on top of the pile, and amassed billions, lives luxuriously.
I blame corruption. Russians can't seem to conquer that; it's become a way of life for too many. Otherwise, maybe if they looked at themselves as a work in progress. Still, maybe eventually Putin and others will fall for like the czar. And foreign influence would come into play but not the same as Bolshevism.
Many are of the younger generation that didn’t have to
live through the misery of the Soviet years, but hear the glorious stories of its military might back in the day.
At least probably closer to reality.
I doubt they really miss communism as a whole, but rather the stability they had under communism. It was replaced with caos. The US certainly didn’t help when our advisors help d sell off state assets for pennies on the dollar and created the oligarchs.
Those who were purged or starved offered no opinion.
I trust this poll as much as I trust a poll from CNN.
Gorbachev said... “There are some people for whom freedom is an annoyance. They don't feel good with it.”
Sounds like the Liberals here.
Yep.
they are just imagining having everything they have now... for free.
they can’t comprehend having nothing like everyone else during the soviet years.
They wouldn’t even have cell phones and personal computers if the USSR hadn’t collapsed.
communism only spreads misery equally as the infrastructure built by capitalism crumbles all around them. It can’t innovate, so whatever tech exists now at its inception is where it will be forever. Stuck there in innovation limbo.
Reagan and Gorbachev were fond of each other...
>The reason is simple: when the Soviet Union collapsed, their entire government and economy collapsed, and nobody there knew what to replace it with. Their entire society was destroyed.
It’s more than that. The primary reasons nations have empires is the status boost. Russians were reduced American lapdogs for a long time after the USSR went down.
Imagine all the people who lost their government pension when the Soviet Union collapsed.
It was tough on my brain for years afterwards. Growing up the world was black and white. The enemy was known. Now it’s a technicolor landscape where enemies pop up from every hill and hole in the ground.
> It’s really maddening because Putin is with the oligarchs, possibly on top of the pile, and amassed billions, lives luxuriously.
Putin was a reaction to the Oligarchs. Since coming into power he’s destroyed dozens of Oligarchs and increased the average standard of living. Is he corrupt? Sure. But he’s a less corrupt that the Oligarchs from the 90s.
>I blame corruption. Russians can’t seem to conquer that; it’s become a way of life for too many. Otherwise, maybe if they looked at themselves as a work in progress. Still, maybe eventually Putin and others will fall for like the czar. And foreign influence would come into play but not the same as Bolshevism.
All nations are corrupt. Before the US paid off its debt from the revolutionary war all the war debt was bought up by members of Congress for pennies on the dollar. The people who received the promissory notes for goods and services rendered (Farmers, blacksmiths, etc) got nothing. The US government like every other government is founded on corruption.
If you want low levels of corruption limit then limit the size of government, but corruption is not a major factor in the competence of a government system. Japan has an entirely corrupt system that functions very well.
“” “The reason is simple: when the Soviet Union collapsed, their entire government and economy collapsed, and nobody there knew what to replace it with. Their entire society was destroyed.” “”
Bingo. In 1999 average salary in Russia was under $60 a month. USSR was far from opulent but is was lower middle class for most with much better living conditions. No homelessness or unemployment, free rent and so on. It also had very little to none crime to talk of. That means a city of million people had maybe a few dozen homicides per year and armed robbery was a nationwide emergency. In 1990s scores of people were murdered on a daily basis and everybody got mugged more than once.
Let’s add mass closure of businesses and civil wars and it is no-brainer why there are Soviet sympathizers.
If you click through and read the poll (Google translate does a good job), you'll see the opposite. It's the older cohort that regrets the fall. It's also the older cohort that thinks it was not inevitable.
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