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Of course they did. When the countries became independent, multiple interdependent industries collapsed, leaving tons of people out of work. Not only that, the mafia had quickly taken a stranglehold.
My husband had half siblings in Ukraine. His parents sponsored a visit in the early 90’s, after independence. They both held opinions that they had more opportunities and freedoms under Soviet rule for the reasons you mention. Although anecdotal, it’s quite possible that everyone this professor has met said life was better under the USSR.
i have a friend who was raised in Russia during the Soviet era. She remembers growing up and having to spend the summers on her family farm canning vegetable if her family didn't they wouldn't have them for the year. There was no choice. She remembers empty shelves and most telling to this day won't talk politics. She has memories of people just disappearing who were too vocal. She loves the Russian people but even today is disgusted with the amount of corruption there. Which may be why so many look favorably on the past. Nostalgia is sometimes a powerful illusion.
I can believe that life in Russia was better under Gorbachev than under Putin.
Gorbachev was a good man trying to reform his country. No doubt life was better under him than it is under Putin. . However when we talk about the Soviets we are largely talking about the leaders previous to him. Right up until Gorbachev took power in the mid 80s the Soviet leaders were brutal hard liners who imprisoned their opponents, restricted basic freedoms and enforced an economic system that only provided a near subsistence existence for most soviet citizens. Of course then there was the whole cloud of nuclear destruction hanging over us. I grew up during the Cold War, the idea of nukes falling out of the sky was ever present. The movie Red Dawn was not just entertainment, people really feared that kind of thing would happen, really the plot of that movie was tame compared to what a full scale war with the Soviets would have looked like.
Those who think the Soviets were ok are not old enough to remember AND they have not read enough history books. President Reagan was right when he called the Soviet Union an evil empire.
Last edited by danielj72; 07-11-2019 at 08:03 AM..
“Every single person I have I [sic] asked in Central Asia (and Eastern Europe) over the past decade and a half has said life was better under the Soviets -- 100 percent,” O’Dell tweeted on Tuesday."
I guess one would have to go to Romania or such to find out....I can't say I know....and, remember, they are talking Soviets....so what are they saying?
Are they saying that life under the Soviets was better than life under "just some Putin influence" as is not the case in some of those places???
One would need a lot more information to suss out such a tweet.
It is fact that Putin and MANY Russians look to the Soviet Era as what they want to see reborn....and Stalin is becoming popular again. So Putin and the majority of Russians that support him are definitely not big into the Western Enlightenment or our style of capitalism.
I was in Moscow in 1988 for a short time and was amazed to see people standing in blocks long lines for toilet paper and potatoes.
Waiting in three lines to get bread. Waiting in lines to get toilet paper, 10 years waiting to get the car you just paid for?
No doubt.....but you had some idea that (most) everyone was suffering with you and you thought that once things fleshed out they might be better, etc. etc.
Free education if you qualified - at the highest levels (doctors, scientists)......
Now the people in the villages see the Benz and Rolls Royces and the private jets and read all the same stuff we do about the Oligarchs.
One would have to be in both shoes to wonder which is perceived in which way.
Remember, they lost about 1/2 of their population....so that's a shock to the soul...thinking you have an Empire that you sacrificed 20-30 Million citizens for and then it goes away.
People are not just based around money. Today the world IS smaller and most people know what is going on.
If we take the average person, would they be happier if they were lower-middle class and everyone else was also (say, like S. Philly where my family was).....or, would they prefer to be solid middle class and see vast numbers of others in private jets and mansions, knowing that those people stole it because of who they know?
Hard to answer - never the less, the OP shows bias and a lack of understanding of history, culture and current events. The Prof - idiot for even using Twitter. Complex ideas cannot be communicated that way.
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