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US Politics 14h
It’s funny how American media teaches us that the USSR was hell on earth when most ppl who were adults in the USSR actually miss it and much prefer it to capitalism
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Anonymous 3h

I don’t know which imaginary former residents of the USSR you dreamt of speaking with but this is absolutely not the case. Stories from behind the Iron Curtain include gulags, rations, meat still for sale rotting in grocery stores, antisemitism, genocide, and the government covering up the deadliest nuclear accident in history.

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Anonymous 14h

This is such a crazy oversimplification holy shit my guy

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Anonymous 14h

It depends on the SSR, a lot of soviet nostalgia is just russian nationalists wishing they still controlled 12 other countries. And yeah the collapse of the USSR definitely had a horrible short term impact on living standards but Russia recovered economically in the 2000s and its satellite states are far better off now than they were in the 80s.

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 14h

It’s oversimplification to state a well researched fact?

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Anonymous replying to -> OP 14h

It MASSIVELY depends on what part of the USSR we are talking about. The Baltics? Fucking despised it. Those guys basically just got colonized. No nostalgia going on there. It’s a similar attitude in the buffer states who weren’t part of the USSR itself but were its vassals. Most Georgians and Azeris also believe they are better off post-USSR.

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 14h

The attitudes are most positive in the areas that benefitted from Soviet economics, and particularly ones who didn’t do well after the Soviet fall. In this you can fit Armenia, Russia, Moldova, Belarus, and many of the central Asian states.

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 14h

But again it heavily depends on which ethnic community we are talking about, what part of each country, etc. Because a blanket statement like this is WILD to make when you see how many Eastern Europeans in the Baltics and buffer states have fallen into fascism because they’re so rabidly anti-communist.

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 14h

Like you have to look at this with nuance instead of developing grand narratives where everything you like is great. Were there benefits to the Soviet system? Absolutely. It provided a lot of employment in very rural regions with few economic prospects. It minimized ethnic conflict (well post-Stalin at least) and provided education and social mobility to minority groups. And the quality of life markedly decreased in the post-Soviet years.

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Anonymous replying to -> #1 14h

But this also came with the Russification of many ethnic groups, the loss of autonomy for eastern Europe and the Baltics, and declines in religious freedom. Plus after the 1960s boom, quality of life stagnated and began to decrease. For the countries who felt they were being puppeted by Moscow and who experienced economic flourishing after the 2000s, the Soviet times are not looked back on positively.

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Anonymous replying to -> #2 14h

Also i’m not really sure what this is supposed to prove, I bet if we surveyed Chinese citizens in the Deng era that lived through the CR most of them would say they prefer post-1976 China. Does that mean markets are better than planning?

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