Russans prefer communism

[eric922]

I've in a debate with some capitalists on a progressive forum and I need some help. I've heard some people here cite stats showing that the Russian people said life was better under the USSR and I was wondering if you all could share them with me?
Oh and on the bright side 76% of the people who took this survey on the progressive forum said they were in favor of getting rid of capitalism and building something else.

[el_chavista]

Was Russia better off red? (http://media.eyeblast.org/newsbusters/static/2009/10/NewsweekRussia-full-2009-10-12.jpg)

[Kassad]

In before people still manage to defend the counterrevolution in the Soviet Union despite the widespread death, disease and poverty that followed.

[Chimurenga.]

This may be close to what you're looking for. Nevertheless, its an interesting study.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1396/european-opinion-two-decades-after-berlin-wall-fall-communism

http://pewresearch.org/assets/publications/1396-8.gif

[Geiseric]

Lol'd at poland

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I was told by a person in the military that a lot of the smaller countries that were formerly USSR pretty much all agree life was better than now. He had visited areas such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc. No statistics, just passing on the word.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Correction: Russians prefer bureaucratic collectivism.

[Nolan]

Correction: Russians prefer bureaucratic collectivism.

Do you have some impulse that makes you get insulted when someone refers to the USSR as "socialist" or "communist?"

Person 1: "The socialist USSR..."

Person 2: "YOU MEAN STALINIST/STATE CAPITALIST/BURECREATICALIST COLLEVTIALISATIONIST"

I mean, granted, the USSR when it collapsed was not socialist. But this is silly.

[Nolan]

This may be close to what you're looking for. Nevertheless, its an interesting study.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1396/european-opinion-two-decades-after-berlin-wall-fall-communism

http://pewresearch.org/assets/publications/1396-8.gif

Funny, I expected Russia to be much higher dark blue and Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary to be much lower.

What about Romania? Remember that poll we had on here a while back?

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Funny, I expected Russia to be much higher dark blue and Lithuania, Ukraine, and Hungary to be much lower.

What about Romania? Remember that poll we had on here a while back?

I guess it might depend on the choices for the poll or whatever.

Hungary and Bulgaria were relatively prosperous during the Eastern Bloc era and face harsh conditions today, so the high preference for nostalgia makes sense. Lithuania is quite surprising considering the rapacious anti-communism of all people from the Baltic's I've ever encountered or read about.

I think the reason Poland is so low is partly due to the spread of reactionary currents in after 1980 as well as the more troublesome economic conditions in the area most remembered (the more recent times); if it were not for the economic turmoil of the 80's I fancy this would be a more positive memory considering the economic wasteland of modern Poland.

The Russian result is probably the most unexpected, especially the big difference between Ukraine and Russia itself. Maybe the poll involved too many participants from wealthier districts of Moscow.

[sanpal]

First of all, russians never consider the USSR as being under communism. It is a western anti-communist propaganda stamp. Socialism yes.
And second, it depends from today's living standard in the enumerated countries in comparing with socialist period, the more falling causes the more nostalgia. Many economies of socialist block depended on the USSR's consumption field. It is interesting how it is in Byelorussia?

[Gorilla]

The Russian result is probably the most unexpected, especially the big difference between Ukraine and Russia itself. Maybe the poll involved too many participants from wealthier districts of Moscow.

The Russian numbers were a lot higher pre-2003. High oil prices from the Iraq war etc. have turned things around a little bit from the fucking disaster that was the 1990's there.

[Red Commissar]

I don't think one should focus so much on that the want to "return" to Communism, but rather that that capitalism has failed to provide them with anything they thought would happen after the change in regimes. That's the take away message here.

I think a lot of them had it in their heads that they were going to get rid of the "bad" in their society while keeping the good (excluding those who wanted free market). Their expectations in reform were slashed and broken when they saw what actually happened. Maybe they entertained thoughts that it would be like the social democratic type systems that some of Western Europe had, but only judging it from the outside. That they would get more crap but somehow maintain their social nets, services, and employment. At any rate it shows that after all this time, the much talked about "freedoms" that the new "democracies" and market brought with the collapse of "Communism" are more lauded here in America and the demagogues that benefited from it (the politicians that rose to power after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc) than the majority of people it actually affected.

[Rafiq]

Do you have some impulse that makes you get insulted when someone refers to the USSR as "socialist" or "communist?"

Person 1: "The socialist USSR..."

Person 2: "YOU MEAN STALINIST/STATE CAPITALIST/BURECREATICALIST COLLEVTIALISATIONIST"

I mean, granted, the USSR when it collapsed was not socialist. But this is silly.

"A lie told a hundred times ceases to be one"

You can "Go with the flow" if you please, though don't expect to be refuted.