What were the reactions?

[The Man]

What were the reactions of the people that lived in the USSR after it fell? How did people feel about it?

[Red Future]

Majority of the population wished for its continuation

[Jose Gracchus]

Feared where their next meal would come from.

[Pretty Flaco]

Majority of the population wished for its continuation

Do you have any statistics that back this up? I've heard differing things about the fall of the USSR

[Omsk]

From what sources?BBC?CNN?
The majority of the people expected better leaders,who could lead them into a better future,they did not want to loose so much from their life,their memories,their way of life.
The fall of the loved Union not only caused tremors in Russia,but it also caused many little wars,conflicts,which could simply not happen in the good old Soviet Union.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/USSR_Republics_Numbered_Alphabetically.png/800px-USSR_Republics_Numbered_Alphabetically.png

Shambled,scattered.


Do you have any statistics that back this up? I've heard differing things about the fall of the USSR
Here are the sources:

According to a 2006 poll by VCIOM 66% of all Russians regretted the collapse of the Soviet Union.[7] 50 per cent of respondents in Ukraine in a similar poll held in February 2005 stated they regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[8]

The final collapse of the USSR was one of the most sudden and dramatic territorial losses that has happened in the history of Russia or its successor states in centuries. Between 1990 and 1992 the Kremlin had lost direct government control over about one-third of Soviet territory – most of it acquired in the period between 1700 and 1945 – which had about one-half of the Soviet population by the time of the dissolution.

[Rooster]

I'm sure people just wanted more reforms of the system to allow more control of their lives instead of sending it to the dustbin of history. I've spoken to a few people from eastern Europe about it and that's generally what they said, but I'm not sure how much of that is just nostalgia.

[Aurorus Ruber]

Something that I've often wondered myself. The impression one gets here is that the general public hated the Soviet government and that it collapsed largely because they opposed and resisted it.

[Rafiq]

I suppose it depends who you were.

The USSR, by no means, was a great place to live in, although it was much better than Russia today for the majority of people.

It really depends on who you were. If you're a Capitalist in Moscow today making millions, than of course the collapse was very good. But if you're a homeless alcoholic without a Job, or an average worker for that matter, the collapse was terrible.

The collapse did however, give Russia better consumer goods and even better food, from all over the world. This has little to do with capitalism though, and more to do with not being isolated from the world's finest resources.

The public did resist Soviet Authority. They didn't like the government. But they hate the system now more then they hated the Soviet Bureaucracy.

[Born in the USSR]

In 1985 at the start of perestroyka top Soviet leaders really didn't have a great authority with the people,but the authority of Soviet system was still high.There was a certain dissatisfaction with the existing shortcomings,but I must say that nobody wanted to destroy socialism.Gorbachov began his policy of destroying the socialism under the slogan of improvement of socialism.Open anti-communist propaganda in the Soviet Union started only in 1990; 5 years of brainwashing was necessary to prepare people to accept it - think over this fact.Why it was able to convince people of the advantages of capitalism? Because in the USSR lived the generation who have never seen it,they simply didn't have immunity from it.I remember a worker who yelled at meetings:"I'm tired of working for commies,I want to work for an owner and to travel to Canary at holidays!"He was sure that such would be life under capitalism.In 1990s he took to drink and died and his son now works for the owner for a song.In 1991 people divided into two parts. The first part was in the euphoria of the destruction of socialism;a few years after the euphoria was over and it turned into an aversion to capitalism. Another part started an active struggle against the Yeltsin regime, which ended in October 3-4,1993 with revolt in Moscow and shooting the Parlament.In 1996 at presidential election failed an attempt to legitimate dismissal of Yeltsin and the apathy began in the community.

[ComradeOm]

Majority of the population wished for its continuationIf that were true then it would not have fallen. That the dreams of the early 1990s quickly gave way to the horrors of shock capitalism should not detract that there was almost no will to maintain the USSR in 1990/91. Opinion polls from 2006 that display nostalgia for the Soviet era are much less important than attitudes (which were very much pro-capitalist) at the time

[Red Future]

Do you have any statistics that back this up? I've heard differing things about the fall of the USSR

Check out the 1991 referendum results

On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991) 76.4% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.

[Red Future]

If that were true then it would not have fallen. That the dreams of the early 1990s quickly gave way to the horrors of shock capitalism should not detract that there was almost no will to maintain the USSR in 1990/91. Opinion polls from 2006 that display nostalgia for the Soviet era are much less important than attitudes (which were very much pro-capitalist) at the time

Its true there was real impetous in some reformist elements of the Communist Party to take the path of the Chinese and the Vietnamese and adapt similar a market system and embrace Capitalism in the process.Yeltsin s shock doctrine was neither wanted or liked though.

[Queercommie Girl]

If that were true then it would not have fallen. That the dreams of the early 1990s quickly gave way to the horrors of shock capitalism should not detract that there was almost no will to maintain the USSR in 1990/91. Opinion polls from 2006 that display nostalgia for the Soviet era are much less important than attitudes (which were very much pro-capitalist) at the time

More Western-style liberal wishful thinking. Fact is, the majority of the population in the USSR did not wish for the Soviet system to collapse, but due to the reign of the corrupt revisionist bureaucrats, they had no say in the matter.

The Soviet Union was not overthrown by a revolution from below, but by a counter-revolution from the top.

[ComradeOm]

More Western-style liberal wishful thinking. Fact is, the majority of the population in the USSR did not wish for the Soviet system to collapse but due to the reign of the corrupt revisionist bureaucrats, they had no say in the matterIn 1991 the Soviet system was entirely discredited. It had been decades since it was genuinely popular but the terminal economic collapse of the end 1980s put paid to any real desire amongst the Soviet citizens to maintain it. This was crucial as it robbed the state of any legitimacy that it may have relied upon to survive. Hence when the counter-revolution (or counter-counter-revolution if you want) came in August 1991 it was not a popular protest or rising but an attempted coup by an isolated fragment of the ruling bureaucracy

Incidentally, this coup attempt came less than a month after the electorate had overwhelmingly voted for Yeltsin's explicit promises of change and capitalism. (The CP candidate received a mere 16% of the vote. Square that with your "fact".) People may have still wanted to maintain the USSR in some form but it was clear that the Soviet system itself was on the way out in favour of Western-style capitalism

[eric922]

Check out the 1991 referendum results

On March 17, 1991, in a Union-wide referendum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991) 76.4% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.
So if the majority voted to reform the Soviet Union and not replace it, than why did it fall? Did the powers that be just tell the people to go to hell?

[GPDP]

So if the majority voted to reform the Soviet Union and not replace it, than why did it fall? Did the powers that be just tell the people to go to hell?

Pretty much, yeah.

Though the fact that there was so little resistance to the measures to restore capitalism is a testament to the utter bankruptcy of the Soviet system and its efforts to demobilize and demoralize the Soviet workers, such that they hardly lifted a finger to save it. In a way, the fall of the Soviet Union was very much a beast of its own creation.

[ComradeOm]

So if the majority voted to reform the Soviet Union and not replace it, than why did it fall?To play Devil's advocate, why shouldn't it have? Given that capitalism was very clearly on the way in (and the referendum was not about reforming the Soviet economy or the nature of its society) what impetuous was there for maintaining such a state? Or to put it this way: how could you have a Union that was neither Soviet nor Socialist?

There were probably better alternatives than the collapse into petty nationstates that we saw historically. But without a real need to maintain the Union the Soviet ruling class fragmented as elements sought to carve out their own personal empires from the rotting Soviet corpse