On Wednesday, August 17, 2022 at 4:07:17 PM UTC, David P. wrote:
> QUORA: Why do so many Russians seem to miss the Soviet Union? Do they really miss standing in line to buy food all day, shortages, famine, political repression, KGB rule, and the poor standard of living?
> Answered by Jon Shore, Jul 25
> I lived and worked in the Soviet Union during the mid to late 80’s and remember it well. My current family is Russian and most of them grew up in Soviet Latvia.
> There is certainly some nostalgia for the old Soviet era with some of my relatives. This nostalgia is based on some memories that are cleansed of the darkness by time and distance. They forget the bad and remember the good. The nostalgia is also heavily promoted by Russian media. Always showing old films from the period, promoting musical artists from that time who sing all the old favorites. Also, re-writing the history of the time. There is never any mention of the negatives from that time in the media.
> Personally the only things I am nostalgic for are my friends, cheap concerts and seeing the sites without any crowds.
>
> The Soviet system was like a vampire sucking the life blood out of everyone and every country it touched and siphoning all that energy and wealth back to a few people in Moscow. It was a system based on fear, corruption, lies and propaganda. Most post Soviet countries, including Russia, are still struggling with the results of this ‘experiment’.
>
> While most former Soviet republics are far better off now and are even better off than Russia, there is still a great deal of work to do to bring them up to western economic and infrastructure standards and to cleanse the old ubiquitous Soviet corruption.
> ----------
> [COMMENTS]
> Mateusz Wesołowski · Jul 25
> The answer is simple, people are nostalgic for when they were young and strong. Just happens to be that time was under communism for 40+ year olds.
> -----------
> Jean-Pierre Van Melis · Jul 25
> In short…. “Happiness is a good health and a bad memory”
> It’s human to remember the good and forget the bad. If you’re incapable of forgetting the bad it’s a recipe for a short life. It’s a survival mechanism.
> The ones still living now, by this definition, have forgotten the bad….
> ---------------
> Mateusz Wesołowski · Jul 25
> Sure, and that’s understandable.
> But it’s important to remember. Just because someone lived through communism and remembers it fondly - does not mean that he’s an objective source of information.
>
> Also while there were many countries that were part of the soviet union or it’s puppet - we have to remember that the decisions were made in Moscow. Most other nations inside the soviet union considered soviet occupation a boot on their neck, when that boot was taken away they were happy to regain freedom and spoke openly about the horrors they suffered during communism. With Russia nobody took the boot of their neck… it was them that were doing the neck stomping.
>
> It’s hard to believe but even recently I’ve seen Russians saying that they miss the “good relations” they had with all the other communist countries during SU. The same time we remember as time of poverty and brutal oppression by a tyrannical regime, they remember as time of “good relations”. That’s soviet propaganda, but people believe it to this day. And sure the relations were “good” on the surface. When the relations were breaking down and people were rebelling Soviet union simply sent tanks. But the Russian people weren’t told that the people hate Soviet union and rebel against communism - instead they were told that it’s evil capitalist subversives that are committing a coup and soviet union is simply helping it’s brotherly nation that will be grateful to them for their help.
>
> This is hard to understand for me. In Poland we also had communism and propaganda but people never believed it and always looked between the lines. Smuggled forbidden books from the west and listened to western radio stations - even though it could easily get you a prison sentence and serious problems for your family. I have a suspicion that it took mental gymnastics and some effort by Russians not to know the truth. Since I spoke with a a Russian individual from that time that claimed the people knew the government was lying - they just chose not to learn the truth since it was dangerous.
>
> They may be remembering it with rose tinted glasses since admitting to a life built on lies now after they already lived it might be quite painful or worse shameful.
>
> With Russia there is another aspect, while it fared relatively better then other countries be it directly annexed or puppets during communism, it did collapse economically at the end when all those countries it controlled broke free. Between 1990 and 2000 Russia had a period of extreme poverty and collapse of society. Since that period was after the fall of communism many people who went through it consider communism a better time then the lean years that materialized after communism collapsed. They don’t see that it’s that very communism that caused the years of poverty.
>
> The Russian people living today have a sad history with plenty of suffering. I would be sympathetic to them if they didn’t time after time decide to spread that suffering to all the nations around them. Even today.
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> Jean-Pierre Van Melis · Jul 26
> It works for us too…
> We remember well how miserable life was in the Sovjet-Union. This gave us a good feeling about not having to live in that continuously expanding prison….
> It literally had a fence around it!!
> -----------------
> Dave Kurtz · Jul 25
> THANK You SIR for this very HONEST OBSERVATION; it Shows that you Did Not DRINK the kool-Aid )POLAND Is now a Very Blessed NATION; and OPENING UP the Door for the WOMEN and CHILDREN; fleeing the Russian WAR CRIMES
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> Barbra Reed · Jul 29
> Thank you for your wise, insightful & detailed response. I hope that many people find your response.
> ----------------
> Michael Mannino · Aug 3
> Interesting comments. The heart of the USSR was Russia, a deeply paranoid, tyrannical state. I thought that Russia was a prisoner of its corrupt, tyrannical rulers. Now I see with the Ukraine war that a large part of the Russian mentality is conquest, brutality, and paranoia. Putin and his henchmen are evil for sure. Putin seems to have backing from a large part of the country although support is rather shallow due to fear of reprisals and unending propaganda. Russia is a pariah state now.
> ----------------
> Mateusz Wesołowski · Aug 3
> It is. The problem is we don’t subscribe to their ideology - so we don’t want to destroy them as they do with their enemies - this means that even if they are defeated we will still have to live with them. This means that unless we want a repeat we need to convince them. Otherwise the defeat will only breed resentment.
>
> In the end it’s them that have to want to change. Who knows, maybe sanctions will help with that. But with all the conformism i see in Russia today i doubt it will be anytime soon.
>
> Unless some factors change or we find a new approach.
> ---------------
> Jean-Pierre Van Melis · Mon
> Let them live and “develop” on their own as was done in the 20th century. In the end they will notice (again) that people are better of somewhere else.
>
> Somehow they persist now they weren’t and prefer to listen to Putin’s fairy tales.
>
> I don’t think they can pull it off another time to isolate their people from the rest of the world.
>
> In the beginning of the 20th century most people hardly left Russia, like most people in the western world were not travelling either. It wasn’t that hard to put a cage around it in the 2nd part of the 20th century if the cage was big enough for them to notice.
>
> Now many more people are travelling, including Russians. A new cage will be something they notice. They will also be able to see the difference in life beyond the cage and their own.
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> Mateusz Wesołowski · Mon
> Possibly. Hopefully. Preferably before they are against a wall. Because that might force them to the negotiating table, or it may force them to fight to the death. They are proud people after all.
>
> I’m not negating what you say.
>
> I just think that there is also a risk that such isolation will fuel their aggression.
>
> I know too little to asses this risk properly. I don’t think anyone can do so atm - to many variables to calculate it with any degree of precision.
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> Focusontruth · Sun
> Our youthful years are always happy no matter what the circumstances and we would love to return to the careless times before having children and adult responsibilities. My maternal grandfather took his family from Russia during golodomor in Kuban into present day Iran. They lived in extreme poverty and threat of imprisonment, yet my mother, in her 90’s now, relives them like they were years of honey and gold.
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> Vaughan Pratt · Jul 25
> My one visit to Russia was in July 1992 with my wife and two school children, where we spent time in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Tver on the Volga where I had been invited to speak at a conference.
>
> For context, at the end of the previous year Russian President Boris Yeltsin had declared that all activities of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were illegal on Russian territory. As a result, a few weeks later the Soviet Union’s president Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, and by Christmas the Soviet Union no longer existed. We were there only half a year after those events.
>
> What we saw on some streets in Moscow in this immediately-post-Soviet period was thousands of people lining those streets elbow to the elbow, each with one product for sale, such as a lipstick. If they sold it they could go home for the day. A few miles further out we found a giant flea market with hundreds of tables. In the Red Square itself, only a block from the third-floor apartment where we were staying, things seemed relatively normal except for the ominous-looking apartment guards seated outside doing what would count as doorman duty in New York.
>
> A little over a year after our visit, the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis occurred, followed shortly thereafter by the adoption of a whole new Russian Constitution.
>
> In 1992 we were just innocent westerners with no understanding of the previous year’s dramatic changes, nor of the following year’s further changes. It was a very strange period to be a tourist in Russia. We came away mystified as to how Russians could find that sort of life tolerable. But then we also had no idea of whether things had been better or worse for them two years ago.
>
> What Yeltsin was up to while were there can be seen here. Not that we were at all aware of this at the time, even though we’d visited the Kremlin while in Moscow.
> --------------
> Joe Trapp · Jul 27
> I was in Russia in 1991, two months before Gorbachev was detained in the coup attempt and during the Russian elections. While most of the younger population, particularly educated ones, were relieved and hopeful of the growing freedom and contact with the outside world, there were a few segments of society that were either overwhelmed by the changes or dismayed entirely.
>
> First of all, the military. There were lots of uniformed military just walking aimlessly around. This was particularly true outside of Russia in countries like East Germany, where completely broke Russian soldiers were walking around museums and parks without really looking at anything; they were there because they could go for free and pass the time, day after day. There was a sense of “loss of honor.”
>
> Second, the elderly. While they are almost all dead now, I’m sure their predicament chilled many Russians. Their pensions were worthless, and they were begging in the streets in a very dignified but humiliated way. Our first stop getting off a plane in Leningrad was the Chesme Church, and along the walkway on either side were extremely wrinkled elderly, their hands out and their heads bowed.
>
> Last, there was a huge population of people who were like aquarium fish suddenly thrown into a fast running stream. This was very difficult for many people. It wasn’t all MacDonald's and Hollywood movies. And still there was a desperate Soviet-era lack of stuff. I went to GUM in Moscow, which was very beautiful, but very empty. I went to a camera store their that had film boxes to the roof on display. When I wanted to buy some, I was informed they were all empty. There were long lines everywhere, and often people would get into a cue without even knowing what was at the other end. We waited in one and got an ice cream cone.
>
> Safety was also becoming somewhat of an issue. We saw a few fights, got warned off by a couple of gangsters.
>
> It was a tough transition, and not everyone made it to the other side, but for a large portion, it worked out. People at least want to be connected to the Western world. I have relatives in Germany, some who were officials in the DDR (East Germany) and staunch communists. The highest ranking, in fact, who had Olympic athletes and generals as neighbors, was a Nazi officer during WWII. They too had a bit of a tough transition, but none of them have looked back at the DDR as the good old days. Even for the privileged (especially for them?) it was kind of a prison.
>
> Most people just want peace, security, freedom, and prosperity, but it’s difficult to maintain all four at a high level and more difficult to improve upon. What happened in Russia immediately after 1991 was similar to 1900s immigrants coming to America thinking “the streets were paved with gold.” It was a big disappointment to many when they found that prosperity did not come easily and immediately.
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> Barbra Reed · Jul 29
> Thank you for your outstanding response and your personal insights. This is why I come to Quora. We appreciate your first had account of your life situation/ encounter in post-Soviet Russia. Posts such as yours help us expand our understanding of the world and of history. Thank you!
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> Focusontruth · Sun
> Thankfully my family came out of this phase with the help of my father visiting and helping them financially. He came to the US from a German prison of war camp for the Polish army (he was from Byelorus) and Russian POW’s were not lucky at all. Our country was great after WWII because it took in refugees legally and the economy was great enough for them to prosper. After 50 years he was able to come home and see his two siblings before they all passed on within years of the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. The Russian Soviet elite wanted the common man to return to communism and so they kept products in warehouses and made artificial shortages to push people to want to return to the old ways. Thank God that it all went sour.. Putin may be a villain for the West, but he is definitely a person who put Russia back on its feet. Russia was strong before communism and so he has done a lot for his country. Unlike our president Biden, who was done everything for the globalists to destroy our country, Putin does have Russia’s best interests in the forefront. So now globalists like Klaus Schwab are using the same tactics to take control of the globe. What’s in store….artificial famines…Gates buying American farmland to destroy food supply…yada yada…when will America wake up??? Lobbying is destroying our country!! Spread the word.
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> Michael Durham · Sat
> Very interesting just about the time putin was beginning his quest to be the richest man in the world 200–400 billion. Humans really can be despicable.