I saw all of this on the evening news, everyday for years, when I was a kid. It always leaves me baffled when the topic of the Soviet collapse comes up and boomers (who saw the same news) act like this was a victory for the people of the USSR.
What the fuck are they talking about? I think they've so thoroughly dehumanized these people that all of the terrible shit they saw on the news just didn't seem like a big deal. I guess if all of the images of post collapse deprivation were going to be impactful they wouldn't have been broadcast.
I think Americans were so deeply propagandized about the USSR that they believed any real suffering the people endured under capitalism was a balloon party compared to what life was like under communism in their imaginations. Absolutely insane shit like “if they find you own a Bible you are immediately executed”.
And for the more economically “sophisticated”, I remember hearing a lot of “well the Soviet economy was so inefficient that some pain must come along with restructuring, but they will be better off in the end”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/18rsqyx/today_marks_the_32nd_anniversary_of_the/
I saw all of this on the evening news, everyday for years, when I was a kid. It always leaves me baffled when the topic of the Soviet collapse comes up and boomers (who saw the same news) act like this was a victory for the people of the USSR.
What the fuck are they talking about? I think they've so thoroughly dehumanized these people that all of the terrible shit they saw on the news just didn't seem like a big deal. I guess if all of the images of post collapse deprivation were going to be impactful they wouldn't have been broadcast.
I think Americans were so deeply propagandized about the USSR that they believed any real suffering the people endured under capitalism was a balloon party compared to what life was like under communism in their imaginations. Absolutely insane shit like “if they find you own a Bible you are immediately executed”.
And for the more economically “sophisticated”, I remember hearing a lot of “well the Soviet economy was so inefficient that some pain must come along with restructuring, but they will be better off in the end”.