It's also unfalsifiable (unless you can read people's minds) and ignores that severe drop in material conditions that came in the wake of the USSR's dissolution.
I saw a documentary about Gogol Bordello recently which made me so sad because I actually loved their “Gypsy punk” pan-immigrant-experience punk shtick but he was like “we fled communism, in 1994” and like fuck man you were literally fleeing capitalism.
He also included a scene where he performed a song with Ukrainian soldiers who just happened to have clarinets and accordions ready for the occasion, and another scene where he played to Ukrainian “gypsys” at a special refugee center just for “Gypsy’s”, itself a disconcerting fact, and in this scene I noticed they were lighting the scene with car lights. The car lights pointing directly into the face of the refugees who were watching him play guitar, you could even see them squinting at the pain of it but they kept watching and clapping anyway for some reason and like holy fucking shit he’s dead to me now.
If you told this story with all of its absurd details but changed some of the proper nouns, people would eat it up as an example of the evil communist regime's buffoonish propaganda.
"Thats just because they miss being an empire!!! English people miss the British Empire too!"
While I don't think we need to question their motives anyway, simply looking at the material realities of Russia and other former SSRs really does explain why people would feel that way.
Look at any of the data regarding economic output, development, quality of life, etc in the former USSR in the 1980s and then the years after. Without fail, you will see a steadily-increasing number throughout the 80s. Then, shortly before or right after the fall of the USSR, you can see things starting to trend down. This downward trend continues through the 90s to the point where things are significantly worse than they were in the 80s under communism - not just "low growth", but actual declines. Then things do eventually start to turn around, and most former SSRs (notably, not Ukraine even pre-war) eventually just get back to their communism numbers in aggregate. Though it needs to be pointed out that these aggregate measures don't reflect economic distribution within the population, so for the average Russian worker for example, it's highly likely they are no better off now than they were in 1989 materially. And it all came at the cost of incredible misery, destruction of society, and 2-3 million excess deaths in the period. Hell, even by just the aggregate economic measures, had the USSR just continued on and delivered fairly mediocre growth, Russia and most other SSRs would probably be better off today anyway.
Even if I wasn't a communist, I cannot fathom how anyone (at least who isn't some petite boug scum) who remembers the USSR wouldn't rather be living under it versus what they have now.
The people hated the fall of the USSR and what happened in the aftermath, to the point that various socialist, communist, and socdem parties were set to take over the goverment in the mid-90s. But then Boris Yeltsin - with help from Bill Clinton and the US - orchestrated things so that could not happen and consolidated power within the presidency. A move that certainly did not create any unintended consequences down the line.
Here, ill do op's reply for them
"Thats just because they miss being an empire!!! English people miss the British Empire too!"
This is of course, chauvinistic and reductive, but its the reponse ive seen.
It's also unfalsifiable (unless you can read people's minds) and ignores that severe drop in material conditions that came in the wake of the USSR's dissolution.
I saw a documentary about Gogol Bordello recently which made me so sad because I actually loved their “Gypsy punk” pan-immigrant-experience punk shtick but he was like “we fled communism, in 1994” and like fuck man you were literally fleeing capitalism.
He also included a scene where he performed a song with Ukrainian soldiers who just happened to have clarinets and accordions ready for the occasion, and another scene where he played to Ukrainian “gypsys” at a special refugee center just for “Gypsy’s”, itself a disconcerting fact, and in this scene I noticed they were lighting the scene with car lights. The car lights pointing directly into the face of the refugees who were watching him play guitar, you could even see them squinting at the pain of it but they kept watching and clapping anyway for some reason and like holy fucking shit he’s dead to me now.
If you told this story with all of its absurd details but changed some of the proper nouns, people would eat it up as an example of the evil communist regime's buffoonish propaganda.
While I don't think we need to question their motives anyway, simply looking at the material realities of Russia and other former SSRs really does explain why people would feel that way.
Look at any of the data regarding economic output, development, quality of life, etc in the former USSR in the 1980s and then the years after. Without fail, you will see a steadily-increasing number throughout the 80s. Then, shortly before or right after the fall of the USSR, you can see things starting to trend down. This downward trend continues through the 90s to the point where things are significantly worse than they were in the 80s under communism - not just "low growth", but actual declines. Then things do eventually start to turn around, and most former SSRs (notably, not Ukraine even pre-war) eventually just get back to their communism numbers in aggregate. Though it needs to be pointed out that these aggregate measures don't reflect economic distribution within the population, so for the average Russian worker for example, it's highly likely they are no better off now than they were in 1989 materially. And it all came at the cost of incredible misery, destruction of society, and 2-3 million excess deaths in the period. Hell, even by just the aggregate economic measures, had the USSR just continued on and delivered fairly mediocre growth, Russia and most other SSRs would probably be better off today anyway.
Even if I wasn't a communist, I cannot fathom how anyone (at least who isn't some petite boug scum) who remembers the USSR wouldn't rather be living under it versus what they have now.
The people hated the fall of the USSR and what happened in the aftermath, to the point that various socialist, communist, and socdem parties were set to take over the goverment in the mid-90s. But then Boris Yeltsin - with help from Bill Clinton and the US - orchestrated things so that could not happen and consolidated power within the presidency. A move that certainly did not create any unintended consequences down the line.