Ex soviet block kid here, even got CCCP stamp in an old passport.
This might be true, but it might be worth considering that by late 70 it would not really matter that much. You could hardly get anything with the money left, basic food products included.
Buying meat in a store would be a thing of a chance or you got nasty scraps, and there was really little other options beyond popatos and a few other very basic foods. In my country most of 80s people would que for most of the day to buy toilet paper, and one your run around the city based on rumor on where something could be gotten. This created a massive black market, but there prices would make an average pay worthless. And also any western foreign currency would be worth much more than local, as they were key for smugglers, anyone looking to escape to the other side and tightly controlled (if you were even given a passport and were allowed to travel abroad you could buy a very small amount of currency, much below what would be needed to sustain oneself).
Anyways stuff like this, institutional inertia and stiffness, plus repression of any attempts at change created a feedback loop of a massive shadow economy and corruption that chocked the system and created a deeply pathological culture that has been an issue in the region since.
The experiences of my family (in the USSR) were not as you describe. Things were cheap and necessities were available. Getting some things was more difficult for non-price reasons. That also seems to align with studies like what the CIA conducted about access to nutrition in the USSR.
Overall, that was a significant improvement over what came before, as well as over what came after.
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that the USSR ended on a low note.
Decades of economic isolation by western powers, constant conflict with the usa, loss of faith in the government through some of the destalinisation measures and liberalisation of the economy all took their toll.
If history had gone a bit differently and revolutions elsewhere hadn’t been stamped out paving the way for the rise of the Nazis and the ascension of the USA on the back of nuclear horror things might’ve gone a lot better.
They would not, the very the idea was corrupted to the core. By stamping out Prague spring the Chinese scenario of limited or experimental capitalism was made impossible. It would collapsed on itself anyways.
Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
I have many friends that were children of the block like you. Talk to them and they all share your same opinion. It is fucked up today the western youth is now glazing on the old USSR days when you talk to everyone who experienced them and they were garbage.
Personally speaking I don’t want to have to wait in a bread line every morning.
I never realised Lemmy is full of 60+ year olds who would have been old enough to have any meaningful experience of the USSR. (And even then at 61 you’d only just be catching the end where everything was going to shit due to many complex factors).
Ok so you were 14 when the USSR fell and 8 when Gorbachev came to power. You were a child. At that age you simply don’t have the depth or breath of experience for it to be meaningful. Same as 14 or 8 year olds now don’t have the experience to really have wider political input. If you haven’t worked, had to get a house, engaged with the state using your “experience” to derive conclusions about it is nonsense. Not to say younger people can’t have opinions but they simply can’t defer to experience as generally they lack it but this can be substituted with study, statistics etc.
Edit:
Also again you were 8 when Gorbachev came to power and everything was going to shit you have 0 experience of the pre Gorbachev era. Appealing to personal experience to draw conclusions about that is even more nonsense.
Personal experience with the USSR? None. But I never claimed to have any. Otherwise experience: I’m Chinese originally rural but through scholarships I was put in the position to be able to earn a PhD and 2 masters and now live in a city. But this really has nothing to do with what we were talking about. I never claimed to have personal experience of the USSR.
Pray tell what makes you an expert?
I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I’ve read many studies and books about the USSR as well as my second masters being in Marxist Theory so I would call myself relatively informed.
All of this is however a dodge that has nothing to do with the point at hand which is that appealing to experience when in reality you have effectively 0 makes no sense. If you’ve never worked or engaged with any facets of the state appealing to experience to draw general conclusions about it is plainly ridiculous.
To get a good view on the matter, it would require having worked and having gone through a process of getting new housing both before Gorbachyov and after the fall of the USSR. Something tells me that people who earn, say, 30 000 or so rubles (or an analogous sum) per month today were in a much better spot back before Gorbachyov.
I won’t disagree but you’re (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
As already stated and the easiest example is I’ve been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours. As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it. Is this really what people want to glaze?
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
I won’t disagree but you’re (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
In what way would this be a shifting of goalposts?
A child is likely not going to have much familiarity with important things that are important in this context - in particular, things like getting a job, prices compared to salaries, not having to deal with layoffs, and being able to get new housing. Those things do need to be accounted for.
We also need to take into consideration that Gorbachyov’s administration significantly reduced the living standards, and it was his goal to dismantle the USSR. So, we should compare the years before him with the full on restoration of capitalism that people keep claiming to be an improvement.
As already stated and the easiest example is I’ve been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours.
Not great that they had to wait for hours, but this is an inconvenience compared to not having access to food at all. Going to remind you that many people do die by being unable to access food under capitalism. Would you actually say that the situation in, say, Africa, or non-socialist Asia, or in post-USSR Russia and Ukraine was somehow better?
As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it.
You are talking about a place with “food deserts”, and where people do die by being unable to access food at all.
Also, consider that most of the world does not live in the Imperial Core. Rather, the Imperial Core’s wealth is predicated on plundering the rest of the world. You likely only considered the living conditions in the USSR and in the Imperial Core (and not the Russian Empire, not the post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and not elsewhere).
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
“Corruption” is a very nebulous accusation that liberals love to throw at NATO’s enemies. Anyway, can’t exactly compete in corruption with states that have literal lobbying.
You are keep implying that the vast majority of people lived better in the Russian Empire, and that praising the Russian Empire this way is somehow not edgy.
I don’t think I’ve seen even a single person on ml claim personal experience but instead deffer to data and other sources which is entirely valid in my opinion
Ex soviet block kid here, even got CCCP stamp in an old passport.
This might be true, but it might be worth considering that by late 70 it would not really matter that much. You could hardly get anything with the money left, basic food products included.
Buying meat in a store would be a thing of a chance or you got nasty scraps, and there was really little other options beyond popatos and a few other very basic foods. In my country most of 80s people would que for most of the day to buy toilet paper, and one your run around the city based on rumor on where something could be gotten. This created a massive black market, but there prices would make an average pay worthless. And also any western foreign currency would be worth much more than local, as they were key for smugglers, anyone looking to escape to the other side and tightly controlled (if you were even given a passport and were allowed to travel abroad you could buy a very small amount of currency, much below what would be needed to sustain oneself). Anyways stuff like this, institutional inertia and stiffness, plus repression of any attempts at change created a feedback loop of a massive shadow economy and corruption that chocked the system and created a deeply pathological culture that has been an issue in the region since.
The experiences of my family (in the USSR) were not as you describe. Things were cheap and necessities were available. Getting some things was more difficult for non-price reasons. That also seems to align with studies like what the CIA conducted about access to nutrition in the USSR.
Overall, that was a significant improvement over what came before, as well as over what came after.
I think it’s pretty uncontroversial that the USSR ended on a low note.
Decades of economic isolation by western powers, constant conflict with the usa, loss of faith in the government through some of the destalinisation measures and liberalisation of the economy all took their toll.
If history had gone a bit differently and revolutions elsewhere hadn’t been stamped out paving the way for the rise of the Nazis and the ascension of the USA on the back of nuclear horror things might’ve gone a lot better.
They would not, the very the idea was corrupted to the core. By stamping out Prague spring the Chinese scenario of limited or experimental capitalism was made impossible. It would collapsed on itself anyways. Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
You saw the results of capitalism’s shock therapy. I dunno how you can be this dumb at blaming at a problem on something’s ABSCENCE
Suppressing NATO-backed nazis is not a bad thing, contrary to what you claim.
So you’ve seen the results of neoliberalism and you blame Communism for that?
I’ve added some citations to your post:
[1] [2]
it is known ↩︎
my vibes tell me ↩︎
I have many friends that were children of the block like you. Talk to them and they all share your same opinion. It is fucked up today the western youth is now glazing on the old USSR days when you talk to everyone who experienced them and they were garbage.
Personally speaking I don’t want to have to wait in a bread line every morning.
You know what happens at the end of the bread line?
You get bread. For free.
Here you have to wait in line too. But when you get to the end, you have to pay, and millions of people can no longer afford it.
I’m 41 in the USA and there are blocks and clocks of tent cities in my city.
I never realised Lemmy is full of 60+ year olds who would have been old enough to have any meaningful experience of the USSR. (And even then at 61 you’d only just be catching the end where everything was going to shit due to many complex factors).
Ok so you were 14 when the USSR fell and 8 when Gorbachev came to power. You were a child. At that age you simply don’t have the depth or breath of experience for it to be meaningful. Same as 14 or 8 year olds now don’t have the experience to really have wider political input. If you haven’t worked, had to get a house, engaged with the state using your “experience” to derive conclusions about it is nonsense. Not to say younger people can’t have opinions but they simply can’t defer to experience as generally they lack it but this can be substituted with study, statistics etc.
Edit:
Also again you were 8 when Gorbachev came to power and everything was going to shit you have 0 experience of the pre Gorbachev era. Appealing to personal experience to draw conclusions about that is even more nonsense.
Lol I’m Canadian I’m talking about my friends with the real world experience growing up in the bloc.
And to throw is back how old are you? What is your experience? Pray tell what makes you an expert?
Mid-30’s
Personal experience with the USSR? None. But I never claimed to have any. Otherwise experience: I’m Chinese originally rural but through scholarships I was put in the position to be able to earn a PhD and 2 masters and now live in a city. But this really has nothing to do with what we were talking about. I never claimed to have personal experience of the USSR.
I wouldn’t call myself an expert but I’ve read many studies and books about the USSR as well as my second masters being in Marxist Theory so I would call myself relatively informed.
All of this is however a dodge that has nothing to do with the point at hand which is that appealing to experience when in reality you have effectively 0 makes no sense. If you’ve never worked or engaged with any facets of the state appealing to experience to draw general conclusions about it is plainly ridiculous.
Not the person whom you asked, but
To get a good view on the matter, it would require having worked and having gone through a process of getting new housing both before Gorbachyov and after the fall of the USSR. Something tells me that people who earn, say, 30 000 or so rubles (or an analogous sum) per month today were in a much better spot back before Gorbachyov.
I won’t disagree but you’re (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
As already stated and the easiest example is I’ve been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours. As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it. Is this really what people want to glaze?
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
In what way would this be a shifting of goalposts?
A child is likely not going to have much familiarity with important things that are important in this context - in particular, things like getting a job, prices compared to salaries, not having to deal with layoffs, and being able to get new housing. Those things do need to be accounted for.
We also need to take into consideration that Gorbachyov’s administration significantly reduced the living standards, and it was his goal to dismantle the USSR. So, we should compare the years before him with the full on restoration of capitalism that people keep claiming to be an improvement.
Not great that they had to wait for hours, but this is an inconvenience compared to not having access to food at all. Going to remind you that many people do die by being unable to access food under capitalism. Would you actually say that the situation in, say, Africa, or non-socialist Asia, or in post-USSR Russia and Ukraine was somehow better?
You are talking about a place with “food deserts”, and where people do die by being unable to access food at all.
Also, consider that most of the world does not live in the Imperial Core. Rather, the Imperial Core’s wealth is predicated on plundering the rest of the world. You likely only considered the living conditions in the USSR and in the Imperial Core (and not the Russian Empire, not the post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and not elsewhere).
“Corruption” is a very nebulous accusation that liberals love to throw at NATO’s enemies. Anyway, can’t exactly compete in corruption with states that have literal lobbying.
Meanwhile every edgy teenager on .ml is an expert who lived through the entirety of the soviet union
When you can’t attack the message, simply attack the messenger.
Of course, this will raise questions later about why a bunch of edgy teenagers are better at predicting the course of world events than you.
You are keep implying that the vast majority of people lived better in the Russian Empire, and that praising the Russian Empire this way is somehow not edgy.
I don’t think I’ve seen even a single person on ml claim personal experience but instead deffer to data and other sources which is entirely valid in my opinion