Has anyone encountered someone from a country that has had socialist in the past falling for propaganda.
I have a couple friends who know I’m a ML and its difficult to try to discuss communism around them because of how they fall for the anti red propaganda.
I can discuss the issues with them but they often dismiss everything at themselves being an authority on the subject as I do not live in a post socialist society. I ususally write them off as impossible to enter reasonable discussions with and also I focus mostly on the people within my region to agitate. But occasionally they’re a mutual friend or are in the vicinity of the discussion and return to the same old things.
Unnecessary but relevant story:
There was even an incident with a German I met at a party. I talked for a bit about normal stuff and mentioned how hard living was for me in my country because of capitalism and he shut me down not wanting to talk about politics which ofc I respect its a party. But later when I was discussing the feminist progress in socialist countries have accomplished and their impact on our country and culture with a professor I was totally chattin up(she wrote her final thesis on a similar matter), they came over and interrupted the conversation with their own opinions on the matter. Mostly referring to the history in Berlin of which ofc they hands personally experienced. Thankfully this didnt ruin the vibe and us socialists got social lmao.
But Its something I have encountered repeatedly and I’m not sure how to approach it. Especially as someone from a imperial country.
社会主義採用してた国の人とプロパガンダ信じるのがありますか？ 少し友達に僕はMLだを知ってます。プロパガンダひっかかるので、辺で共産主義について話は難しです。
あの人とよく話せますけど、よく僕の意見は無視されますよ。あの人にとって、あの人は共産主義について権威振舞いますよ。あの人とちゃんと話無理と思いますて, 同国人とに焦点変わります。しかし、よくあの人辺がいますて、よく僕の話に遮ります。どうしようかな
[Edit: lmao I misclicked or something into the wrong community ty for the replies tho]
The large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall.
Well, I appreciate the attempt to engage in conversation by throwing someone else’s biased work at me, but there’s a number of problems with this article. Not the sources, though. I will say that these opinion polls are reliable as opinion polls. There’s just a lot more happening.
This article sounds great to anyone that’s never talked to a single person that lived under a socialist government listed here about the actual day-to-day of life, or the countries that they neglected to mention.
First off, nostalgia is classically an unreliable metric for all humans. A guy that loved the Tito era for entirely sexist and exploitative reasons explained it to me like this: “You know why everyone says they liked it back when Tito was around? We’re old. Back then, our dicks worked and we were strong and the girls were pretty!” Gross, but he has a point.
Not that you can have reliable polling from the socialist era to compare. Literally – people couldn’t trust the government enough to give their honest opinion. Most people were afraid they would will suffer at the hands of the government if they give their opinions. Sounds swell. (https://yorktowninstitute.org/purposeless-polls-how-soviet-citizens-rebelled-against-a-regime-that-rejected-open-communication/)
Nostalgia is generally not accepted as an accurate form of analysis of the past or assessment of the present because humans tend to only remember the good times. Called “Rosy Retrospection" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_retrospection). And that nostalgia is triggered by the unhappiness of the present – not that there wasn’t unhappiness back then, too. Just that people ignore that part. (https://allaboutpsychology.substack.com/p/the-psychology-of-nostalgia-why-everything)
Personally, all the Tito- and Stalin-loving people I’ve met have been the most racist, conservative fuckers alive in any of these countries listed. The ones that say ,“the gays ruined Eurovision.” That’s a direct quote from a former co-worker that loved Tito so much because it was a dictatorship of personality that her parents aligned with (another word for this: corruption and preferential treatment). My partner and I say “the gays ruined Eurovision” sarcastically now when watching Eurovision because of her.
Hungary – case in point. The same proportion of people that put Victor fucking Orban in office are selling you on Ye Olde Socialism? Are you kidding me? My friend, it’s not a 1:1 relationship of “socialism was lovely and everything was great” and “old crusty fucks know what they’re talking about.” Holy shit – did you not even remember Orban existed and is Trump’s bestie?
Let’s look at the glaring omission: Albania. And use the same exact source as the Serbia survey, Balkan Insight. As it turns out, a lot of people in Albania didn’t enjoy socialism because Enver Hoxha turned it up to 11. It was North Korea levels of brutal. So when some people who simply don’t hate that era, it pisses off the people that suffered immensely under socialism.
https://balkaninsight.com/2016/12/12/albania-struggles-to-fight-the-root-of-communism-nostalgia-12-09-2016/btj/
perfect quote:
Oh, look – another connection between the far-right and nostalgia for the socialist era. Hmm….
Speaking of Albanians, you know who else didn’t love the socialist era and Tito? Albanians (and many other ethnicities) in Yugoslavia. The problem with socialism is its authoritarian structure lends itself perfectly to ethnic cleansing and marginalization. Albanians in Yugoslavia were more or less forbidden from participating in the economy. The Albanian reputation for sketchy shit is because on one side of the border Hoxha made life hell, and people that escaped had to hustle to survive outside of the regular economy.
All that Serbian nostalgia seems nice and lovely to you? Those Serbians also want to take back Kosovo and get rid of the Muslim population entirely. Remember? They fucking TRIED that already once. Did you forget a literal genocide in Yugoslavia as it collapsed? Ah yes, because we forget the bad things with nostalgia.
Let’s also look at how “Communist” Tito really was. Answer: Not very
Stalin and Tito got into a big fight because while Tito kept the word “socialist” in the name of the country, be liberalized the economy a lot. Which pissed Stalin off. It was the only thing that kept Yugoslavia from collapsing into an economic travesty that even the USSR couldn’t pull out of itself. https://schoolworkhelper.net/tito-stalin-dispute-1948-timeline-analysis-significance/
Part of this was economic relations between Yugoslavia and non-aligned movement countries in Africa. (https://afrinz.ru/en/2024/04/titos-african-diplomacy-how-yugoslavia-conquered-the-continent/) Tito engaged in trade – something not very socialist, right? Because he needed to to prop up the country’s economy. It’s a hard truth, but still a truth.
The result was that Bulgaria, Albania, and the USSR all saw Yugoslavia as something between threat and pariah. Albania built thousands of bunkers on its border with Yugoslavia as a jobs program utilizing Chinese cement imports, and used Yugoslavia’s “non-socialist” economic policies as a reason to paint them as a threat.
But doesn’t Bulgaria rank high on the nostalgia list? Sure, and it’s because joining the EU led to inflation and young people going to Germany for work. But shit – Bulgaria’s roads are nice. It’s not all bad.
Speaking of bad, the old guy that grounded the Tito love explained to me once why the Yugoslavs and Bulgarians didn’t get along back then or today. When this old guy was 18, he would get some blue jeans and like $20 in Yugo dinars and go into Bulgaria in his Yugo with some records and a full tank of gas. He would trade the jeans and records for Bulgarian Lev, and spend the weekend with sex workers and pretty much exploiting economic disparity at every angle. This is the nostalgia you think is so valid – people from one socialist country going to another that had it worse off and exploiting the people. Same thing the Russians did to Ukraine and Georgia.
I’m not saying that everything is nice in the post-European socialist world. It’s not. But accepting wistful nostalgia as honest truth is entirely foolish. Do I trust old white guys that loved the Jim Crow South to give me an honest assessment of the time and place as well? Fuck no. And because humans are humans, that’s a lot of what you’ll get.
But don’t take my word for it. Try reading books from people who recall the absurdly fucked up times.
Most books set in the USSR by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Secondhand Time — Svetlana Alexievich
Anything by Ismail Kadare
Gabriela Adameşteanu — Wasted Morning
The Truth That Killed - The Diary of Georgi Markov (killed by Bulgarian Secret Service for talking about life in soviet Bulgaria)
–Have you ever noticed how few books there are by people who just fucking loved living under any of these regimes? –
Now downvote away out of spite because I didn’t say you were right. It’s OK, I expected it all along.
The rise in the far-right in post-socialist countries is due to the systematic eradication of the left. These now capitalist countries are not democratic in any way, and their systems have largely been dominated by western finance capital.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was an anti-semitic Nazi sympathizer, and was arrested as such. His fiction is based on the folklore of the gulag system, and archival evidence and historical texts paint a much clearer picture of the soviet prison system. He’s essentially Yeonmi Park but for the USSR.
Here’s a real quote:
From an excellent thread going over his many ideological failings:
His own wife called the Gulag Archipelago “folklore,” why on Earth are you listening to a rabid anti-semite and fiction author over actual historical evidence?
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski’s Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Death rates spiked:
And wealth disparity skyrocketed alongside the newly impoverished majority:
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism and reintroduction of capitalism, and this is why the large majority of post-soviet citizens regret its fall. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
When you look at the US Empire and western Europe as having higher quality of life than the USSR, you are looking at the benefits of imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism and wishing the USSR also practiced this, instead of helping liberate colonies and the global south. Russia in particular was a semi-feudal backwater in 1917, and made it to space 5 decades later. The USSR was not the picture of wealth, but was for its time the picture of development and rapid progress.
The USSR was stable by the time it dissolved, it was dissolved from the top-down. It did not fail horribly, it was killed by a corrupt wing that had taken hold since Khruschev. It remained socialist until the very end, but by no means was it an inevitable failure, and modern socialist states have learned from it.
Removed by mod
Simple, fascism always glorifies the past, but tries to twist it into a point of national pride rather than socialist pride, combined with the fact that the left was thoroughly de-rooted. I didn’t debunk literally every author, because the first one I saw was a Nazi and a fiction writer. I also gave you many books written by people living in the USSR giving a positive overview of the experience, something you said is rare.
Right. You’ve got it.
The economic system means nothing for the nostalgia to work. The nostalgia is not for socialism. It was for anything else.
Anything. Not socialism specifically. Anything else.
So why lean so hard on a misunderstanding of those surveys you admit yourself is wrong?
Regretting the fall of the USSR and stating that they live worse lives economically than under socialism doesn’t make them all fascists. There’s a collective yearning for a time when life was better, that doesn’t make every one of them fascist, and the fact that fascists try to take advantage of this fact to gain power does not mean that socialism was secretly worse. I demonstrated numerous ways how the dissolution of socialism was disastrous to back this up, which you called “fangirling” (which itself is misogynistic and misgendering) and unrelated.
“Better” can also be defined as simply not going through the total collapse of one’s country. Stability, not economic power, has value. Humans do a lot to maintain homeostasis and low risk living. It’s a looooong timeline to unfuck a country. Generations, in fact. Not limited to post-Soviet bloc counties either. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, the US after the Civil War, Germany, Italy, Spain, Iraq. Take your pick.
How many East Germans “regretted” the collapse of the Nazi regime simply because their currency ceased to buy them food?
Stop thinking that an economic model of governance solves or causes all problems. Humans cause problems. They’ll use any economic model to show you how easy it is to fuck it up.
This is just you turning a blind eye to the very real fact that the reason metrics collapsed with the adoption of capitalism and the dissolution of socialism is because critical safety nets were destroyed, disparity skyrocketed, and profit became king. I didn’t give you hard evidence of the successes of socialism for no reason, but to definitively point out why socialism’s absence and capitalism’s presence has been disastrous. Because this is inconvenient for you, you just try to shift it to a general “human problem,” even though the socialist system worked well up until the very end.