I grew up in USSR, and I can tell you that thinking it was run as a dictatorship is incredibly ignorant. Please spend some time to actually educate yourself about USSR before providing opinions on it.
I grew up in YU (still live here) so I can tell you one thing regarding USSR. Bulgaria was mostly run by the Russians back then and they came over here to buy condoms and jeans… they didn’t have those things there back then, but we did.
Not to mention the 20 mil USSR citizens that went “missing” between the end of WWII and the fall of the communist regieme.
I actually support communism and socialism, but not the way it was implemented in USSR.
Nobody is arguing that it can’t be done better than USSR, but pretending that USSR did nothing right is not productive either. It has problems, and a lot of things could’ve been done better, it also vastly improved conditions from what things were like before USSR, and quality of life declined dramatically for vast majority of people after it collapsed. Just go look at what happened in southern republics like Armenia or Tajikistan. Nobody in Europe ever talks about that.
USSR was also able to do things like eliminate homelessness, illiteracy, provide everyone with food and housing. These are basic things that western regimes aren’t able to do today.
Finally, transition to capitalism was also one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history causing around 7 million excess deaths. I’m all for learning from the mistakes of USSR and trying to do better going forward, but let’s not pretend there were no positive aspects to USSR either.
I never said that it did everything wrong, I just said it was implemented wrong, and not the whole things, some things… as well as the eradication of enemies of the state, that could’ve been handled better… just killing or locking up everyone doesn’t solve anything. Sure, some people, yes, I do agree on that (heck, everyone does it, even the US), but it was done as a scare tactic in USSR, and that was one of main reasons why communism has such a bad name now, even amongst ex communist/socialist countries. The system is not bad at all (needs a bit of tweaking, but it has good foundations), the problem is it’s implementation. If you ask me, Yugoslavia almost had it perfect, but with no firm leadership after Tito died and every country just doing their own thing after he passed away, it was bound to collapse.
Quality of life was never at it’s best in USSR and other socialist/communist countries/federations, but you have one good point, it eradicate homelessnes. That was the whole idea behind the system, equality for everyone. Not to mention crime and homicides, communist/socialst countries had the lowest rates in the world. I remember when I was young, you could litelarly open a tent in a field and just camp there for weeks if you’d like, no one was gonna attack you or say you can’t camp there. We really had freedom back then, in the true meaning of the word.
Children’s programs were also very good. Summer camps, where they get to experience the world and each other, first love/crush, etc. And it was all mostly backed up by the state, parents had to pay very little or nothing (depending on their emplyment status).
Nobody in Europe talks about that because they wanna impose capitalism as a better option, throwing socialism/communism as a bad soical order, thus they justify these problems as teething problems when you suddenly switch social orders, which is not true of course… yes, there are problems when you switch social/economical orders, but they usually pass within a few years, if the system is really better than the previous one. When it actually isn’t, they just tell you to “hold tight, it’ll pass”, which it never does, cuz… in reality, it’s worse than what you previously had.
As I said, communist countries/regiemes had some things implemented the right way, but some were just plain dumb decisions, and others were just rutheless. Take that away, put in some smart people in charge (not polititians, people that have actually had 1st hand experience regarding the problem) and things will thrive. You can’t please everyone, but you can please 99% of the population, I think it can be achieved.
Don’t know if you’ve heard of the Venus project. It basically takes the communist concept and takes it a bit further. Look it up, I think you might like the idea beind it 😉.
I mean it was the first ever attempt at creating a worker state, so not really surprising that it wasn’t perfect. Furthermore, USSR was under duress from the imperialist west throughout the entirety of its existence. It was invaded right after formation in 1918, then it was plunged into WW2 that caused unimaginable destruction, and then US started the Cold War right after that. The fact that the country was under siege throughout its existence obviously had a huge impact on how it developed. We’ve also seen what happened to more liberalized societies like Chile that didn’t become militant. The government was quickly overthrown by counterrevolutionaries. In fact, Gorbachev’s liberalization reforms were ultimately what allowed counterrevolution to take place in USSR. I think that’s important context to keep in mind.
If USSR was allowed to develop peacefully, I think it could’ve turned out very differently from the way it did. If all the resources could’ve been devoted towards the socialist cause of improving lives of the people, and if there was no threat of counter revolution then it would’ve been a much more open society.
I agree that Yugoslavia managed to find a better model, and Goulash Communism approach Hungary used was another good example.
Again, to be clear here, I’m not advocating remaking USSR as it was. Clearly the model failed in the end, and it’s important to study it to understand how to create a better system that’s more stable and more egalitarian.
I do like the ideas behind Venus project, I think the big question that remains is how people wrestle power away from the oligarchs in order to put the means of production to start building things the Venus project talks about. We need a systemic change in the structure of the economy, and people who benefit from the current system aren’t just going to let go of their power and privilege without a fight.
I grew up in USSR, and I can tell you that thinking it was run as a dictatorship is incredibly ignorant. Please spend some time to actually educate yourself about USSR before providing opinions on it.
I grew up in YU (still live here) so I can tell you one thing regarding USSR. Bulgaria was mostly run by the Russians back then and they came over here to buy condoms and jeans… they didn’t have those things there back then, but we did.
Not to mention the 20 mil USSR citizens that went “missing” between the end of WWII and the fall of the communist regieme.
I actually support communism and socialism, but not the way it was implemented in USSR.
Nobody is arguing that it can’t be done better than USSR, but pretending that USSR did nothing right is not productive either. It has problems, and a lot of things could’ve been done better, it also vastly improved conditions from what things were like before USSR, and quality of life declined dramatically for vast majority of people after it collapsed. Just go look at what happened in southern republics like Armenia or Tajikistan. Nobody in Europe ever talks about that.
USSR was also able to do things like eliminate homelessness, illiteracy, provide everyone with food and housing. These are basic things that western regimes aren’t able to do today.
Finally, transition to capitalism was also one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history causing around 7 million excess deaths. I’m all for learning from the mistakes of USSR and trying to do better going forward, but let’s not pretend there were no positive aspects to USSR either.
I never said that it did everything wrong, I just said it was implemented wrong, and not the whole things, some things… as well as the eradication of enemies of the state, that could’ve been handled better… just killing or locking up everyone doesn’t solve anything. Sure, some people, yes, I do agree on that (heck, everyone does it, even the US), but it was done as a scare tactic in USSR, and that was one of main reasons why communism has such a bad name now, even amongst ex communist/socialist countries. The system is not bad at all (needs a bit of tweaking, but it has good foundations), the problem is it’s implementation. If you ask me, Yugoslavia almost had it perfect, but with no firm leadership after Tito died and every country just doing their own thing after he passed away, it was bound to collapse.
Quality of life was never at it’s best in USSR and other socialist/communist countries/federations, but you have one good point, it eradicate homelessnes. That was the whole idea behind the system, equality for everyone. Not to mention crime and homicides, communist/socialst countries had the lowest rates in the world. I remember when I was young, you could litelarly open a tent in a field and just camp there for weeks if you’d like, no one was gonna attack you or say you can’t camp there. We really had freedom back then, in the true meaning of the word.
Children’s programs were also very good. Summer camps, where they get to experience the world and each other, first love/crush, etc. And it was all mostly backed up by the state, parents had to pay very little or nothing (depending on their emplyment status).
Nobody in Europe talks about that because they wanna impose capitalism as a better option, throwing socialism/communism as a bad soical order, thus they justify these problems as teething problems when you suddenly switch social orders, which is not true of course… yes, there are problems when you switch social/economical orders, but they usually pass within a few years, if the system is really better than the previous one. When it actually isn’t, they just tell you to “hold tight, it’ll pass”, which it never does, cuz… in reality, it’s worse than what you previously had.
As I said, communist countries/regiemes had some things implemented the right way, but some were just plain dumb decisions, and others were just rutheless. Take that away, put in some smart people in charge (not polititians, people that have actually had 1st hand experience regarding the problem) and things will thrive. You can’t please everyone, but you can please 99% of the population, I think it can be achieved.
Don’t know if you’ve heard of the Venus project. It basically takes the communist concept and takes it a bit further. Look it up, I think you might like the idea beind it 😉.
I mean it was the first ever attempt at creating a worker state, so not really surprising that it wasn’t perfect. Furthermore, USSR was under duress from the imperialist west throughout the entirety of its existence. It was invaded right after formation in 1918, then it was plunged into WW2 that caused unimaginable destruction, and then US started the Cold War right after that. The fact that the country was under siege throughout its existence obviously had a huge impact on how it developed. We’ve also seen what happened to more liberalized societies like Chile that didn’t become militant. The government was quickly overthrown by counterrevolutionaries. In fact, Gorbachev’s liberalization reforms were ultimately what allowed counterrevolution to take place in USSR. I think that’s important context to keep in mind.
If USSR was allowed to develop peacefully, I think it could’ve turned out very differently from the way it did. If all the resources could’ve been devoted towards the socialist cause of improving lives of the people, and if there was no threat of counter revolution then it would’ve been a much more open society.
I agree that Yugoslavia managed to find a better model, and Goulash Communism approach Hungary used was another good example.
Again, to be clear here, I’m not advocating remaking USSR as it was. Clearly the model failed in the end, and it’s important to study it to understand how to create a better system that’s more stable and more egalitarian.
I do like the ideas behind Venus project, I think the big question that remains is how people wrestle power away from the oligarchs in order to put the means of production to start building things the Venus project talks about. We need a systemic change in the structure of the economy, and people who benefit from the current system aren’t just going to let go of their power and privilege without a fight.