Recently I tried to correct somebody suggesting that ‘the Russian working class lifted not one finger in defence of ‘their’ state’. At first I offered a video of the demonstration from 1993, and some opinion polls, but she basically said that they weren’t good enough.

I am tempted to link to her essay where she justified her arguments, but to be honest it’s so messy and lengthy that I feel like it would be too distracting to share here. (But I can concede if somebody insists.)

Still, it raises an important question: where were the tens of millions of Soviets demonstrating or striking in favor of their union?

One possible reason for this is that, since the working masses already had so much political power, physical demonstrations would have been unnecessary and many thought that their electoral input would have sufficed. This might be begging the question (‘did they really have much political power?’), but surely they had ways to fight back besides physical demonstrations or strikes.

Either way, it’s clear that people were being too polite and gentle with the anticommunists infiltrating the U.S.S.R. in the 1980s and later.

  • @Kind_Stone@lemmygrad.ml
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    82 years ago

    People were not “polite and gentle” in the 80s and later. They were too polite in the 1960s and 1970s when major economical changes were made by rather unreachable higher ups. By the 1980s economics were already busted enough and breaking down, enough for the people to get sceptical and angry enough to listen to the counter-revolutionary voices and willingly join the anti-soviet movement. It was quite widespread too. The Perestroika was generally positively accepted mainly because people viewed it as something positive, a way to fix existing economical and administrative problems which came to life after the 70s.

    Existing counter revolutionary elements quickly used that rise in negativity to blame socialism for everything and paint a new image of capitalism - everything like you have now, but more free, hip and stylish with great opportunities for everyone to rise up. Of course, since people grew very apolitical after the Great Patriotic War and the quality of life was stable and improving very little of the young at the time had any idea of poverty and lack of any social protection that would come, so people willingly advocated for Perestroika and when it happened and the point of no return did not trigger the majority of people. The socialism here was basically already gone by the point of dissolution of SU, but that was one thing that people clearly view negatively and some of the remaining politically active people did try to walk out and stop it.

    However, years of lack of political struggle, no experience in that regard and overall passivity did contribute and things quickly calmed down and turned into the mess we all well know. The 90s.