A lot of Soviet movies I grew up with, our comedies were HILARIOUS: Приключения Шурика (Операция Ы, Кавказская пленница, и т.д.), 12 Стульев, Джентльмены удачи, Иван Васильевич меняет профессию). My favourite Soviet drama as of late is Свой среди чужих, чужой среди своих, it’s soo good 😭 I also enjoy early-ish J-horror (mid 90s-early 00s), the classics: Ringu, Ju-on, Dark Water, Tomie, etc. We watch quite a few European kinda art house-ish movies (mostly, horror). For the 90s nostalgia, we watch the X-files, lol.
Why not deride christianity, lol? I was born far, far, from the imperialist core, and this rotten ideology of defeatism, individualism, the just world hypothesis, the myth of meritocracy, etc. has freaking wrecked my life. It had seeped into the collective unconscious in the lands that used to be united by the people’s power of the Soviets, and it had ruined many a life even before the collapse of USSR (Parenti gives a pretty good analysis of this in, I think, the second chapter of Blackshirts and Reds). I am a good example - I used to be my own freaking big brother. It’s dialectical materialism that has set my mind free. It’s comrades Lenin, Stalin, Mao, who were humans, just like me, who have helped me begin understanding the world. And I, by no means, blame “the rotten West” of all our woes, but Marx damn it, what we used to have in these lands - and what we could have achieved!..
Also, does anyone else notice how patriotism is revered, in some cases, almost fetishized by some? I’ve always had a hard time understanding what patriotism even is, before I came across Lenin’s and Stalin’s statements on self-determination and national struggle. I can understand a love for one’s land and people. But how can a modern person even feel connected to the land and the people in conditions of such alienation? It appears to me, almost as if modern day “developed” world’s patriotism is fueled by individualistic and opportunistic (if not outright egocentric) view of the world, a religious division into “us vs them”, and a banal desire to feel a sense of belonging (which, by itself, is not at all strange) - which may stem from not only a lack of understanding of history, but a profound disconnect with self.
How do you define support? Have you looked into dialectical materialism? One can support *an entity and still see the contradictions, and still strive for the resolution of these contradictions. This is said a lot - communism is not a religion. It is not a static set of rules and principles. It is a science, and it aims to resolve the contradictions of capitalism through materialist means. We should not succumb to the black and white dichotomy that monotheism has been instilling into us.
Thank you.