If you wouldn’t mind, I’m curious what you think the main disconnects are between the USSRs representation in the west and your lived experience. I’m also pretty curious what you think about modern day Russia compared to your time in the USSR.
The main disconnect is that regular people living in USSR did not feel oppressed, and most people were generally happy with their lives. I find there is a fixation on maximizing freedom of speech in the west, but the reality is that it’s not something vast majority of people thinks about day to day. Even in he west, most people aren’t even able to articulate what communism or capitalism actually is. In fact, I would argue that when a country is in a situation where politics becomes the dominant topic most people think about that’s a sign that things aren’t going great.
Everybody in USSR had their needs met, work wasn’t exploitative, and people didn’t work that hard, there was lots of vacation, and guaranteed retirement. Nobody worried about losing their job and ending up on the street or not being able to retire in dignity. It’s really hard to convey how much stress that removes from people’s lives. Crime was extremely low, elderly people would go to the parks in the evenings, the idea of being mugged seemed completely outlandish. Kids could go anywhere unsupervised and parents never worried about it.
There was a lot more opportunity for self actualization in USSR because you didn’t have to get a career that was profitable to exploit. For example, you wanted to become an artist or a scientist and pursue some obscure topic then you could do that without having to think about whether it could be monetized or not.
City planning was excellent compared to anything I’ve seen in the west. Everything was broken up into self sufficient microdistricts that had parks, schools, hospitals, and stores within walking distance. You didn’t need a car to get around, and public transit was excellent.
The main downsides that I remember were around lack of commodities. My family still had a black and white TV in the 80s and a rotary phone. This would be the main complaint most people had.
This was the main motivation for trying the western system. Most people knew that people in the west had nice things like fast cars, fancy clothes, gadgets and so on. Since nobody actually had any understanding of what capitalism was like, they just assumed that they would get to keep all the good aspects of USSR and get all the cool stuff west had on top of that. By the time people realized what a horror this was it was too late to turn things around.
Modern day Russia largely resembles what we see in the west. I think Russia has regressed in terms of human rights, it now has oligarchs running things, there is homelessness, and life expectancy has dropped significantly. It’s exactly same dynamic we see in the west where a small minority lives off the exploitation of the majority. However, even despite all that capitalists still haven’t manged to dismantle all of the legacy of USSR. This thread on Reddit shows that the worker rights situation in Russia today is still far ahead of what we see in US.
That’s definitely an interesting perspective and I appreciate you taking the time to write it out and share :)
You mention you
find there is a fixation on maximizing freedom of speech in the west, but the reality is that it’s not something vast majority of people thinks about day to day.
So does that mean you did find there was little freedom of speech in the USSR? I know you say the majority of people don’t think about it daily, but I definitely do and I find it very important, so I’m curious if you think a society should have strong freedoms of speech or not?
I would phrase it as there were a handful of political topics that couldn’t be discussed as freely as in the west in USSR. In many ways there was a lot more freedom of speech. Here’s a great example of that from an interview with George Lucas where he explains how film makers in USSR had far more freedom than those under capitalist regimes.
I would also argue that freedom of speech is only meaningful when that speech can translate into tangible action. What the west has is the freedom to scream into the void, but as soon as there is any potential threat to the state then it’s quickly dismantled. Great examples of that are the Black Panthers and MLK movement.
Finally, I think that every society has restrictions on freedom of speech, and some such restrictions are obviously desirable. I fully support restrictions on capitalist propaganda and right wing extremism.
However, my point was not to argue against freedom of speech but rather that the society should focus on ensuring that the basic needs are met and that regular people can live comfortable lives before focusing on maximizing freedom of speech. It’s a question of priorities.
And given that counter revolutionary elements exist in socialist societies who try to undermine socialism and bring back capitalism, suppressing this sort of speech is justified. If you look at USSR, what ultimately facilitated a counter revolution was the liberalization under glasnost and perestroyka programs that Gorbachev introduced.
Interesting.
If you wouldn’t mind, I’m curious what you think the main disconnects are between the USSRs representation in the west and your lived experience. I’m also pretty curious what you think about modern day Russia compared to your time in the USSR.
The main disconnect is that regular people living in USSR did not feel oppressed, and most people were generally happy with their lives. I find there is a fixation on maximizing freedom of speech in the west, but the reality is that it’s not something vast majority of people thinks about day to day. Even in he west, most people aren’t even able to articulate what communism or capitalism actually is. In fact, I would argue that when a country is in a situation where politics becomes the dominant topic most people think about that’s a sign that things aren’t going great.
Everybody in USSR had their needs met, work wasn’t exploitative, and people didn’t work that hard, there was lots of vacation, and guaranteed retirement. Nobody worried about losing their job and ending up on the street or not being able to retire in dignity. It’s really hard to convey how much stress that removes from people’s lives. Crime was extremely low, elderly people would go to the parks in the evenings, the idea of being mugged seemed completely outlandish. Kids could go anywhere unsupervised and parents never worried about it.
There was a lot more opportunity for self actualization in USSR because you didn’t have to get a career that was profitable to exploit. For example, you wanted to become an artist or a scientist and pursue some obscure topic then you could do that without having to think about whether it could be monetized or not.
City planning was excellent compared to anything I’ve seen in the west. Everything was broken up into self sufficient microdistricts that had parks, schools, hospitals, and stores within walking distance. You didn’t need a car to get around, and public transit was excellent.
The main downsides that I remember were around lack of commodities. My family still had a black and white TV in the 80s and a rotary phone. This would be the main complaint most people had.
This was the main motivation for trying the western system. Most people knew that people in the west had nice things like fast cars, fancy clothes, gadgets and so on. Since nobody actually had any understanding of what capitalism was like, they just assumed that they would get to keep all the good aspects of USSR and get all the cool stuff west had on top of that. By the time people realized what a horror this was it was too late to turn things around.
Modern day Russia largely resembles what we see in the west. I think Russia has regressed in terms of human rights, it now has oligarchs running things, there is homelessness, and life expectancy has dropped significantly. It’s exactly same dynamic we see in the west where a small minority lives off the exploitation of the majority. However, even despite all that capitalists still haven’t manged to dismantle all of the legacy of USSR. This thread on Reddit shows that the worker rights situation in Russia today is still far ahead of what we see in US.
That’s definitely an interesting perspective and I appreciate you taking the time to write it out and share :)
You mention you
So does that mean you did find there was little freedom of speech in the USSR? I know you say the majority of people don’t think about it daily, but I definitely do and I find it very important, so I’m curious if you think a society should have strong freedoms of speech or not?
I would phrase it as there were a handful of political topics that couldn’t be discussed as freely as in the west in USSR. In many ways there was a lot more freedom of speech. Here’s a great example of that from an interview with George Lucas where he explains how film makers in USSR had far more freedom than those under capitalist regimes.
I would also argue that freedom of speech is only meaningful when that speech can translate into tangible action. What the west has is the freedom to scream into the void, but as soon as there is any potential threat to the state then it’s quickly dismantled. Great examples of that are the Black Panthers and MLK movement.
Finally, I think that every society has restrictions on freedom of speech, and some such restrictions are obviously desirable. I fully support restrictions on capitalist propaganda and right wing extremism.
However, my point was not to argue against freedom of speech but rather that the society should focus on ensuring that the basic needs are met and that regular people can live comfortable lives before focusing on maximizing freedom of speech. It’s a question of priorities.
And given that counter revolutionary elements exist in socialist societies who try to undermine socialism and bring back capitalism, suppressing this sort of speech is justified. If you look at USSR, what ultimately facilitated a counter revolution was the liberalization under glasnost and perestroyka programs that Gorbachev introduced.