Quote:
Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl
I don't know, I never lived in the Soviet Union. I've heard some former Soviets who hated the Socialist Republics and some who pine for the lost Union. I have no kind of context with which to understand their mentality. That's why I'm asking the Russian, numnuts  |
Basically take everything Susexx describes and reverse it, that is how lifein the soviet union looked like from this side, the side of an occupied country that "voulentarily" joined the brotherhood of socialist republics.
To serve in the soviet army was not a privilege, but at times a death sentence, the conditions in the army, as my uncle who served in Afghanistan describes, were horrible at the best of times. My father had a bit of a better time in the navy.
While the factories worked they produced useless crap. People saw it as a duty to steal from the places they worked at. No one was motivated.
Freedom as such did not really exist, while there were elections for some
positions only party approved people ran, and even then there was a clear favorite who had to win. 99.8% of the population voted, yay.
The soviet onion did not fall apart because Gorbatchev was put in power, it was a sinking ship well before that, the economy was not able to sustain itself because it produced items of no value on the internal or external market, the farming industry had huge setbacks as really, really stupid mistakes were made in crop engineering which failed spectacularly. If anything people were slaves before the collapse of the onion, after that we do havea lot more freedom and will not be shot for having an opinion, wont be dragged to the kgb building basement to be tortured.
Most people who miss the soviet union never lived in it, or lived in a position where they were more equal than others. In short it was petty ****, not quite the hellhole the western media made it out to be but just as far from the paradise the ironically named Pravda made it out to be either. The only way to make it was to adopt a fatalistic view of life and develop a darksense of humour that goes with that.