By Stephen Gowans
The Soviet Union was dissolved 22 years ago, on December 26, 1991.
It’s widely believed outside the former republics of the USSR that Soviet citizens fervently wished for this; that Stalin was hated as a vile despot; that the USSR’s socialist economy never worked; and that the citizens of the former Soviet Union prefer the life they have today under capitalist democracy to, what, in the fevered parlance of Western journalists, politicians and historians, was the repressive, dictatorial rule of a one-party state which presided over a sclerotic, creaky and unworkable socialist economy.


None of these beliefs is true.

Here's the rest, worth repeating at any instance.


Myth #1. The Soviet Union had no popular support. On March 17, 1991, nine months before the Soviet Union’s demise, Soviet citizens went to the polls to vote on a referendum which asked whether they were in favor of preserving the USSR. Over three-quarters voted yes. Far from favoring the breakup of the union, most Soviet citizens wanted to preserve it. [1]

Myth #2. Russians hate Stalin. In 2009, Rossiya, a Russian TV channel, spent three months polling over 50 million Russians to find out who, in their view, were the greatest Russians of all time. Prince Alexander Nevsky, who successfully repelled an attempted Western invasion of Russia in the 13th century, came first. Second place went to Pyotr Stolypin, who served as prime minister to Tsar Nicholas II, and enacted agrarian reforms. In third place, behind Stolypin by only 5,500 votes, was Joseph Stalin, a man that Western opinion leaders routinely describe as a ruthless dictator with the blood of tens of millions on his hands. [2] He may be reviled in the West, not surprisingly, since he was never one after the hearts of the corporate grandees who dominate the West’s ideological apparatus, but, it seems, Russians have a different view—one that fails to comport with the notion that Russians were victimized, rather than elevated, by Stalin’s leadership.

In a May/June 2004 Foreign Affairs article, (Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want), anti-communist Harvard historian Richard Pipes cited a poll in which Russians were asked to list the 10 greatest men and women of all time. The poll-takers were looking for significant figures of any country, not just Russians. Stalin came fourth, behind Peter the Great, Lenin, and Pushkin…much to Pipes’ irritation. [3]

Myth #3. Soviet socialism didn’t work. If this is true, then capitalism, by any equal measure, is an indisputable failure. From its inception in 1928, to the point at which it was dismantled in 1989, Soviet socialism never once, except during the extraordinary years of World War II, stumbled into recession, nor failed to provide full employment. [4] What capitalist economy has ever grown unremittingly, without recession, and providing jobs for all, over a 56 year span (the period during which the Soviet economy was socialist and the country was not at war, 1928-1941 and 1946-1989)? Moreover, the Soviet economy grew faster than capitalist economies that were at an equal level of economic development when Stalin launched the first five year plan in 1928—and faster than the US economy through much of the socialist system’s existence. [5] To be sure, the Soviet economy never caught up to or surpassed the advanced industrial economies of the capitalist core, but it started the race further back; was not aided, as Western countries were, by histories of slavery, colonial plunder, and economic imperialism; and was unremittingly the object of Western, and especially US, attempts to sabotage it. Particularly deleterious to Soviet economic development was the necessity of diverting material and human resources from the civilian to the military economy, to meet the challenge of Western military pressure. The Cold War and arms race, which entangled the Soviet Union in battles against a stronger foe, not state ownership and planning, kept the socialist economy from overtaking the advanced industrial economies of the capitalist West. [6] And yet, despite the West’s unflagging efforts to cripple it, the Soviet socialist economy produced positive growth in each and every non-war year of its existence, providing a materially secure existence for all. Which capitalist economy can claim equal success?

Myth #4. Now that they’ve experienced it, citizens of the former Soviet Union prefer capitalism. On the contrary, they prefer the Soviet system’s state planning, that is, socialism. Asked in a recent poll what socio-economic system they favor, Russians answered [7]:
• State planning and distribution, 58%
• Private property and distribution, 28%
• Hard to say, 14%
• Total, 100%
Pipes cites a poll in which 72 percent of Russians “said they wanted to restrict private economic initiative.” [8]

Myth #5. Twenty-two years later, citizens of the former Soviet Union see the USSR’s demise as more beneficial than harmful. Wrong again. According to a just-released Gallup poll, for every citizen of 11 former Soviet republics, including Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, who thinks the breakup of the Soviet Union benefited their country, two think it did harm. And the results are more strongly skewed toward the view that the breakup was harmful among those aged 45 years and over, namely, the people who knew the Soviet system best. [9]

According to another poll cited by Pipes, three-quarters of Russians regret the Soviet Union’s demise [10]—hardly what you would think of people who were reportedly delivered from a supposedly repressive state and allegedly arthritic, ponderous economy.

Myth #6. Citizens of the former Soviet Union are better off today. To be sure, some are. But are most? Given that more prefer the former socialist system to the current capitalist one, and think that the USSR’s breakup has done more harm than good, we might infer that most aren’t better off—or at least, that they don’t see themselves as such. This view is confirmed, at least as regards life expectancy. In a paper in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, sociologist David Stuckler and medical researcher Martin McKee, show that the transition to capitalism in the former USSR precipitated a sharp drop in life-expectancy, and that “only a little over half of the ex-Communist countries have regained their pre-transition life-expectancy levels.” Male life expectancy in Russia, for example, was 67 years in 1985, under communism. In 2007, it was less than 60 years. Life expectancy plunged five years between 1991 and 1994. [11]

The transition to capitalism, then, produced countless pre-mature deaths—and continues to produce a higher mortality rate than likely would have prevailed under the (more humane) socialist system. (A 1986 study by Shirley Ciresto and Howard Waitzkin, based on World Bank data, found that the socialist economies of the Soviet bloc produced more favorable outcomes on measures of physical quality of life, including life expectancy, infant mortality, and caloric intake, than did capitalist economies at the same level of economic development, and as good as capitalist economies at a higher level of development. [12])

As regards the transition from a one-party state to a multi-party democracy, Pipes points to a poll that shows that Russians view democracy as a fraud. Over three-quarters believe “democracy is a facade for a government controlled by rich and powerful cliques.” [13] Who says Russians aren’t perspicacious?

Myth #7. If citizens of the former Soviet Union really wanted a return to socialism, they would just vote it in. If only it were so simple. Capitalist systems are structured to deliver public policy that suits capitalists, and not what’s popular, if what’s popular is against capitalist interests. Obamacare aside, the United States doesn’t have full public health insurance. Why not? According to the polls, most Americans want it. So, why don’t they just vote it in?

The answer, of course, is that there are powerful capitalist interests, principally private insurance companies, that have used their wealth and connections to block a public policy that would attenuate their profits. What’s popular doesn’t always, or even often, prevail in societies where those who own and control the economy can use their wealth and connections to dominate the political system to win in contests that pit their elite interests against mass interests. As Michael Parenti writes,

Capitalism is not just an economic system, but an entire social order. Once it takes hold, it is not voted out of existence by electing socialists or communists. They may occupy office but the wealth of the nation, the basic property relations, organic law, financial system, and debt structure, along with the national media, police power, and state institutions have all been fundamentally restructured. [14]

A Russian return to socialism is far more likely to come about the way it did the first time, through revolution, not elections—and revolutions don’t happen simply because people prefer a better system to the one they currently have. Revolutions happen when life can no longer be lived in the old way—and Russians haven’t reached the point where life as it’s lived today is no longer tolerable.

Interestingly, a 2003 poll asked Russians how they would react if the Communists seized power. Almost one-quarter would support the new government, one in five would collaborate, 27 percent would accept it, 16 percent would emigrate, and only 10 percent would actively resist it. In other words, for every Russian who would actively oppose a Communist take-over, four would support it or collaborate with it, and three would accept it [15]—not what you would expect if you think Russians are glad to get out from underneath what we’re told was the burden of communist rule.

So, the Soviet Union’s passing is regretted by the people who knew the USSR firsthand (but not by Western journalists, politicians and historians who knew Soviet socialism only through the prism of their capitalist ideology.) Now that they’ve had over two decades of multi-party democracy, private enterprise and a market economy, Russians don’t think these institutions are the wonders Western politicians and mass media make them out to be. Most Russians would prefer a return to the Soviet system of state planning, that is, to socialism.

Even so, these realities are hidden behind a blizzard of propaganda, whose intensity peaks each year on the anniversary of the USSR’s passing. We’re supposed to believe that where it was tried, socialism was popularly disdained and failed to deliver—though neither assertion is true.

Of course, that anti-Soviet views have hegemonic status in the capitalist core is hardly surprising. The Soviet Union is reviled by just about everyone in the West: by the Trotskyists, because the USSR was built under Stalin’s (and not their man’s) leadership; by social democrats, because the Soviets embraced revolution and rejected capitalism; by the capitalists, for obvious reasons; and by the mass media (which are owned by the capitalists) and the schools (whose curricula, ideological orientation and political and economic research are strongly influenced by them.)

So, on the anniversary of the USSR’s demise we should not be surprised to discover that socialism’s political enemies should present a view of the Soviet Union that is at odds with what those on the ground really experienced, what a socialist economy really accomplished, and what those deprived of it really want.

I think Gowans is one of the top commentators on the web

I think Gowans is one of the top commentators on the web

I had not tagged the name before but you're right, I went looking, though this might reduce your enthusiasm.

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/the-ghost-of-paul-sweezy/#comments

We Lived Better Then

Over two decades ago Vaclav Havel, the pampered scion of a wealthy Prague family, helped usher in a period of reaction, in which the holdings and estates of former landowners and captains of industry were restored to their previous owners, while unemployment, homelessness, and insecurity—abolished by the Reds– were put back on the agenda. Havel is eulogized by the usual suspects, but not by his numberless victims, who were pushed back into an abyss of exploitation by the Velvet revolution and other retrograde eruptions. With the fall of Communism allowing Havel and his brother to recover their family’s vast holdings, Havel’s life—he worked in a brewery under Communism—became much richer. The same can’t be said for countless others, whose better lives under Communism were swept away by a swindle that will, in the coming days, be lionized in the mass media on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s demolition. The anniversary is no time for celebration, except for the minority that has profited from it. For the bulk of us it ought to be an occasion to reflect on what the bottom 99 percent of humanity was able to achieve for ourselves outside the strictures, instabilities and unnecessary cruelties of capitalism.

Over the seven decades of its existence, and despite having to spend so much time preparing, fighting, and recovering from wars, Soviet socialism managed to create one of the great achievements of human history: a mass industrial society that eliminated most of the inequalities of wealth, income, education and opportunity that plagued what preceded it, what came after it, and what competed with it; a society in which health care and education through university were free (and university students received living stipends); where rent, utilities and public transportation were subsidized, along with books, periodicals and cultural events; where inflation was eliminated, pensions were generous, and child care was subsidized. By 1933, with the capitalist world deeply mired in a devastating economic crisis, unemployment was declared abolished, and remained so for the next five and a half decades, until socialism, itself was abolished. Excluding the war years, from 1928, when socialism was introduced, until Mikhail Gorbachev began to take it apart in the late 1980s, the Soviet system of central planning and public ownership produced unfailing economic growth, without the recessions and downturns that plagued the capitalist economies of North America, Japan and Western Europe. And in most of those years, the Soviet and Eastern European economies grew faster.

The Communists produced economic security as robust (and often more so) than that of the richest countries, but with fewer resources and a lower level of development and in spite of the unflagging efforts of the capitalist world to sabotage socialism. Soviet socialism was, and remains, a model for humanity — of what can be achieved outside the confines and contradictions of capitalism. But by the end of the 1980s, counterrevolution was sweeping Eastern Europe and Mikhail Gorbachev was dismantling the pillars of Soviet socialism. Naively, blindly, stupidly, some expected Gorbachev’s demolition project to lead the way to a prosperous consumer society, in which Soviet citizens, their bank accounts bulging with incomes earned from new jobs landed in a robust market economy, would file into colorful, luxurious shopping malls, to pick clean store shelves bursting with consumer goods. Others imagined a new era of a flowering multiparty democracy and expanded civil liberties, coexisting with public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, a model that seemed to owe more to utopian blueprints than hard-headed reality.

Of course, none of the great promises of the counterrevolution were kept. While at the time the demise of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was proclaimed as a great victory for humanity, not least by leftist intellectuals in the United States, two decades later there’s little to celebrate. The dismantling of socialism has, in a word, been a catastrophe, a great swindle that has not only delivered none of what it promised, but has wreaked irreparable harm, not only in the former socialist countries, but throughout the Western world, as well. Countless millions have been plunged deep into poverty, imperialism has been given a free hand, and wages and benefits in the West have bowed under the pressure of intensified competition for jobs and industry unleashed by a flood of jobless from the former socialist countries, where joblessness once, rightly, was considered an obscenity. Numberless voices in Russia, Romania, East Germany and elsewhere lament what has been stolen from them — and from humanity as a whole: “We lived better under communism. We had jobs. We had security.” And with the threat of jobs migrating to low-wage, high unemployment countries of Eastern Europe, workers in Western Europe have been forced to accept a longer working day, lower pay, and degraded benefits. Today, they fight a desperate rearguard action, where the victories are few, the defeats many. They too lived better — once.

But that’s only part of the story. For others, for investors and corporations, who’ve found new markets and opportunities for profitable investment, and can reap the benefits of the lower labor costs that attend intensified competition for jobs, the overthrow of socialism has, indeed, been something to celebrate. Equally, it has been welcomed by the landowning and industrial elite of the pre-socialist regimes whose estates and industrial concerns have been recovered and privatized. But they’re a minority. Why should the rest of us celebrate our own mugging?

Prior to the dismantling of socialism, most people in the world were protected from the vicissitudes of the global capitalist market by central planning and high tariff barriers. But once socialism fell in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and with China having marched resolutely down the capitalist road, the pool of unprotected labor available to transnational corporations expanded many times over. Today, a world labor force many times larger than the domestic pool of US workers — and willing to work dirt cheap — awaits the world’s corporations. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what the implications are for North American workers and their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan: an intense competition of all against all for jobs and industry. Inevitably, incomes fall, benefits are eroded, and working hours extended. Predictably, with labor costs tumbling, profits grow fat, capital surpluses accumulate and create bubbles, financial crises erupt and predatory wars to secure investment opportunities break out.

Growing competition for jobs and industry has forced workers in Western Europe to accept less. They work longer hours, and in some cases, for less pay and without increases in benefits, to keep jobs from moving to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other former socialist countries — which, under the rule of the Reds, once provided jobs for all. More work for less money is a pleasing outcome for the corporate class, and turns out to be exactly the outcome fascists engineered for their countries’ capitalists in the 1930s. The methods, to be sure, were different, but the anti-Communism of Mussolini and Hitler, in other hands, has proved just as useful in securing the same retrograde ends. Nobody who is subject to the vagaries of the labor market – almost all of us — should be glad Communism was abolished.

Maybe some us don’t know we’ve been mugged. And maybe some of us haven’t been. Take the radical US historian Howard Zinn, for example, who, along with most other prominent Left intellectuals, greeted the overthrow of Communism with glee [1]. I, no less than others, admired Zinn’s books, articles and activism, though I came to expect his ardent anti-Communism as typical of left US intellectuals. To be sure, in a milieu hostile to Communism, it should come as no surprise that conspicuous displays of anti-Communism become a survival strategy for those seeking to establish a rapport, and safeguard their reputations, with a larger (and vehemently anti-Communist) audience.

But there may be another reason for the anti-Communism of those whose political views leave them open to charges of being soft on Communism, and therefore of having horns. As dissidents in their own society, there was always a natural tendency for them to identify with dissidents elsewhere – and the pro-capitalist, anti-socialist propaganda of the West quite naturally elevated dissidents in socialist countries to the status of heroes, especially those who were jailed, muzzled and otherwise repressed by the state. For these people, the abridgement of civil liberties anywhere looms large, for the abridgement of their own civil liberties would be an event of great personal significance. By comparison, the Reds’ achievements in providing a comfortable frugality and economic security to all, while recognized intellectually as an achievement of some note, is less apt to stir the imagination of one who has a comfortable income, the respect of his peers, and plenty of people to read his books and attend his lectures. He doesn’t have to scavenge discarded coal in garbage dumps to eke out a bare, bleak, and unrewarding existence. Some do.

Karol, 14, and his sister Alina, 12, everyday trudge to a dump, where mixed industrial waste is deposited, just outside Swietochlowice, in formerly socialist Poland. There, along with their father, they look for scrap metal and second grade coal, anything to fetch a few dollars to buy a meager supply of groceries. “There was better life in Communism,” says Karol’s father, 49, repeating a refrain heard over and over again, not only in Poland, but also throughout the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. “I was working 25 years for the same company and now I cannot find a job – any job. They only want young and skilled workers.” [2] According to Gustav Molnar, a political analyst with the Laszlo Teleki Institute, “the reality is that when foreign firms come here, they’re only interested in hiring people under 30. It means half the population is out of the game.” [3] That may suit the bottom lines of foreign corporations – and the overthrow of socialism may have been a pleasing intellectual outcome for well-fed, comfortable intellectuals from Boston – but it hardly suits that part of the Polish population that must scramble over mountains of industrial waste – or perish. Maciej Gdula, 34, a founding member of the group, Krytyka Polityczna, or Political Critique, complains that many Poles “are disillusioned with the unfulfilled promises of capitalism. They promised us a world of consumption, stability and freedom. Instead, we got an entire generation of Poles who emigrated to go wash dishes.” [4] Under socialism “there was always work for everybody” [5] – at home. And always a place to live, free schools to go to, and doctors to see, without charge. So why was Howard Zinn glad that Communism was overthrown?

That the overthrow of socialism has failed to deliver anything of benefit to the majority is plain to see. One decade after counterrevolution skittered across Eastern Europe, 17 former socialist countries were immeasurably poorer. In Russia, poverty had tripled. One child in 10 – three million Russian children – lived like animals, ill-fed, dressed in rags, and living, if they were lucky, in dirty, squalid flats. In Moscow alone, 30,000 to 50,000 children slept in the streets. Life expectancy, education, adult-literacy and income declined. A report by the European Children’s Trust, written in 2000, revealed that 40 percent of the population of the former socialist countries – a number equal to one of every two US citizens – lived in poverty. Infant mortality and tuberculosis were on the rise, approaching Third World levels. The situation, according to the UN, was catastrophic. And everywhere the story was the same. [6, 7, 8, 9]

Paul Cockshot points out that:

The restoration of the market mechanism in Russia was a vast controlled experiment. Nation, national character and culture, natural resources and productive potential remained the same, only the economic mechanism changed. If Western economists were right, then we should have expected economic growth and living standards to have leapt forward after the Yeltsin shock therapy. Instead the country became an economic basket-case. Industrial production collapsed, technically advanced industries atrophied, and living standards fell so much that the death rate shot up by over a third leading to some 7.7 million extra deaths.

For many Russians, life became immeasurably worse.

If you were old, if you were a farmer, if you were a manual worker, the market was a great deal worse than even the relatively stagnant Soviet economy of Brezhnev. The recovery under Putin, such as it was, came almost entirely as a side effect of rising world oil prices, the very process that had operated under Brezhnev. [10]

While the return of capitalism made life harsher for some, it proved lethal for others. From 1991 to 1994, life expectancy in Russia tumbled by five years. By 2008, it had slipped to less than 60 years for Russian men, a full seven years lower than in 1985 when Gorbachev came to power and began to dismantle Soviet socialism. Today “only a little over half of the ex-Communist countries have regained their pretransition life-expectancy levels,” according to a study published in the medical journal, The Lancet. [11]

“Life was better under the Communists,” concludes Aleksandr. “The stores are full of things, but they’re very expensive.” Victor pines for the “stability of an earlier era of affordable health care, free higher education and housing, and the promise of a comfortable retirement – things now beyond his reach.” [12] A 2008 report in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, noted that “many Russians interviewed said they still grieve for their long, lost country.” Among the grievers is Zhanna Sribnaya, 37, a Moscow writer. Sribnaya remembers “Pioneer camps when everyone could go to the Black Sea for summer vacations. Now, only people with money can take those vacations.” [13]

Ion Vancea, a Romanian who struggles to get by on a picayune $40 per month pension says, “It’s true there was not much to buy back then, but now prices are so high we can’t afford to buy food as well as pay for electricity.” Echoing the words of many Romanians, Vancea adds, “Life was 10 times better under (Romanian Communist Party leader Nicolae) Ceausescu.” [14] An opinion poll carried out last year found that Vancea isn’t in the minority. Conducted by the Romanian polling organisation CSOP, the survey found that almost one-half of Romanians thought life was better under Ceauşescu, compared to less than one-quarter who thought life is better today. And while Ceauşescu is remembered in the West as a Red devil, only seven percent said they suffered under Communism. Why do half of Romanians think life was better under the Reds? They point to full employment, decent living conditions for all, and guaranteed housing – advantages that disappeared with the fall of Communism. [15]

Next door, in Bulgaria, 80 percent say they are worse off now that the country has transitioned to a market economy. Only five percent say their standard of living has improved. [16] Mimi Vitkova, briefly Bulgaria’s health minister for two years in the mid-90s, sums up life after the overthrow of socialism: “We were never a rich country, but when we had socialism our children were healthy and well-fed. They all got immunized. Retired people and the disabled were provided for and got free medicine. Our hospitals were free.” But things have changed, she says. “Today, if a person has no money, they have no right to be cured. And most people have no money. Our economy was ruined.” [17] A 2009 poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that a paltry one in nine Bulgarians believe ordinary people are better off as a result of the transition to capitalism. And few regard the state as representing their interests. Only 16 percent say it is run for the benefit of all people. [18]

In the former East Germany a new phenomenon has arisen: Ostalgie, a nostalgia for the GDR. During the Cold War era, East Germany’s relative poverty was attributed to public ownership and central planning – sawdust in the gears of the economic engine, according to anti-socialist mythology. But the propaganda conveniently ignored the fact that the eastern part of Germany had always been less developed than the west, that it had been plundered of its key human assets at the end of World War II by US occupation forces, that the Soviet Union had carted off everything of value to indemnify itself for its war losses, and that East Germany bore the brunt of Germany’s war reparations to Moscow. [19] On top of that, those who fled East Germany were said to be escaping the repression of a brutal regime, and while some may indeed have been ardent anti-Communists fleeing repression by the state, most were economic refugees, seeking the embrace of a more prosperous West, whose riches depended in large measure on a history of slavery, colonialism, and ongoing imperialism—processes of capital accumulation the Communist countries eschewed and spent precious resources fighting against.

In the former East Germany a new phenomenon has arisen: Ostalgie, a nostalgia for the GDR. During the Cold War era, East Germany’s relative poverty was attributed to public ownership and central planning – sawdust in the gears of the economic engine, according to anti-socialist mythology. But the propaganda conveniently ignored the fact that the eastern part of Germany had always been less developed than the west, that it had been plundered of its key human assets at the end of World War II by US occupation forces, that the Soviet Union had carted off everything of value to indemnify itself for its war losses, and that East Germany bore the brunt of Germany’s war reparations to Moscow. [19] On top of that, those who fled East Germany were said to be escaping the repression of a brutal regime, and while some may indeed have been ardent anti-Communists fleeing repression by the state, most were economic refugees, seeking the embrace of a more prosperous West, whose riches depended in large measure on a history of slavery, colonialism, and ongoing imperialism—processes of capital accumulation the Communist countries eschewed and spent precious resources fighting against.

Today, nobody of an unprejudiced mind would say that the riches promised East Germans have been realized. Unemployment, once unheard of, runs in the double digits and rents have skyrocketed. The region’s industrial infrastructure – weaker than West Germany’s during the Cold War, but expanding — has now all but disappeared. And the population is dwindling, as economic refugees, following in the footsteps of Cold War refugees before them, make their way westward in search of jobs and opportunity. [20] “We were taught that capitalism was cruel,” recalls Ralf Caemmerer, who works for Otis Elevator. “You know, it didn’t turn out to be nonsense.” [21] As to the claim that East Germans have “freedom” Heinz Kessler, a former East German defense minister replies tartly, “Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security.” [22] Still, Howard Zinn was glad communism collapsed. But then, he didn’t live in East Germany.

So, who’s doing better? Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright turned president, came from a prominent, vehemently anti-socialist Prague family, which had extensive holdings, “including construction companies, real estate and the Praque Barrandov film studios”. [23] The jewel in the crown of the Havel family holdings was the Lucerna Palace, “a pleasure palace…of arcades, theatres, cinemas, night-clubs, restaurants, and ballrooms,” according to Frommer’s. It became “a popular spot for the city’s nouveau riches to congregate,” including a young Havel, who, raised in the lap of luxury by a governess, doted on by servants, and chauffeured around town in expensive automobiles, “spent his earliest years on the Lucerna’s polished marble floors.” Then, tragedy struck – at least, from Havel’s point of view. The Reds expropriated Lucerna and the family’s other holdings, and put them to use for the common good, rather than for the purpose of providing the young Havel with more servants. Havel was sent to work in a brewery.

“I was different from my schoolmates whose families did not have domestics, nurses or chauffeurs,” Havel once wrote. “But I experienced these differences as disadvantage. I felt excluded from the company of my peers.” [24] Yet the company of his peers must not have been to Havel’s tastes, for as president, he was quick to reclaim the silver spoon the Reds had taken from his mouth. Celebrated throughout the West as a hero of intellectual freedom, he was instead a hero of capitalist restoration, presiding over a mass return of nationalized property, including Lucerna and his family’s other holdings.

The Roman Catholic Church is another winner. The pro-capitalist Hungarian government has returned to the Roman Catholic Church much of the property nationalized by the Reds, who placed the property under common ownership for the public good. With recovery of many of the Eastern and Central European properties it once owned, the Church is able to reclaim its pre-socialist role of parasite — raking in vast amounts of unearned wealth in rent, a privilege bestowed for no other reason than it owns title to the land. Hungary also pays the Vatican a US$9.2 million annuity for property it has been unable to return. [25] (Note that a 2008 survey of 1,000 Hungarians by the Hungarian polling firm Gif Piackutato found that 60 percent described the era of Communist rule under Red leader Janos Kadar as Hungary’s happiest while only 14 percent said the same about the post-Communist era. [26])

The Church, former landowners, and CEOs aside, most people of the former socialist bloc aren’t pleased that the gains of the socialist revolutions have been reversed. Three-quarters of Russians, according to a 1999 poll [27] regret the demise of the Soviet Union. And their assessment of the status quo is refreshingly clear-sighted. Almost 80 percent recognize liberal democracy as a front for a government controlled by the rich. A majority (correctly) identifies the cause of its impoverishment as an unjust economic system (capitalism), which, according to 80 percent, produces “excessive and illegitimate inequalities.” [28] The solution, in the view of the majority, is to return to socialism, even if it means one-party rule. Russians, laments the anti-Communist historian Richard Pipes, haven’t Americans’ taste for multiparty democracy, and seem incapable of being cured of their fondness for Soviet leaders. In one poll, Russians were asked to list the 10 greatest people of all time, of all nations. Lenin came in second, Stalin fourth and Peter the Great came first. Pipes seems genuinely distressed they didn’t pick his old boss, Ronald Reagan, and is fed up that after years of anti-socialist, pro-capitalist propaganda, Russians remain committed to the idea that private economic activity should be restricted, and “the government [needs] to be more involved in the country’s economic life.” [29] An opinion poll which asked Russians which socio-economic system they favor, produced these results.

• State planning and distribution, 58%;

• Based on private property and distribution, 28%;

• Hard to say, 14%. [30]

So, if the impoverished peoples of the formerly socialist countries pine for the former attractions of socialism, why don’t they vote the Reds back in? Socialism can’t be turned on with the flick of a switch. The former socialist economies have been privatized and placed under the control of the market. Those who accept the goals and values of capitalism have been recruited to occupy pivotal offices of the state. And economic, legal and political structures have been altered to accommodate private production for profit. True, there are openings for Communist parties to operate within the new multiparty liberal democracies, but Communists now compete with far more generously funded parties in societies in which their enemies have restored their wealth and privileges and use them to tilt the playing field strongly in their favor. They own the media, and therefore are in a position to shape public opinion and give parties of private property critical backing during elections. They spend a king’s ransom on lobbying the state and politicians and running think-tanks which churn out policy recommendations and furnish the media with capitalist-friendly “expert” commentary. They set the agenda in universities through endowments, grants and the funding of special chairs to study questions of interest to their profits. They bring politicians under their sway by doling out generous campaign contributions and promises of lucrative post-political career employment opportunities. Is it any wonder the Reds aren’t simply voted back into power? Capitalist democracy means democracy for the few—the capitalists—not a level-playing field where wealth, private-property and privilege don’t matter.

And anyone who thinks Reds can be elected to office should reacquaint themselves with US foreign policy vis-a-vis Chile circa 1973. The United States engineered a coup to overthrow the socialist Salvador Allende, on the grounds that Chileans couldn’t be allowed to make the ”irresponsible” choice of electing a man Cold Warriors regarded as a Communist. More recently, the United States, European Union and Israel, refused to accept the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, all the while hypocritically presenting themselves as champions and guardians of democracy.

Of course, no forward step will be taken, can be taken, until a decisive part of the population becomes disgusted with and rejects what exists today, and is convinced something better is possible and is willing to tolerate the upheavals of transition. Something better than unceasing economic insecurity, private (and for many, unaffordable) health care and education, and vast inequality, is achievable. The Reds proved that. It was the reality in the Soviet Union, in China (for a time), in Eastern Europe, and today, hangs on in Cuba and North Korea, despite the incessant and far-ranging efforts of the United States to crush it.

It should be no surprise that Vaclav Havel, as others whose economic and political supremacy was, for a time, ended by the Reds, was a tireless fighter against socialism, and that he, and others, who sought to reverse the gains of the revolution, were cracked down on, and sometimes muzzled and jailed by the new regimes. To expect otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the determined struggle that is carried on by the enemies of socialism, even after socialist forces have seized power. The forces of reaction retain their money, their movable property, the advantages of education, and above all, their international connections. To grant them complete freedom is to grant them a free hand to organize the downfall of socialism, to receive material assistance from abroad to reverse the revolution, and to elevate the market and private ownership once again to the regulating principles of the economy. Few champions of civil liberties argue that in the interests of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press, that Germans ought to be allowed to hold pro-Nazi rallies, establish a pro-Nazi press, and organize fascist political parties, to return to the days of the Third Reich. To survive, any socialist government, must, of necessity, be repressive toward its enemies, who, like Havel, will seek their overthrow and the return of their privileged positions. This is demonized as totalitarianism by those who have an interest in seeing anti-socialist forces prevail, regard civil and political liberties (as against a world of plenty for all) as the pinnacle of human achievement, or have an unrealistically sanguine view of the possibilities for the survival of socialist islands in a sea of predatory capitalist states.

Where Reds have prevailed, the outcome has been far-reaching material gain for the bulk of the population: full employment, free health care, free education through university, free and subsidized child care, cheap living accommodations and inexpensive public transportation. Life expectancy has soared, illiteracy has been wiped out, and homelessness, unemployment and economic insecurity have been abolished. Racial strife and ethnic tensions have been reduced to almost the vanishing point. And inequalities in wealth, income, opportunity, and education have been greatly reduced. Where Reds have been overthrown, mass unemployment, underdevelopment, hunger, disease, illiteracy, homelessness, and racial conflict have recrudesced, as the estates, holdings and privileges of former fat cats have been restored. Communists produced gains in the interest of all humanity, achieved in the face of very trying conditions, including the unceasing hostility of the West and the unremitting efforts of the former exploiters to restore the status quo ante.

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/we-lived-better-then/

An Interview with Irina Malenko, Author of Sovietica (http://mltoday.com/an-interview-with-irina-malenko-author-of-sovietica)

Very nice, good cover art too.

http://www.northstarcompass.org/nsc1112/p35b.JPG

Maybe some us don’t know we’ve been mugged. And maybe some of us haven’t been. Take the radical US historian Howard Zinn, for example, who, along with most other prominent Left intellectuals, greeted the overthrow of Communism with glee [1]. I, no less than others, admired Zinn’s books, articles and activism, though I came to expect his ardent anti-Communism as typical of left US intellectuals. To be sure, in a milieu hostile to Communism, it should come as no surprise that conspicuous displays of anti-Communism become a survival strategy for those seeking to establish a rapport, and safeguard their reputations, with a larger (and vehemently anti-Communist) audience.

This should be tattooed on foreheads, and never forgotten. US "leftist celebrities" are not leftists and are celebrities accordingly...

I had not tagged the name before but you're right, I went looking, though this might reduce your enthusiasm.

http://gowans.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/the-ghost-of-paul-sweezy/#comments

Its something that leftists across the spectrum are wrestling with. It would be worth our time if we could provide a sensible account that doesn't swing as wildly as the economic ups and downs it is trying to explain.

Its something that leftists across the spectrum are wrestling with. It would be worth our time if we could provide a sensible account that doesn't swing as wildly as the economic ups and downs it is trying to explain.

From what I've seen a consensus is building in that direction. Other than demonstrating that capitalism sucks even more than we thought(even less up-side) what other implications for practical purposes?

One that immediately comes to mind is that if there ain't no 'good times' then it is more difficult to build and expand unions. We are certainly in that situation now.

From what I've seen a consensus is building in that direction. Other than demonstrating that capitalism sucks even more than we thought(even less up-side) what other implications for practical purposes?

One that immediately comes to mind is that if there ain't no 'good times' then it is more difficult to build and expand unions. We are certainly in that situation now.

BP, they're blowing in (with) the wind as always. To understand what is happening, you have to get concrete. The booge have developed immense powers to forestall the inexorable crisis. Not only do their methods distort the business cycle, they also distort (or contort) the ideological apparatus that springs up around and as cover for their methods.

Rule 1 is Don't believe a word they say.

BP, they're blowing in (with) the wind as always. To understand what is happening, you have to get concrete. The booge have developed immense powers to forestall the inexorable crisis. Not only do their methods distort the business cycle, they also distort (or contort) the ideological apparatus that springs up around and as cover for their methods.

Rule 1 is Don't believe a word they say.

Who is 'they'? Gowans, Sweezy, Bonds? We are talking about stagnation as a normal state of capitalist society interspersed with bubbles, yes? The idea has it's attraction, certainly when viewed over the last 100 years.

Most in Ex-Soviet States Say USSR Breakup Harmful

By Michael Pizzi

A Gallup poll found that many people feel let down by dissolution of USSR, even as anti-Putin protests erupt in Ukraine.

After more than two decades of wars, revolutions and economic collapses, residents of states formerly part of the Soviet Union are more than twice as likely to say the split from Russia harmed their countries than benefitted them, according to Gallup poll results released Thursday.

Gallup asked more than a thousand citizens of 11 former Soviet states to reflect on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which happened 22 years ago next week, and found a nostalgic, Russophilic streak among seven of the 11 countries it surveyed – even Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets of Kiev to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence in their country. Russians, too, appear to lament the USSR dissolution, with 55 percent saying it harmed Russia and only 19 percent reporting benefit.

Analysts say they are not surprised by the poll, which might be dissonant with the prevailing American perception of communist USSR as an oppressive regime from which most people should be grateful to break free. "Most people see more harm than good that came out of the collapse of the integrated larger state," said Fiona Hill, a Russia specialist and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute. "I don't think anyone's really bemoaning the loss of communism – no one's saying 'bring back the 5-year plans' – but I don't know anyone who feels they reaped massive personal benefit from the collapse."

The two states most skewed toward a "harmful" assessment of Soviet dissolution – Armenia and Kyrgyzstan – both lost subsidies due to the sudden breakup and were plunged into poverty, from which they have yet to recover. "You had the massive disintegration of an integrated economic entity," Hill said. "Those two countries were both really jolted by the collapse. They were very much propped up by Moscow." Conversely, the oil-producing nations of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan were the only three states to assess the breakup as mostly beneficial.

Division and disappointment

The 1991 dissolution of the USSR, which occurred after several republics had already declared their independence, was not universally popular in the Union's other republics. A March 1991 government-run referendum found that a majority of the republics overwhelmingly supported preserving the USSR, perhaps as reflected in the Gallup poll.

The poll also reveals generational gaps, whereby those too young to remember life in the USSR actually have more positive views of the breakup, possibly because young people were less affected by the societal and personal impact. Not all splits that resulted from the breakup fell along clear ethnic lines – in many cases, ethnic groups were marginalized or isolated in pockets of new independent states. Sometimes mixed marriages were torn apart. The ethnic Kyrgyz majority and Uzbek minority, notably, have periodically clashed in Kyrgyzstan.

Many ex-Soviet citizens have also been let down by their post-Soviet rulers and indicate that hoped-for freedoms – deprived under the authoritarian USSR – have not materialized. Tajikistan suffered under a bloody five-year civil war in the mid-1990s, in which nearly 100,000 died, but the war ended with Tajik president Emomalii Rahmon clinging to power. He still rules the authoritarian state to this day.

Unsurprisingly, Tajik respondents to the Gallup poll were likely to say that "most or many" people in the country were afraid to express political views, and that they had overwhelmingly negative perceptions of the breakup.

Soviet nostalgia

The poll, conducted between June and August, is timely. Over the past couple of months, Russian efforts to turn former Soviet states eastward by drawing them into a Kremlin-led customs union have come to a head. Belarus and Kazakhstan – which was one of three states to favor the Soviet breakup in the poll – are already members of the union, which will soon include Armenia. Russia's Putin has been accused by Western officials of blackmailing Ukraine, which has recently accepted a cut in oil prices from Russia and a massive $15 billion debt relief package in exchange for spurning an EU trade pact. But Putin has been met with strident opposition in several former Soviet states, most of all Ukraine.

In a Thursday op-ed she wrote from prison, Yulia Tymoshenko, a jailed opposition leader – and former Ukrainian president – urged her compatriots to peacefully remove current President Viktor Yanukovich, Putin's ally in Kiev, from power. She warned of a "new, post-Soviet empire." Failing to uproot Kremlin influence, Tymoshenko wrote in the Kyiv Post, "could lead to the birth of a new aggressive empire on the territory of the former Soviet Union that will distort the development of all humanity." More protests – though on a smaller scale – greeted Putin on his visit to the Armenian capital of Yerevan earlier this month. Protestors held signs saying, "Putin, go home" and "No to the USSR."

But the Gallup poll paints a more complicated picture of the former Soviet states that might bolster Putin's political overtures to the former Soviet Union – and the appeal of a customs union that restores transportation, economic and labor migration ties among states that were ripped apart in 1991, some experts say. "Our integration project is based on equal rights and real economic interests," Putin has said about the customs union, which is mutually exclusive from parallel EU pacts.

Though he has mostly spoken in vague terms about the Eurasian Union, his emphasis on integration has resonated in places like Armenia, the most recent country to sign on. "The poll could really help to underscore the crux of the union," Hill told Al Jazeera. "The ability to play on nostalgia for this vast area, economically and politically, will really help."


Al-Jazeera, Dec 19, 2013

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/19/most-residents-ofexsovietstatessayussrbreakupharmful.html

Bump

The reasons for Russian revolution and the new capitalist reality

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G9m-jilrCDI/VTqoMPraE2I/AAAAAAAAM40/rT3MwLv_WU4/s1600/image00.jpg

April 24, 2015

Sergey Kurginyan

Gazeta.eot.su

Translated from Russian by Dvajdsitdva






Noble and majestic is the history of these descents into social hell, undertaken with the goal of rescuing those suffering.




Does anyone really believe that Marx (also Engels, Lenin, and Stalin), faced with new problems, would cling to secondary (and even primary) components of models, exercises, theoretical constructions? While these components (as well as the models themselves, doctrine and theory) arose in a situation where the new problems were absent? But how does one then approach the famous statement of Engels, not once repeated by Lenin, and then Stalin, that "Marxism is not a dogma, but a guide to action"? And other similar such statements uttered by Marxist politicians, which have been made plenty of times!



About the classes and the class struggle Marx wrote very little - he just ran out of time. The "class in itself" for Marx is not a class. To mold this unorganized, helpless, senseless "class in itself" into a full-fledged class ("the class for itself"), it needs to be joined by some intelligent force, which possesses not only intellectual self, but also a political self. For these forces to awaken the class, to restructure it into something historically complete. For a class to reformulate, to acquire a new and much more perfect structure, to find a new will and consciousness, to morph into a substance from a proto-substance, and then - to the subject of historical action. And once becoming this subject - to save itself, and the rest of humanity.



From what did the class and humanity had to be rescued in the late XIX - and early XX century? From material poverty, generating dehumanization. The very same material impoverishment was a consequence of exploitation, brilliantly described by Marx. Material impoverishment in the period that we are discussing, from which we are separated by more than a century, was quite obvious and blatant. It and its consequences gave rise to furious indignation, which always arises from witnessing the suffering of the majority, brought to the sacrificial altar by the greedy minorities, in people who had material wealth, but were gifted with what Chekhov called "the talent of compassion." It helps to reread the stories of Chekhov or the novel of Emile Zola's "Germinal", to understand just how disgusting and foul were the beastly excesses of material capacity of the minorities, and how the majority suffered. And those members of this minority, who were endowed by nature or by upbringing with the ability of deep and sacrificially-active compassion, deeply felt for this majority.



Such representatives of the minorities came together in one way or another. Of course, the unsurpassed standard of such cohesion and real unification was Lenin's "party of a new type". But the Mensheviks and other social revolutionaries also united. And just as the Bolsheviks, extended a helping hand to those representatives of the majority, who in their eyes had the greatest ability to resist dehumanization, carried out by the minorities for the sake of their own deplorable luxuries.



The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks both approached the working class from different angles, but they both considered them to be the most capable of resistance. The Socialist-Revolutionaries went to the peasants, because their model of resistance to dehumanization convinced them that the peasants were most capable of resistance.




But we are talking about here, and I would like to reiterate, about resistance to dehumanization that has been generated by mass impoverishment, as a result of exploitation.


[These events originated as small ripples, then turning into waves, flowing back and worth. Dehumanization of the exploited majority by the exploitative minorities, caused these resistance movements to surge and counter the flowing tide, as the only solution - tr.]

A huge number of workers lived in barracks and worked endlessly, they were deprived consistently of what a person needs for a decent and healthy life. But among these deprivations, the most important one was the lack of daily bread. Hunger in itself and its related deficits, just as material, as hunger, is what dehumanized the people [and got the resistance wheel spinning - tr.] a century ago. Among these material deficiencies were: offensive overcrowding, affecting many workers; the wretchedness of living conditions fueling the wretchedness of interpersonal and group relations; an incredible exhaustion from labor, fueling terrible dullness, an escape from reality towards alcohol; dirt and unsanitary conditions; gradual adoption of the most vulgar habits.






Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gorky, Kuprin - each author narrated these deficits and the resulting horrors of dehumanization on their own. The Russian intelligentsia and nobility enthusiastically read about it, and then watched it all with disgust. Adopting a firm decision that it cannot be tolerated and it must change. And ended up at the scaffolds and prisons, giving their “soul for a friend".



Noble and majestic is the history of these descents into social hell, undertaken with the goal of rescuing the suffering.



Noble and glorious are the results - the creation of the Soviet Union and a Soviet society, were all of these horrors were explicitly absent.



Noble and glorious are the achievements, because the Soviet Union was able not only to end all the monstrous consequences of extreme and offensive material hardships designed to shackle the majority by the insane minority, who swam in luxury. The Soviet Union managed to do much more - to create such an ascent, where people free from material hardships, began to live by the maxim "not on bread alone" and thus became a different breed of people.


[A biblical quote from Matthew 4.4, “Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Possibly implying that a man is different from an animal in that he can do more compassionate and productive things than just continuously and ignorantly consume without purpose - tr.]



A century has passed, and what do we see?



On that "blessed West,” where the Soviet people were lured by the anti-Soviets, we really do not see the humiliating impoverishment of workers in general, and the working class in particular. Destructive material impoverishment takes place on the periphery of the capitalist world - in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In those places dehumanization by hunger at a minimum does not decrease. And actually - is growing.



The worsening of the material impoverishment of workers can be tracked without any difficulty if you look at standard of living indicators for the workers of planet Earth. But due to the heterogeneity of such data, some could argue, that you are measuring the "average temperature in a hospital". Also, to prove to people that the relative prosperity of workers in the West is bought at the price of all the grosser and more relentless impoverishment of all other workers of the world is firstly, quite difficult, and secondly, not as effective, as some like to think. Because someone will say, "Who cares! Let the blacks bend their backs, and we will have everything like the West!" And some will say that the blacks have always bent their backs and are now bending their backs less. And will explain that they are bending their backs due to their laziness, inferiority and so on.



In truth we are facing a new capitalist (or imperialist, or even ultra imperialist) reality. It requires significant adjustments. Otherwise, we will lose all reality. And together with that reality we will lose the right to strong-willed and life-affirming resistance to new challenges, new threats, and new snares of the enemy of men and humanity.



In conclusion,


See you in the USSR!


[i]Editor's note:

While people passionately argue about these and other conspiracies surrounding the Russian revolution (rightfully or not), the fact remains that there was a genuine social need at its foundation.

Just like in Ukraine where the interests of various elite groups were supported by popular social dissatisfaction and a genuine desire for a better future.

Although not mentioned in the article, repressions of the Stalin period, initiated by the few, overshadowed the achievements made possible by the Revolution (in education, healthcare, and other social spheres comprising the Soviet safety net).

When embracing capitalism for a pair of jeans and a personal vehicle, many Russians were quick to toss the Soviet legacy to the sidelines of history, defining that period by the Soviet crimes, as opposed to accomplishments.

But problems did not miraculously disappear and new problems require new heroes and new solutions, for which history could be a guide.


http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-reasons-for-russian-revolution-and.html

An interesting perspective from Russia, though we could do without the gratutious cheap shot from the editor.
I have no idea what these 'new perspectives' are.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

https://scontent-atl3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/11108976_1404509819874142_171690311015191833_n.jpg?oh=2ba375d21db90ce112047da85d82ba4a&oe=56B17B4F

Achievements Of Socialism In The Soviet Union

This is a video showcasing some of the things that were achieved during Socialism in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mostly focusing on the Stalin era because thats when most of the breakthroughs happened but also the time of Lenin and shortly after Stalin's death in the 50s. Besides really its not about figureheads, its about what the society as a whole achieved in the worker's state.


http://youtu.be/s5axVunzQSA

Aside from the obligatory anti-Stalinism and use of the word nostalgia, which I think trivializes what it is describing this has some good material in it.



What’s up with growing communist nostalgia in Eastern Europe?
by worker

25 years later many are thinking things were better in the Soviet bloc - and there are some valid reasons to think that

Kurt Biray

(openDemocracy)

Wed, Nov 11, 2015 |

http://russia-insider.com/en/whats-growing-communist-nostalgia-eastern-europe/ri11088#.VkbugA-XCIc.facebook

Originally appeared at openDemocracy

There is absolutely no doubt that the transition from state socialism to liberal democracy in many Eastern European states has been a long and bumpy ride. Political liberalisation and the shift from a Soviet command economy to a free market economy have caused various socio-economic ramifications for the peoples of this vast region through failed promises and expectations.

While the problems of transition vary from country to country, the most common concerns range from severe unemployment to a lack of job security and, inevitably, economic instability. Stagnating economic growth in many post-communist states has, however, also produced a new and unforeseen phenomenon: communist nostalgia.

The term nostalgia originates from the Greek root words nostos (returning home) and algia (longing) and thus the word’s meaning is synonymous with the term homesickness. Nostalgia has consistently been attributed to romanticising the past in the present to make it look better. Within the present-day Eastern European context, nostalgia refers to an increasingly positive outlook on the pre-1989 communist past.

Reasons for this include the safety and security ensured under state socialism and the major social and economic developments propelled by the command economy. Other factors contributing to this nostalgia are the failures and uncertainties of the existing system of capitalist liberal democracy that now engulf Eastern Europe. Communist nostalgia, therefore, is a growing phenomenon in the post-communist states of Eastern Europe due to the successful progress and advances made before 1989 and the failed transition and unmet expectations of so-called ‘freedom’ and capitalism.

State socialism prompted massive and unprecedented social and economic developments throughout the region. Before elaborating on these advances, however, a misconception originating in the West about the ordinary lives of Eastern Europeans during the Soviet era must be addressed.

After WWII, the West constantly viewed Eastern Europe as a giant prison camp of 90 million people under communist repression with the U.S. Congress even passing an arbitrary resolution denoting them as “captive nations”. This might have been true throughout the Stalin years but not so since the late 1950s. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the President of the US was required every year to declare something called Captive Nations Week. At the time the people of Eastern Europe did not consider themselves as being held “captive” and even laughed at the term.

Another fallacy of this label’s usage by the US was its implication that Eastern Europe was free before becoming the Eastern Bloc. Instead, all states in the region, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, were ruled by ruthless and oppressive monarchs or despots of one kind or another. The American labelling of these nations as “captive” during the Cold War epitomised the ignorance of Western propaganda at the time which was aimed at denouncing everything that was communist.

If the people of Eastern Europe were actually “captives” then what explains each respective nation’s receptiveness to the political socialisation mechanisms of the Communist Party. The communist system was very successful at indoctrinating and transmitting socialist beliefs to the masses. The populations of many of these states accepted and internalised values such as socialist patriotism, which converged with the traditional nationalist and other pre-existing norms of the region. The political socialisation that took place pre-1989, therefore, is definitely a contributing factor to the level of communist nostalgia that exists in many Eastern European states today.

Not only did the communist system succeed in transmitting socialist values to the populations of Eastern Europe, but also in industrialising and transforming their economies. Huge developments in infrastructure, manufacturing and industry dominated the scene all over Eastern Europe, which was largely agrarian and underdeveloped before WWII.

As of the late 1970s, for example, Poland’s state-owned steel company, Zjednoczenie Hutnictwa Zelasa i Stali, was bigger than Great Britain’s at the time. It ranked one notch ahead of Bethlehem Steel Corporation and one behind United States Steel in the world output listing. The People’s Republic of Poland also became a major copper producer and exporter, not to mention the fourth largest coal producer in the world – behind the US, Russia and China. During the 1970s, the Polish mining industry was so modernised that it even sold machinery and expertise to America.

Hungary became the largest manufacturer of cross-country and city buses in all of Europe. Throughout the 1970s, the Ikarus factory exported these buses to the US where they were used by municipal transit systems in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles. The Hungarian People’s Republic also planned an assault on the electronics and data processing market with a state-owned company called Videoton (started in 1969) located in Budapest. By the late 1970s, it was doing more than $300 million worth of business annually.

Bulgaria completely industrialised its agricultural sector in the same time period, operating 170 agro-industrial complexes which provided all of Europe with fresh fruits and vegetables, high-quality canned goods and preserves. One of Bulgaria’s government-owned companies also managed Europe’s largest international trucking fleet which carried tomatoes from Sofia to Denmark, Black Sea grapes to Holland and West German tools to Turkey.

By 1979, Bulgarian economic decision makers initiated a reform movement that put greater emphasis on efficiency of production and decentralised the economy, especially in light industry and agriculture. Central planning thus became less rigid by placing more consideration on surrounding economic realities. Bulgaria’s successful attempt to strike equilibrium between agricultural development and industrial production specialisation undoubtedly expanded and advanced the national economy by the 1980s.

There are numerous reasons for explaining East Germany’s successful centralised economic system; having a Western industrial heritage, high levels of economic advancement and generations of skilled workers are all contributing factors. East Germany’s economic management awarded innovation and efficiency, which allowed the communist state to create products of the highest quality in the Eastern Bloc. Although the nation’s economy was not perfect, scarcities were minimal and central planning seemed to work quite well.

Life for the average Eastern European living under state socialism was infinitely better than it was before WWII. Per capita annual income in the year 1974, according to figures provided by the United Nations, were $3,000 in Czechoslovakia, $2,300 in Hungary, $2,000 in Poland, $1,650 in Bulgaria and $1,200 in Romania. This compared to $6,000 in West Germany, $3,600 in England, $2,700 in Italy, $2,200 in Ireland and $2,200 in Spain (all in the same year).

It is important to note that since there were very few extremely rich or extremely poor people in the socialist states, “per capita annual income” is actually closer to real average income per person as compared to nations in Western Europe. When contrasting these statistics, there seems to be little difference in economic wealth between the socialist states and their Western counterparts.



The economic and technological achievements made during the Soviet era were accompanied by massive investments in social programmes and public services. These included health care, education and day-care centres, which the communist system ensured were either affordable or free of charge with “One of the major characteristics of the previous state socialist societies was the comprehensive provision of a state-financed and delivered health system”.

Another inherent attribute to the socialist state was the strong dedication to education for all and the ending of illiteracy: there is absolutely no denying that the communist parties of Eastern Europe did much to educate their people. Illiteracy, which was once widespread throughout the entire region, was practically eliminated by the full provision of universal and free schooling.

Under the communist system of social development there was also substantial expansion of post-secondary education in a number of university and college level institutions as well as an increase in the numbers of students. The most preeminent example was Poland, where the number of post-secondary institutions exploded from 28 in 1939 to 89 in the late 1970s, while the number of students grew from 14 per 1,000 (before WWII) to 145 per 1,000 in 1977.

Most Eastern European students before 1989 obtained some kind of government assistance covering tuition, residence and books. These scholarship programmes and grants did, however, vary from country to country, as did the number of students receiving financial aid. In all the Eastern Bloc countries, grants and scholarships were given based on both family incomes and academic performance. Although education and healthcare constituted only part of the public services offered to Eastern Europeans, they were fundamental social initiatives for the communist regimes.

This outstanding level of economic and social progress, especially in healthcare and education, is fundamental to the growing disillusionment and distaste for the capitalist system in contemporary Eastern Europe. Conducting a comprehensive public opinion poll in the 1990s, sociologist Stephen White acquired survey data denoting the rising public support for the socialist system in comparison with the situation following political and economic reform.

The social and economic downturns following the transformation have produced major public disapproval - these surveys indicate that substantial segments of the populations in Eastern Europe find life worse under post-Soviet conditions. Most people in these countries have gained an appreciation for the many positive features of the Soviet system: the role of the state over employment, the provision of social welfare, equality and public order. According to the same surveys, post-communist rule is considered to be remote, parasitic and incompetent and is also associated with crime and corruption.

Every state throughout the region has had difficulty adjusting to the new political and economic order, some more so than others. An intriguing example is East Germany, whose citizens experienced immense psychological devastation from the abrupt transition to capitalism. A clear image of ‘the good old days’ resonated amongst post-communist citizens of the former GDR when they were forced to adopt a different and more individualistic way of life because their previous lives were now deemed worthless.

“‘Literally over a single night, all the things that had been taken for granted were no longer valid’; the natural result was a ‘serious identity crisis’ that was reflected in ‘confusion and frustration’”. The current economic situation in the New German States (former GDR) is no different from the psychological one. Mass privatisation and deindustrialisation has required West German subsidies of approximately €130 billion annually to the crumbling East German economy, which has still not recovered.

The troubling situation is made even worse by continuing demographic problems. With increasing unemployment and a dropping birth rate, many young people are migrating to West Germany or other parts of Europe due to the lack of apprenticeship training positions in the East. Consequently, East German businesses have experienced a severe decline of potential employees to maintain or expand their workforce. Migration, along with the death surplus of the post-communist state, added up to a population decrease of 2.2 million people from 16.7 million in mid-1989 to 14.5 million in 2005. All these factors make East Germany an interesting case study when examining the failed economic and political reforms brought about by democratic transition.

Another case study urgently requiring attention is the failed attempt to democratise and integrate Bulgaria into the global capitalist system (neo-liberalism). In the decade right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1992-2002), many rural areas of the Bulgarian countryside embarked on a transformative and disorienting experience. Traditions and rituals from the Soviet era were threatened by economic privatisation and non-family village relations were dismantled by newly formed social and political divisions. Much like the previous case discussed, the Bulgarian countryside also diminished from massive emigration.

Mike Donkin, a BBC reporter and journalist, stated in 2006 that Bulgaria had the fastest rate of population decline in all of Europe: “and the sense of abandonment is even greater in the countryside…Scattered across the landscape now are dozens of deserted or almost deserted villages”.

The most devastating ramification of democratic transition and economic privatisation was the loss of jobs and professional occupations in Bulgarian villages. To make matters even worse, the negligent liquidation of collective farms reduced them to subsistence farming and production (a 19th century mechanism). For these reasons, Bulgaria has suffered economic and social devastation ever since the fall of state socialism. This helps to explain the strong sense of communist nostalgia that exists today in Bulgaria, especially in the countryside.

Very much like Bulgaria and East Germany, other Eastern European states have also experienced vast economic inequalities and uncertainties. Ultimately, this has fostered a negative assessment of the capitalist present and a positive view of the communist past, which therefore explains the pre-eminence of communist nostalgia in post-communist politics.

In his article, Communist Nostalgia and its Consequences in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, Stephen White addresses his research literature and survey data from the 1990s indicating that more than half the adult population in the entire East European region gave a positive assessment of the socialist economic system.

The overall average for the post-communist states in 1998 was 54% - with the highest support in Ukraine and Belarus at 90% and 78% respectively. This was a significant increase from the amount of support communism had in 1991 - 36% - which again was at its highest in the former Soviet republics. White’s data demonstrates an interesting correlation. The evidence suggests that nostalgia for the economic stability and equality of the communist past increased with the duration of failed economic reforms and instability since 1989.

Since communist nostalgia is a growing phenomenon in Eastern Europe today, it has different ways of manifesting itself amongst post-communist citizens. Nostalgic types are quite particular in their reverence for the past and share different things they are nostalgic about (this is shown in their electoral support for communist and socialist parties). Most of these individuals are nostalgic for job security, free education and reliable and affordable healthcare. This is because most Eastern Europeans remember and long for the vast social programmes and services that are no longer offered under capitalism.

The concept of nostalgia quickly became an inherent quality of post-communist politics. The safety and security guaranteed under state socialism co-mingled with the failures and uncertainties of the existing capitalist system and liberal democracy has made this happen. It is interesting to speculate what the future entails for the entire region and whether or not this nostalgia will transform into something much bigger than what it already is.

"You save the world and make it a better place, but....."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUSKBBmWwAAJj7Y.jpg

Looks like a good place for this...

Tour of the Yeltsin-center
colonelcassad
19 May 21:38

http://www.rotfront.su/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/20160514_eltsincenter-1024x683.jpg

Tour of the Yeltsin-Centre

In the May holidays I decided to cultivate and to visit Yeltsin Centre (aka Yeltsin Museum) to learn more in detail about the heroic biography of the first president of the new Russia, liberated from the bloody Communist yoke. Before visiting the museum of the glorious past Boris I only remembered a promise to lie down on the rails, obmochennoe wheel aircraft, conducting the orchestra let fall from the bridge. But, as it turned out, and Yeltsin made ​​a lot of good things, to remind you of that, and built this museum for a modest seven billion nefterubley.

Who would not say, the center of the building is beautiful. Along with the contents of two billion exactly pull. Around everything clean, the fountains are different, the audience walks relatively intelligent. In front stands a monument to Boris Nikolayevich. I'm up to this evil tongues naboltal that the monument is made ​​in the form of a bottle of vodka, plugged a tennis racket, but it is not. The first president of a free Russia imbedded in the stele and leaning on something invisible, squinting, looking down on the road, you know, the Russians.

Inside the museum design is very worthy, there is a snack bar and a restaurant with a good choice of alcohol (prices, however, brutal), everywhere it smells like in Turkish hotels. A lot of correct, polite guards, reliably protecting the museum from various afflictions. Prices for democratic visiting the museum: two hundred rubles per adult, if without privileges and titles. Instead of paying a fortune for the theater, poor Russians may well get their portion of culture in the museum. Smiling girl selling tickets, trying to convince me to visit at the same time an exhibition of contemporary art in the same center, but I, frankly, stingy, thinking that culture I would be quite enough without the blue pigs with five legs.

Near the entrance hangs a large booth with the names of the organizations and the names of people who have assisted in the creation of the museum. It's nice to see how the list harmoniously ardent patriots with double liberals. Perhaps it is the very unity of the entire Russian people, which is so much talk in recent years. However, some patriots at a stand, seeing there is the name of the main fighter against oligarchs among those against whom he fights, hesitate and start to babble something about mnogohodovki especially tricky. At the stand, I suddenly wondered how to react Soviet citizens if Stalin to fight Trotskyites built in Kirovograd Trotsky Museum.

In the dressing room you can see the gifts that I bestow Boris in different years of his reign. From gifts memorable luxury two-handed sword - a dream tolkiyenistov. Undoubtedly, edged weapons handed over to the first president for cutting heads of the Communist hydra. Also struck by the presidential office armored ZIL, who faithfully served his father Russian democracy prior to transplant in order for the products of the German automobile industry. Lots of gifts received by the first president of associates, of which I have to visit the museum for some reason, remembered only Burbulis.

Passing through the metal detector frame, we are in the museum. To warm up the visitors are invited to watch a short film "Russia in search of freedom." To be honest, the film is not so: it is clearly designed for young people with klipovoy thinking - tedious melteshenie 3D-characters, fast frame rates and other "our answer to Hollywood." And the graphics are not all that well, "Civilization" introductory video games more impressive. You can learn from the film, how complicated by Russia since the beginning of time came for freedom, which occurred only in the 90s. Naturally, especially tight with the freedom was in Soviet times. The filmmakers poskromnichali and estimated the number killed by the Bolsheviks only twenty million. For objectivity's sake it should be noted that the film had a positive impact on of the Dnieper and the Great Patriotic War, but with the proviso that all the great Soviet was "contrary" and "a huge sacrifice." Here the liberal filmmakers sang in unison with the patriots, claiming that all the gains of socialism were made ​​mysterious "simple guy", which prevented the Communists are constantly chewing their party soldering and occasionally fire intermittently unfortunate peasant in the head.

Then the visitor must pass through a narrow corridor , forced expositions doeltsinskoy age, broken by main periods: the coup better men drunken, red terror, the torture chambers of the NKVD, Khrushchev corn - as usual. The stands of posters of the Soviet era intelligently interspersed photos of starving children, innocently arrested and other horrors of the Soviet era. In short, nothing new. In each section, dedicated to a specific period, hanging screen showing footage films and performances statesmen. Movies are shown different, sometimes not from that era. For example, in the section of the bloody Stalinist I noticed frames "A feast of Belshazzar" of perestroika bredovatogo film. Screens minor annoyances: the sound from different sources interfere, and it all looked like a Soviet cartoon about Nehochuha, which at the same time demonstrated a few cartoons.

Slightly stupor from the nightmares of the Soviet era, the visitor ascends to the second floor, where he will get acquainted with the "seven days that changed Russia ". In contrast to the LORD the days of creation, seven of Yeltsin's days are not consecutive: the coup, "filling the shelves", the adoption of the constitution, overcoming default ... If I were the manager of the museum, I would add the number of Yeltsin's exploits to the twelve, with God compare Boris somehow immodestly , but it is with Hercules. Unreached were such feats as the First Chechen storming of the White House, slept for Ireland, attempted murder KGBshniki via electronic ostanavlivatelya heart dances with the singer aspen, rails again ...

We must pay tribute to the creators of the museum, seven days they have exhausted all possible. Talk about all the exposure for a long time, I will describe only the brightest. Day three, for example, is dedicated to save the country from famine. In one room is a typical shop of the Soviet era, the liberal alternative to the existing reality: of the products are only trёhlitrovki birch sap and pyramids of cans of seaweed, in any case glued to the counter. Together with me acquainted with the exposition of a pleasant young couple. She wondered abnormality of the Soviet people, who, sitting on such a rigid birch-cabbage diet, able to defeat the Nazis and still something there to build. A young man intently tried otkovyryat one of the cans to determine whether the bloody Bolsheviks on the composition and caloric content of products indicated. But in contrast to the other room it was shown the abundance that came as a result of the reforms. Products for unknown reasons, have not shown (except alcohol "Royal" and vodka "Absolut"), but on the stand put a huge amount of what was then the home appliances and clothing, among which I with affection and nostalgia for lost youth saw Turkish sweater «Boss».

One of "days" was devoted to the controversial election campaign "god forbid." About her museum creators remembered with a slight hint of playfulness, a little embarrassed, like some famous writer, recalled that as a child my grandmother broke the vase. Like, oh, how young we were not yet able to properly organize pre-election PR, yes nothing, for the good, you know! But in October 1993 it is shown as something unintelligible. In one room a pile piled police shields (which is why many visitors choose that room did not have time to equip), and the other, avoiding various unpleasant moments, the creators moved immediately to the newly founded constitution, article from which frighteningly read with different stars of the Russian screen cinema and music.

and finally, the apotheosis of the exhibition - hall of freedom, which in Russia and did not smell to Yeltsin. The Bolsheviks, of course, also spoke of freedom, but this freedom was wrong. Minded Communists believed that man is free, if it is guaranteed a job where he can not "optimize" or assign a profit, free education in any quantity, and other totalitarian dirty trick. A very hard-nosed can not understand, some kind of freedom brought them Boris, if it people began to barricade homes iron doors and grilles in the institutions can not be reached without a passport, the police has got a rubber dubёm, at the entrance to the airport shmonali in prison, and children accompany parents to school until the age of majority. That freedom hall is just intended to dispel all doubts.

Freedom, what designers hall counted exactly five, are the pillars with screens on which various figures are continuously talking about that freedom, by which the screen hangs. Mr Yeltsin brought enslaved rossiyaninu following freedoms: business (much needed for the majority of the population), movement (not a very topical after the recent Turkish-Egyptian scandals), assembly and association (about which try not to mention the events in the Swamp), thought and speech ( about which shamefully silent for ten years to think, in principle, do not prohibit, but only infrequently and in silence) and conscience (splagiachennaya in communist tyrants). Puzzled caused a small number of submitted freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution: whether it is listed freedom are the most important, whether the room is too small, or just not enough money on the other.

Before leaving each visitor can democratically to sit down on a bench next to a bronze Yeltsin made ​​in full value to share with him mentally sore and together think about the fate of free Russia. I sat down and leaned on the warm side of his father of Russian democracy. And quite suddenly I am dreaming that I was doing at the site of the museum management to vytsyganit some more bucks from the state budget. You can, for example, to make a living installation, depicting ordinary men, clad in Communist shackles. Visitors would walk, and their legs hitched iznurёnnye totalitarianism citizens. And from time to time through the halls would be swept first president, breaking the chain and giving expensive Russians freedom and democracy. Cool right? In total, it will take a couple of billion, a mere penny for our neftebyudzheta!

Suddenly, it seemed to me that the bronze Boris read my thoughts, smiled patronizingly, and he blew a wind of change with a slight scent of fresh fume. Http://goo.gl/ voEtD0 - zinc

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2756590.html

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Direct guarantees safety
colonelcassad
June 17 9:03

http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2014/nato-at-65/manfred-worner-impact/files/2946.jpg

On the issue of bikes that NATO did not give guarantees on the USSR did not expanding.

http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/colonelcassad/19281164/864882/864882_900.png

"The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside the territory of Germany gives the Soviet Union direct security guarantees."
May 17, 1990. (Quote from a speech in Brussels NATO Manfred Wörner "The North Atlantic Alliance and European Security in the 1990s," the Secretary-General) . Link to the original English-language performances http://nato.int/docu/speech/1990/s900517 a_e.htm But now NATO troops are in the countries directly bordering Russia.

PS. On the title photo NATO Secretary-General Manfred Werner in Moscow on Red Square. 1991.

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2802165.html

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Those treacherous commies...oh, wait. When you hear the Kremlin going on about 'our partners' ya gotta wonder, "whose side are they on?"

When you hear the Kremlin going on about 'our partners' ya gotta wonder, "whose side are they on?"

No, you don't have to wonder...

The St Petersburg branch of the Committee on 25 January. Statement on the perpetuation of the memory K.G.Mannergeyma
17-Jun-2016 03:41 pm

Yesterday at the Saint Petersburg "Committee on January 25," We discussed the situation with the "Mannerheim board" and definitely decided to make a statement on this occasion. The text of the statement is as follows:

June 16, 2016 in St. Petersburg the memory plaque was unveiled Carl Gustav Mannerheim. The opening took place in the presence of top officials in Russia. Any real or perceived merits before the Russian Mannerheim thwarted by the fact of his command of the Finnish forces were engaged in the siege of Leningrad in the north during the war, the blockade, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of residents. In this connection, the installation of a memorial plaque in the city, which already will forever remember Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, as an accomplice of war crimes, seems extremely cynical and outrageous. Well-known personal statement Mannerheim justifying territorial claims against the Soviet Union, his desire to create a Finland from the White Sea Ladoga, to return to pre-Petrine Russia border. Promotion of "merit Mannerheim" is a precursor to starting our eyes a campaign to destroy the Russian Federation's territorial integrity, falling within the scope of Article 280.1. Of the Criminal Code. Glaring and demonstrative recognition of the merits of Carl Mannerheim is a desecration of the memory of millions of victims of the siege, as well as citizens of the USSR who died in battles with the invaders and the Finnish regime in concentration camps during the war Mannerheim. Before us is an immoral act to revise the results of World War II is clearly covered by the provisions of Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "rehabilitation of Nazism". Particularly glaring looks that event on the ground of St. Petersburg-Leningrad, the city-hero, not to allow the enemy into its territory in the course of hostilities, but capitulated to him today. We demand that the President of the Russian Federation personally and immediately issued a decree to abolish the sacrilegious decision to perpetuate the memory Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, and immediately order the dismantling of the memorial plaque. We demand that the persons who participated in the commemorative event June 16 to install a memorial plaque in memory of Carl Mannerheim, a public apology to residents of St. Petersburg. Justification of Nazism has no place on our earth, under whatever pretext it has not been performed. St.-Petersburg branch of the All-Russian national movement under the by Igor Strelkov ( "Committee on January 25")

http://el-murid.livejournal.com/2842634.html

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And this shows how a Tsarists is a better ally for communists(for the time anyways) than the procurators from Moscow.

Ain't life funny?

Soviet Salary 1985 today
What income had an average Soviet family in 1985? What is the income under current conditions? I have long wanted to make this comparison, let's see what we get around.

http://image1.thematicnews.com/uploads/images/00/00/01/2016/06/16/2d0969.jpg


1985 we are taking, because this is the last year of classical Soviet system, and later the Gorbachev leadership set a course for the revival of capitalist relations, there was a private business, the opportunity to cash non-cash payment, to conduct financial fraud, private organizations were allowed to foreign trade, etc.

Compare the city, we will families.

The average size of the Soviet urban families in 1985 - 3.5 persons in the RSFSR -.. 3.2 persons (1) the total family income in the same year on average in the USSR was at 143 rubles. rubles per month [UPS, eyes beguiled - data for the year 1987, in 1985 - 135 rubles. In all my calculations should be amended to 1%, basically the same))], which means the total monthly income of the family of 3.5 people. It was equal to RUR 500.5 (2). Background:

The average monthly salary of workers and employees of the USSR in 1985 amounted to 190.1 rubles. (3) Family income of 500.5 rubles. formed of 396.4 rubles. wages, 47.5 rubles. pensions, scholarships, grants and subsidies, 16.5 rubles. income from personal subsidiary plots, as well as 39.5 rubles. other income (included here IMHO shadow). In addition, free housing, including collective, 88.9 million square meters was built in 1985 total (useful) area that the per capita of 0.32 square meters, and our family - 1.12 sq.m. This rate suggested that a child born in our family, was to receive his personal room exactly to the age of puberty.

For comparison purposes, we need to take the structure of cash expenditures of the Soviet family in 1985, and to translate it into modern prices.

The structure was as follows:

On power - 33.7%
Fabrics, clothing and footwear - 18.1% of
cars, motorcycles, bicycles - 1.6%
Other non-food products - 11.3%
alcohol - 3%
Payment of apartments, utilities and maintenance of their own homes - 3 %
Other cultural and personal services - 7%
Taxes, fees, charges - 9.4%
Other expenses - 5.1%
Savings families - 7.8%.


Derive about Soviet ruble conversion factor of 1985 spent on food in modern rubles. The question is not as simple as it may seem. After all, modern products greatly inferior in quality products at the time. Fundamentally different price system. For example, the meat was bought and at state prices and the market, and today - only at the market. Very much different packaging. Today, more aero when trading. Therefore, I will take the coefficient of Natural loose milk.

In 1985 - 28 kopecks. EMNIP per liter, a week ago, I bought a bottle of the milk polutoralitrovye for 75 rubles., ie, liter - 50 rubles. K = 179. To strongly not to argue, I remind you that this includes the price of food in canteens and there the Soviet dinner for 80 cents a four-course will be equal to today, no less than 350 rubles. K = 438. But then ate in canteens at work all the time.

We use this factor for milk. 33.7% of 500.5 rubles. - It is 169 rubles spent on the power of the Soviet family.. Today - this is 30 251 rubles.

The coefficient of textiles, clothing and footwear. Here the question concerns my specialty. We deduce the male shirt. 1985 - 10 rubles, the modern equivalent -. 2500 rub. K = 250. Many will argue, because townsfolk think that today's clothing is cheaper. In fact, just today, a lot is sold extremely bad clothes and shoes, which in Soviet times just do not let the market. But the products of a similar quality to the Soviet are expensive. Accordingly, modern cheap shoes and clothes and has to be changed frequently.

In 1985, the Soviet family spent on the fabric, clothes, footwear 18.1%, or 90.6 rubles. Today at K = 250 is 22 650 rubles.

By "cars, bicycles, motorcycles." In 1985, VAZ-2106, the best car of the middle class, worth 7260 rubles. Today a new car of the middle class as reliable assembly will cost about one million. K = 138. Accordingly, 1.6% or 8 rubles spent in 1985, transformed into modern 1104 rubles.

For other non-food items derive for household appliances, is still the most expensive purchase. Take the new coolest TV. 1985 - about 800 rubles. The novelty of the "Horizon" - 38 000 rubles. R = 47.5. Let us not waste time on trifles, indicating that K on school notebook surpasses 200, use the TV. Accordingly, 11.3% or 56.6 rubles. 1985 turned into 2689 rubles.

. today . To Alcohol recently I bought vodka for the reunion - 450 rubles. for half a liter. In 1985 - 5.3 rubles. R = 84.9. In 1985 - 3% of the family budget, or 15 rubles, which now equals 1274 rubles.

By the communal. In 1985, it is 3% of the family budget, or 15 rubles. Today, we take about an average, taking into account the seasonality of prices, and most of understating 8000 rubles. K = 533. Let's understated, rounded to 500. Then the 15 Soviet rubles. 1985 turned into 7500 rubles today.

To the cultural and everyday services. Services also rose strongly. 40 kopecks. - Simple men's haircut in 1985, today the last time I had a haircut, "under the brush" and gave 450 rubles. and 50 rubles. tips. I think you can look and a haircut for 250 rubles. Then K = 625. A ticket to the cinema in the evening - 50 kopecks against 400 rubles. K = 800. In kindergarten is also better not to withdraw)) In transport services, too)) Let's not much to argue, I use an undervalued factor of 500. Then, 7% or 35 Soviet rubles converted into a modern 17 500 rubles.

Taxes and any insurance levies today grew strongly, but I do not understand, how can we display ratio. I propose to compare budgets net of such costs.

Other expenses. Here, in particular health, education expenses. The fact that in 1985 it was free or very cheap, was a serious blow to the family budget. For I will bring the banal flu. Today you have the flu and is easily spent on treatment of 1,000 rubles. In 1985 it would spend roughly ruble. Here is the ratio of "other" costs, which affects the spread of paid services in health and education. Then, 5.1%, or 25.5 rubles. 1985 today turn 25 500 rubles.

We still need to add on the fact that in 1985 the Soviet family received free of charge. The symbol of this free bonus will make a square meter received free housing. 1.12 sq.m. a year and a month - 0.1. As the average price per square meter of modern housing, take the price on my Saratov -. 36 000 rubles, if I'm not mistaken. The month is 3000 rubles. They and Priplyusuem.

To sum ​​up.

In 1985, the average Soviet family of conventional 3.5 people with an average salary of its employees 190 rubles. minus 47 rubles for taxes and fees, net of deferred 39 rbl., has spent the lives of 414.5 rubles.

To today have a similar standard of living of the modern Russian family has to spend per month 111 468 rubles. Of course, the average Russian family spends so much so she has to buy food substitutes, cheap clothes and shoes, to save on treatment and rest.

Thus, we can calculate the rate of the ruble against the Soviet family expenses. One ruble in 1985 - is 269 rubles in 2016.

We can also understand what 190 rubles Soviet salaries in 1985 today is the salary of 51,110 rubles. Youth only has to be explained that in 1985 the work for 190 rubles. you can find very easily, as well as the work of, say rubles for 250. But now the job for 51 thousand rubles ...

http://back-in-ussr.com/2016/06/sovetskaya-zarplata-1985-goda-segodnya.html

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And this shows how a Tsarists is a better ally for communists(for the time anyways) than the procurators from Moscow.

Ain't life funny?

Funny? It is fucking unreal.

Who won the space race?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ClWEdqQVEAAZRuV.jpg

Our achievements
18 July, 18:47

http://i1275.photobucket.com/albums/y456/venomous15/Putinism/PutinJews/vPclSGFeW8k_zps9a8e001c.jpg

The wonderful revelation of the conversation, and Titov Simonyan.

- I know what you say? I'll tell you a surprising thing. That is yesterday we met by chance with Titov, leader of the "Party of Growth", talked, and I told him what I want to tell you now. Why I do not like what we have now is called and called liberal wing? The fact that our liberal flank of every year, every six months - and I was just scared and discouraged - gives Bolshevism scary, you know? I think it is very dangerous for a country like ours, which are all already passed. Because we are from the rhetoric on "And where did the money, and indeed, whether the person they earned? Did he declare them if he broke the law? "- This is quite a normal and permissible useful rhetoric in a civilized society. These are questions that the opposition always has to ask, it is necessary to kak-to get answers and so on. But we do not even notice how even here you are - a journalist of "Echo of Moscow" - so jump on stupenechku towards "immoral whether to be rich?" we do so not build normal.
...
- I'm saying that I'm scared, because we are increasingly slipping from capitalism, which we, in general, have won big trouble and the collapse of the country won , the idea that it is necessary to work hard and earn a lot, and it will be great, and then all will be well with the idea that, in fact, a lot of money at all - this is bad. this is a typical example. Some time ago, also published in some of our liberal media selection - what decorations and what handbags are women who work in the administration, who work in the town hall, somewhere else. That's what? That gives me more than Bolshevism. Because no one is figuring out these decorations gave the husband a millionaire ...

http://vott.ru/entry/433306 - zinc

PS. Domestic nouveau riche very scary thought, that the loot on the corpse of the murdered of the country, it is not forever and sooner or later will come and ask. The rhetoric has got nothing to do with it, since it is obvious that most of the states of the 90 formed a criminal or semi-criminal way, because of the looting public property with the complicity of government officials. These people naively think they would forget about it. Immorality is not formed from bogastva and the way it was received when the authorities actually say that we of course know that our high moral rich got their wealth by criminal means, but we will not touch, because ... That's just so personal normal build will not work.

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2852131.html

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The Myth of #Stalin’s Military Purge (by way of response to @nikola_sock)

With respect, your assertion rests on revisionist history difficult to deal with in the scope of Twitter format and inordinately radicalized by ideology. Suffice it to say, all the academic sources on the subject considered in the West to be doctrinal were written in the years since the 20th Congress of the Communist Party and Khrushchev's self-serving "secret" denunciation of Stalin and, especially, in the 90s and early 21st century, as demonization of Stalin peaked, then gradually ebbed & reversed. There is undeniable comedy in the fact that a source much relied on, for example, by Wikipedia is a Trotskyite historian who gained prominence in the years following Stalin’s death.

For obvious reasons, Western academic circles were satisfied with the conclusions then reached by Russian scholars, and looked no further. In Russia herself, however, study continued, growing ever more nuanced & ever more skeptical of past confirmation bias. The balance of current Russian academic writing is, at the very least, voicing the need for thorough review of Stalin's legacy. The field's momentum and the more objective among the academics accept that past analysis objectively lacks reliability and that its conclusions are suspect.

The Difficulties of Analysis

There is an obvious difficulty here: Specifically with respect to the purges of the Soviet military ranks in advance of the Great Patriotic War, we are dealing with a hypothetical, rather than with something amenable to statistical or substantive analysis beholden to rigorous logic and factual verification. Where one may be tempted to see evidence of incoherent, even capricious, megalomania, another is equally right to argue that the need for purges was manifest and that anything less than guaranteed officer fidelity would have been fatal against the existential Nazi threat—a threat the USSR anticipated and planned for.

However, we simply have no way to compare the alternatives—the progress of the Soviet army with and without the purge. Thus, inevitably, any historian intent on condemning the purge faces the conundrum of reasoning away the ultimate success of the Soviet Union against the Nazi Germany. The inevitable outcome are fairy tales about “General Winter” and insupportable claims that Soviet military strategy consisted of little more than drowning the Wehrmacht with cannon fodder.

The Need for Reform

To start understanding what motivated the purge, one must remember Soviet Russia's experience during the Civil War, as compounded by foreign imperialist intervention. The conflict stripped bare a myriad of political, social and class schisms, with the Tsarist officer corps fractured in fealty and moved by a sense of duty to support a plethora of adversarial forces with competing political programmes. The subsequent years of military reform could not change the basic fact that the army (83% of highest-ranked commanders & up to 75% of its entire officer corps in 1922 had served in the Tsarist army) retained a body of officers who either started careers with fealty oaths to USSR's original existential nemesis—the Tsar—or were in one way or another shaped by pre-Communist society.

Add to this the clandestine, but no less real, political opposition to Stalin's political course in favour, of, for example, Trotskyist doctrine. And, of course, no less important, the Nazi espionage and recruitment—a tool of Germany's long-term strategy of aggression (here it is safe to ignore Hitler's bizarre claim that Nazis didn't recruit, but only fabricated evidence to discredit Soviet generals).

An army of a state anticipating an existential threat would be well served by ensuring ideological and national loyalty. Even so, the opportunist Vlasov still managed to evade the purge, joining the Nazi's genocide against his own people. How many more Vlasovs were denied the opportunity to turn their arms against their homeland under Wehrmacht's banners?

The Real Math of the Purge

Now for the inconvenient truth—the military purge’s magnitude: Recent estimates put it at approx. 4% of officer corps. For obvious reasons, officers dismissed from the ranks were replaced—with younger recruits—to maintain unit strength. Curiously, personnel education levels shot up with the arrival of forward-thinking & innovative young Soviet officers. There is no basis whatever to claim that the purge replaced military scholars with illiterate peasants. The reverse, evidently, was true.

Among 36761 officers discharged during the purge, only 10868 were arrested and subjected to some form of legal process. Documentation demonstrates that the reasons for discharge among the 36761 ranged from natural (or accidental) death, to illness & disability, to insobriety & disorderly conduct, to immorality & army code violations, to a consequence of expulsion from the Communist Party.

Military service could be terminated voluntarily, and some did so. A unique example of a discharge involved a military engineer: A head of regimental engineering corps, not a Communist Party member, was discharged after demonstrating potential as a singer. He was discharged to army reserve, with the order explicitly directing him to resume study at the Leningrad Conservatory.

Cases of discharge in due course, untainted by allegations of treason, are as much a part of the "purge" as arrests. It is difficult to imagine the normally zealous NKVD staff, tasked with overseeing the review of military personnel, as forgiving, and I will hazard an assumption that the overwhelming majority of those discharged without arrest were simply dead weight and were delisted for any number of mundane reasons. Only the 10868 arrested have direct relevance to the infamous purge.

Only 70% of those arrested were convicted, suggesting no small measure of investigation & adjudication to find truth. A potentially common reason for discharge was the loss of Communist Party membership, an event reasonably treated as a mark of unreliability in the USSR.

Understanding the Arrests

As clearly evident from the documents, the Red Army faced an internal disciplinary crisis in the run-up to the purge. This involved the more serious causes for discharge, accompanied by arrest: criminality, violence against civilians, rape. Likely, also included among these were serious breaches of army code, insubordination, ideological subversion, and so forth. As discussed below, the famed Tukhachevsky Case was likely motivated, in part, by the need to remove those who literally presided over this military decline.

Overall, particularly considering that spring cleaning of personnel dead weight outnumbered arrests more than 3 to 1, the widely assumed in the West to be senseless and arbitrary, Stalin's military "purge" suddenly looks like cadre reform that was thorough and, perhaps, radical, but for that reason alone no less appropriate or justified.

Add to the documented limited scope of the true purge that at least a third of the discharged men were permitted to return, and that replacement young and well educated military officers appreciably elevated the army's collective intellect, infusing the naturally conservative institution with innovation in military theory, previously scarce or unavailable skills & a fresh perspective, and it becomes a truly Sisyphean toil to patch up the crumbling edifice of the venerable myth of Stalin's act of dictatorial cannibalism.

The Tukhachevsky Case

The most often cited "incontrovertible proof" of the purge's irrational madness is, of course, the Tukhachevsky Case, a trial at which the named accused was prosecuted along with seven other of the highest-ranking Soviet military commanders. They were convicted.

It is often baldly asserted that the trial was a fraud, confessions were obtained under torture and innocents died. Particularly amusing are the attempts to rationalize the fact that it only took 2 weeks for the accused to confess. The usual facile approach is to twist this into an argument that confessions were a natural consequence of the military code of ethics of the accused. It is often said with much aplomb that the purported martyrs believed insubordination to Stalin to be a fate worse than unjust execution with their honour intact, and, bowing to his authority as Commander-In-Chief, walked like virginal lambs to the slaughter, bent to Stalin's savage will.

According to the faithful, the officers’ readiness to confess reinforces the revisionist claim that their confessions were false. The over 140 pages of plans to defeat the Red Army reproduced by Tukhachevsky along with his confession are blithely ignored. Nor is it credible to dismiss out of hand the allegations of espionage for & collaboration with the Germans. The fact that Hitler batted his eyelashes protesting that Germany merely fabricated such evidence, but did not recruit agents, is not a claim worthy of consideration, let alone credulity.

But the eight poster boys of the doctrine of the insidious military purge had sins enough to go around without ever diving into the matter of Nazi collaboration. The army's moral decline, the alcohol abuse, the lack of discipline and pervasive military code violations, insubordination and political subversion—all these signs of deepening crisis mentioned above and eradicated by the purge—were presided over and allowed to fester by the very same unjustly accused martyrs. Whatever the suitably proportionate punishment for their glaring mismanagement, their expulsion as commanders was to the Soviet Army's direct and immediate benefit—no matter their replacement. It was by no means a tragic loss.



The Crippled Army’s Unexplained Victories

But the most unambiguous blow to the chimera of a crippling military purge is most evident in the least controversial facts. Close examination of the Nazi's assessments of the Soviet Army's officer corps & its capabilities create the impression that the grand indictment of Stalin's decapitation of Soviet army on the eve of the war was transcribed nearly verbatim from these German reports.

Hitler exuded confidence when he portrayed the consequences of the purge as cause for immediate attack in January '41: "The Russian army is a clay colossus with no head." In May '41, Krebs, a German military attaché, confirmed further, upon returning from Russia: "Russian officer corps are much worse than in 1933. Russia will need 20 years to rebuild."

The German invasion on June 22, 1941, much like the earlier against the numerically superior French forces, was a master class in blitzkrieg. And yet, less than six (6) months after the initial catastrophe, the "headless" & "pitiful" clay colossus of Soviet officer corps struck back, dealing the unstoppable Wehrmacht consecutive defeats at Rostov, Tikhvin and Moscow—all as early as 1941. The year of 1942 brought the turning point at Stalingrad, and 1943—the first hint of destiny at the massive armoured duel at Kursk.

The Fraud of “General Winter” and the Myth of Nazi Domination

The vast expanse of Russian geography and the fact that the years of dogged fighting that followed the Nazi invasion of the USSR turned the cavalier efficiency & strategic pizzazz of blitzkrieg warfare into a distant & unreliable memory often obfuscate reality by distorting the escalating Soviet war effort into the doldrums of defeats, retreats & delays in search of winter's shield.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Having recovered from the near-crippling initial shock, USSR won battles as early as 1941—all led by an officer corps that Western historians, in line with Hitler, claim had been purged into oblivion. Nor does the argument that USSR’s victory was paved with cannon fodder hold water—total Soviet casualties only marginally exceeded those of the Wehrmacht, in proportion that is logically attributable to the fact that the German army was, in 1941, the best army in the world.

The two assertions are impossible to reconcile. But given that one—that Soviet victories escalated inexorably from humble beginnings in 1941 into the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945—is fact, and the other—that the Soviet army defeated Hitler despite senseless beheading of its officer corps—myopic confirmation bias, the myth of Stalin's crippling army purge should be restored to its proper place in the dustbin of revisionist history.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sou6aq

Nothing could be further from the truth. Having recovered from the near-crippling initial shock, USSR won battles as early as 1941—all led by an officer corps that Western historians, in line with Hitler, claim had been purged into oblivion. Nor does the argument that USSR’s victory was paved with cannon fodder hold water—total Soviet casualties only marginally exceeded those of the Wehrmacht, in proportion that is logically attributable to the fact that the German army was, in 1941, the best army in the world.

Also, the idea of 'human wave' victory in the era of modern weaponry was dispelled in action during both the US Civil War and WWI. Anyone with any integrity would never use this outdated myth, but then, as Gleb points out so well, these are people with no integrity.

the USSR

http://i0.wp.com/topnewsrussia.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/original-3_500x321.jpg?w=500
07/19/2016

Thanks to the USSR during the red flag over Berlin.

Thanks to the USSR for the Soviet Army, for the assurance that no one ever will attack my country.

For Yuri Gagarin's smile.

Because there were no unemployed, beggars and millionaires.

Because my police really took care of me.

For that kept the great Russian culture and the culture of other peoples of the Union of vulgarity and market laws.

For the undefeated "Dynamo" and "Cup of Cups."

For science, with the Observatory for synchrotrons.

For the Caucasus mountains, on which you can relax and go skiing without fear of getting shot by a fanatic.

For organic food and soda pop in 3 pennies.

For health care and education, which were really free and professional.

For the pride of the vastness of the Great country where he was born and live.

When the receipt of the rent is, in fact, a candy wrapper.

Thanks to the USSR during the times when children are without their parents went to school.

When honest "Uncle Stepa" -militsionery helped elderly and children to cross the road.

When we wanted to become pilots, astronauts, scientists and travelers.

When the whole city drinking soda from a vending machine from the same glass, and were not afraid to get infected.

When an ambulance is free for all without being an insurance policy.

Thank you for the informative magazine "Young technician", "Technics - youth", "Science and Life", "Young Naturalist" ...

For what have read everything that came across - up to the tear-off calendars (who do not know or have forgotten it, some useful information was posted on the back of each tear-off pages) and were the most widely read and well-educated nation.

Thank You For Free sports clubs and children's clubs

Thank you for that when flying on airplanes in Crimea sanatorium for a ticket, paid by trade unions, and were not afraid that the plane can capture the terrorists, or he will break just because of its deterioration.

For what clothing was on demand, shopping, and no one was fond of, and was fond of chess and sports.

Thank you for the great country of construction (highways, factories, reservoirs, subway stations, channels).

For something that made everything from a needle to the tank yourself, and not liberated Europe and America from the piles of rags / used scrap metal, turning the country into a huge second-hand with a sign "Fashion from America!", "Cars from Europe ! "," Product of Finland "(delivery in the country were in the use of consumer goods from clothes, third-rate films that were in use, and is often written off agricultural machinery, used cars, old equipment for the food industry, b / the medical and dental equipment, technologically obsolete scientific and technological equipment and devices produced in the US and Europe. America is equipped with its own scientific and technical base of the latest devices and equipment and eliminates the disposal costs retiring equipment, directing him to Russia and CIS countries. USED politicians already imported to Ukraine).

Thank you for fair justice, one for all, for what could condemn anyone, not according to merit and rank, but also to justify any, not depending on connections and money

For the morality of women and the courage of men,

Because the school had six first class, which means that the children had a lot, a lot.

Thank you for the fact that nowhere have I read then, no I did not say, nor parents, nor teachers, nor television, that man lives for the sake of dough.

Because then all were friendly, kind and confident in the future.

The only disadvantage of the Soviet Union that created our great ancestors, and the system has created the Gorbachev team Gaidar-Chubais, who is still in power, it is this team that created the uneducated and evil generation, who think that the past Russia and the USSR, is limited by repression and queues ..

The Red Army in TWITTER - Red Army in VKontakte

http://topnewsrussia.ru/sssr/

Something in my eye....
(getting to be such an old foggie)

the USSR

http://i0.wp.com/topnewsrussia.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/original-3_500x321.jpg?w=500
07/19/2016

Thanks to the USSR during the red flag over Berlin.

Thanks to the USSR for the Soviet Army, for the assurance that no one ever will attack my country.

For Yuri Gagarin's smile.

Because there were no unemployed, beggars and millionaires.

Because my police really took care of me.

For that kept the great Russian culture and the culture of other peoples of the Union of vulgarity and market laws.

For the undefeated "Dynamo" and "Cup of Cups."

For science, with the Observatory for synchrotrons.

For the Caucasus mountains, on which you can relax and go skiing without fear of getting shot by a fanatic.

For organic food and soda pop in 3 pennies.

For health care and education, which were really free and professional.

For the pride of the vastness of the Great country where he was born and live.

When the receipt of the rent is, in fact, a candy wrapper.

Thanks to the USSR during the times when children are without their parents went to school.

When honest "Uncle Stepa" -militsionery helped elderly and children to cross the road.

When we wanted to become pilots, astronauts, scientists and travelers.

When the whole city drinking soda from a vending machine from the same glass, and were not afraid to get infected.

When an ambulance is free for all without being an insurance policy.

Thank you for the informative magazine "Young technician", "Technics - youth", "Science and Life", "Young Naturalist" ...

For what have read everything that came across - up to the tear-off calendars (who do not know or have forgotten it, some useful information was posted on the back of each tear-off pages) and were the most widely read and well-educated nation.

Thank You For Free sports clubs and children's clubs

Thank you for that when flying on airplanes in Crimea sanatorium for a ticket, paid by trade unions, and were not afraid that the plane can capture the terrorists, or he will break just because of its deterioration.

For what clothing was on demand, shopping, and no one was fond of, and was fond of chess and sports.

Thank you for the great country of construction (highways, factories, reservoirs, subway stations, channels).

For something that made everything from a needle to the tank yourself, and not liberated Europe and America from the piles of rags / used scrap metal, turning the country into a huge second-hand with a sign "Fashion from America!", "Cars from Europe ! "," Product of Finland "(delivery in the country were in the use of consumer goods from clothes, third-rate films that were in use, and is often written off agricultural machinery, used cars, old equipment for the food industry, b / the medical and dental equipment, technologically obsolete scientific and technological equipment and devices produced in the US and Europe. America is equipped with its own scientific and technical base of the latest devices and equipment and eliminates the disposal costs retiring equipment, directing him to Russia and CIS countries. USED politicians already imported to Ukraine).

Thank you for fair justice, one for all, for what could condemn anyone, not according to merit and rank, but also to justify any, not depending on connections and money

For the morality of women and the courage of men,

Because the school had six first class, which means that the children had a lot, a lot.

Thank you for the fact that nowhere have I read then, no I did not say, nor parents, nor teachers, nor television, that man lives for the sake of dough.

Because then all were friendly, kind and confident in the future.

The only disadvantage of the Soviet Union that created our great ancestors, and the system has created the Gorbachev team Gaidar-Chubais, who is still in power, it is this team that created the uneducated and evil generation, who think that the past Russia and the USSR, is limited by repression and queues ..

The Red Army in TWITTER - Red Army in VKontakte

http://topnewsrussia.ru/sssr/

Something in my eye....
(getting to be such an old foggie)

Me too. I talk about these things to everyone I can. They look at me as though I were crazy. So close, mankind came so close to ending the exploitation of man by man. Of giving every child a real future of equality, justice, and freedom from want. How do we get that close again?

Me too. I talk about these things to everyone I can. They look at me as though I were crazy. So close, mankind came so close to ending the exploitation of man by man. Of giving every child a real future of equality, justice, and freedom from want. How do we get that close again?

I had just had an ugly confrontation about communism with one of our old Russian allies which ended in mutual unpleasantness & blocks when Quaint Alien, who I believe is a NAF soldier, posted this and says to me, "This is why I fight." Holy fuck, we got no excuses.

My life in the USSR
Proletarian TV
Proletarian TV
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Published on Sep 10, 2012
Julia Hawkins, member of the CPGB-ML talks about her family and her life growing up in the soviet union.

"The media portrays Soviet Life as dull, grey and oppressive. Nothing could be further from the truth, she says. We had rich, secure, cultured and meaningful lives. As workers, we felt we owned not just our places of work, but the whole country, which was set up from top to bottom to serve our interests.

"I didn't become political until I came to this country and didn't realise what we had until we lost it. That is the tragedy. I realise that it is because our nation was being dismantled from the inside, by the Khruhschevite revisionists and their successors."

I recommend that everyone should read Harpal Brar's book "Perestroika, the complete collapse of revisionism"

http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secN...

join us to build a better world - and a Soviet Britain


http://youtu.be/eV2lTkCRrfI

Most of this thread is about yesterday, this one is about today:

Letter from a Russian University Teacher to the Russian Bureacrauts: The People, the Country, the Truth and Even the Russian Language Are Alien to You
A text in English follows the introduction written in Russian.

More and more it becomes absurd and even offensive to call Russian oligarchy and Russian bureaucracy "Russian"

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s9muNWjCXWU/V627pik7r9I/AAAAAAAABRY/So2w4dcCWtkdPsyXhFIg91-M_dCoo3w1QCLcB/s320/Russian%2Bschool%2BMedvedev%2Bbusiness.jpg


The Russian bureaucracy, apparently so accustomed to "postal prose" (that every day, the petition from the teachers - can not help but get used) that is no longer, in principle, to respond to this prose. Either it reacts as if all the Russian language does not understand. So, August 08 this year, Education Minister Livanov responded to the outrage of teachers low salaries that stated that our salary is (suddenly) become equal to the average for the region (August 7 were not equal, and now suddenly caught up). That is, for example, if the average salary is 27 thousand in Samara., And the teachers are the same. In other words, the number of 16-17 thousand. (Real ZP in Samara at a load rate of 1 or slightly more, depending on the school) Livanov simply refuses to accept.

One gets the impression that the government in general has ceased to perceive the Russian language. I understand if it was 300 years ago - then officials often spoke German. Or 200 years ago - when they spoke French. But now they, like, have to understand Russian. But no ...

In such circumstances, the Russian master, or rather, the teacher (as the vast majority of teachers are women) is still open to use Pushkin ancient way - to write a letter in a foreign language. Maybe someone also read.
I offer you my "Tatyana's letter," or rather, Olga. So I write in English ...

In the following text I would like to share with you my vision of the current situation with the Russian teachers and education in general. I am writing in English now because when Russian teachers speak Russian nobody seems to hear them. Maybe, our government doesn’t understand Russian at all. So, I am writing this in the hope that this text in English will be read at least by someone.

First, I would like to say a few words about myself. I dare to call myself a patriot because Russia, the Russian language and culture are everything to me. But, it seems, they are nothing to the Russian bureaucrats.
My name is Olga and I have been a teacher all my life. The qualification I acquired on graduation from university is “teacher of English, French and German”. Besides teaching, I do some research work. In 2010, I defended a PhD in History. I combine working at school and at university in a Russian provincial city (1500 km away from Moscow – and this is so far that the bureaucrats in Moscow seem not to understand the strange dialect I speak).

Financially, my status is the following (and my situation isn’t the worst in the country – there are people whose situation is worse though it is hard to believe). My monthly payment makes it impossible for me to buy a flat (not even in a lifetime) or a car (though I will keep trying). I cannot afford to travel. It is too expensive. If my parents didn’t support me, I would be a pauper. Thus, at my age of 35, I cannot fully support myself and my daughter and am totally dependent on my parents. Indeed, I should have started a business…
I come from a (proud) family of doctors, teachers and engineers. These three professions (as well as musicians) are repeated in my family through generations. I cannot imagine other profession for my daughter than a doctor, a teacher or an engineer. It looks like a vicious circle. And, as the Russian prime minister rightly said, it is totally our fault that we cannot break this circle and improve our living conditions.
I have no relation to banking, finance or accounting. And it is my fault that after graduation I chose not to emigrate from Russia but to stay and work for my country.

Of course, theoretically speaking I could have started some business but with my monthly payment it is impossible to accumulate a starting capital. I cannot take a loan because it is too expensive. Taking a loan will ruin me financially (but, of course, the prime minister knows better).

So, speaking of the monthly payment of teachers… Below is the payment check I got at school in January 2016. It is my payment for the previous month. At school, I worked half the standard time (10 hours per week, while normally it is 18 – the traditional load). But, as I had to combine this part-time job with the work at university, I could not take more hours.

The figure is underlined. It is 8,776 (eight thousand seven hundred and 76 rubles). If I had worked the standard amount of hours, I would have been paid the double amount of what is indicated in the check, i.e. 17,552 (but the education minister is still sure (he said it on August 8, 2016) that my monthly payment is 27,000, i.e. equal to the average salary in the region – it’s either that I cannot tell 17 from 27 or that the minister is calling teachers liars).

From this sum I have to pay the monthly bills for my flat. Below is the main and the largest of them (the figure in bold is 5,038 rubles):

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SXiF4hirumg/V6yLObGkDNI/AAAAAAAABQc/zLDNJUept_IM-Xd9Wtm45ZJW35Gf2EBpwCLcB/s320/Teacher2.png

Actually, I should say that I am not the only one who tried to show the payment checks to bureaucrats. There was a well-known initiative started by a newspaper “Novaya Gazeta”: they invited the readers to send them the checks. The initiative started in October 2015 and still there is no reaction from the foreign language-speaking government.

Now let’s pass over to the university teachers’ payments (I am “lucky” to work both at school and at university). I work about the same amount of hours at university (1/2 load). This is my payment check for April 2016. Have a look:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J48aAGjbAn8/V6yLO5_bJFI/AAAAAAAABQg/uT6ka7g0mgktceSRfu6WFE4wWjw7BIVrwCEw/s320/Teacher3.png

The circled figure in the right-hand bottom corner is 8,524 rubles. If I worked the standard amount of hours, my payment would be doubled and reach the figure of 17,048. The same as at school. No difference (and payment or bonus for having a PhD – again, I should have started some business!).

I have to confess, like most teachers, I give private lessons. This small “business” of mine actually makes me an outlaw as I don’t pay taxes. If I did, my business won’t be profitable.

Believe it or not, but to me it is a mystery where the official statistics Mr. Livanov quoted on August 8 has come from. I suppose that to achieve this figure of 27,000, the salaries of common teachers were put together with the salaries of University rectors. The salaries of the latter are hundreds of thousands and in some cases even millions.

Why is this possible and where the roots of this inequality are? Partly, these roots are in the moral side of the problem. They are in the image of a teacher that has been carefully cultivated for 25 years now. With the help of the media, teachers and doctors have been made no less than the chief corrupters of the country. Nothing has been getting more coverage in the media than the cases of corruption at schools and universities. These cases got all the coverage and public attention (and hatred) that the corruption in the government should have got.

I don’t say that teachers are ideal (there is nothing ideal in this mortal world…). But to make a Ms Smith or a Ms Ivanova or Petrova the chief corrupters in Russia is ABSURD.

Unfortunately, this theatre of absurd has formed the public opinion on teachers and education in general. The slogan of the 25 year long anti-teacher and anti-education propaganda is: they don’t teach, they take bribes. This insulting, outrageous image-making has made it possible for the prime minister to address the teachers of the country with the words: “Go to business” (which means “go to hell”).

To sum up, I would like to quote a passage from a book “Without a Family” by French author Hector Malot. The book was written in 1878 and describes the France of 1830s or 1840s. In this passage the author describes his short (1-2 months) experience of going to a village school (the translation from Russian (not French) is mine – needs some polishing but the picture is clear):

“What I say might seem unbelievable. However, at the time I am speaking about many villages of France had no schools at all. And where there were schools, there were often teachers who didn’t teach children anything. They just looked after them thinking it to be their main responsibility. And this was the case of our school … During our presence at school he (the teacher) did not give me or my friends a single lesson. By profession, he was a shoe-maker. From morning till night he was making wooden shoes. … We talked only about the weather and our household affairs. We didn’t even mention reading or arithmetic. He delegated the responsibility of teaching us these subjects to his daughter, a tailor. … There were twelve of us, pupils, and our parents paid 50 centimes for each of us which made it 6 francs a month. Two people couldn’t live on such a tiny payment. What school couldn’t give, the teachers had to compensate by sewing and shoe-making. It is not surprising that I didn’t learn anything at school, even the alphabet”.
This is what happens when teachers “go to business.”

And a couple of words in Russian:

Well, well, dear reader (an official with knowledge of English) ... "My fate henceforth I entrust to you, before you pour tears, I implore your protection ..." ( Pushkin )

http://vladimirsuchan.blogspot.com/2016/08/letter-from-russian-university-teacher_11.html

Partially translated by Google

So, by stealing everything now nailed down the oligarchs wreck the pride of the USSR. It would be crazy to speculate that the Russian ruling class seeks to reduce the Russian working class to a pre-Revolution level at the behest of their 'partners', wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

So, by stealing everything now nailed down the oligarchs wreck the pride of the USSR. It would be crazy to speculate that the Russian ruling class seeks to reduce the Russian working class to a pre-Revolution level at the behest of their 'partners', wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

The Russian working class must be brought to heel. The US working class has been tamed and subjected through monetary coercion, among other things, now the Russian one will be managed by force, among other things. In both cases those "other things" are pertinent.

Residents of 11 Countries Compare Life Before and After Collapse of Soviet Union
August 17, 2016 | 8:08 am

https://cdn3.img.sputniknews.com/images/104434/66/1044346644.jpg

Residents of 11 Countries Compare Life Before and After Collapse of Soviet Union

http://sputniknews.com/agency_news/20160817/1044346654/compare-life-before-after-soviet-union.html

According to a Sputnik.Polls survey, residents of 9 out of 11 surveyed former Soviet countries aged over 35 believe that life in the USSR was better than it has been since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Some 64% of respondents in Russia who lived in Soviet times believe that the quality of life in the Soviet Union was better. About 60% of respondents in Ukraine agreed with this statement. The survey showed that the highest rates of agreement with this statement are found among respondents in Armenia (71%) and Azerbaijan (69%). Those respondents who do not remember living in the USSR, those aged 18-24, believe that life has improved since the collapse. Some 63% of young people in Russia think so. The data is based on a survey conducted by Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), M-Vector, Ipsos, Expert Fikri and Qafqaz in 11 countries of the former Soviet Union, at the request of Sputnik news agency and radio.

https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/images/104434/85/1044348578.png
© Sputnik/
Residents of 11 Countries Compare Life Before and After The Collapse of The Soviet Union

People over 35 believe that life was better in the USSR, compared to the post-breakup period, almost in every country: 71% against 23% in Armenia, 69% against 29% in Azerbaijan, 64% against 28% in Russia, 60% against 32% in Moldova, 61% against 27% in Kazakhstan, 60% against 23% in Ukraine, 60% against 30% in Kyrgyzstan, 53% against 28% in Belarus, and 51% against 46% in Georgia. Only respondents from Tajikistan (39% against 55%) and Uzbekistan (4% against 91%) aged over 35 believe that life improved after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Respondents (under 25) who were born after or shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union believe that life is better now: 48% against 47% in Armenia, 48% against 37% in Kyrgyzstan, 56% against 35% in Kazakhstan, 57% against 34% in Belarus, 79% against 20% in Georgia, 39% against 18% in Ukraine, 63% against 25% in Russia, 68% against 14% in Azerbaijan, 84% against 13% in Tajikistan and 89% against 5% in Uzbekistan. And it is only in Moldova that 69% of young people believe that life was better in the Soviet Union than after it collapsed (17%).

https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/images/102152/59/1021525948.jpg
© Sputnik/ Knorring
Americans and Europeans Ignore USSR’s Role in Victory Over Nazism
The survey was conducted by VCIOM in Russia, M-Vector in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, as well as Ipsos, Expert Fikri and Qafqaz in other countries of the former Soviet Union from July 4 to August 15, 2016. A total of 12,645 respondents took part in the survey. The survey involved 1,000 respondents each in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, 1,045 respondents in Uzbekistan, 2,000 in Ukraine and 1,600 in Russia. The samples used represent the respective country’s population by sex, age and location. The maximum sampling error does not exceed 3.1% with a 95% confidence level.About the Sputnik.Polls Project

The international public opinion project was created in January 2015, in partnership with leading research companies such as Populus, IFOP, and Forsa. The project organizes regular surveys in the United States and Europe on the most sensitive social and political issues.

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/residents-of-11-countries-compare-life-before-and-after-collapse-of-soviet-union/

25 years of the Emergency Committee
colonelcassad
19 August 2:35

https://pp.vk.me/c305804/v305804139/cdf/vw8bE_sSxpk.jpg

By the 25th anniversary of the coup. Poster "You stayed in the Communist Party?", August 19, 1991. This poster has a rather unusual history. What is interesting this poster? Duplication of this poster has ended on the night of August 19. It happened in one of the cooperatives of the city. But when the morning cooperators learned that there was putsch, they decided to start up a circulation of 25 000 copies under the knife. At the moment, only a few copies left.

https://vk.com/student_historian?z=photo-3 5683765_283664770% 2Fwall-29115409_233846 - zinc

PS. Events related to the Emergency Committee were developed so that the poster a few days really did not relevant.

Regarding the same event, it will not be too original in its relation to it - in my opinion, the Emergency Committee did not do what needs to be done, namely, not wound on the tracks of tanks "fighters for democracy", as the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square. The result of the selection - to push or not to push, can be clearly seen in the current political map of the world.
However, it should be noted that the measures taken by the Emergency Committee for suspension Gorbachev from power and half-hearted attempts to arrest Yeltsin demonstrate running processes collapse of the Soviet Union and as a result, overdue character attempts to force to change the situation. Actions themselves putsch leaders in this regard can be characterized as sluggish and indecisive (not so long ago it was possible to observe similar behavior on the part of the authorities of Ukraine and Yanukovych regime in question "evromayadana"), although they have great potential in the use of power and administrative resources as the union and at the national level. Among them, there was no real leader, who would lead them right through existing resources and making what was required in that situation, including the shedding of blood. Whereupon, the coup failed, but speeding up the destruction of the Soviet Union, which resulted in very serious consequences for the citizens of the USSR, which in the 90 fully reaped the consequences of the failure of the coup and the victory of "democracy."


http://youtu.be/IH8Nlmmk0ag

Plus survey on the topic:

Poll # 2052162 25 years of the Emergency Committee
Open: All , detailed results viewable to: All . Participants: 1208
During the August coup, who do you support?
Show answers
Yeltsin and Gorbachev
292 ( 24.4 % )
Emergency Committee
169 ( 14.1 % )
No one supported
208 ( 17.4 % )
I was still small
527 ( 44.1 % )
Who would you support now, knowing what it was over?
Show answers
Yeltsin and Gorbachev
90 ( 7.6 % )
Emergency Committee
763 ( 64.1 % )
None of them would not support
261 ( 21.9 % )
Difficult to answer
77 ( 6.5 % )
Do win the Emergency Committee of the USSR could save?
Show answers
Yes
584 ( 48.7 % )
No
415 ( 34.6 % )
Difficult to answer
200 ( 16.7 % )

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/2908851.html?utm_source=twsharing&utm_medium=social

Google Translator

Other videos at link.

Where were you in August of '91?
Aug. 19th, 2016 at 12:02 PM


Emergency Committee, 25 years later,

I personally sat on the military airfield near Minsk Machulishchy, of 12 Arr CH with full ammunition. I would order - would razebli fuck. Eltsin with the lads is not something that kanatskoy to reach the border -. Poland would not have time to sebnut Belovezhki as planned in the event of failure (infa reliable)
, but the order has been received. Successful coups make young captains, not the elderly pterodafteli with trembling hands, which is what is your Emergency Committee in full. Fuck hildren your tanks on the streets, when we have? Pohvatali to who should be packed in bags from under the potatoes and dragged in the "right place" - without the noise and dust, bishop. But the problem was that it is your "who must" have been at the head of the anti-constitutional plot - the whole top of the KGB . But, nevertheless, the USSR legally exists, it has not been canceled: the USSR legally exist http://norg-norg.livejournal.com/925.ht ml You just need to go and pick it up from the floor. Only no one, damn ... Here in the MSU carried out a survey on the events of 25 years ago. Know whether today's young people about what the Emergency Committee and any events associated with it? Would they like to live in the Soviet Union? They went out to the street, happen coup in their memory? Juvenile stupid ass simply amaze tupizna and untroubled mind. Their opinion - it's just fucking chthonic some! Cho, in fact, so bad with the younger generation? That's the news from a parallel universe any, Bishop! For example: Anastasia, a graduate student of faculty of journalism (! That in itself is already a diagnosis, fucking)
[
Spoiler Spoiler (the click to the open)
]
And there is still much that can be characterized as fecal brain juice - if these young brains were stupid ass. http://www.taday.ru/text/2175556.ht ml A half (half, damn!) citizens do not remember and do not know about the Emergency Committee and the Soviet Union already badly remember. Naroslo, en. Http://www.taday.ru/text/2175303.ht ml That survey pidorskogo we washed down with a survey. Do you also think that the collapse of the Soviet Union was right, the right decision?

http://www.taday.ru/data/2016/08/18/1236742277/soviet_union_017.jpg

http://allday1.com/imagedb/2e/a/a55aa815bf259517b49dd408149be.jpg

Poll # 2052176
To the Open: the All , detailed The results viewable to: the All . PARTICIPANTS: 278
The collapse of the Soviet Union - is that correct?

View Answers
Yes!
20 ( 4.1 % )
No.
189 ( 38.6 % )
Glory to Ukraine!
13 ( 2.7 % )
Norga for President!
25 ( 5.1 % )
If not Putin - is the cat?
19 ( 3.9 % )
Stalin, Stalin! The men were tired, on!
84 ( 17.1 % )
All shisn und rasstrilen! Who and when it will give me a pistol and ammunition for anti-aircraft guns?
36 ( 7.3 % )
Komunyaki - on Gilyaks!
5 ( 1.0 % )
All liberoidov - on the lights!
86 ( 17.6 % )
And I - poher. As usual, Bishop.
13 ( 2.7 % )

http://dostalo.livejournal.com/614789.html

Google Translator is not up to it's mediocre game today, can't understand much but I think I like the tone.

What’s Behind Nostalgia for the USSR? Public Opinion Might Surprise You!
by worker
02:42 30.08.2016(updated 04:12 30.08.2016)
Get short URL635850
A recent Sputnik News poll revealed that, in nine of the eleven former Soviet republics, a majority of those over the age of 35 think life in the USSR was better before its disintegration. Michael Parenti, author of Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, and Loud & Clear producer Walter Smolarek, sat down with Radio Sputnik's Brian Becker to talk the significance of the dissolution of the USSR. According to the Sputnik survey, 64 percent of Russian residents who lived in the USSR rated life in the Soviet Union higher than it after its dissolution. The highest percentages of such respondents are registered in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The same opinion is registered among 61 percent in Kazakhstan, 60 percent in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, 53 percent in Belarus, and 51 percent in Georgia. In Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, those polled believe life improved after the end of the USSR. People 25 and younger — those who were born after or shortly before the break-up — think life today is better. Results among former Soviet residents certainly stand in contrast to the Western perception of the disintegration of the USSR as "a revolution of democracy." In 2004, leading Russian historian Richard Pipes published the results of a survey in the New York Times, suggesting that 74 percent of Russians regretted the demise of the Soviet Union, after the newly-formed government cut back job guaranties, health care, and other social services. A new market system eliminated price controls, as well as subsidies for food and housing, clothing, transportation and utilities. The new "unjust economic system," or "free market new capitalism that was coming in," turned out to be a more problematic system than the previous form of communist collectivism, according to Parenti. Painful economic "shock therapy" imposed on the USSR by the International Monetary Fund led to the formation of a new elite that quickly acquired most of the once-collective property. The standard of living in Russia dropped drastically. "You don't get rich without creating poverty," it was jokingly said at the time. But while oligarchs got rich, the poor got poorer. Of course, Russia is not in the same state today it was in the 1990s. President Vladimir Putin has a 91 percent approval rating, indicating that he is doing something right. "Any leader who uses the land, the labor, the resources, the market of this country in any way that's helping and moving along in the developmental way is usually demonized" abroad, according to Parenti, suggesting that the popular Russian leader is found by the West to be "dangerous and a danger to imperial capitalism." Some pro-Western liberals claim that nostalgia for the Soviet Union is a desire to return to communism or the GULAG. Others recognize the reason to be more complex, citing peace and friendship between nations as an achievement of Soviet society. Those raised on Soviet values claim that they often miss the popular respect paid to science and education. Most acknowledge, however, that a revival of the Soviet Union is not practical. What people can take from Soviet history, however, is experience, memory, social technologies and eternal values, aspects of a society that can lead to peace for the entire world.
Read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160830/1044756757/ussr-nostalgia-opinion.html

A bit over the top in the Putin praise, in recent years everything is going backwards for the Russian working class as Western style 'austerity'has become in vogue with the oligarchs. Education, public health and pensions are all circling the drain and there some indication that Putin's poll numbers are starting to tank, but this is being suppressed.

Life After the USSR: Buying the Dream, Living the Nightmare

By Eric Draitser

August 19, 2016

Via teleSur English

The reality of life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe is not at all what was promised. Standing in front of the Berlin Wall in June 1987, then President Reagan famously proclaimed:
There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace … General Gorbachev, if you seek peace - if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - if you seek liberalization: come here, to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
Despite the neoliberal talking points about “freedom,” “democracy,” and “peace,” the reality of life in post-Soviet Eastern Europe is not at all what was promised. Consider the abstractions employed by people like Reagan who framed the end of the Soviet Union as an event that would usher in “peace” and “prosperity.” And then consider the fact that neither peace nor prosperity has come to fruition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet bloc.
From the perspective of war and peace, no one could say that the post-1991 period has been particularly peaceful, especially when compared to the relative stability of the Cold War era. The United States has rapidly expanded NATO right to the doorstep of Russia, having subsumed most of the former Soviet Republics of Eastern Europe, including the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, as well as Poland and Georgia.
In that time, NATO has waged multiple vicious wars in the Balkans, including the criminal bombing of Yugoslavia which itself accounted for numerous war crimes, as concluded byAmnesty Internationalat the time.
NATO has further attempted to pull both Belarus and Ukraine into its orbit, with the former remaining non-aligned, and the latter now in the throes of an ongoing civil war which is thedirect product of a U.S.-backed coup against the Russia-allied former government of Viktor Yanukovich.
The U.S.-backed neocon-aligned government of Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia is responsible for waging the unprovoked 2008 war with Russia over the breakaway republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a war that undeniably was started by NATO partner Georgia. As an EU-commissioned independent report concludedin 2009, “An investigation into last year’s Russia-Georgia war delivered a damning indictment of President Mikheil Saakashvili today, accusing Tbilisi of launching an indiscriminate artillery barrage on the city of Tskhinvali that started the war.”
Aside from wars in Europe, Western hegemony has also brought death and destruction to the Middle East and Africa, resulting in an exodus of refugees who are now being scapegoated by economically devastated countries in Southern and Eastern Europe. And while one might understand the socioeconomic factors leading to an anti-refugee backlash, it is unmistakable that the phenomenon is more a product of U.S.-NATO war-making than anything else.
And, of course, the most significant driver of public opinion is the standard of living or quality of life. Embedded in this abstract indicator is everything from employment opportunities, relative purchasing power, access to health care and education, and much more.
Seen in this way, much of Eastern Europe longs for the halcyon days of the Soviet Union and communism, not because they were without problems – far from it, in fact – but because the kinds of problems people faced were markedly different from the ones they face today.According to acomprehensive pollconducted by leading polling organization Gallup in 2013, “residents of [11 of the 15] former Soviet republics are more than twice as likely to say the breakup hurt (51 percent) than benefited their countries (24 percent).”
Think about that statistic for a moment: twice as many residents of the former Soviet republics think the breakup of the Soviet Union did more harm than good. That is a rather devastating indictment of the supposed era of freedom and prosperity that the likes of Reagan & Co. promised in the years leading up to the breakup.
And while many neoliberal apologists hold up the fact that younger generations are more positive about the future, this fact is something of a distortion as part of the reason for such feelings is the ability of young people to simply leave their home countries.
As economists Michael Hudson and Jeffrey Sommers concluded after studying the situation in Latvia:“Neoliberal austerity has created demographic losses exceeding Stalin's deportations back in the 1940s (although without the latter's loss of life).
As government cutbacks in education, healthcare and other basic social infrastructure threaten to undercut long-term development, young people are emigrating to better their lives rather than suffer in an economy without jobs.
More than 12 percent of the overall population (and a much larger percentage of its labor force) now works abroad.”In essence, the neoliberal policies of the EU-aligned former Soviet republics have created deep crises in nearly every aspect of social and economic life. From plummeting birth rates to an exploding orphaned population, the notion of a brighter future should certainly give any observer pause.
Additionally, the post-Soviet period has given rise to a dangerous wave of ethnic politics in which the governments of these countries are often made up of the ethnic majority which is aligned to Brussels and the Washington Consensus, and which demonizes ethnic minorities, especially Russians.
In fact, economic decline and its inevitable effects on society have been seen in just about every former Soviet bloc country.
In Romania for example, a country which joined the EU in 2007, “the most prosperous districts are dotted by dozens of unfinished building projects abandoned by bankrupt developers. And the small inner circle of prosperity is surrounded by areas of the city of 3 million that are little changed from the crumbling squalor of the Ceausescu era.”
And this is a country that received an IMF bailout akin to the albatross around Greece’s neck. Romania has experienced neoliberal-imposed austerity which has seen public sector wages slashed, a massive hike in sales tax, and the cutting of social services such as unemployment, maternity, and disability benefits.
A similar picture exists in nearly every country in Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, as well as in Germany itself wheremillions long for the days of the GDR (East Germany) before countless German professionals and academics were left without jobs and without benefits.
Striking income inequality and inflamed ethnic tensions may have brought an American-style feeling to Eastern Europe, but it’s clearly not what most people want.
Add to that therise of far-right fascist parties capitalizing on the economic hardship and complete failure of the Left to challenge the neoliberal consensus, and it should be no surprise that today Eastern Europe faces a very dangerous historical moment, one which could have major implications for its long-term future.
And so, equally unsurprising is the fact that a significant portion of the people of the former Soviet republics look longingly at the days before the fall of the Soviet Union. They remember all the hardships, the lack of consumer goods, the police state, and more.
But they equally remember the month-long summer vacations with family, the guaranteed employment and income, the free and universal health care and education, etc. These are the aspects of life under the Soviet Union that have been systematically erased by the narrative set forth by the West where capitalism reigns supreme and must remain unchallenged, as if it were the word of God himself.
But no, capitalism is not a cure-all for the ills of life. Western-style capitalism (neoliberalism) has imposed on the people of Eastern Europe a new kind of hardship in the years since the Soviet Union collapsed. No longer are consumer goods restricted by an imposing state apparatus, they are now available to all who can afford them; unfortunately for the vast majority of people, they can’t.
Instead, they must work more for less in hopes that their children won’t have to flee the country in search of better opportunities.
Such is the reality of the American Dream in post-Soviet Europe.

http://mltoday.com/article/2521-life-after-the-ussr-buying-the-dream-living-the-nightmare/91-other-featured-posts

25 years since collapse of USSR, 25 years of global instability
Published time: 11 Sep, 2016 14:52
Edited time: 11 Sep, 2016 15:41

https://img.rt.com/files/2016.09/original/57d56064c361887b5c8b4609.jpg
© Vladimir Vyatkin / Sputnik

Yes, you have read the title of this article correctly. And no, this is not a press release by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
What this is, however, is an article documenting what has happened on the international stage since, and as a consequence of, the USSR’s demise, 25 years ago – an event which continues to affect the lives of ordinary people across the world, whether they are aware of it or not, and whether they like it or not.

This article stands diametrically opposed to the West’s standard narrative of the USSR, and it is this which makes this article particularly pertinent today, given that the West’s portrayal of itself as the “foundation of global peace and stability” has come to be exposed as nothing more than a façade and a manipulative lie. With that in mind, I ask of you, the reader, to be open-minded when reading this article and to set aside what Western politicians and mainstream journalists have constantly told you about the Soviet Union – a country which, amongst many other achievements, secured the victory over Nazism in the Second World War. As Winston Churchill wrote, it was the USSR that “tore the guts out of the Nazi war machine.”

Prior to 1991, the West, which is effectively the United States, had intervened, either by direct military force or through subversion, in the affairs of a number of independent, sovereign countries, such as Vietnam and Chile. And those interventions, which were illegal under international law, resulted in vast losses in human life and caused regional instability which, of course, had knock-on effects on global stability. However, from 1991 onwards, the rate at which the US has intervened in the domestic affairs of countries has increased exponentially, breaking international law like never before and acting in a brazen way like never before. The end result of those interventions has been to make the world more dangerous and more unstable than at any time since the Second World War.

The list of countries and regions which the US has intervened in is long and shocking, making for depressing reading: Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. All of those countries are of immense geo-strategic importance, hence they were, and continue to be, on Washington’s radar. And in most of those cases, the Americans have either achieved, or attempted to achieve, their objectives by supporting Islamists (Bosnia, Libya and Syria), Fascists (Croatia and Ukraine) or organized crime (Kosovo).

That interference, which the West has carried out under the deceptive heading “humanitarian intervention,” has caused immense damage to the standing of international law and the mechanisms of the United Nations. It has turned hitherto stable countries and regions into deeply unstable places which have, literally speaking, gone up in flames. It has brought organized crime to towns and cities across Europe. And it has turned Islamist terrorism into a potent force which has spread like a malignant cancer to Europe.

So what accounts for the sudden and drastic increase in America’s interventions in the world since 1991? The answer is simple: the absence of the USSR.

The Soviet Union was a superpower which, from 1945 until its collapse in 1991, prevented the US from dominating the world (something that Washington achieved after the Soviet collapse, the consequences of which the world is suffering from today). With a vast industrial sector, a vast industrial-military complex and a vast military, which numbered over four million personnel in 1991, supported by a massive inventory of military equipment, the USSR acted as a formidable bloc to American ambitions.

When policymakers in Washington were plotting over which countries to intervene in to enhance American power, they always had to take into consideration what the response of the Soviet government would be. That is not to say, however, that the Americans were always deterred by the Soviet Union, as they were not. But US plans were severely curtailed because of Soviet power. What the world was witness to from 1945-1991 was a counter to American political, economic and military influence. That meant the US did not have a free hand in global affairs.

Now, while the world prior to 1991 was not safe, given that there were more nuclear weapons then than there are today, the number of countries being destabilized were far fewer prior to the Soviet collapse. Further to that, the rise of radical Islam and Islamist terrorism since 1991, which the Americans have played an instrumental role in as a result of their support for Islamists in Bosnia, Libya and Syria, poses a terrible danger today to the safety and security of ordinary people across the world on a daily basis.

Let us take a look at how the world would have developed had the USSR not collapsed.

First, the Cuban Missile Crisis was averted, in part, because the US had to negotiate with the Soviet Union. People in the West are not often told that one of the main reasons the USSR deployed ICBMs in Cuba was that the US already had its own ICBMs in Turkey, which, of course, shared a border with the Soviet Union. And people in the West are not often told that the Cuban crisis was resolved because the Soviet government agreed to withdraw its ICBMs from the Caribbean island in reciprocation for the Americans withdrawing their ICBMs from Turkey. Hence, out of a near catastrophe for the world emerged a more stable situation, in which neither the US, nor the USSR, had ICBMs on one another’s borders. It should be noted, however, that today there are US nuclear warheads in Turkey. Alas, the collapse of the USSR encouraged the Americans once again to deploy weapons of mass destruction in a country situated in a very volatile part of the world, and the Russian Federation did not act as deterrence in that case.

Second, the Soviet Union would not have tolerated Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity being torn to shreds as the West did from 1991-1992, and then again in 1999. The Soviet Government would have given its full support to the Yugoslav People’s Army to disarm and arrest the illegally armed groups which emerged in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. And the Soviet Navy would have dispatched a flotilla to Yugoslav waters to deter Western military intervention. It should be remembered that, following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Yugoslavia began to turn to the USSR for support.

Third, the Soviet Union deployed its military forces in Afghanistan to neutralize increasing radical Islam there. Partly as a result of the Soviet collapse, the Taliban, under the direction of close US ally Pakistan, soon came to power in Afghanistan. Had the USSR not collapsed, it is possible that the Taliban would not have taken control of the country, and it is certain that the Americans would not have invaded Afghanistan, as they did in 2001. Under no circumstances would the Soviet government have tolerated an American presence in Afghanistan on the borders of Soviet Central Asia – and Washington would have known this. Hence, the terribly dangerous situation in Afghanistan today caused by the American invasion would have been averted through the Soviet deterrent.

Fourth, Iraq, while also an ally of the West, was also an important ally to the USSR. And like the West, the Soviet Government sold vast amounts of military equipment to the Iraqis. During the Iran-Iraq War, Soviet battleships and freighters were sent to the Persian Gulf to ensure non-interrupted supplies of Iraqi oil. The Americans would never have invaded Iraq, like they did in 2003, with the Soviet Union in existence. Washington would have known that an invasion of Iraq could have brought the US and the USSR to the point of war.

Fifth, Libya was an important arms market for the USSR and gave Moscow considerable leverage in North Africa. It follows, therefore, that the Soviet Government would have dispatched a naval flotilla to the Libyan coast if the Americans, British and French had considered military intervention to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, like they did in 2011. Plans for Western intervention in Libya would have been deterred.

Sixth, Syria was the Soviet Union’s closest friend and ally in the Middle East and acted as the Soviet government’s eyes and ears in this hugely important part of the world. The Americans would never have considered supporting terrorist groups in Syria, as they are doing today. Washington knew just how close relations between Syria and the USSR were. The US would not have touched Syria, just as the USSR would not have touched Israel, a staunch friend and ally of America.

Seventh, Ukraine would not be edging towards membership in the European Union and NATO due to US influence today, because had the USSR not collapsed, the artificially created country of Ukraine would not exist.

It is all too easy to forget that, prior to 1991, American interventions in the world were not as common as they have become today. The Americans, at that point in time, understood that there were limitations on their ambitions and power – and this took the form of the Soviet Union. The US could not simply bomb a country (Serbia) and then take a piece of its territory and proclaim it as “independent” (Kosovo), or invade a country in one of the most geo-strategically important regions of the world (Iraq), depose both its leader and government and replace it with a pro-American one.

If one looks at the countries and regions in the world which are jeopardizing global peace and stability today, one will see that they have all become destabilized by American interventions – from the former Yugoslavia to Iraq to Libya to Syria to Ukraine. And the US succeeded in intervening in those countries because there was no deterrent – no Soviet Union.

Now, Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has regained a lot of its lost superpower status. And that is very good for peace and very good for stability in the world. So, for instance, if Russia today was weak, like it was in the 1990s, the Americans would more than likely have opted for direct military force in Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad. Hence, it is evident that the US does not have the free hand in global affairs which it enjoyed after the Soviet collapse – and this is due to a Russian deterrent.

However, the current Russia does not have the power that the USSR possessed. Perhaps, and hopefully, it will one day. But until then, American interventions will remain a feature of the world in which we live today, albeit reduced in their frequency.

The Soviet Union, which the vast majority of its citizens expressed support for in a March 1991 referendum, proved to be not just a success for its people, but also for global peace and stability as well. This year marks 25 years since that positive force on the international stage disappeared. Suffice it to say that the world today is a more dangerous place because of the absence of the USSR.

Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos for RT.

Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos is an editor of Politics First magazine and an expert on Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union.

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/358981-ussr-west-stability-powers-security/

Hindsight is fuckin' golden....

Made in USSR: Items That ‘Serve for Ages’
worker | September 17, 2016 | 8:01 pm | political struggle, Russia, socialism, USSR
17:25 17.09.2016(updated 17:26 17.09.2016)
Get short URL52101511
The dissolution of the Soviet Union was accompanied by not only territorial and political changes, but also by the disappearance of certain products that were popular in the Soviet era. Some things – such as school uniforms- are difficult to find, but surprisingly Soviet electronics are even now still in use. Soviet refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and washing machines were made “for the ages,” collector and an employee at an aviation plant, Ivan Borisov, told RIA Novosti. Soviet items such as the EAYA washing machines, ZIL refrigerator or Chayka vacuum cleaner have been working for decades and are still in use. “The products were designed not to be profitable, but to make life easier. They had a different meaning, initially,” Ivan said. According to the collector, many Soviet people had fond memories associated with these household items. They often purchased items planning to own them for many years to come. “Some people waited for a refrigerator for six months, someone won it in the lottery and someone received it for victory in a competition. People had stories, sweet memories related to these items,” the man said. “All the things of those years […] exude warmth,” he added. All of the Soviet items in Ivan’s collection are still in working condition, among them, a vacuum cleaner and a refrigerator which were produced in 1945. The collector explained that the main thing is to install the equipment properly, and then it will function without any failures. “The Soviet technical items almost never fail,” Ivan said. “Vacuum cleaner motors can operate for 40 years. The manual says that after 300 hours of work one should replace the carbon brushes in it. But when you open it, you see that these brushes have not been worn down, even though it obviously had been working for much a longer time,” the collector said. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union production of such items was halted and replaced by imports of foreign production — cheap and better looking, but functioning only for a limited period of time. “This is the evil of our time: not only are we offered a new product every day, […] but it is also designed to quickly go out of order so that we have to buy a new one,” Ivan said. According to Ivan, old equipment often labelled as “garbage” has much more sense in it than it may seem at first glance. These items are precious reminders of the times, which people, for various reasons, prefer to forget, the man explained.
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/art_living/20160917/1045410377/made-in-ussr.html

http://houstoncommunistparty.com/made-in-ussr-items-that-serve-for-ages/

'Made for the ages', indeed. Just another example of how socialist sensibility is ecologically superior to the competition and accumulation driven economy of the capitalists.

I am 34 and I miss the USSR
September 19th, 2016 - Fort Russ News -
By Olga Lugovaya - Zavtra.ru - translated by Kristina Kharlova


https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r5Cu-SD4nEY/V9_6TG58O9I/AAAAAAAAYhc/HKdiSu2xnUkd876xw_C9aFIIF2hfnO9TACLcB/s640/87082509_large_5.jpg
"A pioneer is a good friend, takes care of the young and helps the old"

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yr090KpI2N4/V9_7H6TkP5I/AAAAAAAAYhg/TNMlaPMMkR8G33bOucA9ie4tWCJp4XOWwCLcB/s1600/lugovaia-o.jpg
Olga Lugovaya

There is a perception that those who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union are more nostalgic for their youth. Somehow I am also nostalgic for the Soviet Union, although my youth is now, so my sorrows are not for youth, but for the country.

My early, but conscious childhood was during the decline and the death of the Soviet Union. I caught only the approaching earthquake which is shaking us to this day. However, I remember much from that era and my memories aren't flashes of fragmentary events and impressions from the distant childhood, but very specific events.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yQr4HATRId4/V-AJSk5fUyI/AAAAAAAAYh0/ONvsAVytbRwS4cntuKwNN0F7nA1A2bkPgCLcB/s200/0_67ced_7b06bb6f_XL.jpg
I remember the ceremony of inauguration of becoming "oktyabryata" [the youngest communists at 7 years old, in first grade - KK] and the special pride I felt wearing the pin. I remember in school in first grade the teacher Zoya Grigoryevna, seeing what a mess my desk was, quietly made a remark, saying that Lenin's desk was always in perfect order. It was the year one thousand nine hundred and eighty-nine. I quickly organized my workplace with the thoughts "I want to be like Lenin". And then in 2 years, Zoya Grigoryevna said, "Children, tomorrow we will not wear our badges". For a very long time I held the badge close at hand. Sort of, my child's communist party membership card, I still have it. I have a pioneer tie, which was bought ahead of time, but I never became a pioneer.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1K2Ud2mw-V4/V-AJsMR3kII/AAAAAAAAYh4/ppXqKjx1E6wjS0u8BIdnCFzA_kMbNeR8QCLcB/s400/5013734985_0.jpg
Oktybryata are neat, study well, love school and respect the elderly!

I remember well the security and peace that prevailed in the now completely different, disturbing and volatile Dagestan Republic. In those years, my father Alexander Vasilyevich every year got us [company-sponsored and free - KK] trips to the resort from the company "Dagenergo", where he worked for many, many years. Me and my brother, being then still kids of 5-6 years old, with my mom and grandma went 35 kilometers from civilization for 3 weeks or even a month. In the evening we went to the outdoor cinema, located in an adjacent resort 3 kilometers away. Came back from the show almost at midnight. We were enjoying a quiet, warm, southern night, listening to the sound of the sea, the distant voices and laughter of vacationers also returning from the show, admired the incredibly starry sky. Two fragile women and two small children, we never thought that someone could attack us.

In 2009 in Makhachkala, opposite the Interior Ministry building, located at the central Lenin square, opened a memorial to fallen on duty police officers. The black plates, framed by granite display mournful lists, since 1936, that is, since the formation of the DASSR. Reading the years and names, it is clear that even in the most troubled and difficult times as for the Republic and for the whole country there are just 1-3 names, up to 5. From 1943 to 1949 - no names. From 2000 the situation is as follows: 1 year - 1 plate (!). At least a dozen names for one year and the number of these plates is growing. This unique of its kind document I always cite as an example to all those spiteful critics who measure the country solely with kielbasa.

Once I was asked if I had a dream. Yes, I have a dream - it is to revive the great and powerful Union, when the sound of its anthem went pierced your heart and stopped your breath. A dream of justice and honesty, morals and real patriotism, security and peace in all corners of my homeland. Crazy? Possible. But I'm sure that at least half of the country is full of such crazies as me, at least. Yesterday, I went to the polls and, yes, I voted for my dream, or rather for those who, as I hope, fight for justice, equality and fraternity.


***

P.S. from Kristina Kharlova:

Guess what, dear Western readers, the stereotypes you hear about USSR are lies! Those store lines you see on the pictures are from the 90's when Russian government followed the advice of Western advisors and drove the country to default.

The Soviet model is a mortal danger to the Western system and it is imperative for the media to instill an immunity against it in Western consciousness.

You may be surprised to learn that security, lack of crime, safety, trust in the future and ethical education were the hallmarks of USSR. Please don't judge a society by it's elite, but by it's lower class. While lower classes face high odds of hunger and incarceration in the West, in the USSR there were only two classes - the working class (95% majority) and the thin sliver of nomenclature, the management class (who existed somewhere in the movies, but were rarely encountered in daily life), who were rumored to enjoy special benefits like personal vehicles and finer foods by virtue of their role as controllers of country's resources, who, however were unable to steal so much that it would be noticeable and undermine the working class.

There was one solid working class sharing similar socio-economic background and opportunities. The Soviet values were that all workers have a right to free and subsidized housing, education (including higher education), daycare, job placement, adequate vacation (4 weeks), sports and activities for kids, public transportation, job security, early retirement (55 for women), 2-3 years of maternity leave, summer camps and healthcare, of course.

Another words, equality so coveted but elusive in the West, was achieved in USSR.

Soviet ideology was a religion. No, not about praying to Stalin. Our God was Lenin and he was the epitome of virtue. Soviet education developed a moral code which aimed to raise perfect Soviet citizens. Soviet ethical code was the foundation of Soviet education. From age 7 you were accepted into the club of the highest honor and virtue. You were expected to help the youngest and the oldest. Each tram, bus and trolley had seats assigned to the elderly and mothers with children. Men would give up their seats for women. What is so striking in the West? Men don't get up in public transport. We, as young pioneers (junior communists) went to the homes of the elderly to pay them a visit. We mopped our own classrooms, because hard work was one of the cornerstones of Soviet ideology. After school was out for the summer we had 2 weeks of "labor" - painting desks and preparing for the next year. We did duty in the cafeteria helping set up for lunch. We were expected to study hard and try hard, because Lenin did. Lenin was our God, but we knew Lenin as a model of righteousness. Every school had a Lenin room - a mini-museum of Lenin's life. And we tried, we tried to be good like Lenin because together we can work towards a better future.

In school we studied the sacrifice of little communists in WWII tortured and murdered by the Nazis, and learned to appreciate the unique traditions of various nationalities inhabiting the USSR, dressing up in different ethnic costumes for special festivals. Soviet education aimed to raise hard-working, selfless and driven children who all had the same opportunities to fulfill their greatest potential.

The fall of the USSR ushered a segregation of society into rich and poor, a spike in crime, greater opportunities for fewer people and struggle and survival for most.

After a 25 year experiment marked by wars and economic tremors, although the oldest Soviet generation is gone, the memories are not forgotten and Soviet nostalgia is a force that will be a major contestant for Russia's future.

http://www.fort-russ.com/2016/09/i-am-34-and-i-miss-ussr.html

http://youtu.be/gxYdGSIP0d0

Watch Grover Furr dismantle Tim Snyder's anticommunist agitprop on Ukraine

courtesy Privilege Cheka

In Moscow, hanged Solzhenitsyn
colonelcassad
October 12, 8:16

https://cs7064.vk.me/c836537/v836537443/59bd/DbBDpj7o41o.jpg
In Moscow, at the gates of the Gulag Museum hanged an effigy of Solzhenitsyn and poems.

http://www.mk.ru/upload/entities/2016/10/10/articles/detailPicture/90/0b/af/a84937469_1012778.jpg

Shock is the preparation for "by Solzhenitsyn."

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3005441.html

Google Translator

I'm blindpig and I approve this message.

http://youtu.be/Vum-hsHy3Gk

Russian lyrics:

Колёса диктуют вагонные
Где срочно увидеться нам
Мои номера телефонные
Разбросаны по городам

Заботится сердце сердце волнуется
Почтовый пакуется груз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз
Вы точки тире телеграфные
Ищите на стройках меня
Сегодня не личное главное
А сводки рабочего дня

Заботится сердце сердце волнуется
Почтовый пакуется груз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз

Я там где ребята толковые
Я там где плакаты вперёд
Где песни рабочие новые
Страна трудовая поёт

Заботится сердце сердце волнуется
Почтовый пакуется груз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз
Мой адрес не дом и не улица
Мой адрес Советский Союз



Kolyosa diktuyut vagonnye
Gde srochno uvidet'sya nam
Moi nomera telefonnye
Razbrosany po gorodam

Zabotitsya serdtse serdtse volnuetsya
Pochtovyy pakuetsya gruz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz

Vy tochki tire telegrafnye
Ishchite na stroykakh menya
Segodnya ne lichnoe glavnoe
A svodki rabochego dnya

Zabotitsya serdtse serdtse volnuetsya
Pochtovyy pakuetsya gruz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz

Ya tam gde rebyata tolkovye
Ya tam gde plakaty vperyod
Gde pesni rabochie novye
Strana trudovaya poyot

Zabotitsya serdtse serdtse volnuetsya
Pochtovyy pakuetsya gruz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz
Moy adres ne dom i ne ulitsa
Moy adres Sovetskiy Soyuz


English lyrics:

The railcar wheels dictate
Where we urgently meet
My telephone numbers
Are scattered throughout the cities
The heart cares the heart worries
The postals pack the cargo
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union

Telegraphic dots and dashes
You search for me at the construction sites
Today personal matters aren't important
Just the work-day reports

The heart cares the heart worries
The postals pack the cargo
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union

I am where the guys are sensible
I am where posters proclaim 'forward'
Where a laboring nation sings
The new workers' songs

The heart cares the heart worries
The postal packs the cargo
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union
My address not just the house or the street
My address is the Soviet Union

Homesick for a Dictatorship

Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism

Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an "illegitimate state." In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

By Julia Bonstein

July 03, 2009 07:18 PM Print Feedback
The life of Birger, a native of the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northeastern Germany, could read as an all-German success story. The Berlin Wall came down when he was 10. After graduating from high school, he studied economics and business administration in Hamburg, lived in India and South Africa, and eventually got a job with a company in the western German city of Duisburg. Today Birger, 30, is planning a sailing trip in the Mediterranean. He isn't using his real name for this story, because he doesn't want it to be associated with the former East Germany, which he sees as "a label with negative connotations."


And yet Birger is sitting in a Hamburg cafe, defending the former communist country. "Most East German citizens had a nice life," he says. "I certainly don't think that it's better here." By "here," he means reunified Germany, which he subjects to questionable comparisons. "In the past there was the Stasi, and today (German Interior Minister Wolfgang) Schäuble -- or the GEZ (the fee collection center of Germany's public broadcasting institutions) -- are collecting information about us." In Birger's opinion, there is no fundamental difference between dictatorship and freedom. "The people who live on the poverty line today also lack the freedom to travel."

Birger is by no means an uneducated young man. He is aware of the spying and repression that went on in the former East Germany, and, as he says, it was "not a good thing that people couldn't leave the country and many were oppressed." He is no fan of what he characterizes as contemptible nostalgia for the former East Germany. "I haven't erected a shrine to Spreewald pickles in my house," he says, referring to a snack that was part of a the East German identity. Nevertheless, he is quick to argue with those who would criticize the place his parents called home: "You can't say that the GDR was an illegitimate state, and that everything is fine today."

As an apologist for the former East German dictatorship, the young Mecklenburg native shares a majority view of people from eastern Germany. Today, 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 57 percent, or an absolute majority, of eastern Germans defend the former East Germany. "The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there," say 49 percent of those polled. Eight percent of eastern Germans flatly oppose all criticism of their former home and agree with the statement: "The GDR had, for the most part, good sides. Life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today."

These poll results, released last Friday in Berlin, reveal that glorification of the former East Germany has reached the center of society. Today, it is no longer merely the eternally nostalgic who mourn the loss of the GDR. "A new form of Ostalgie (nostalgia for the former GDR) has taken shape," says historian Stefan Wolle. "The yearning for the ideal world of the dictatorship goes well beyond former government officials." Even young people who had almost no experiences with the GDR are idealizing it today. "The value of their own history is at stake," says Wolle.

People are whitewashing the dictatorship, as if reproaching the state meant calling their own past into question. "Many eastern Germans perceive all criticism of the system as a personal attack," says political scientist Klaus Schroeder, 59, director of an institute at Berlin's Free University that studies the former communist state. He warns against efforts to downplay the SED dictatorship by young people whose knowledge about the GDR is derived mainly from family conversations, and not as much from what they have learned in school. "Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service," Schroeder concluded in a 2008 study of school students. "These young people cannot, and in fact have no desire to, recognize the dark sides of the GDR."

"Driven Out of Paradise"

Schroeder has made enemies with statements like these. He received more than 4,000 letters, some of them furious, in reaction to reporting on his study. The 30-year-old Birger also sent an e-mail to Schroeder. The political scientist has now compiled a selection of typical letters to document the climate of opinion in which the GDR and unified Germany are discussed in eastern Germany. Some of the material gives a shocking insight into the thoughts of disappointed and angry citizens. "From today's perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down," one person writes, and a 38-year-old man "thanks God" that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn't until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.

Today's Germany is described as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic. Schroeder finds such statements alarming. "I am afraid that a majority of eastern Germans do not identify with the current sociopolitical system."

Many of the letter writers are either people who did not benefit from German reunification or those who prefer to live in the past. But they also include people like Thorsten Schön.

After 1989 Schön, a master craftsman from Stralsund, a city on the Baltic Sea, initially racked up one success after the next. Although he no longer owns the Porsche he bought after reunification, the lion skin rug he bought on a vacation trip to South Africa -- one of many overseas trips he has made in the past 20 years -- is still lying on his living room floor. "There's no doubt it: I've been fortunate," says the 51-year-old today. A major contract he scored during the period following reunification made it easier for Schön to start his own business. Today he has a clear view of the Strelasund sound from the window of his terraced house.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html

**************************

Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism
By Julia Bonstein
Part 2: 'People Lie and Cheat Everywhere Today'

July 03, 2009 07:18 PM Print Feedback
Wall decorations from Bali decorate his living room, and a miniature version of the Statue of Liberty stands next to the DVD player. All the same, Schön sits on his sofa and rhapsodizes about the good old days in East Germany. "In the past, a campground was a place where people enjoyed their freedom together," he says. What he misses most today is "that feeling of companionship and solidarity." The economy of scarcity, complete with barter transactions, was "more like a hobby." Does he have a Stasi file? "I'm not interested in that," says Schön. "Besides, it would be too disappointing."


His verdict on the GDR is clear: "As far as I'm concerned, what we had in those days was less of a dictatorship than what we have today." He wants to see equal wages and equal pensions for residents of the former East Germany. And when Schön starts to complain about unified Germany, his voice contains an element of self-satisfaction. People lie and cheat everywhere today, he says, and today's injustices are simply perpetrated in a more cunning way than in the GDR, where starvation wages and slashed car tires were unheard of. Schön cannot offer any accounts of his own bad experiences in present-day Germany. "I'm better off today than I was before," he says, "but I am not more satisfied."

Schön's reasoning is less about cool logic than it is about settling scores. What makes him particularly dissatisfied is "the false picture of the East that the West is painting today." The GDR, he says, was "not an unjust state," but "my home, where my achievements were recognized." Schön doggedly repeats the story of how it took him years of hard work before starting his own business in 1989 -- before reunification, he is quick to add. "Those who worked hard were also able to do well for themselves in the GDR." This, he says, is one of the truths that are persistently denied on talk shows, when western Germans act "as if eastern Germans were all a little stupid and should still be falling to their knees today in gratitude for reunification." What exactly is there to celebrate, Schön asks himself?

"Rose-tinted memories are stronger than the statistics about people trying to escape and applications for exit visas, and even stronger than the files about killings at the Wall and unjust political sentences," says historian Wolle.


These are memories of people whose families were not persecuted and victimized in East Germany, of people like 30-year-old Birger, who says today: "If reunification hadn't happened, I would also have had a good life."

Life as a GDR Citizen

After completing his university degree, he says, he would undoubtedly have accepted a "management position in some business enterprise," perhaps not unlike his father, who was the chairman of a farmers' collective. "The GDR played no role in the life of a GDR citizen," Birger concludes. This view is shared by his friends, all of them college-educated children of the former East Germany who were born in 1978. "Reunification or not," the group of friends recently concluded, it really makes no difference to them. Without reunification, their travel destinations simply would have been Moscow and Prague, instead of London and Brussels. And the friend who is a government official in Mecklenburg today would probably have been a loyal party official in the GDR.

The young man expresses his views levelheadedly and with few words, although he looks slightly defiant at times, like when he says: "I know, what I'm telling you isn't all that interesting. The stories of victims are easier to tell."

Birger doesn't usually mention his origins. In Duisburg, where he works, hardly anyone knows that he is originally from East Germany. But on this afternoon, Birger is adamant about contradicting the "victors' writing of history." "In the public's perception, there are only victims and perpetrators. But the masses fall by the wayside."

This is someone who feels personally affected when Stasi terror and repression are mentioned. He is an academic who knows "that one cannot sanction the killings at the Berlin Wall." However, when it comes to the border guards' orders to shoot would-be escapees, he says: "If there is a big sign there, you shouldn't go there. It was completely negligent."

This brings up an old question once again: Did a real life exist in the midst of a sham? Downplaying the dictatorship is seen as the price people pay to preserve their self-respect. "People are defending their own lives," writes political scientist Schroeder, describing the tragedy of a divided country.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122-2.html

Don't ya know that the booj editor added that headline 'Homesick for a dictatorship' out of sheer disgust.

Don't ya know that the booj editor added that headline 'Homesick for a dictatorship' out of sheer disgust.

My bet is yes he/she did. It's one thing for "Western" numb-nuts, buried in a shit-load of propaganda, to denigrate the socialist republics, but to have former citizens of those republics tell you, consistently, that they prefer the socialist states, is something altogether different.

Thin-wristed, liberal dilettantes can sniff and tell you how "terrible" it was in the "old" communist countries, but the people who actually lived it, tell a completely different story.

Unhappy Russians nostalgic for Soviet-style rule – study
Former states under Soviet Union from Estonia to Mongolia also covered by findings that ‘happiness gap’ between eastern and western Europe persists

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/96c7fa13de2ada2ae945725104f1827972e3f842/0_0_4096_2457/master/4096.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&
Tourists take photos in front of a mural of Vladimir Lenin in Skrunda-1, a former Soviet secret city in Latvia. Photograph: Valda Kalnina/EPA
Reuters in London

Tuesday 13 December 2016 21.43 EST

A quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, life satisfaction in Russia and other ex-Soviet states remains stubbornly low, with enthusiasm wavering for democracy and open market economics, according to a survey.

The study found that only 15% of Russians think their households have a better quality of life, compared with 30% in 2010 when respondents were last asked, and only 9% see their finances as better than four years ago.

Just over half the respondents from former Soviet states also thought a return to a more authoritarian system would be a plus in some circumstances, said the findings from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank said.


The EBRD, created 25 years ago to invest in former communist countries, questioned households across ex-Soviet bloc for more than a decade for its “Life in Transition” project, polling 51,000 households in 34 countries from Estonia to Mongolia.

They did find the “happiness gap” with western Europe had narrowed, thanks to improvements in central Asia, the Baltic states and central Europe, but also because of less satisfaction in parts of Europe, including Germany and Italy.

The findings resonated with increasing evidence in 2016 – ranging from Britain’s vote to quit the European Union and Donald Trump’s US election win – of dissatifaction with some of the effects of globalisation.

The EBRD chief economist Sergei Guriev said the study also showed countries could only successfully transition from command economies to more open-market systems if that process was “perceived by the public as being fair and of benefit to the majority”.

If the public does not see the benefits of the reforms they will ultimately not be successful,” he said.

Guriev said one of the biggest factors in people’s lower life satisfaction was losing their jobs. Governments therefore needed to make sure workers learned new skills, he said.

He also said the the survey showed people’s appreciation of democracy and open market economics was wavering.

“Right now in most of our countries the majority doesn’t seem to prefer democracy over authoritarian rule, whereas in Germany 80% do,” Guriev said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/14/unhappy-russians-nostalgic-for-soviet-style-rule-study

See what they did here? Russians have a proclivity for 'authoritarianism'.....figures that tool Ben Norton retweeted this.

Nonetheless, the fact remains.

USSR 1991 – History did not end with the counterrevolution; Socialism is timely and necessary

By Nikos Mottas*.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cIFYMfwyBpU/WF2BzRJ01OI/AAAAAAAACEQ/mrF_CRtbESQNSjn0Lc9Kyh2-Kc9bxNdXwCLcB/s320/5110171AA3013_047_lt.jpg

It was December 26, 1991 – 25 years ago- when the red flag with the sickle and hammer was lowered from the Moscow Kremlin. It was then, during the cold days of December, when the first socialist state of the world, the homeland of the world's proletariat, bent under the weight of the counterrevolution. Four days before, on December 22nd, the leaderships of three of the largest Soviet republics had decided the dissolution of the USSR, while the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been outlawed on summer of the same year.

The events of December 1991 sealed the victory of the counterrevolution, as the result of a process which officially began in 1985 with the Perestroika and reached its peak in 1989 with the overthrow of Socialism. Of course, the roots of the counterrevolution can be traced back in a series of revisionist-opportunist decisions taken at the CPSU's 20th Congress back in 1956.
In 1991, the homeland of the heroic bolsheviks, the homeland of Lenin and Stalin, the homeland of General Zhukov, of Yuri Gagarin and Dmitri Shostakovich, the homeland of the Soviet people became loot in the hands of the Russian bourgeoisie, of the oligarchs who emerged from the leadership of Perestroika. Even the opinion of the Soviet people (in the referendum of March 17, 1991, 76% of the voters supported the existence of the USSR) had been ignored by the perpetrators of the counterrevolution.


“The Soviet red flag is no longer waving in the domes of the Kremlin. Its lowering sealed with a dramatic and symbolical way the end of the 74-year old course of the first socialist state in the world. For a moment the clocks indicators remained motionless, marking the critical moment. The hearts of many million workers in all over thr world stopped beating, weighting the magnitude of the loses”.

- Rizospastis daily (KKE newspaper), 28 December 1991.

The immense social achievements of the USSR were succeeded by illusory promises by the new capitalist Russian government for- supposedly- more democracy, for more social freedoms and for a free-market economy which would improve the people's lives. The so-called “shock therapy”, which included several policies of economic liberalisation during the 90s, had multiple negative effects in people's lives: rapid increase of social inequalities, destruction of the socialist welfare state, extreme increase of poverty for the working class, decrease of the life extectancy rate, resurgence of nationalist claims between former soviet republics and the emergence of economic oligarchs as actual rulers of the new capitalist Russian state.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JO0WDmmUL6E/WF2C8t8J-OI/AAAAAAAACEY/BiehZ7_l-ZQ1754eVerXrHzXC5teaMaUgCLcB/s400/Gorbachev-Yeltsin.jpg
Yeltsin and Gorbachev: Permanently in the darkest pages of History.

Twenty-five years after the counterrevolution in the USSR, the majority of the Russian people- especially the older generations- think that life under Socialism was better. The restoration of Capitalism brought an unprecedented barbarity in almost every sector of public life; a barbarity which benefited the few and aggravated the situation for the majority. On March 2016, a survey conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Center (VTsIOM) showed that more than half of Russians (64%) would vote to maintain the Soviet Union if a referendum were held today. This figure increases from 47% among those 18-24 to 76% among respondents age 60 and more.

During the same period (March 2016), a similar survey by the Levada Center Survey in Russia showed that nore than half (56%) of the Russians regret the collapse of the USSR and 58% of the survey's participants would welcome the revival of the socialist system. Back in 2013, a survey by the Russia's Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) , showed that 60% of Russians think that the life in the Soviet Union had more positive than negative aspects.

The same kind of nostalgia for the USSR exists also in other former Soviet republics, like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan etc, where the policies of monopoly capitalism have swept away any social privileges achieved by the working class people during Socialism.

HISTORY DID NOT END.

The various apologists of capitalism, who advocated the concept of the “end of History” in the beginning of the 90s, have already been refuted. Despite the fact that the counterrevolutionary events in the USSR and Eastern Europe significantly deteriorated the correlation of forces internationally, it becomes clear that Socialism is timely and necessary. The impasses of rotten capitalism, which creates crises, poverty, unemployment, misery and wars, consist a solid proof that nothing has ended.

The people, the working class in all over the world must organize their counter-attack, to strengthen the bastions of resistance against capitalist exploitation and imperialist barbarity and create the preconditions for the ultimate victory of Socialism. The red flag, with sickle and hammer, will rise again.

*Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism, a PhD candidate in Political Science, International Relations and Political History.
Posted by In Defense of Communism

https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2016/12/ussr-1991-history-did-not-end-with.html

Yes, approval of this post is a 'litmus test'.

On the role of the USSR military spending
colonelcassad
February 27 2:09

https://img.gazeta.ru/files3/901/6650901/POL_03-incut3_pic-690x-80658.jpg

Overview material on military expenditures of the USSR in the 80s at the end of the Cold War.

Military expenditures have ruined the Soviet Union?

Controversy, in particular, is the aspect of the impact of military spending on the Soviet economy, which the crisis has brought decay. Huge numbers are often mentioned in the current political debate about defense spending in Russia, calling for their reduction. "Excessive military burden" of the Soviet Union, often referred to as a certainty, and the numbers are called startling: military spending late USSR allegedly were calculated, according to Shevardnadze (May 1988) - 19% of the gross national product, Gorbachev (1990) - 20%, chief of General Staff V. Lobov (end of 1991) - in the "one-third of GDP" [1]. In his interview with a former member of the present Central Committee of the CPSU V. Falin he estimated the cost of the Brezhnev period as the 22-23% of the GNP, apparently relying on some of the estimates of the time.

Such a spread of data suggests that the estimates given by officials - arbitrary. This is all the more likely because of the fact that they far exceed the data of the official statistics of the closed and open, according to which the Soviet military expenditures were relatively modest:., In 1968 - 16.7 billion rubles (2.6% of GDP level of 1980) , 1975-1976 - 17.4 billion (2.8%), 1980-1984 -. 17.1 billion (2.7%), 1987 -. 20.2 billion (3.2%). [1]. [3, p. 5].

Estimates Gorbachev, Shevardnadze and Lobau, who are united only by compliance with the concept of "a lot", raised questions among the party functionaries in the years of perestroika. Secretary of the CPSU G. Baklanov, who was responsible for the military industrial complex, to ask questions about the origin of data directly to Gorbachev. Later in the interview, he recounted the conversation this way: "He brought (we are talking about the events of 1986 - NM) completely wild figures, allegedly proving how much funds we have a defense - 30-40%. I'm with him then had a conversation. I asked Mikhail Sergeyevich, how do you take these numbers? We have the State Planning Commission, the Ministry has. Let's take the actual numbers, rather than those you articulate. After all, they were not included in the plans, in our finances. Gorbachev came away from the conversation - that I have the numbers and all! " [4]. In the opinion of Baklanov, the source of these data was the ... Institute of USA and Canada, which is not surprising: assessment of Gorbachev and his supporters in the political elite of the USSR were numerically close to the estimates of Western experts.

I must say that up to 1974-1975 years. the US intelligence community believed that the proportion of Soviet military spending in GDP is not more than 6-8%, which is less than the US military burden in 1962-1971. (10.7%) [1]. In 1960, under pressure from American military circles began work on the revision of these estimates, which held a special commission under the president, known as "Team B". By 1974 it had provided a report which insisted that the CIA was underestimating Soviet military expenditure and the burden on the Soviet economy. And, as we know today, "Team B" guided by dubious information, including the testimony of one of the defectors who either seen, or not seen some documents closed Soviet military budget 1960.

Messages were invalid character, however, led to a change in the assessment of the military budget of the Soviet Union. In 1976, the estimate of the proportion of Soviet military spending has been increased from 6 to 12-13% of GDP. Later, in 1985, this proportion had increased to 15-17%. We can assume that these changes stood the military-industrial lobby in the US and American "hawks" who sought to build up its own military power, which contributed quite "Soviet threat."
As the study of secret documents the US side throughout the war in Afghanistan, 1979-1989 gg. and I could not really estimate the size of the cost of Soviet participation in the conflict.
In the document, the total exploration expenses 1983 the USSR for economic aid to Afghanistan in 1980-1983. estimated at $ 450 million [5]. The analytical report in 1984, compiled on the basis of intelligence, we are talking about 1.5 billion. Dollars. Economic aid and $ 16 billion. Military spending [6]. By 1986, military spending, according to the same agency, for the entire period 1980-1986. has made 15.27 billion. rubles [7]. This spread of US intelligence data can be regarded as a mere guess, due to the lack of precise information.

Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining the Soviet Afghan war have ceased to be secret by the end of the 1980s., When their clarification, on the instructions of Gorbachev, took a special group, the chairman of the slave NI government Ryzhkov. According to Boris Gromov, analysts take into account not only the military spending, "economists counted literally everything - the training of Afghan students in Soviet universities, the cost of travel of civilian experts in Afghanistan, the number of civil and military equipment, which was transferred to the government and the armed forces of the countries. There were even considered flying Aeroflot aircraft to the Republic of Afghanistan, after winning the April Revolution "[8]. That is, it was taken into account absolutely all kinds of expenses, one way or another connected with the war.

Ryzhkov Group resulted in his report is evidence of a very significant level of cost, but it was well below the estimates of Western intelligence agencies. According to Ryzhkov, to "the needs of the Afghan" for 1985 was spent 2.62 billion rubles, and for 1986 -.. 3.6 billion [9, p. 611]. In total, by 1986 the Soviet Union in Afghanistan has not been spent and 10 billion. Rubles , not to mention the large amounts of fantastic CIA estimates.
Meanwhile, created thanks to the calculations of the US intelligence agencies the Soviet military-industrial ghost made US leadership to begin a new round of the arms race, to "drive" the Soviet Union, forcing it to increase military spending to an unacceptable level for us. On it was sent and the program of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), known as "Star Wars." As you know, the Americans hoped to devalue defense technological innovations, allowing to block a nuclear attack on their country, the Soviet arsenal of nuclear weapons and the USSR make haste to create something new.

Reagan declared its intention "to make these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete," as Henry Kissinger hoped that "the arms race, which they [Soviet leaders] so desperately began in the 1960s. Or fully absorb their resources, or lead to US strategic breakthrough "[10]. In practice, however, this plan failed. In the first days after Reagan's statements Soviet leaders regarded them as a bluff. Yuri Andropov, focusing on the evaluation of the Soviet experts, who believed that Reagan described the system can not be created in the next 10-15 years, wondered: "Americans know - can not know that a reliable missile defense is now impossible to create. Nevertheless, today announced its intention to build such a system, although in practice it will be inefficient and unreliable missile. Why then all this masquerade? To intimidate us and to use as a lever to pressure? "[11]. However, in an interview he gave shortly after this conversation with experts, Andropov described SDI project as a serious and aggressive. Apparently, he was only trying to use the situation to make the United States the image of the arms race of the initiator and thereby gain extra points in the information war.

By the inflated estimates of the CIA in the USSR applied in the era of perestroika. Thanks to the international "defuse" these estimates began to penetrate in the Western press, where they were able to familiarize employees seek, offer them to the attention of Gorbachev. At that time, Gorbachev badly needed in the arguments justifying the reduction of military expenditures in order to use this problem in the fight against the conservative opposition within the CC. Its foreign policy is based on "asymmetric concessions" to the West on the issue of disarmament at that time did not meet understanding in the highest political circles of the Soviet Union. Soviet leader himself, apparently flattered by his popularity in foreign countries [2, p. 183], although some authors believe that making concessions in foreign policy, Gorbachev was hoping to get loans from Western partners.

Meanwhile, according to many, concessions were worn frankly humiliating. We went to a large-scale in comparison with the NATO arms reduction countries: the USSR had to decommission and destroy medium-range missiles in 1500, while the US - 350 [2, p. 184]. During negotiations in April 1987 on the issue of missiles and medium-range at Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had to exclude the military representatives of the USSR from the discussion process, so they are not ripped disadvantageous for the USSR compromise.
By the way, the size of the concessions was already started to bother and Gorbachev himself, what he said during a meeting with US Secretary of State George Shultz:. "During the conversation, Gorbachev has repeatedly accused the US side is that it tries to force the Soviet side to make great concessions on the basis of the weakness of the latter. He even accused the United States that they do not treat the USSR as a great power, to which Schulz said his famous phrase: "I cry for you. '"
In these circumstances, Gorbachev had to adjust or foreign policy, or, to avoid accusations of capitulationism - to prove that the arms race is causing enormous damage to our economy. To do this, and have been used CIA data, with traditional statistics USSR military budget has been criticized for lack of information, as does not include the costs of the military-industrial complex, military, scientific research, etc ..

However, since 1989 this argument is no longer be convincing, since the national statistics all military spending began to bring together [3, p. 16]. It turned out that their share in GDP in 1989 amounted to 7.9% (in the United States for the same year of 5.5%), in 1990 - 6.9% (in the United States - 5.2%). (US military spending calculated on the basis of the Stockholm Peace Institute data, US GDP in 1980-1990 -. According to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis Department of Commerce).
In more recent estimates, the share of military spending in the GDP of the USSR in 1985 and 1986. It was 8.4% and 8.1%, respectively [4]. The values of the military expenditures of the USSR and the USA, so there were quite comparable.

Military of the Soviet Union the load a bit more, but with an important caveat: in the statistics do not take into account the conversion products for the US defense industry, while the figure for the USSR accounted for and strongly influences our comparison. In the Soviet military-industrial complex 45% of the workers engaged in production of civilian products [4], one third of innovation specialists MIC wore civilian character. Among the products produced by the Soviet military industry are vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, electric, motorcycles. Such despecialization MIC had its advantages, as in the non-military time allowed to exploit the maximum benefit of its funds, as in the case of war, mobilization, and facilitate their conversion. It is possible that due to the specifics of the same production lot of defense enterprises to survive during the crisis of the 1990s, but it is a subject of a separate study.

Many modern historians, criticizing Soviet policy in the field of defense, indicate multiple superiority in the absolute number of certain types of weapons the army potential enemy. This "excess" production was due to the Soviet leadership sought an excess of some compensate for the lack of other weapons. Colonel-General A. Danilevich noted in 1990 .: "In some types of weapons we surpassed a potential enemy (I mean, first of all, armor - NM.), In other inferior: significantly in the aviation, air defense. ... The Americans believed that due to the tanks we are able to go through the whole of Europe to the English Channel in ten days, and that hindered them "(cited in [1]). In addition, the Soviet High Command sought to prevent a repeat of the situation of 1941, when due to the initial period of war defeats much of the arms of the park was destroyed. In other words, I would like to have more reserve for emergencies.

What is still the reason for the economic crisis of the USSR of the 1980s? In 1985-1989 gg. The Union was faced with the problem of the foreign trade balance, caused by including a fall in world oil prices. At the chaotic increase in investment in the economy and rising incomes of the population, outstripping GDP growth, this has caused the budget deficit, which had to compensate for the build-up of money mentioned above and by foreign loans. Of course, these budget problems were not the only reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they have made a significant contribution to the negative developments of the late 1980s.

It is worth mentioning, and that in 1989 the budget deficit exceeded 7% of the country total military expenditure, so that even a complete rejection of defense activities would not solve the economic problems in full [3, p. 5-6]. In conclusion, it should be noted that any military expenditures are quite unpleasant burden for the economy, which is regularly forced to spend money on projects that are not profitable and carry a very limited social burden.
However, the defense of the country - is the protection of its wealth from the capture and destruction, and if saving this budget column, the country may even cease to exist as such in certain circumstances.

Notes:

1. V. Shlikov What ruined the Soviet Union? The General Staff and the economy // Military Gazette, №8-9, 2002.
2. J.. Boffa From the USSR to Russia. History unfinished crisis. 1964-1994: Per. Italian Khaustova LY M .: International relations, 1996.
3. National Economy of the USSR in the 1990 Statistical Yearbook. M .: Finance and Statistics, 1991, p 5.
4. OI Skvortsova economic policy of Gorbachev - the factor of the collapse of the bipolar world // The end of the Cold War, new facts and aspects: Proceedings. Saratov State University. NG Chernyshevsky; Editor Clove VM Saratov Scientific Book, 2004.
5. the Impact of The Economic Soviet of Involvement in Afghanistan (the U). Defense Intelligence Agency, April 1983. L. 3. // Hereinafter: US documents published after the declassification of George Washington University (Washington, DC).
6. The Soviet Invasion in Afghanistan: Five Years After. Soviet of the Analyses of Office, May 1985. L. The 14.
7. of The Cost of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan. Office of Soviet Analyses, Feb. L. The 13. 1987.
8. BV Gromov Limited contingent. M., 1994.
9 .A. A. Lyakhov Tragedy and valor of Afghanistan. 2nd edition revised and enlarged. Yaroslavl: TF "NORD", LLC, 2004.
10. Henry Kissinger's diplomacy. Translation VV Lviv. M .: Ladomir, 1997.
11. OA Grinevskiy performance called "Star Wars" // Independent Military Review, May 18, 2000.

http://www.stoletie.ru/print.php?ID=7843 0 - zinc

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3269812.html

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This is a good piece. But this just jumped out at me:


Andropov described SDI project as a serious and aggressive. Apparently, he was only trying to use the situation to make the United States the image of the arms race of the initiator and thereby gain extra points in the information war.

This "information war" must have been waged against the US with other bourgeois states the prize. It was not any kind of outreach to the oppressed working class in bourgeois states (which is the only information warfare that makes any sense). This, to me if true, shows a total lack of grasp by the Soviet leadership. Now, as I say, this may not be true, Andropov may not have been trying to "wage" an "information war" for the approbation of lesser bourgeois states. But if he was, it was a dead-end from the get-go, a no-win situation.

This is a good piece. But this just jumped out at me:



This "information war" must have been waged against the US with other bourgeois states the prize. It was not any kind of outreach to the oppressed working class in bourgeois states (which is the only information warfare that makes any sense). This, to me if true, shows a total lack of grasp by the Soviet leadership. Now, as I say, this may not be true, Andropov may not have been trying to "wage" an "information war" for the approbation of lesser bourgeois states. But if he was, it was a dead-end from the get-go, a no-win situation.

I don't know. It is certainly the case that the world was watching and that a pitched battle was being waged for the supremacy of one social organization over another. And the US most certainly was the aggressor and initiator (regardless of whether star wars was a real project or not).

These facts matter greatly to the billions of oppressed (then and now) and it is not so easy to withdraw from the information battlefield when the opposition spreads sweet lies and vile poisons across the globe in equal measure (speaking strictly about the "information" front)

The role of the "perestroika" in the weakening of the party in power and the emergence of capitalism

colonelcassad
June 3, 9:10

http://inosmi.ru/images/23948/66/239486606.jpg

A fragment from the book of the Iraqi Professor Najm al-Dalimi "Price great betrayal and breakup of the Soviet Union."
Quite an interesting view of the Iraq problem on the collapse of the Soviet Union. and activities Yakovlev and Gorbachev's

role of "perestroika" in the weakening of the party in power and the emergence of capitalism

In 2008, the United States held a ceremony awarding the Medal of Freedom Gorbachev. Award and the accompanying prize of 100 thousand dollars was presented by former US President George HW Bush. The reason for awarding Gorbachev became his great contribution to the collapse of a great state, and "sale" of Eastern European countries, especially the German Democratic Republic. Such a low price was the betrayal of his people, his ideology, party, equitable treatment, taking into account that this is not the first award, which was an apostate Gorbachev. one of the main architects of the so-called perestroika, a member of the Politburo of the ruling party Aleksandr Yakovlev was able in a short period of time to occupy the position of Head, responsible for the development of ideological and information policy of the Party and the Soviet state. He is directly responsible for the implementation of this important and dangerous task and worked in direct support of Gorbachev.

Yakovlev removed from office the vast majority of those responsible for the ideological work of the Party and the government, media executives, magazines, television. This affected, for example, the newspaper "Moscow News" magazine "Banner" and "New World" and other newspapers and magazines, and television directors, in particular the "First Channel" (Ostankino). In addition, it is appointed to the post of his supporters, who were in favor of "perestroika" and acted in the interests of Gorbachev and his rogue team. At the same time he conducted educational meetings and seminars in the Central Committee for the new members of the party and the government under false pretenses promotion of values such as transparency, democracy and human rights. In addition, they began to develop programs, to do research and write articles that broadcast their point of view, serve exclusively the purposes of "perestroika".

Yakovlev thanks to its powers and unlimited support from Gorbachev gave permission to write some political articles and books that met its stated rate. Most of the authors of these works are members of the ruling party and the supporters of Gorbachev as, for example, Yuri Afanasiev. The main purpose of these books was to distort the socialist thought and theory of Marxism-Leninism, to refute the works of Lenin and Stalin, do so to be recognized in error, denigrate them, especially Stalin. The authors sought to discredit the work of building socialism and its achievements in various fields, whether political, economic or ideological, to distort the socialist values and intentionally devalue the gains, which reached the Soviet people, and gain them victory. In particular, this applies to a great victory over German fascism in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), this yellow plague, which is a "foundling" of capitalism and one of the most terrible and dirty ideological, political and socio-economic trends.

Under the leadership of Aleksandra Yakovleva, member of the Politburo of the ruling party, loyal to him and his destructive course of writers working to advance the idea of integration of the socialist and capitalist systems. According to this "restructuring" does not imply the Stalinist democracy and Stalinist socialism, "restructuring" - is the work on the construction of a new socialism, "socialism with a human face." Gorbachev and Yakovlev have successfully worked hard to weaken the role and status of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as the main political forces, control society and the state in accordance with the socialist Constitution of the USSR. In the end, they managed to make the first and most important step to undermine the socialist system, as well as the Party's prestige by abolishing the sixth article of the Constitution of the USSR, the leading role of the Communist Party. Thus, was approved by the principle of political pluralism, have been held "democratic" elections, which in turn led to political chaos, as the former Soviet Union to the Russian Federation, there were more than 1,000 political parties. In July 1991, members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Yakovlev and Eduard Shevardnadze (former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union) have created an alternative ruling party Movement of democratic reforms with the support of US imperialism, namely, its financial, economic, intelligence institutions. They were supported by, for example, billionaire Dzhordzh Soros, is closely associated with the American intelligence service, and the Institute Kraybla, which was led by the CIA. The movement also has the support of the Institute of Democracy in America. Movement members were intended to destroy the inner-structure and with it the Soviet state.

The main and the most "dirty" task that was entrusted to Yakovlev, was to distort and denigrate the scientific ideology - Marxism-Leninism, theory and expose its authors false charges. After all this scientific ideology laid the foundations of a socialist society in the USSR and the implementation of successful models at the national and international levels. As for Gorbachev, his task was the selection of party leaders and other personnel who would support his destructive course. Parallel to this, Gorbachev was dismissed by the talented and dedicated socialist ideology of the leaders and members of the party who rejected proclaimed their course. All this happened under fictitious pretexts. So, for example, stated that they are conservatives and opponents of progress. He was replaced by party cadres in the executive branch, as well as at various administrative levels. In general, Gorbachev replaced more than two thirds of party workers and party cadres in the executive branch, that is more than 70% of all staff, including the Secretary of the Central Committee, as well as the secretaries of the regional, city and district committees. In addition, it suspended the factory directors posts, chairmen of collective farms and state farms, as well as leaders of academic and research institutions who disagree with his policies. Gorbachev was able to realize all this thanks to the powers of the leader of the ruling party. Thus, it is removed from power the most talented, strong and experienced leaders in the USSR, and all these changes occurred under the false slogan of "updating" of the Soviet society and the ruling party. Given all this, one can conclude that these reforms have led to the subsequent crash, namely the Soviet Union, which in turn was due to the great betrayal within the party. The collapse was expressed as follows.

Firstly, it is the lack of commitment of the theory of Marxism-Leninism, and attempts to develop it to suit the requirements of time, realities both within the State and in the international arena.
Second, is the lack of practice of socialist democracy, which would express the interests of the people, the era of Khrushchev's reign until the coming to power of Gorbachev.
Thirdly, it is necessary to take into account the low level of "socialist class consciousness", which applies to Soviet society in general and the working class, especially since Khrushchev led the party and the state and to Gorbachev's rule.
Fourthly, it is impairing the value of the principle (or lack thereof) of the collective leadership of the party, so that the party secretary became a kind of prophet, the only decision maker.
Fifth, it should be noted the predominance of utilitarian and opportunistic behavior among some party workers.

These and other factors contributed to the success of the traitor Gorbachev and his team in the destruction of the great states of the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the great party of the status of the party of Lenin and Stalin, which in a short period of time has made significant progress in political, economic, social, scientific, and military spheres, success, which have been recognized enemy even before the allies, as evidenced by those acts of aggression and unjust wars that were unleashed against ashamed power. Among them we should highlight the civil war (1918-1922), World War II (1941-1945), as well as the so-called Cold War (1946-1991).

The main goal of President Gorbachev and his corrupt supporters is the destruction of the Soviet Union by the so-called "perestroika", which leveled all the achievements in socio-economic, scientific and military fields, as well as to promote the emergence of capitalism in the country in the most violent of its manifestations, in order to finally destroy the socialist economy. Important decisions to revive the capitalist relations of production, especially in the industrial sector, as it did in the case of co-operatives in the industrial sector, in other words, the work was carried out to establish the capitalist private sector have been taken. To this end, the owners of private enterprises granted preferential loans, the so-called co-operatives were permitted to establish economic relations with foreign industrial enterprises, especially enterprises in capitalist countries.

Thus, the government pursued a policy aimed mainly at weakening and dismantling of the socialist enterprises. As a result, most of them were, in terms of "perestroika" of leaders, not cost-effective, and as a result, had to be sold at a low price or privatized by businessmen, which in turn contributed to the emergence of the bourgeois class, which has become a social and economic pillar of the regime . Thus, a gap between the authorities in the course of construction of the capitalist economy and the existing economy, the core of which is a socialist enterprise. In other words, the destruction of the economy was carried out under the slogan "renovation, development and openness."

Gorbachev, Yakovlev and his team have done everything that was in their power, using all administrative means to the Soviet people began to hate the socialist system and ultimately rejected it. One of the most important steps in the period of "perestroika" began to struggle with alcohol abuse (very inefficient). So, was carried out the corresponding information work, it was launched a campaign in the media, and as a result, all types of alcohol disappeared from public warehouses. At the same time there were queues for all alcoholic beverages, prices increased by 45%, there was a black market, which is controlled by a mafia, and the leaders of "perestroika" began to speculate on the sale of alcohol, getting huge profits. Catastrophic situation has been created, which has touched all Soviet citizens began to disappear as the most essential food items such as bread, salt, cheese, meat and more. According to the former Minister of Defense of the USSR Marshal Dmitry Yazov, authorities forbade trains loaded with food and other goods to enter Moscow to warehouses in the state still lacked the necessary products. This in turn was to provoke people's anger towards the socialist system and the ruling party, as Soviet citizens were forced to stand in line for hours to get bread, butter and meat. All this was accompanied by the advent of coupons for food and other goods that were not even in the period of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), and as a result of Soviet citizens no longer believe in the Communist Party. At the same time, the struggle of the working class, especially with the directors of industrial enterprises, which resulted in a decrease in the level of material production because of the chaos and instability in the country, as well as reducing real incomes, while mafia actively developed shadow economy, thereby undermining the national economy.

Directors of public and private enterprises were given formal instruction in all possible ways to stop the production of major food products, while the train nagruzhonnye food remained relatively far from the cities, especially in Moscow and Leningrad, which led to the deterioration of the goods, so that they are simply thrown into forest.
The main purpose of all this organized sabotage on the part of the leaders of the so-called "perestroika" was fueling discontent and hatred of the Soviet people to the Party and the socialist system. As a result, Gorbachev and his team managed to create a crisis in the country and make the culprit turned out to be the principles underlying the socialist system, the inability of the latter to provide citizens with the necessary goods. In addition, efforts were made to undermine the state of the financial system, with the result that they have declared that the Soviet state is unable to provide its citizens with all necessary, being among the countries with the largest external debt.

At the same time the leaders of "perestroika", reformers and democrats became influential businessmen in the period of the Soviet Union and after its collapse. They were engaged in the sale of food products intended for citizens, for the purpose of personal enrichment. This dangerous trend has developed with the support of Gorbachev and his supporters. Businessman getting various benefits and credits from foreign banks. At the beginning of "perestroika" in 1985 through the efforts of Gorbachev's Soviet Union's foreign debt amounted to 13.1 billion dollars, while in 1991 it reached 70.3 billion dollars. Most of these loans have gone out to bribe the Soviet leaders. In addition, gold reserves were depleted. Thus, the volume of gold fell from 2000 to 200 tons.

Gorbachev, Yakovlev and their supporters realize that in order to destroy the Soviet Union, it is necessary first of all to provoke conflicts between the peoples of the state. For this it was necessary to inflame national feelings, particularly the non-Russian peoples, work with youth, she began to be hostile to the Soviet government and the Russian people. This task is assumed by Alexander Yakovlev (he was a member of the Political Bureau and was responsible for the development of relations with the communist parties around the world).

In 1988, Aleksandr Yakovlev a visit to the Baltic states, in the city of Rijeka, and then to Vilnius to solve some of the problems in these republics, in particular, to resolve disputes that have arisen between their leaders. Also held a meeting with ruling party activists and leaders of the anti-Soviet opposition, and in the spring of 1988 in the republics, especially in Estonia opposition was formed, namely, the "People's Front", which began to open political activity to overcome the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) from the Soviet Union. Due to the destructive and hostile policy of the authorities of the Baltic republics, Kazakhstan has also appeared movement of youth and workers, especially in the capital. Then there was a movement in Ferghana. The anti-Soviet activity was carried out in the Republic of Georgia, the same thing happened in Azerbaijan, where the events had a pronounced nationalistic character. The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Karabakh region, which killed 130 women and children. The conflict around this area does not stop until now.

By order of Gorbachev's Soviet army was thrown "extinguish fires" in the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which acted extremist nationalist organizations, who supported the West of the country to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet army was thrown back in order to suppress the forces of counter-revolution, and this took place with the support of the imperialist West, especially the United States.
In August 1991, in the light of the political upheavals that took place in the Baltic republics and the republics of Central Asia, it was created the State Emergency Committee. The decision on its establishment was approved by Gorbachev. However, recent events have shown that Gorbachev played a dual role. In case of victory of the State Commission on the state of emergency, he would have stayed with them, and in case of failure, he would have gone on cooperation with Borisom Eltsinym and his team, but in the end he lost both his hand and his betrayal ever thrown it into the "cesspool" stories.

http://inosmi.ru/longread/20170602/23948 5114.html - zinc

However, I would reduce all the problems exclusively to the activities of Gorbachev and Yakovlev did not. They acted largely due to one medium, which has been evolving since the Khrushchev era.

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3458556.html

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Boris's post script is a good one, but the piece is very informative. Those bastards may not own the whole crime but they were certainly the 'trigger men'. Even in it's post-Khrushchev period the Soviet Union was of vast value to it's people and the world in general, which has suffered capitalist ravages equivalent to a world war since it's demise. i would happily and without any remorse beat Gorby and his cronies to death with a 2x4.

New research shows Communist Party won 1996 election - Yeltsin implanted by Clinton
June 18th, 2017 - Fort Russ News -
Rusvesna - By Inessa Sinchougova

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Boris Yeltsin's victory at the 1996 election was the direct result of American political consultants, and personally of Bill Clinton, says World Socialist Web Site.

Not only did they supervise the election program of the Russian president, and followed the ratings, but some evidence suggests that the elections were indeed rigged. The real victory belonged to Gennady Zyuganov, Communist Party leader, explains the author.

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"The US electoral system is one that legally allows super-rich financial oligarchy to bribe candidates, parties and elections," - he writes. So, for example, in the disclosed correspondence of the Democratic Party National Committee, it is clear that they were trying to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders, by the manipulation of the electoral process.

"If we are talking about manipulation of elections in other countries, the US ruling elite, its media and political puppets know very well what they are doing. The United States is the world leader in the intervention in elections in other countries", - says the author of the article, citing research data. In the period from 1946 to 2000, the United States 81 times interfered in the electoral process in other countries.

In addition, this figure does not include the operation to overthrow regimes and military coups that took place in Iran, the Congo, Guatemala, Chile and so on. In fact, the article notes, the US government and its accomplices leave almost no one without intervention, including nominal allies.

However, one case, according to the author, is especially notable in the list of the US undisguised insolence. "We are talking about 1996, when Boris Yeltsin went to a second term. Then the White House and President Bill Clinton personally conducted a massive campaign in support of the leader, whose regime was established to monitor the final collapse of the Soviet Union and the imposition of capitalism."

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By the time that Yeltsin announced that he will go for a second term, he was one of the most despised people in Russia, asserts the author, due to the privatization of the Russian economy and its catastrophic consequences: There was a 50 percent GDP contraction, hyperinflation, rising corruption, crime, the collapse of the medical sphere, depletion of food and fuel, non-payment of salaries and pensions, living standards fell to catastrophic levels. The war in Chechnya was tearing the country apart in a brutal civil against foreign-funded Wahhabists, while some regions in Siberia stopped conscripting their young men into the army and sending taxes to the federal budget - effectively Russia was disintegrating into several states, and remained a 'federation' only in name.

Yeltsin's opposition was so strong that in 1993 with the help of a dictatorial decree, he dissolved parliament, and with the help of the military, suppressed protests - killing, according to the author of the article, about two thousand people.

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"This was the so-called democratic character, which was supported by the United States in the 1996 elections," - the author writes.

According to the journalist, Yeltsin's entourage called on him to cancel or postpone the election, fearing that his opponent, Gennady Zyuganov, would win. However, the "rescue of Yeltsin was delegated to American political consultants." Moreover, this operation was not particularly secret: after the victory of Yeltsin, Time magazine made the appropriate cover and an article, describing how it was done.

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The result was due to the American political consultants who had experience in such cases as Watergate and helping Bill Clinton become the governor of Arkansas. The three worked for four months in Russia and received a salary of $250 thousand, plus an unlimited budget to carry out surveys and other civil-political life activities. To hide their mission, they said that they had come to Russia to sell TVs.

The study finds that Yeltsin obtained only 6% of the electorate vote.

Around the same time, the International Monetary Fund, on US request, gave Russia a loan of $ 10.2 billion, which allowed the Russian government to "spend a huge sum for the payment of long-owed wages and pensions to millions of Russians", forever tying is hands by interest rates. (This was later paid off during Putin's first term)

The exact role of the Clintons remains blurry, but the US president personally said that he wanted for Yeltsin to be elected as opposed to Zyuganov; calling Yeltsin and teaching him how to campaign - in effect becoming the political adviser of the Russian President.

The author of the article believes that Yeltsin lost the election, and the results were rigged. The same opinion was expressed in 2012 by Dmitry Medvedev.

"This story emphasises the absolute hypocrisy of the CIA, the Democratic Party and the media, who are trying to foment anti-Russian hysteria to prepare aggression against Russia, attributed to its mythical intervention in what has historically been the preserve of America - to determine the outcome of elections in other countries", - concludes the author.

http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/06/new-research-shows-communist-party-won.html

Fort Russ is a 'Putinists' outfit, nonetheless.....