this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Yeah things were "better" under the Soviet Union.
They were. The large majority of people who lived in the soviet union regret its fall. The introruction of capitalism and the destruction of the socialist system caused metrics like life expectancy, home ownership, quality of life, and more to plummet while poverty, starvation, prostitution, and drug abuse skyrocketed.
do you perhaps know the specifics of the "socialism" fall in now-post-ussr region? Because it was more of introduction of total anarchy and rule of the strongest than it was the introduction of capitalism.
Of course USSR was better than the crysis which consequences we're suffering to these days.
sorry, it's not really related to the discussion you had with the lad, i'm just in a rambling mood ig :D
The chaos of the introduction of capitalism, labeled "shock doctrine," was intrinsically linked to capitalism and private plunder. There's no real way to compare what happened to a theoretical possibility where socialism was dissolved, and not capitalism but another system took its place.
bro, the 90s of the post-ussr region was literally ruled by gangs and otherwise criminal mob. It had nothing to do with any doctrine, as the politicians didn't matter much.
And yes, i wholeheartedly agree, we can't compare any two countries from two different times, even if they occupied the same territory, as we'd inherrently ignore lots of historical context that way.
Yes it does happen when capitalism is introduced, it's a feature of expanding capitalism, either colonial or imperialist.
i fail to see the connection. Literally the same kind of chaos occured when the revolution happened in 1917. Not to mention, that for capitalism to be "introduced" it should be foreign in the first place. USSR, especially late one was quite capitalistic itself, albeit with it's own uniquie flavor.
Seriously you don't see any difference in popular revolution overthrowing centuries long tyranny and literal foreign agents overthrowing a state contrary to people wishes and establishing comprador tyranny?
I am starting to suspect you see history not as dialectical process but as set snapshots.
Considering the above, it does not surprise me anymore.
i'm not talking about the overthrowing itself, but rather about what came after. Before leninists established their rule, there was a period of anarchy, just like there was in the 90s, not to mention that for people of a less internationalist view, USSR rule was just as tyrannical.
you'd have to explain to me how my words you quoted made you think what you thought. The way USSR was at the end of it is a result of dialectical process.
What i said there is, while (after NEP) the banking system was nationalized and even small enterprises shut, enterprise is still an enterprise, even the nationalized one. USSR before perestroika is basically a country-wide corporation, and after perestroika it's just a plain capitalist country, so i don't see why you oppose ussr to capitalism, when saying that "capitalists came and forced ussr to crumble". I know that soviet propagenda would claim otherwise, but capitalists were inside all along, they just had monopoly on everything, and were referred to as government.
Call me dumb or whatever for all i said, but i think that eversince people understood that money should circulate rather than be hoarded and kept, anything we do is inherently and unavoidably capitalistic, thus categorizing a subset of people as "capitalists" in opposition to other subset is inherently wrong.
If you don’t even know what capitalism is, then maybe you should sit this one out.
how about you explain to me than? What a certain term means is a matter of agreement rather than discussion. The same word could have different meanings in different contexts after all.
I'm rather more curious about your thoughts on my USSR = state-wide corporation take tho.
I'm aware of how chaotic it was, but it was also capitalist with foreign plundering from western countries.
Not the biggest fan of the USSR - but compared to the capitalism that followed, yeah, they were
no wonder, considering how exactly that capitalism looked like, and how "well" people where with handling their finances.
Collapse of the USSR in terms of how destructive it was is comparable to the one of Roman Empire. It was litaral anarchy in the 90s.
Lots of people lost all their money they hoarded in a single moment, simply because just keeping the money hidden in a safe place was considered prime financial safety. And then lots of people lost their money again as they had no idea how to handle their finances properly, and people like Mavrodi emerged with their financial pyramid schemes, promising huge profits for all the investors.
tbf, USSR did great, especially considering that basically whole world pressured and opposed it in many ways. It still managed not only to persist, but also to help other countries. But comparing its economics to even all the combined economics of all the countries that were a part of it at the time is not fair, as USSR had in total more than 70 years to develop, and was occupying vast expances of land that had big cities, lots of fertile soil and just as much of any other resource. If you want to make a more fair comparison, you should compare it to EU.
They certainly were, both better then before and after