Topic: I miss the Soviet Union. - page 3. (Read 15600 times)

I miss the Soviet Union. I never visited the country during its 72 years of existence, and I didn’t much like what I read about it in late-Cold War newspapers and library copies of Soviet Life: the long queues for bread, the military parades presided over by impassive bemedaled field marshals, the kitschy tributes to dictators, the Olympians inflated by performance-enhancing drugs. Communism, with its denial of both God and the individual, never appealed to me as a way of life, and I doubt it was much good for the Russian worker, the Polish worker, the East German worker, or the Yugoslavian worker.

Communism was, however, fantastic for the American worker. It’s no coincidence that the golden age of American equality, that period from the 1940s to the 1970s when the gap between CEOs and employees hit its all-time low, was almost exactly coterminous with the Cold War. As any capitalist will tell you, competition is good for the marketplace. It forces businesses to create better products and more efficient services for consumers. The same is true for capitalism itself: as a means of raising the living standards of an entire society, it never functioned better than when it was forced to compete with a rival economic system. [...]

An economy without a marketplace will produce only the bare minimum necessary for survival. But capitalism, in its rawest form, leads to the same result. Unless tempered by unionization or a social welfare state, the iron law of wages reduces the majority of workers to a subsistence level, while creating vast wealth for a tiny ownership class. Ronald Reagan advanced a false dichotomy between Communism and capitalism that is still with us, 25 years after his presidency ended. It’s true, as Louise Bryant said in “Reds,” that Communism would never have worked in the United States — but capitalism isn’t working as well without it.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/01/communism_saved_the_american_worker_how_soviet_competition_raised_our_living_standards/

"undoubtedly more dangerous than Denikin, Yudenich, and Kolchak combined."

Immediate new elections to the Soviets; the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers and peasants before the elections.
Freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties.
The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant associations.
The organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District.
The liberation of all political prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class and peasant organisations.
The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons and concentration camps.
The abolition of all political sections in the armed forces; no political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In place of the political section, various cultural groups should be set up, deriving resources from the State.
The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up between towns and countryside.
The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs.
The abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups; the abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking into account the views of the workers.
The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil, and of the right to own cattle, provided they look after them themselves and do not employ hired labour.
We request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution.
We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution.
We demand the institution of mobile workers' control groups.
We demand that handicraft production be authorised, provided it does not utilise wage labour.[8]

Until somebody tries it in real life at a large scale and we can all guess how it will end.

There is like no logic in this statement.

Read some history books (published by neutral authors), you wont miss Soviet Union any more.

While that is true, the corruption was not so "in your face", not so obvious. You would give a box of chocolates to a teacher from time to time, but you weren't expected to do so and definitely not giving money. Nowadays you can barely expect to get medical service unless you pay double of what is in the price list.
(And yes, I lived there. Didn't see much of the corruption unless you really needed to have something done high up in the food chain.)

there will always be people who miss it, mostly ethnic Russians and Serbians but others who were in the USSR and Yugoslavia despise it

there are people who like it but are mostly mixed between nations in that country and they still consider themselvs USSRs citzens or Yugoslavs

good thing, they're a minority

So people DO miss the Soviet Union...

Here is a comparison of the USSR and the Russian Fed (RF)

USSR:

1. No immigration from parasite states to Moscow and other cities
2. Free healthcare, but long queues.
3. No corruption among cops, and other public servants. But lot of corruption among the top Communist officials.

RF:

1. Moscow and other cities are now coping with millions of non-white immigrants
2. Expensive healthcare
3. Cops, doctors, nurses.... everyone is corrupt.

Here is a comparison of the USSR and the Russian Fed (RF)

USSR:

1. No immigration from parasite states to Moscow and other cities
2. Free healthcare, but long queues.
3. No corruption among cops, and other public servants. But lot of corruption among the top Communist officials.

RF:

1. Moscow and other cities are now coping with millions of non-white immigrants
2. Expensive healthcare
3. Cops, doctors, nurses.... everyone is corrupt.

My friend's grandmothher will be happy to hear that someone still misses the Soviet Union.

Now really , English is the fourth foreign language I learned but...is there any -ism word that describes something nice ? I can't think of any right now.

Libertarianism is "nice" some of the time. 

For example, REAL communism never happened. What happened in Russia, China, etc, was NOT communism. Communism in its supposed form is actually pretty damn amazing - think about, nobody wants for anything, everyone has the same quality of life. There's no need for conflict when we're all equal in terms of food, material goods, etc. But as a society right now, we are not ready for this kind of equality - not all of us want it, and there will always be people who want to abuse their power to live better than anyone else (which is exactly what the people in power in semi-communist states like USSR did). So even though communism is not that bad of an idea, human nature prevents real communism from ever taking place.