Human rights were also quite strong in the USSR, especially compared to capitalist countries. The soviets were nearly always at the forefront of social liberties.
Doom -12 points 2 months ago
Hold on there bud let's not jump the shark. Yes there was advancements for women's rights and they did have some laws against racism and colonialism although you can definitely argue they didn't exactly respect that colonialism part. Fantastic workplace and education.
But there were a massive lack of human rights -- religious freedoms, freedom of movement which is fucking huge you cannot even go where you wanna go, extreme lack of political freedom and above all being gay was completely illegal.
So not really quite strong and not really that far ahead of capitalist countries, maybe in some facets but saying it was just straight better is completely untrue. The only point it wasn't illegal to engage in homosexual relationships was when they forgot to codify it into law basically but they fixed as soon as Stalin consolidated his power.
Both countries had their problems which was more reflective of global culture than anything. Across the globe women were handling more work, across the globe racism was growing as people started to integrate, and across the globe people still hated being queer. Countries you would argue are socialist or formally socialist today lag behind drastically compared to western countries, many repress it out right and ban anything about it, some criminalize it entirely. Today Russia is completely barbaric in how it handles same sex relationships so clearly the cultural shift didn't happen and some of that progress was never made.
Weydemeyer 63 points 2 months ago
Yes there was advancement for women’s rights
I’m not trying to have a go at you personally, but this is something I see from anti-communists and it drives me up a wall. The way it’s just casually handwaved away that former socialist countries had significantly better rights for one half of the entire population, and it gets relegated to a footnote. It shows just how more work still needs to be done to respect women’s rights. Even if these counties accomplished nothing else, the fact that they actually successfully addressed the needs and rights of HALF the population is a monumental achievement. In the GDR a woman could divorce her husband on her initiative while at the same time in the FRG a woman needed her husband’s permission to work outside the home. This should not be waived off as “yeah yeah I guess women had rights but you couldn’t find a good pair of blue jeans”.
naevaTheRat 19 points 2 months ago
Misogyny is massive. Half the population was liberated from lives of utter dependence on and vulnerability at the hands of the other. Allowed to do stuff like leave abusive marriages and testify against their husbands and shit but it's "Yes yes they got some rights".
It's one of the most significant liberations in human history god damn it. My own grandmother's life was transformed from one of illiterate servitude to one where she could keep her own apartment and do technical work (and get recognition and respect for doing so, not condemnation!).
She was just one among millions. millions!
Doom -6 points 2 months ago
I'm not gonna be offended trust me. But it drives me equally up a wall when I read anything from .ml that acts this way. A huge tenet of socialist views is the idea of proletariat internationalism, the idea that the working class globally should be working together to fix the entire system everywhere. Instead there is a constant desire to frame east vs west, socialist vs capitalist, Russia vs the US. And that's disingenuous and really just makes everyone dumb.
The West absolutely has a laundry list of the evil cruel awful terrible shit it has done, I rarely see that denied. What I do see is that same lens not applied the same to socialist/communist countries especially the USSR.
Women were still barred from any position of power through an invisible glass ceiling, they were still completely expected to work a full time job AND handle women's works, feminist movements were pursued by a state and often crushed, the USSR denied spousal abuse even existed and offered no solution for abused women. Not to mention to overall economic limitations, at least in the west women could own real estate/invest in a stock market/run a business, that wasn't really the same in the USSR where things were mostly state run or decided by the state which limited everyone's freedom equally which I guess you could argue is better in some ways but that's still completely against socialist sentiment.
So yeah I guess women had rights, but it wasn't paradise and in ways it lacked in contrast to their contemporaries.
You just can't have actual discussions here because everyone wants to defend the USSR and it is evident in the culture of former soviet countries how they fared and what the government pushed culturally. Spousal abuse is terrible in these parts of the world, racism runs amok, anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment is massive. People in this thread are literally arguing the USSR was better, yet somehow their culture has completely 180'd? Someone said how the west attributed homosexuality to pedophilia, so did the USSR and so does Russia today because no ground has been made in all those decades since. So what are people even talking about?
Cowbee 23 points 2 months ago
The soviets absolutely respected their anti-colonial stance, not only did they free Russia's colonies but they also contributed to anti-colonial movements. Regarding religious freedom, it was actually quite high. Atheism was pushed by the state, but protections on nationalities also protected right to religion. Political freedom was also much, much higher for the majority of society, who remain disenfranchised by capitalist systems.
As for queer rights, penalties for being gay were often lower than in capitalist countries, and usually gay rights were at the forefront for capitalist countries. They were severely lacking compared to today, but compared to their peers, they were progressive.
I don't see how referencing post-socialist states, where reactionaries took power, indicates anything of meaning when it comes to human rights under socialism.
EmmiLime 32 points 2 months ago
Don't forget how the West rewarded Alan Turing for his contributions during WW2 by castrating him for being gay. Or how the west linked homosexuality with pedophilia.
Or a bigger example being Ronald Reagan letting AIDS run rampant in the LGBTQ+ community?
Edie 11 points 2 months ago
A case of Homosexuality. Feifer, George. *Justice in Moscow*. Simon and Schuster, 1964. pp 207–8
To return to the cases behind closed doors: There is an article in the code that I would have thought unnecessary; it deals with homosexuality.* Muscovites are so strongly heterosexual—so little titillating talk, so much real activity. One never sees obvious homosexuals in public places, and I had assumed that I would never see them in court. Russians seemed too healthy for that.
The exception proved the rule. Late one afternoon I came across it in a wretchedly damp, low-ceilinged basement room in the form of two elderly men, fifty-five and sixty-one, the first with a full eighteenth-century peasant beard, the other in high boots and a tunic. Insensibly drunk, they had exposed themselves on a bitter November day in a park and made some sort of contact with each other. They listened in deep embarrassment while the court found them guilty; but “considering their ages, their families, their honest confessions, and their promises of future good behavior,” it decided not to deprive them of freedom but merely to fine them 20 per cent of their salaries for a year.
The men sputtered thanks to the judge and left separately without exchanging a glance. A once-very-pretty, fortyish woman who heard the sentence with me shook her head incredulously. “I just don’t believe it. You mean they . . .? The two of them? Good God, what for?”* Article 121: Homosexuality.
Sexual relations of a man with a man (homosexuality) is punishable by deprivation of freedom for a period of up to five years. Homosexuality committed by means of application of physical force, threat, or in relation to a minor, or by taking advantage of a dependent position of the victim, is punishable by deprivation of freedom for a period of up to eight years.
SlurpingPus -9 points 2 months ago
Regarding religious freedom, it was actually quite high.
You mean like straight up shooting priests, until Stalin did a 180 during the war because he needed people's unity? Interesting ‘freedom’ you got there.
Doom -12 points 2 months ago
The Soviet union literally occupied parts of central and eastern europe? They crushed uprisings in Hungray and Czechoslovakia that still impact how those countries exist today. They even deported Tartars and Chechens. That's some pretty colonial stances. Their funding for anti-colonial movements was really just anti-western colonialism so it kinda became a "which flavor of colonialism do you want" game. That's literally what was the basis of the Cold War.
No religions were not protected. They nationalized most church property from the get-go, they abolished muslim schools and actively forced people to stop learning Arabic and Hebrew which was pretty necessary for them to engage in their religion.
As for queer rights, penalties for being gay were often lower than in capitalist countries.
They were not progressive at all, 7 years in prison is nowhere near progressive. You can literally just look up Article 121 Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/... what are you talking about?
I don’t see how referencing post-socialist states, where reactionaries took power, indicates anything of meaning when it comes to human rights under socialism.
Because it is reflective of the culture that was pushed. You're basically saying being queer was free and everyone was cool with it, today the sentiment in post-soviet countries is extremely negative, some of the worst on the planet. You don't get that shift overnight, that is a cultural standard that has been reinforced by a legal system for decades.
On the flip side, even though the US went through the lavender scare and the AIDs crisis it was far better. It still is far better because of the cultural impact of those experiences, there is massive queer support in the US because of events like the Stonewall Riots. A plethora of people famous and rich in the US are openly queer, I can see queer couples when I look out my window and pride flags on most streets.
Tomorrow_Farewell 8 points 2 months ago
religious freedoms
I.e. the most powerful pedophilic cults that worship slaver gods were not given power.
freedom of movement
How much freedom of movement did the people colonised by the European powers enjoy?
In the USSR one could, in fact, do both tourism travel and move to other places.
extreme lack of political freedom
I.e. nazis were not given power.
Not sure why you are even claiming that the USSR was behind in this area, considering that states in general do not give opposing opposing movements power.
being gay was completely illegal.
Also a feature of NATO.
Going to mention, though, that the early USSR decriminalised that, and some of the socialist republics - like the GDR - were better in this regard.
Tolc 5 points 2 months ago
- Religious freedom is an oxymoron. Religions must be suppressed
- Your assertion regarding homosexuality in USSR is wrong, they knowingly decriminalised homosexuality before but stalin recriminalized it - which is his fault
- Today russia is hyper conservative because thats what liberals wanted - to dissolve the USSR they needed a strong nationalist movement which they got.
frisbird 17 points 2 months ago
As a communist myself, point number 1 was proven to be incorrect by the USSR. Suppressing all religious expression was the wrong move and created a massive reactionary backlash that could not be managed. Religions must be allowed to wither away and repression only employed when the religion is being used as a cover for counter-revolutionary organizing.
Doom -6 points 2 months ago
Religion is synonymous with culture to some groups. I have seen the sentiment of how Indigenous Americans were treated to be genocide, which I agree with. For largely the exact same reasons and metrics as religious prosecution in the Soviet Union, destroying a national identity, forceful integration, language erasure, basically indoctrination.
They didn't support it, they wanted to abolish the entire concept of marriage. Which included same-sex relationships. Saying they supported it is disingenuous.
Russia is hyper conservative because of a ton of reasons, a lot of those cultural. Which the Soviet Union reinforced in many ways and didn't push against in many other ways. Saying the entire culture flipped because liberals is just not true, c'mon.
Newhere -23 points 2 months ago
There was all good,just the government was always right. So,if person kept low profile,lived his life,didn't spoke against the president, he could live life working and nit bothering about tomorrow. Roof over head, some food always available. Free med care,education, ect. It was very suitable for normies, lazy people were made work, and the smart ones... eh,those suffered in Russia...
Newhere -14 points 2 months ago
Your comprehension of text is outstanding, but please, try to read again and point were I said that normies were lazy or not intelligent? Where I am saying that capitalist are smart? If not minding , I will ask you personal question- what is your direct experience with Russia?
folaht 17 points 2 months ago
Ah yes, the "smart" ones.
Stable geniuses, and very high IQ, always having had a very high IQ, according to many people.
And with very strong instincts, more important than any degree in a university.
Always known how to make the right moves in business.
You know, the ones people say about that they're geniuses, and they don't disagree with them because they've been building empires from the ground up.
Weydemeyer 13 points 2 months ago
In my experience with “smart” people from former Eastern Bloc countries now living in the West, what they “suffered” from was the idea that they didn’t get to live a life of significantly higher material comforts than “normal” workers in their country, similar to how things were in the West.
AdolfSchmitler 49 points 2 months ago
"Is there anything more depressing than communist architecture?"
"Mass homelessness."
Weydemeyer 42 points 2 months ago
I highly recommend the recent Deprogram podcast (ep #248) where they go into a discussion of the daily life experiences of people in socialist countries. Hakim’s father lived in the USSR and Yugo, living in a the former Yugoslavia, has a ton of anecdotal experiences from family and friends.
naevaTheRat 18 points 2 months ago
He has the patience of a saint. We should all aspire to ground our views as thoroughly as him and to be as charitable when explaining our reasoning to others.
bleustenns 6 points 2 months ago
Seeing Cowbee around after joining Lemmy has reinforced my belief that I'm doing the right thing by being ruthlessly patient and positive with others. That dude's awesome, he recommended me, a total stranger, some introductory ML literature (and I haven't had the time to read it yet...), which I'm sure he gets questions about very often.
(If you see this, Cowbee, thanks again! I'd love to chat some after I'm done reading what you've provided me. :) )
marcie 31 points 2 months ago
I have a friend in China that pays around 3500rmb a year (incl electric, heating, ac, internet) for a place in a mid tier Chinese city. It's a 10 minute walk from a metro, fairly new, and she prepaid two years of rent working a gig job at minimum wage for 2 months. Her girlfriend also works minimum wage and they said they aren't even employed right now and they saved some money up from their sporadic gig jobs and are now taking a 2 year vacation because they just wanted to chill, I guess. They send me cute lesbian pictures of them on the beach somewhat regularly. They say no one bothers them about being queer, though their families are still in a somewhat hilarious feud over who should take on whose name. They don't pay any taxes, they are exempt due to a wage cutoff.
I'm sure everyone here has it cheaper! 🤡 China is a capitalist nightmare don't you know?
marcie 15 points 2 months ago
People online, and especially newspapers, always act like China is having a gig nightmare, and that everyone is stuck in unemployment hell. But they obviously don't see the totality of the economy, they are just looking at one number or another. A large number of unemployed people can be good because that can be a long period of personal, consensual downtime from work. So many newspapers were also reporting what you just posted as a brutal bust in the housing market ripping wealth away from millions of Chinese. But they do not understand the context of the economy whatsoever. A house isn't an investment, and its something that takes up such a little part of someone's total wealth in China that they do not care if the prices keep going down. You can pay off a big 80k rmb house in the countryside in about 3.3 years of minimum wage work, and by countryside I mean a rural/suburb area, you still have access to a fast train to the local big city. You typically pay nothing for the land the house is on, its free when allotted by the collective lands comittee, so you're pretty incentivized to set up your own house by ordering a prebuilt one to be shipped there or paying builders to do it. Or if you really wanted to save money, you can hook up a fancy yurt to the free electric and sewage lines and grow your own food, this style of life is so cheap and easy to maintain in China that it really isn't even worth mentioning the numbers. I talked to a trans lady that did that.
bleustenns 3 points 2 months ago
This sort of life being possible in China makes me desire immigration to non-major city areas over there. I only have concerns of freedom of information and access to the greater internet- censorship on a national firewall level is something I'm simply not able to tolerate.
IMPORTANT: I am an American with a public education, and have no real knowledge of what life's like there in terms of freedoms. I've just heard things.
Would you mind going into a bit of detail about how accessing the greater internet works over there? That is, if you know anything. I think I am correct in assuming you are not currently residing there. Would love another's take on this.
marcie 5 points 2 months ago
The big issue with immigrating directly to China is that you will only be allowed to stay in their higher tier cities afaik, this is because of the Hukou system which treats every region of China like its own country with visa restrictions, essentially. Its great for preserving cultures but not so great if you like to travel a lot. So its unlikely that you could take advantage of the collective lands rules as a foreigner unless you married into a family in an area with collective lands. You can obviously visit any region of China but visas/hukou do have limits if you try to go for residency.
There are some loopholes to getting Chinese citizenship, you can move to for example Taiwan or Hong Kong, get residency / citizenship in those places, and then the mainland would consider you a citizen by proxy. But usually if you're moving from one region to another you can only live in the higher tier cities. You can read a little more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
marcie 14 points 2 months ago
I got permission to talk about the feud! Traditionally in this region, the wife of a husband would go live in the husband's family's house and help take care of the house and his family, usually indefinitely. Nowadays, everyone can afford a cheap apartment so usually a certain time each year (usually Chinese New Year and a couple of other holidays) wives go live in the husband's family's house during the celebrations and are a part of the husband's clan, then they go back to their own apartment afterward. Basically, both extended families of this lesbian couple are really salty and wanna double dip on having their kid and the wife stay in their house so they can have two extra women around to gossip and clean with around the holidays lol. They really don't want to share! They've floated a lot of ideas but have come to a stalemate on the matter, I'm really curious how it'll resolve when they get "married" (as much as you can be legally in China rn, anyways, which is basically American-style civil partnerships with joint bank accounts prior to Obergefell). The antics each clan gets up to to try to impress them to join is getting really hilarious, they keep bribing them with gifts (flowers, food, money, cute dresses) all the time, its gotten to be a competition for some of the old grandmas with nothing to do. My friend says this is a little stressful. They really don't want to disappoint either family because they've been so nice.
Alcoholicorn 6 points 2 months ago
mid tier Chinese city
Which one?
3500rmb a year
That seems insanely cheap, did you miss a zero in there? I've seen nice apartments for 2-3K rmb/mo in T2 cities, per year seems crazy.
marcie 4 points 2 months ago
I'll ask if I can mention the location, I didn't say specifically for privacy reasons. Its possible the specific region she is in subsidizes the housing for low income people, idk the specific logistics of how she came to that price. She did mention they don't live in a city center but it didn't matter because it had train access.
Amnesigenic 31 points 2 months ago
Downvoters are all landlords
harcesz 10 points 2 months ago
Ex soviet block kid here, even got CCCP stamp in an old passport.
This might be true, but it might be worth considering that by late 70 it would not really matter that much. You could hardly get anything with the money left, basic food products included.
Buying meat in a store would be a thing of a chance or you got nasty scraps, and there was really little other options beyond popatos and a few other very basic foods. In my country most of 80s people would que for most of the day to buy toilet paper, and one your run around the city based on rumor on where something could be gotten. This created a massive black market, but there prices would make an average pay worthless. And also any western foreign currency would be worth much more than local, as they were key for smugglers, anyone looking to escape to the other side and tightly controlled (if you were even given a passport and were allowed to travel abroad you could buy a very small amount of currency, much below what would be needed to sustain oneself). Anyways stuff like this, institutional inertia and stiffness, plus repression of any attempts at change created a feedback loop of a massive shadow economy and corruption that chocked the system and created a deeply pathological culture that has been an issue in the region since.
naevaTheRat 24 points 2 months ago
I think it's pretty uncontroversial that the USSR ended on a low note.
Decades of economic isolation by western powers, constant conflict with the usa, loss of faith in the government through some of the destalinisation measures and liberalisation of the economy all took their toll.
If history had gone a bit differently and revolutions elsewhere hadn't been stamped out paving the way for the rise of the Nazis and the ascension of the USA on the back of nuclear horror things might've gone a lot better.
thatGuyWithGlasses -26 points 2 months ago
They would not, the very the idea was corrupted to the core. By stamping out Prague spring the Chinese scenario of limited or experimental capitalism was made impossible. It would collapsed on itself anyways. Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
DudleyMason 24 points 2 months ago
So you've seen the results of neoliberalism and you blame Communism for that?
naevaTheRat 19 points 2 months ago
I've added some citations to your post:
^[it is known] ^[my vibes tell me]
EmmiLime 16 points 2 months ago
Source: grew up in post communist country, seen the results
You saw the results of capitalism's shock therapy. I dunno how you can be this dumb at blaming at a problem on something's ABSCENCE
Tomorrow_Farewell 13 points 2 months ago
By stamping out Prague spring
Suppressing NATO-backed nazis is not a bad thing, contrary to what you claim.
Cowbee 2 points 2 months ago
Nah, it was counterrevolutionary. It ultimately would have weakened socialism, which still existed in the Soviet Union, rather than establish a new socialism. This is also why the IMF was involved.
Tomorrow_Farewell 22 points 2 months ago
The experiences of my family (in the USSR) were not as you describe. Things were cheap and necessities were available. Getting some things was more difficult for non-price reasons. That also seems to align with studies like what the CIA conducted about access to nutrition in the USSR.
Overall, that was a significant improvement over what came before, as well as over what came after.
harcesz -2 points 2 months ago
Where did they work, and did they live in Moscow? Some regions or particular stores by key plants were much better supplied, but honestly I'm not sure if you could find one family in USSR that would claim stores were well supplied in the 80s.
Also I come from one of the satellite state. Food was taken out from the country, while there were protests over look of food in the stores. Kinda hard to claim it did not happen. There were rail carts welded to tracks to by workers trying to stop it...
And yeah, Russia was an absolutne shitshow both before and after, no question about it. I'm just addressing oversimplified vision of what money meant in state capitalism.
Ferrous 18 points 2 months ago
Ignoring the fact that this conversation has been steered towards an explicitly liberal/market economics/consumerist framing...
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 66% of Armenians thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful
In a 2016 survey, 69% of Azerbaijanis believed life was better under the USSR.
In a 2016 survey, it increased to 53% of Belarusians saying life was better under the USSR
Another Pew survey, also in 2017, showed that 43% of Georgians thought the dissolution was a good thing, compared to 42% who thought it was a bad thing.
In a 2016 survey, around 60% of Kazakhs above the age of 35 believed life was better under the USSR.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 61% of Kyrgyz thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 16% who thought it was beneficial.
A 2013 Gallup survey showed that 42% of Moldovans thought the dissolution of the USSR was harmful, compared to 26% who thought it was beneficial.[7] Regret about dissolution later increased to 70% according to a 2017 Pew survey, with only 18% saying the dissolution was a good thing.
Levada polling since the mid-1990s on the preferred political and economic system of Russians also shows nostalgia for the Soviet Union, with the most recent polling in 2021 showing 49% preferring the Soviet political system, compared to 18% preferring the current system, and 16% preferring Western democracy, as well as 62% saying they preferred a system of economic planning compared to 24% preferring a market capitalist economy.
Tomorrow_Farewell 15 points 2 months ago
And that is even ignoring various other economic indicators that showed worsened living conditions after the fall.
Tomorrow_Farewell 17 points 2 months ago
Where did they work, and did they live in Moscow?
Not in Moscow. Not in any administrative centers.
but honestly I’m not sure if you could find one family in USSR that would claim stores were well supplied in the 80s.
"Well-supplied" compared to what? Would you say that stores in most of the capitalist world were well-supplied?
Also I come from one of the satellite state. Food was taken out from the country, while there were protests over look of food in the stores. Kinda hard to claim it did not happen.
Movement of food between the republics doesn't seem to be hard to believe, but also does not seem to be malicious.
I’m just addressing oversimplified vision of what money meant in state capitalism.
It's rather silly to call planned economy "state capitalism". For most of its existence, there wasn't even the capitalist class - i.e. a class of people that owned the means of production as private property and used other people's labour to extract profit from said means of production.
obvs 22 points 2 months ago
You understand your whole post is because capitalist systems have always fought to deny resources to communist-leaning systems, right?
So for example, the problems Cuba is facing right now aren't problems with communism but a problem with the fascist dictatorship next door working to deny it resources.
When you're being starved by a kidnapper, your own personal finances aren't your primary problem.
BrainInABox 3 points a month ago
Yes
obvs 1 point a month ago
You do understand that denying resources to others is literally the primary goal of capitalism, right?
It happens at literally every level. Capitalists claim the word is "earning", but at every level it's just denying resources to others.
Amnesigenic 8 points 2 months ago
Cool story
whoisearth -13 points 2 months ago
I have many friends that were children of the block like you. Talk to them and they all share your same opinion. It is fucked up today the western youth is now glazing on the old USSR days when you talk to everyone who experienced them and they were garbage.
Personally speaking I don't want to have to wait in a bread line every morning.
gualudengren 22 points 2 months ago
I never realised Lemmy is full of 60+ year olds who would have been old enough to have any meaningful experience of the USSR. (And even then at 61 you'd only just be catching the end where everything was going to shit due to many complex factors).
whoisearth -11 points 2 months ago
- I am 49
- My friends are older and younger but the messaging is the same
- USSR fell in 1991
- Who are you to define "meaningful"?
gualudengren 22 points 2 months ago
Ok so you were 14 when the USSR fell and 8 when Gorbachev came to power. You were a child. At that age you simply don't have the depth or breath of experience for it to be meaningful. Same as 14 or 8 year olds now don't have the experience to really have wider political input. If you haven't worked, had to get a house, engaged with the state using your "experience" to derive conclusions about it is nonsense. Not to say younger people can't have opinions but they simply can't defer to experience as generally they lack it but this can be substituted with study, statistics etc.
Edit:
Also again you were 8 when Gorbachev came to power and everything was going to shit you have 0 experience of the pre Gorbachev era. Appealing to personal experience to draw conclusions about that is even more nonsense.
Tomorrow_Farewell 8 points 2 months ago
Not the person whom you asked, but
Who are you to define “meaningful”?
To get a good view on the matter, it would require having worked and having gone through a process of getting new housing both before Gorbachyov and after the fall of the USSR. Something tells me that people who earn, say, 30 000 or so rubles (or an analogous sum) per month today were in a much better spot back before Gorbachyov.
gualudengren 17 points 2 months ago
I don't think I've seen even a single person on ml claim personal experience but instead deffer to data and other sources which is entirely valid in my opinion
Tomorrow_Farewell 16 points 2 months ago
You are keep implying that the vast majority of people lived better in the Russian Empire, and that praising the Russian Empire this way is somehow not edgy.
RiverRock 16 points 2 months ago
When you can't attack the message, simply attack the messenger.
Of course, this will raise questions later about why a bunch of edgy teenagers are better at predicting the course of world events than you.
RiverRock 20 points 2 months ago
You know what happens at the end of the bread line?
You get bread. For free.
Here you have to wait in line too. But when you get to the end, you have to pay, and millions of people can no longer afford it.
Amnesigenic 12 points 2 months ago
You have many friends that are either fictional or fucking morons
Scrollone -11 points 2 months ago
Everyone I talk to that comes from the USSR says the same as OP. It was horrible, and capitalism is way better.
So maybe you're the one who's a moron, or maybe (and this is the most likely thing) the truth is in the middle.
Amnesigenic 6 points 2 months ago
Anything's possible when you make shit up kiddo
BrainInABox 2 points a month ago
That's crazy, everyone I talk to that comes from the USSR says it was great and far better than capitalism.
mk_machinist -1 points 2 months ago path: 0 25524471, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 0
dropdrip -2 points 2 months ago
I see something in the commentary I can't exactly define. It's probably bigger than a single word can encompass. Regardless of how revolutionary and forward thinking the leaders of a polity are they are still leading groups and individuals who have their own cultural beliefs, of which their positions would be inherently antithetical towards revolutionary ideas--if they were not the revolution would have occurred earlier. There's a cultural threshold that must be passed before revolutionary activities can occur, but that threshold may be with a minority of people who can enable those activities to start. They will still be leading a majority who simply do not care intellectually. Most people do not give a thought towards the economic system they live under.
A white-class who materially benefits from a black-class' oppression will be racist towards that class regardless of what the leading mouthpieces say, especially if that benefit has been enforced throughout many generations. "Equality feels like suppression to the privileged." When a strong revolutionary polity enters a territory they--by definition--are fought against. It's intellectually lazy to call this push-back the "suppression" of religion--ethnicity, sexuality or any other category--by the revolutionaries.
Revolutionaries were on the correct lines. One cannot attack the revolution's failings on the actions of uninterested participants or more accurately: counter-revolutionary actors. The communists were more socially progressive than the capitalists. That's a fact not up for debate. Communists are more socially progressive than capitalists.
Rents should be abolished. It's a tax and I do wonder why taxes are still in use by national-governments today. They're inefficient and create absolutely needless friction and dissent amongst payers. Money has long left the bounds of reality. Of a nation state to issue money, but then tack back a small fraction due to cultural-legacy, should it not be ridiculed? Likewise the ill effects of landlords has been well documented economically: their patronage is solely for the oppressive effects on you--the worker.
TassieTosser 14 points 2 months ago
Because buildings don't maintain themselves?
dropdrip 1 point 2 months ago
You're being facetious. Rent is not capital harboured for the maintenance of lands or buildings. From Wiktionary:
I want to make this point absolutely clear: landlords in Australia have been a cohort that's been cultivated by the capitalists as a bulwark against labour domestically. In law and in economic-systems privileges have been carved out solely for them, to the detriment of the industrial-capacity of Australia to produce tangible goods.
Australia has a housing crisis--which is not a state that is unique to Australia. Housing is a human right. Australia's government acknowledged this and promised to act on it. It has failed in every domain--deliberately!
The right to housing is clearly supported by international law, indeed at the very foundation of the international human rights system in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, establishes an internationally recognised set of standards for all persons without qualification. Article 25 of the Declaration provides, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including .... housing”.
—Chris Sidoti, Human Rights Commissioner, 4th of September, 1996.
Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Australia is a party, recognises the right of all people to adequate housing and commits state parties to take appropriate steps to ensure the realisation of that right. Article 11 recognises, “.... the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing...” and that “States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right”.
I do encourage readers to read the linked document (especially Australians). It will help shed light on why the privileged children of Western-democracies are looking back at the USSR as an ideal to work towards whilst they face worsening material conditions with the political classes unanimously declaring: it will get worse; deal with it. Users such as whoisearth@lemmy.ca are being, I think, disingenuous.
The children of Australia are aware that the adults (that are in privileged positions now, shaping Australia's future political- and economic-landscapes) were the recipients of public-housing, cheap private-housing and free tertiary-education, whilst ending those same programs for them. This injustice is further inflamed with the deliberate inflation of asset-classes, of which housing has become an overwhelming salient sore-point in the Australian context.
Rents in Australia do not go towards the maintenance of the property. They overwhelmingly go towards the financing of new mortgages. A rental-property is a political-license to freely create private misery for your tenant as you attempt to extract unjust amounts of capital to finance a mountain of new mortgages in an attempt to join the politically protected class: landlords.
I pay $300.00 AUD a week to rent a room, with no access to laundry or cooking facilities. Meanwhile the property fails Australia's national-standards for housing. There are no smoke-detectors in the bedrooms. A glass-panel in one of the windows has a hole in it. The bathroom's exhaust fan does not work. Mold is a never-ending issue. These conditions are illegal, but good luck getting the landlord to meet his legal-obligations! If you live in Australia you know tenants are treated as an underclass.
Tenants are supposed to maintain the building and the land, not the rent. That's the expectation and the reality here. It is certainly different to what I've read of European-tenancy expectations. I can only defend Australia by saying it's a young, naive nation led by lazy and entitled morons.
In Australia homelessness is increasing. Asset-classes are over inflated. Rents are crippling. Wages are insufficient. The leading thought of the domestic political-class is that A.I. will increase productivity, leading to higher wages which will erode that asset inflation, leading to a nice, comfortable equilibrium. Of course this ignores the fact that the historical gains of increased productivity have gone towards profits, not wages. Somehow the future gains will be different! Everyone knows that's a lie, which means the current cohort of leaders are promising nothing. No change. We will continue this course of destructive neoliberalism.
What the USSR accomplished was remarkable. What the Chinese have accomplished is astonishing. All under the frame-work of socialism, working towards communism. Meanwhile the Western-democratic nations seem to be in endless internal-squabbles, external-wars and domestic degradation.
marcie 7 points 2 months ago
In modern China they have landlords, but it actually makes rent cheaper because the managerial cost is offloaded and the government has driven rent prices to the floor by creating a massive oversupply of housing production. It's very fascinating that there are landlords at all, it almost feels like a trap. I'd kill to talk to one, I wonder how the numbers work
NotEasyBeingGreen 4 points 2 months ago
Presumably the rent went to the government, which was considered as a stand in for the people, right?
RaphaelSchmitz 10 points 2 months ago
Rich kid or living under a bridge?
Amnesigenic 8 points 2 months ago
"I've got mine, fuck everyone else"
Amnesigenic 4 points 2 months ago
You didn't use those words but anyone with a functioning brain knows that is exactly what you meant
homosapien -12 points 2 months ago path: 0 25547901, hotness: undefined, score: -12, children: 22
gualudengren 5 points 2 months ago
When’s China gonna get rid of it’s power?
This is the result of someone who has not once even grazed the same room as someone engaging with theory not to mind engaging with it themselves trying to have a gotcha moment.
What are you talking about getting rid of "power" that is absolutely 100% not the communist stance. Communists don't even advocate for the abolition of government but for the withering of the state which is a separate apparatus that exists fused with the government in class society.
homosapien -7 points 2 months ago path: 0 25547901 25548651 25549395, hotness: undefined, score: -7, children: 14
EmmiLime 11 points 2 months ago
WHY are supposed anarchists always so pro-capitalist and pro-fascist??
Every time you lot will listen fiercely to what Amerika has to say about its enemies and you religiously believe it hard. Why?
homosapien -3 points 2 months ago path: 0 25547901 25548651 25549395 25550712 25551954, hotness: undefined, score: -3, children: 6
homosapien -3 points 2 months ago path: 0 25547901 25548651 25549395 25550712 25552154, hotness: undefined, score: -3, children: 2
graphito -13 points 2 months ago
Typical .ml bait but I'll bite.
You can get similar conditions for a fairly similar price right now. Current monthly rent of 2 bedroom apt in regional slav city (1m population) is about €200. Any .ml users wanna move in? USSR ideation is very very welcome
Edie 27 points 2 months ago
So 25%
Also:
The average rent in the USSR around 1970 was 2–3% of the average urban family budget. This compares to an average of 20–25% before the Revolution, and 25–30% in the USA in 1970.^24^
Albert, Szymanski. Human Rights in the Soviet Union. Zed Books. 1984. Chapter 5
graphito -25 points 2 months ago
Your preoccupation with incomes and percentages makes you look anti-revolution and maybe even capitalist, comrade. For people like you, glorious fatherhood has special completely free of charge housing facilities!
papalonian 21 points 2 months ago
But it's a good point to start asking more questions when the claim looks too good to be true -- just as it is with the OP's meme
The only question you asked was, "does anyone want to move in to a living situation completely dissimilar to the one described in the OP (which effectively no longer exists, contrary to the point I was trying to make)? Didn't think so 😏"
graphito -15 points 2 months ago
Bruh, the meme is a frame of western modern movie with western actors glamorizing the past, palatable version of which never actually existed. It is a propagandist solution for the global housing crisis
It's "Make X Great Again" from the other end of the horseshoe
Idk how to engage with this populist twisted media in direct good faith argument. At the very least, my joke gives more information to those struggling with housing to seek out better opportunities
balsoft 9 points 2 months ago
The official average salary is a half-truth (hence a russian saying: if my boss eats meat and I eat cabbage, on average we eat golubtsi), most people in the regions are living on 30000 RUB a month or so. It may still be better than the US because you get public transit and thus don't really need a car but it's still not good. Capitalism ruins everything.
China is a more enticing proposition but it's very difficult/impossible for a foreigner to get a permanent residence permit.
marcie 7 points 2 months ago
China is a more enticing proposition but it’s very difficult/impossible for a foreigner to get a permanent residence permit.
There is apparently a trick, you can apply for permanent residence in Taiwan. Since Taiwan is considered part of China, the mainland also will support Taiwan's permanent residency rules and will give you permanent residency on the mainland (in tier 1 cities only afaik).
flandish 16 points 2 months ago
i’d do anything to get the fuck out of america. i can be a software engineer and firefighter anywhere. my wife can paint anywhere. but i’m disgusted at my country’s behavior on the world stage, and locally, and how The Jungle is a god damned documentary.
notthebees 12 points 2 months ago
That would be so nice. A single bedroom apartment where I live is like $700 in the city, $600 out of the city. For context, that is 50% of my salary and I work full time in a job that requires a college degree. And it is applied.
DillingerEscape -15 points 2 months ago path: 0 25534356, hotness: undefined, score: -15, children: 6
Tomorrow_Farewell 21 points 2 months ago
The fact that you seriously think that people were not paid in the USSR is extremely silly.
DillingerEscape -2 points 2 months ago path: 0 25534356 25534636 25536179, hotness: undefined, score: -2, children: 0
AdolfSchmitler 12 points 2 months ago
Oh you're someone who thinks communists work for free or something lol
DillingerEscape -3 points 2 months ago path: 0 25534356 25535440 25536214, hotness: undefined, score: -3, children: 0
karn -6 points 2 months ago
Party loyalty > actually knowing what you're doing with nuclear power
Note how they didn't actually rebuke this, they really actually think the party leaders did a good job with Chernobyl.
News flash, reactors aren't supposed to blow up. I guess marx didn't cover that idea.
RiverRock 14 points 2 months ago
Which eastern Europeans? Certainly not the ones that saw their life metrics shoot up immediately after centuries of feudal serfdom. Or did you mean the deposed petty aristocrats and Holocaust collaborators?
Tomorrow_Farewell 14 points 2 months ago
The labels should be swapped.
It is overwhelmingly the western 12 year-olds that complain about praise for communism/communist revolutions.
Also, let's not pretend as if Eastern Europeans were oppressed by the Warsaw Pact, unlike how NATO treats the vast majority of the world.
Amnesigenic 8 points 2 months ago
I'm almost 40
Tolc 8 points 2 months ago
Meanwhile people who lived in eastern europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc
late_pessimistic -19 points 2 months ago
It's not like authoritarian governments ever lied with their official statistics to prove a point or anything...
Objection 18 points 2 months ago
It's always very funny to me when people react to socialist accomplishments with literal disbelief. Because when I show you a scientific paper backing up the claim in the meme, you're now in the position of either trying to rapidly backtrack and pretend that the thing you considered so good it was literally unbelievable is actually not that impressive, or doubling down and accusing Western sources of being compromised by some insidious communist conspiracy, that somehow survived the collapse of the USSR.
So which one is it gonna be?
bleustenns 4 points 2 months ago
Saved, this is a really good thing to have on hand. Thanks for posting.
Do you know anything about the data behind this paper? Why was there a spike in rent costs in 1928?
late_pessimistic 1 point 2 months ago path: 0 25531742 25535305 25541228, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
BanMeFromPosting 14 points 2 months ago
Authoritarianism is a meaningless word created by an actual anti-semite as a way to minimise the Holocaust by claiming the Soviet Union and the Nazis where the same because they both used state power to do things. Every state is authoritarian, all it is is a word to describe enemy-countries, like saying "regime" instead of government
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And public transport was dirt cheap, a third of the population had summer houses. If we could replicate the capital distribution without the human rights infringement, that would be amazing. But recently the US is doing the opposite: replicate sky high prison population with skyrocketing inequalities
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