Lucky for you, your loved ones survived the shock therapy implemented from the 90s onwards. Then do a survey of the people who didn’t survive. Or who had to leave. Or who were trafficked. Or who were bombed by NATO. Or whose shipyards and factories were asset stripped. Then speak to the people who lived under the Tsar or the Nazis or whoever else preceded the Soviets. Then find some people in Ukraine and Russia, who were comrades until the 90s, and ask them what it’s been like in the slow, violent aftermath of letting the capitalists back in.
Well clearly also lucky for me to not have my ancestors be deported to Siberia. Soviet union did not come without costs either. Radical change will always have negative aspects. Ushering in socialism could arguably be considered just as violent as letting capitalism back in.
Except if that followed logically, then who was it who took the post-Soviet states into capitalism? Not to mention that the fact that they survived leaves open the possibility that if they were ‘capitalists’ through that time, that ‘capitalists’ might not have probably died in Siberia.
So we can say the USSR failed to create socialism? Because after half a century of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” the bourgeoisie still existed in those countries as none of them stayed socialist after the collapse.
Look, I’m not saying the USSR was perfect. I’m not saying I have a perfect understanding of the USSR. I’m saying you need to understand that whether it’s explicit or subconscious, you are doing a class analysis by virtue of living in a class society. Most of your information is shaped by the ruling class, which controls the production and distribution of knowledge. It’s the same for the people you’re going to talk to. You can’t escape it. The ruling ideas of the epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. Individual anecdotes based on an insignificant sample size of respondents doesn’t change anything.
The people I talked to, their ruling class for the majority of their life was the “proletariat” class. Their point of view of the world didn’t magically change after the union collapsed and capitalism was introduced. If they can’t be trusted to give accurate insight into how the world was back then then who can you trust?
Well clearly also lucky for me to not have my ancestors be deported to Siberia.
Or your ancestors were just among the vast majority of people—who were not deported to Siberia. Perhaps they were even supportive enough of the Soviet project that they were happy to live in it without rebelling so much that they would be punished.
Soviet union did not come without costs either. Radical change will always have negative aspects. Ushering in socialism could arguably be considered just as violent as letting capitalism back in.
Yes. This is not controversial. The question is, why? (The answer is because capitalists will never willingly let socialists take power and will do everything possible to stop socialists from succeeding.)
So we can say the USSR failed to create socialism?
Considering the USSR doesn’t exist and the world is not socialist, I don’t think it’s controversial to say the USSR failed to create socialism. They succeeded in implementing a socialist experiment and brought underdeveloped and war torn parts of Europe to a position there they could compete on an equal footing with the most advanced capitalist countries.
They also helped bring about an end to colonialism and we’re so successful the advanced capitalist states had to implement a welfare state to prevent revolutions in the imperial core.
If they can’t be trusted to give accurate insight into how the world was back then then who can you trust?
They can be trusted to give an account based on a memory of things that happened over 30 years ago, based on their own experience, their class position during and after the USSR, all influenced by folk knowledge and propaganda by Soviets and capitalists. Their view is valid data. But it is not universal data. There is no such thing.
There are few sources that I would ‘trust’ on their face. Oral history, ethnography, and auto-ethnography have their uses, but they have limitations. Such accounts must be understood in their political economic context.
Alright, what would be thing that would change your mind? I’m just going to focus it down to Estonia so it there would be less vagueness over the baltics (because they are still 3 different countries with different historical backgrounds). What would it take for you to believe that Estonia did not want to be in the union and couldn’t willingly leave the union?
- Clearly it’s not the fact that on the precipice of WW2 Estonia wanted to be neutral, which also means not wanting to be in the soviet union.
- It’s also clearly not the fact that post-collapse Estonia designated that period as a period of foreign occupation
- It’s obviously also not the fact that Estonia was forcibly manipulated to join the Union in the first place.
- Nor the fact that someone living in that country is telling you that the people living here didn’t want to live in the union.
- I doubt the survey showing the vast majority didn’t see the collapse as a bad thing would change your mind
- How about the secret protocol of MRP where the Soviet Union clearly states Estonia will be in their sphere of influence. And that’s regardless of what Estonia thinks on the matter.
So really, what is the missing part of proof that would change your mind? Why do you believe the opposite in the first place?
Alright, what would be thing that would change your mind?
Rigorous, Marxist research. Please do not take this as a request for you to show me anti-communist literature.
Why do you believe the opposite in the first place?
It depends what you mean by ‘the opposite’. I think you have misunderstood what I’m saying. I’m not claiming that everybody liked the USSR. So ‘the opposite’ is not me accepting that some people disliked the USSR. I already know they didn’t and I’m not denying it. I’m saying their view must be put into context, treated to analysis, and understood as a class-based perspective.
I know that many people did not like the USSR. I know that the proportion of people who did not like the USSR was different in different SSRs. I know that many people suffered in the USSR, some for good reasons and some who didn’t deserve it. I know that the USSR made mistakes and that different SSRs made different mistakes. I know that the sum of errors made by the USSR led to it’s dissolution.
More stories that people didn’t like the USSR is not a new argument, it’s more evidence for an existing, common argument, which I have heard many times and dismissed. You’re making it sound like you think I’ve never read that anti-Soviet narrative. But every single part of my education was anti-communist.
I started with the anti-communist history, documentaries, survey data, movies, novels, etc, and I found it all lacking in basic requirements of logic and rigour. The anti-communist narrative does not hold up to any of the standards applied to any other idea or subject. This fact should raise alarm bells for anyone who claims to think critically.
More stories about people surviving and living normal lives in the USSR, even if they disliked the USSR, suggests the opposite of what you think it does. It suggests that not all dissidents were sent to Siberia it treated badly. More stories about this or that SSR that wanted to leave but ‘couldn’t’, suggests the exact opposite of what you claim. If it’s proof of anything, given that we know that the USSR ended and that e.g. the Baltics are no longer in the USSR, it proves that SSRs could leave.
I hold that the USSR was still a success because it’s achievements are uncountable. Soviets turned the most backwards country in Europe into the world’s second most powerful superpower in one generation, all without colonialism. Then they liberated the rest of Europe and Asia (supporting China, DPRK, Laos, and Vietnam) from brutal Nazis, fascists, and colonialists. Then they helped liberate much of Africa and parts of Latin America from the same brutal, murderous, terror regimes of western imperialists. There is nothing you could ever say to me that will make me think these were bad things. And I have only scratched the surface of foreign policy.
Nevermind near universal suffrage, education, housing, healthcare, employment, etc, at home. All at a time when the ‘advanced civilisations’ were raping and looting the world to strengthen the west, while their domestic populations didn’t have anything close to universal education, housing, employment, healthcare, suffrage, etc. And did everything that people criticise the USSR for but on a much greater and more violent scale.
So the question is not what would change my mind, because I already have a nuanced and balanced view. The question is what would change your mind?
What would make you realise that implying that a Union of hundreds of million people, that defeated the Nazis, supported anti-colonial movements, and spanning 70 years, didn’t do a single thing right? Because to me, insisting that 6 people and a survey taken at one particular time in one particular place as representative of the facts and experience of all those millions, across a wide geography and several decades is… it’s not rigorous or logical, I’ll say that much.
