Majority of Russians Regret Soviet Collapse, Poll Says

[Kellhound]

Former great power wishes it still was a great power, news at 11!!!

[Allybeboba]

The southern states also miss their slaves.

Can you post some recent polling data on that please?

And on to topic...

One has to wonder how this poll would turn out if they polled the entirety of the USSR. Not just Russia.

Cheers

[kamuimac]

Time and again people make the false assumption that just because Russians are white, they will ultimately behave by the same logic as Western citizens.

Well, they don't. Never have, never will - apart from a minority that is either sent to Siberia, imprisoned, murdered, or leaving the country. Even at its "best", the Russian political culture has never been much different from that of Islamic countries or Nazis.

You need to think of Russia as a nation of bullies who are willing to sacrifice even their own welfare, if in return they get to oppress and torment other nations to feel strong - while getting their steady supply of vodka. Once you understand that, you will no longer be surprised by anything Russia does.

and yet in last 40 years its is US who started more wars then Russia and bombarded way more innocent civilians then Russia - so who is the real bully ?

its easy to point fingers but statistics are showing that atm the world's biggest bully is US -whether you like it or not.

[Witchblade77]

if they poll more people, results will be similar, and you know where dividing line is? those who remember living through the 90ties and those that do not. older people remember life before and just after collapse. younger people don't really have the concept of how it was to live in twilight years of USSR (pretty nice, actualy), they may only barely remember 90ties and their chaos, and they only genuinely remember life as it was once the country finally, painfully started to stabilize - not always in the best of ways.

so they see country heading to totalitarianism with none of the good points of later years of USSR and of course they don't want that. they have no point of reference. meanwhile people who remember yearly paid vacations, resorts, being able to afford extra curricular classes for their children, the general stability, low prices etc? and then losing all of it when the country fel apart and barely scraping through to the mess that it is right now. yeah, they miss it.

[Mihalik]

Completely understandable. We exploited them in the Clinton years, threw them to the dogs (oligarchs) and left them feeling helpless and unimportant. The strawberry farmer communist guy they'll run next year has virtually no chance and Putin is projected to win by 80%. Their discontent is the price of our Cold War victory and modern NATO hegemony world order.

How did WE do any of those things? The US or the West didn't run the Russian privatization program. It was the Russians themselves, they created their own oligarchs. And how the fuck did we exploit them? By buying their oil, gas and AKs and little else? Have you ever considered that might had to do with the fact that what was left of the Soviet infrastructure produced absolutely nothing of value for international markets? How is not buying poorly made crap, manufactured at an elevated cost exploitative?

The thing is, following the collapse of the USSR, Russia was left with a dysfunctional economy, a crumbling military and with most of the important former Soviet Republics and the former Eastern Bloc running for the hills away from them because they spent decades being ruled over, oppressed and exploited by the Russians. For all those people Soviet and Russian were synonymous and everyone was happy to get the fuck away from them.

I still don't understand how any of that shit is OUR fault.

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and yet in last 40 years its is US who started more wars then Russia and bombarded way more innocent civilians then Russia - so who is the real bully ?

its easy to point fingers but statistics are showing that atm the world's biggest bully is US -whether you like it or not.

Yeah no. Pretty much every US war from 1950 up until 1989 was a proxy war with the Russians, and the other side was always funded, trained and geared by the Russians.

On the other hand the Russians had about 60% of Europe under permanent occupation and the entire Caucasus under occupation. Nobody joined the USSR or the Eastern Bloc willingly.

The Cold War was extremely morally ambiguous in how it was conducted, but it was a war that had to be won by the West, because the alternative was absolutely horrifying.

[Auxora]

Putin's been pushing pretty heavy nationalism for many years now. I think it's a bit of rose colored glasses though, since I think as more time passes people forget what an absolute dump the Soviet Union was at the time and how bad regular people had it. 1970's and 1980's Soviet Union was not exactly a high growth economy. So I think if you could teleport those folks back to about 1978 Soviet Union with bread lines and people crammed in awful flats if they are lucky, the fond memories might fade a bit.

Crimea worked because the population there wanted to be part of Russia, and there is some support for it in Eastern Ukraine, but a Soviet Union style Eastern Europe would only happen by force since those countries are very happy with their freedom. Even with the current situation in Washington and disdain for NATO, a full-blown Russian invasion of Eastern Europe would be WW3 territory.

[Keeponrage]

For all those people Soviet and Russian were synonymous and everyone was happy to get the fuck away from them.

that's what ur nazi elites hammered in your empty skull.

In fact RSFSR and Belorussia always contributed into common pot more than any other republic (per capita). Next is Ukraine.

Politburo always consisted of members of many nationalities.

Supreme Council of USSR (Верховный совет СССР) contained members of all nationalities. Moreover, each republic provided fixed and equal amount of members disregarding the size of a republic.

Presidium of Supreme Council contained members from all republic.

Republics were "happy" to get the fuck from Russia in the same way as Russia was happy to get the fuck out of them as well. But by Republics and Russia one should understand not its peoples, but their elites, who needed USSR to be disassembled in order to start robbery and appropriation of peoples property. Ofc, they started to spread propaganda and russophobia all over the place. And you are the victim of it.

[Deleted]

Nostalgia can be a powerful force. It can even create false feelings that make you long for times that really werent that great.

[Derpleton]

They should try it again, after all the USSR wasn't real communism

[Shalcker]

How did WE do any of those things? The US or the West didn't run the Russian privatization program.

Factually wrong - sometimes West did.

[Skroe]

My response to this is "who cares?"

The Russians have been living in the same police state for 300 years. The Russian Empire, The Soviet Union, the Russian Federation. The exact same artificial continent-spanning accident of history, largely a relict of illegitimate territorial expansion two hundred years ago.

But for the Russians themselves? Always, always the same police state. Oh sure some of the details vary, but always an authoritarian regime of the few sapping the wealth of the many while claiming to act in their name. Forever illegitimate. Existentially illegitimate.

Russians, in saying they miss the Soviet Union, are basically saying they miss the equivalent of Matt Smith as Doctor Who because Peter Capaldi just isn't the same.

The Soviet Union tried its best to be a world power. And they spent a solid half of the Cold War winning it. But in the end, the economically, culturally politically and technologically superior West, lead by the United States, most powerful country the world as ever known, led the then-latest iteration of the Russian Imperium to it's only conclusion.

It's going to happen again to. The Russian Federation is a classic imperial reorganization. As empires fall they often decline to plateaus of temporary stability, perhaps changing a capital, a political organization or even a name. Rarely, and often only in books, do they decline quickly and cleanly.

We are in the midst of the decades-long downfall of the Russian Imperium and the Russians who answers that they "Miss the Soviet Union", in another 40 years, will answer that they "Miss the Russian Federation (of their youth)", when the next reorganization comes around, as a broken empire attempts to delay the inevitable.

Really for the sake of the human race, it would be best if Russia just shut the whole show down and stopped trying. They are entitled to nothing and no one. They lost one of the most signficiant geopolitical conflicts in human history against the United States, and losing wars has consequences. If they try again, it will only end the same, and bring more poverty and ruin to the Russian people and their near abroad, and certainly NOT to their adversaries.

Fortunately America has awakened, belatedly, to the Russian enemy, and if it again presents a threat to the world, the United West will once again, stomp them down.

So in the final analysis, it doesn't matter one bit what 140 million Russians thing. The death of the Soviet Union was something that happened to them for the good of all mankind. And so will be the sequel. Eurasia isn't big enough for a strong and rich EU, a strong Russia, a strong and rich China, and a strong and rich India. Of the four, the one with the worst prospects, by far, is Russia.

[Keeponrage]

My response to this is "who cares?"

The Russians have been living in the same police state for 300 years. The Russian Empire, The Soviet Union, the Russian Federation. The exact same artificial continent-spanning accident of history, largely a relict of illegitimate territorial expansion two hundred years ago.

But for the Russians themselves? Always, always the same police state. Oh sure some of the details vary, but always an authoritarian regime of the few sapping the wealth of the many while claiming to act in their name. Forever illegitimate. Existentially illegitimate.

Russians, in saying they miss the Soviet Union, are basically saying they miss the equivalent of Matt Smith as Doctor Who because Peter Capaldi just isn't the same.

The Soviet Union tried its best to be a world power. And they spent a solid half of the Cold War winning it. But in the end, the economically, culturally politically and technologically superior West, lead by the United States, most powerful country the world as ever known, led the then-latest iteration of the Russian Imperium to it's only conclusion.

It's going to happen again to. The Russian Federation is a classic imperial reorganization. As empires fall they often decline to plateaus of temporary stability, perhaps changing a capital, a political organization or even a name. Rarely, and often only in books, do they decline quickly and cleanly.

We are in the midst of the decades-long downfall of the Russian Imperium and the Russians who answers that they "Miss the Soviet Union", in another 40 years, will answer that they "Miss the Russian Federation (of their youth)", when the next reorganization comes around, as a broken empire attempts to delay the inevitable.

Really for the sake of the human race, it would be best if Russia just shut the whole show down and stopped trying. They are entitled to nothing and no one. They lost one of the most signficiant geopolitical conflicts in human history against the United States, and losing wars has consequences. If they try again, it will only end the same, and bring more poverty and ruin to the Russian people and their near abroad, and certainly NOT to their adversaries.

Fortunately America has awakened, belatedly, to the Russian enemy, and if it again presents a threat to the world, the United West will once again, stomp them down.

So in the final analysis, it doesn't matter one bit what 140 million Russians thing. The death of the Soviet Union was something that happened to them for the good of all mankind. And so will be the sequel. Eurasia isn't big enough for a strong and rich EU, a strong Russia, a strong and rich China, and a strong and rich India. Of the four, the one with the worst prospects, by far, is Russia.

ok, Herr Goebbels, ok. Just keep your cyanide close enough, so you can reach it in time.

[Skroe]

ok, Herr Goebbels, ok. Just keep your cyanide close enough, so you can reach it in time.

Uh-huh.

The 20th century witnessed the end of the world built and ruled by empires: from Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, which fell in the final days of World War I, to the British and French empires, which disintegrated in the aftermath of World War II. This decades-long process concluded with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the mighty successor to the Russian Empire, which was stitched back together by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s, only to fall apart 70 years later during the final stage of the Cold War.

Although many factors contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union, from the bankruptcy of communist ideology to the failure of the Soviet economy, the wider context for its dissolution is often overlooked. The collapse of the Soviet Union, like the disintegration of past empires, is a process rather than an event. And the collapse of the last empire is still unfolding today. This process did not end with Mikhail Gorbachev’s resignation on Christmas Day 1991, and its victims are not limited to the three people who died defending the Moscow White House in August 1991 or the thousands of casualties from the Chechen wars.

The rise of nation-states on the ruins of the Soviet Union, like the rise of successor states on the remains of every other empire, mobilized ethnicity, nationalism, and conflicting territorial claims. This process at least partly explains the Russian annexation of Crimea, the war in Ukraine, and the burst of popular support for those acts of aggression in the Russian Federation. As the victim of a much more powerful neighbor’s attack, Ukraine found itself in a situation similar to that of the new states of Eastern Europe formed after World War I on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires. Those states struggled with the enormous tasks of nation building while trying to accommodate national minorities and defend themselves against revanchist powers claiming the loyalty of those same minorities.

Although the historical context of the collapse of empires helps us understand the developments of the last 25 years in the former Soviet space, it also serves as a warning for the future. The redrawing of post-imperial borders to reflect the importance of nationality, language, and culture has generally come about as a result of conflicts and wars, some of which went on for decades, if not centuries. The Ottoman Empire began its slow-motion collapse in 1783, a process that reached its conclusion at the end of World War I. The ongoing war in eastern Ukraine is not the only reminder that the process of Soviet disintegration is still incomplete. Other such reminders are the frozen or semi-frozen conflicts in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the semi-independent state of Chechnya.

A lesson that today’s policymakers can learn from the history of imperial collapse is that the role of the international community is paramount in sorting out relations between former rulers and subjects. Few stable states have emerged from the ruins of bygone empires without strong international support, whether it is the French role in securing American independence, Russian and British involvement in the struggle for Greek statehood, or the U.S. role in supporting the aspirations of former Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe. The role of outsiders has been and will remain the key to any post-imperial settlement. Looking at the current situation, it’s difficult to overstate the role the United States and its NATO allies can play in solving the conflict in Ukraine and other parts of the volatile post-Soviet space. The fall of the Soviet Union, which carried the legacy of the last European empire, is still far from over.

Basically Russia's future is Turkey 2.0. The fall of the Ottoman Empire leading to modern Turkey lead to dozens of countries, and the fall of the Russian Imperium, in its first step, already did that. So will the next. And the next.

Russia's greatest enemy isn't America. It's geography and history.

[sam86]

Why exactly would that be a surprise ? USSR at its peak was rivaling entire western world combined, USA AND western europe, now Russia is a hollow shadow of its former self, even its rank as '2nd' is competing with China (maybe China even more influential than Russia)
USA isn't richest country yet no one in world talk about Qatar or UAE (1st and 2nd richest) as much as USA if at all, some even don't know where they are on map
USSR had that, and probably still have some of that with older generations

Belonging to a nation that u know can wipe out continents for ur sake is an amazing feeling

[Keeponrage]

Uh-huh.

Russia is not an Empire, nor was USSR. The fact it was big and included many nationalities doesn't make it an Empire.

Russia's greatest enemy isn't America. It's geography and history.

Never said that America is a Russian greatest enemy. Your numbskull pals here in Russia may think so. As well as other numbskulls all over the world that paint other countries/nations/nationalities as enemies. As you do.

As for "geography and history". You may remove "history" from that formula, cause it is a function of geography. Geography what makes country what it is. Fighting and benefiting from geography makes nations.

[sam86]

Nostalgia can be a powerful force. It can even create false feelings that make you long for times that really werent that great.

what 'nostalgic' here ? no one can deny that USSR was a behemoth of power, heck in terms of ultimate nuclear power, tzar bomba killed the competition

[Skroe]

Never said that America is a Russian greatest enemy. Your numbskull pals here in Russia may think so. As well as other numbskulls all over the world that paint other countries/nations/nationalities as enemies. As you do.

As for "geography and history". You may remove "history" from that formula, cause it is a function of geography. Geography what makes country what it is. Fighting and benefiting from geography makes nations.

I mean in a sense you are correct. Crimea, aka Putin's Folly, which Russia illegally and illegitimately stole from Ukraine, is but the ignition spark for the next step of Russia's tumble down Mount Olympus.

And America is absolutely Russia's enemy. Rather, it is second only to the immense contradictions of the Russian state when it comes to threats to it.

But really, America isn't even Russia's biggest problem. That would be China.

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what 'nostalgic' here ? no one can deny that USSR was a behemoth of power, heck in terms of ultimate nuclear power, tzar bomba killed the competition

And Tsar Bomba was, in the end, nothing more than a single test detonation of a weapon that was never militarily useful. It had to be big, because it was so inaccurate and, you know, a free fall bomb.

Modern Russian and American Warheads are fare deadlier than Tsar Bomba would ever be despite being a fraction of its size. Because putting warheads on the top of ballistic missiles, then MIRVing, them, then making them reasonably accurate, is a far more effective weapon than a big dumb bomb.

The most dangerous weapons every designed by man is the modern Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile, and it's not even close. Supremely destructive, nearly impossible to stop, accurate, and fast. Not some big dumb bomb.

[Deleted]

Nostalgia can be a powerful force. It can even create false feelings that make you long for times that really werent that great.

What false feelings? Did you live in Russia at the time? Is this how you know it? Russia was a de-facto superpower at the time. The collapse brought it into a state of turmoil from which it is till recovering. It's amazing how many smartasses comment here with the mindset ''lol, these commies want to go back to 1946 police state xD''.

[Skroe]

What false feelings? Did you live in Russia at the time? Is this how you know it? Russia was a de-facto superpower at the time. The collapse brought it into a state of turmoil from which it is till recovering. It's amazing how many smartasses comment here with the mindset ''lol, these commies want to go back to 1946 police state xD''.

Russia will never recover it's former power. The geopolitical conditions where that was possible have permanently changed.

When Russia was strong, Europe was weak, divided, poor and rebuilding from two of the most destructive wars in human history within a 30 year span. Europe was the trouble spot of the world.

When Russia was strong, Japan, one of it's historic opponents, had been brought low by the United States.

When Russia was strong, China, the most populous country in Eurasia, was an insular, backwards country, more akin to the North Korea of the present than anything else.

Only America was strong enough to counter it, and we were largely on the other side of the planet.

Today, Europe is rich, strong and united (Brexit aside). China is confident, powerful and rich. Japan is powerful and rich. New powers have risen in the form of India and to a very limited degree, even Turkey, another historic rival of Russia. And America is everywhere, still unequaled in wealth and power.

Putin plays weak hands well when other players don't even realize there is a game going on. That era is over. It ended in 2016. Going forward Putin will increasingly find Europe, America, China and Japan all playing against him, and winning time and time again. And most of all will be China, which, before it makes its grand play for dominance of the international sphere from America, will first seek to become the undisputed hegemon of Eurasia, as all others before it, including Russia has tried.

Which means Russia is in its way. And Russia and China know this. They've always known it. For all the smiles and statements of common purpose, they know Eurasia isn't big enough for the both of them in their present form.

It is in America and Europe's best interest, to make sure whatever form the competition takes is maximally costly to both countries. This is the game Putin finds himself in, and why the Russian federation is utterly doomed.

[Shalcker]

Russia will never recover it's former power. The geopolitical conditions where that was possible have permanently changed.

All it takes is US losing their superpower status, and we'll be back to Great Powers fights.

And we're quite obviously on track to that.