Thread: Перестройка, также до и после

Originally Posted by dtrq

And for any nation and era

Maybe a little bit offtop, but still: if you could choose when you live, now or 40 years ago, provided you would be in the same exact area you're now in, what would you choose?

Originally Posted by Eric C.

Maybe a little bit offtop, but still: if you could choose when you live, now or 40 years ago, provided you would be in the same exact area you're now in, what would you choose?

It would depend on which of my friends were there

Because more than my country, or any specific time, I love my friends.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

Let's assume all of your friends would go back in time with you =)

But we would all have to live here in Spokanistan? There would not be any real difference between now and 40 years ago! LOL

Originally Posted by Deborski

But we would all have to live here in Spokanistan? There would not be any real difference between now and 40 years ago! LOL

That's the thing! (if you take out of consideration the progress humanity has made over these years, though )

While in Russia, there would be a fantastically huge difference.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

That's the thing! (if you take out of consideration the progress humanity has made over these years, though )

While in Russia, there would be a fantastically huge difference.

It depends on the area you are talking about in any country, I suppose. I've visited some of the places where I grew up and the biggest changes I noticed were 1) the population increase/number of houses 2) more shopping malls, more franchise restaurants and fewer locally-owned businesses 3) less wild places, more encroachment on formerly wild lands.

In Russia, changes have been sweeping in the major cities, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as others - but life in rural villages has barely changed at all. There are still many villages where people draw water from communal wells, have no internet access, and sometimes no roads or the area is accessible only by horse or by boat, if it is by a river for example.

I am not opposed to all of the changes which have happened. Some changes are great. But not all change is for the best.

If I could live in Spokane 40 years ago, as opposed to today, I might pick then because even though these days there are gains in human rights (civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc), the income disparity is greater than it has been before and the cost of land has greatly increased. Forty years ago, a common person could still hope to make something of himself, have a good career and a paid retirement if he was loyal to his company. He could buy a home, provide for his family and although we didn't have as many shopping malls or McDonalds or Walmarts back then, there were still many locally owned businesses where people did their shopping. And the wilderness was still almost pristine in many places.

Now, America is beginning to resemble one big sprawling strip mall from coast to coast. I guess it is inevitable. But not all of that progress is good.

Originally Posted by Deborski

It depends on the area you are talking about in any country, I suppose. I've visited some of the places where I grew up and the biggest changes I noticed were 1) the population increase/number of houses 2) more shopping malls, more franchise restaurants and fewer locally-owned businesses 3) less wild places, more encroachment on formerly wild lands.

In Russia, changes have been sweeping in the major cities, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as others - but life in rural villages has barely changed at all. There are still many villages where people draw water from communal wells, have no internet access, and sometimes no roads or the area is accessible only by horse or by boat, if it is by a river for example.

I am not opposed to all of the changes which have happened. Some changes are great. But not all change is for the best.

If I could live in Spokane 40 years ago, as opposed to today, I might pick then because even though these days there are gains in human rights (civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, etc), the income disparity is greater than it has been before and the cost of land has greatly increased. Forty years ago, a common person could still hope to make something of himself, have a good career and a paid retirement if he was loyal to his company. He could buy a home, provide for his family and although we didn't have as many shopping malls or McDonalds or Walmarts back then, there were still many locally owned businesses where people did their shopping. And the wilderness was still almost pristine in many places.

Now, America is beginning to resemble one big sprawling strip mall from coast to coast. I guess it is inevitable. But not all of that progress is good.

I'm not going to argue over any of your points made here (most of which I would actually share); but what I meant was actually the attitude, and the system in general, now and back then, without considering the technical progress. If we take two major cities as an example, one in the U.S. (let's say NY), and one in Russia (let's say Moscow), and two points of time - now and the mid-1970s, we're going to see that now, those two cities have very much in common, and typical residents live in similar environment, and they look and behave in similar ways; while 40 years ago, that was not the case at all; even 30 years ago that still wasn't that way; people in the USSR couldn't buy stuff from foreign countries, other than that approved by their "dear leaders", people couldn't go abroad, people couldn't even watch cable TV! I remember myself watching the "Back to the Future" movie for the first time; when that guy living in 1985 who ended up in 1955 said to the family that had hosted him that their household had 2 TVs, they thought he was teasing them, because "no one's too rich to have 2 TV sets"; after I watched that, I thought of the countries where most people weren't too rich to even afford 1 TV in 1985, and guess what, one of them was the USSR! That's what I'm talking about, in the USSR, the progress and the prosperity of people were artificially held down by their government who probably thought that those things were inconsistent with their "super valuable idea of communism"; during the Perestroika, their government stopped that pressure, and people saw what they had been denied for decades, and of course it made lots of them unhappy; but that was just meant to be, the question was when. Well now, there are some people in Russia who favor that system for some reason, but at the same time they realize what it was like, and they are very unlikely to be willing to live under such a system.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

I'm not going to argue over any of your points made here (most of which I would actually share); but what I meant was actually the attitude, and the system in general, now and back then, without considering the technical progress. If we take two major cities as an example, one in the U.S. (let's say NY), and one in Russia (let's say Moscow), and two points of time - now and the mid-1970s, we're going to see that now, those two cities have very much in common, and typical residents live in similar environment, and they look and behave in similar ways; while 40 years ago, that was not the case at all; even 30 years ago that still wasn't that way; people in the USSR couldn't buy stuff from foreign countries, other than that approved by their "dear leaders", people couldn't go abroad, people couldn't even watch cable TV! I remember myself watching the "Back to the Future" movie for the first time; when that guy living in 1985 who ended up in 1955 said to the family that had hosted him that their household had 2 TVs, they thought he was teasing them, because "no one's too rich to have 2 TV sets"; after I watched that, I thought of the countries where most people weren't too rich to even afford 1 TV in 1985, and guess what, one of them was the USSR! That's what I'm talking about, in the USSR, the progress and the prosperity of people were artificially held down by their government who probably thought that those things were inconsistent with their "super valuable idea of communism"; during the Perestroika, their government stopped that pressure, and people saw what they had been denied for decades, and of course it made lots of them unhappy; but that was just meant to be, the question was when. Well now, there are some people in Russia who favor that system for some reason, but at the same time they realize what it was like, and they are very unlikely to be willing to live under such a system.

Some of what you say is true, but not all. As regards televisions in the 1980's, my apartment and my neighbors' apartments each had two, and it was not so uncommon. There was a TV in the living room and another in the кухня where my friends went to smoke and watch Yeltsin and Gorbachev debate. Those TV's were there since the 1980's.

Foreign goods were not officially available, however they were on the black market and the black market was everywhere. The kiosks which lined the metro were always full of black market goods and no one arrested you for going there. But even without foreign goods, many Russians still had nice furniture, although much of it looked the same and came from the same factories, so there was less variety. Still, they had nice china cabinets made of lacquered wood, and this was not just privileged families but most of the families I visited. Those who had less were similar to those who have less here in the states - young singles on their own, living in communal apartments for example.

The Soviet system was not perfect and I have never said it was. But it was not as evil as western propaganda has made it out to be either. My issue is that terrible atrocities have happened everywhere in the world. The US is not innocent in this respect. I don't like comparing and contrasting our systems or saying this one is better and that one is worse. I prefer to look at what works in all systems and hold on to that, and throw out what doesn't work.

Nationalism only divides the world. But people everywhere, despite their cultural differences, have the same basic needs. They have tried so many different systems, and all of their systems fail one after the other. It is how we evolve. We keep trying and failing. Will we ever find utopia? Perhaps not. But we can make better progress if we are more open to each others' ways of doing things, if we can learn from each other.

In the Soviet Union, university was paid for and jobs were provided upon graduation. Today, kids worry that they will not be able to find jobs. In America, kids are saddled with so much debt from universities that they often have no hope of ever paying it off. The Soviet education system, while it certainly had flaws, was also one of the best in the world and I saw this first hand when I toured universities and primary schools. What is the solution? Perhaps neither way is perfect, but if we completely ignore one part of history or refuse to listen to it, how can we learn from it?

Most Russians I knew during perestroika were happy to do away with the old system because they thought America was paradise. I tried to tell them that America has lots of problems, but no one would listen to my warnings. They were convinced that America was utopia and that they must copy it and have it for themselves. So they copied us, perhaps a little too well, and now many are disillusioned with capitalism too, and they wax nostalgic about the Soviet era.

As I said, no system is perfect. They are all just evolutionary steps as we grasp for that illusive utopia we all dream of. In reality, it simply doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

That's what I'm talking about, in the USSR, the progress and the prosperity of people were artificially held down by their government who probably thought that those things were inconsistent with their "super valuable idea of communism"

Вы думаете, что наше правительство искусственно сдерживало рост нашего материального благосостояния, провозглашая аскетизм идеалом? Наоборот, правительство старалось поднять уровень жизни людей. Было время (80-ые годы), когда доходы от торговли нефтью направлялись на закупку товаров для населения: джинсы и т.д. Нас ограничивало не правительство, а возможности нашей системы управления и стимулирования.
А идеалы коммунизма не только допускают, но и предполагают высокий уровень жизни населения. "От каждого по способностям, каждому по потребностям" - это принцип коммунизма. "От каждого по способностям, каждому по труду" - это принцип социализма, который рассматривался как подготовительный этап на пути к коммунизму. Так что, коммунизм - это не аскетизм.
Возможно, что американская пропаганда ставила равенство между коммунизмом и аскетизмом, чтобы напугать своё население для профилактики социальных изменений внутри США.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

Maybe a little bit offtop, but still: if you could choose when you live, now or 40 years ago, provided you would be in the same exact area you're now in, what would you choose?

40 years ago there was nothing in the area where I'm now, lol. Anyway, of course I'll choose present days, because this is what I used to live in. But a lot of older generation people would choose 'Back in the USSR'.