msasa79
Jedi Master
It would make rather big difference especially for Ukraine if this was before or after the Maidan coup, i.e. 2014. FWIW.
Grover Furr: Stalin was demonized
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As for the former Soviet republics, no doubt they wouldn't vote for USSR dissolution without our Western friends' big help. And most likely, if they had the knowledge, they would want to keep the state big and strong just get rid of its flaws and pathological elements.
Let's not sell ourselves cheap. :) We've thought and discussed it in depth and came to the conclusion that both have their place in an 'ideal' system, each in specific areas and applications.
Of course workers will prefer socialism. That's one reason why believing that it were the workers who wanted and brought about the regime change is naïve. Don't have much time now to check the whole thing, but The Communists article talks specifically about workers, in GDR and other countries. It doesn't seem they include entrepreneurs, small and big, who would think differently. So not sure about the whole thing. And as usually, it's more complicated than just communism vs. capitalism. There was the forced privatisation and theft by vulture capital in the package, the forced de-communisation that replaced often experienced and qualified managers with new elite's ignorant cronies, and so on... as it always happens with a drastic system change. Same was when communists overthrown tsarism - with all the violence and robbery that accompanied the coup, many people missed the Tsarist Russia.
Let's not sell ourselves cheap. :) We've thought and discussed it in depth and came to the conclusion that both have their place in an 'ideal' system, each in specific areas and applications.
I spend a lot of time in Bulgaria and for those old enough to make the comparison in a meaningful way, many would claim that life was better during the communist era. I was not convinced of their objectivity, but they have shown me, and I have seen with my own eyes, that they have a point.
In the era of 'democracy', as they sardonically phrase it, a rot has set in to the areas outside of the main urban centres. The villages in particular have been abandoned or deteriorated, and are in stark contrast to photos I have been shown of places full of life and community during the communist era. Simple, austere, but full of life. And therefore superior in the era of communism.
The Bulgarian people also understandably link the end of communism and the beginning of 'democracy' with the emergence of secularism, drugs, raves and various strains of LGBT degeneracy. Which is again to construe the communist era as superior.
They consider their Balkan neighbours to be of similar character and culture, and I would be unsurprised if similar sentiments are shared elsewhere in the Balkans.
FWIW
One problem, as I see it, is ideology. Some socialist solutions are good and needed, but when everything is subordinated to the socialist (or any other, for the matter) ideology, it becomes a big problem. Same with democracy, nationalism, capitalism, etc. And then people blame this or that system for everything, throwing out the baby with the the bathwater. Or the other way around - they would praise the system for everything, its downsides included.
Another problem is corruption of a given system that makes it pathological while keeping its original name.
That's why it's safer and more productive to talk about specific methods, measurers and solutions than about the only approved (or the best) ideology with its ideologically possessed thinkers, activists, and leaders.
