• Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
    231·
    2 days 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.

    • harc@szmer.infoEnglish
      56·
      2 days 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.

      • Tomorrow_Farewell@lemmy.ml
        13·
        1 day 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.

      • Ferrous@lemmy.mlEnglish
        16·
        2 days 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.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
          39·
          1 day ago

          Asking people, sadly, is not the reality check it should be. Trump was voted after all.

            • Eheran@lemmy.world
              14·
              22 hours ago

              I mean 2 things:

              1. In Memory things were always better than they actually were.
              2. Asking random people what they want gives you a big portion of answers that are things that are actually super harmful to them. Most people are simply too stupid and/or easy to manipulate/steer/… Hence things like people depending on immigration voting for Trump… go bankrupt later…
              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
                2·
                12 hours ago

                The liberal when presented with the prospect of democracy: “Actually no the masses are too stupid to make their own decisions.”