Comments by "" (@sir_humpy) on "Talking with Russians | Mikhail Avdeev | EP 217" video.
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And the claim that the wave of suicides was BECAUSE of the sense of guilt created by the media is complete drivel. Of course, there were suicides, the soviet union with all the soviet certainties went down the drain, economy in shambles, jobs lost in droves, people with PhD's selling their belongings in the bazaars hiding faces from friends and colleagues, salaries plummeted, inflation in the thousands, rouble a joke, Ponzi schemes à gogo, mafia and murders in daylight, ex-soviet republics erected borders and families became separated overnight over 1/6 of the Earth landmass (no internet, remember), Russia defaulted on its obligations in 1998, war in Abkhazia, Transnistria war, first and second Chechen wars, of course there were more f*cking suicides. And what does the KGB do during all this mess? They postpone the disclosure of Stalin's purges archives until 2044. I guess they are not that keen to prove that Solzhenitsyn's writings is pure fiction after all.
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@bx3556 , that's what you, me and most people outside of Russia may think but it's not what easily 90% of Russians think. And while Solzhenitsyn is nowadays viewed as little more than a whistle-blower, dissident and some bearded old writer who wrote longish fiction about soviet times, that nobody now reads anyway, Gorbie is widely considered a traitor, a person who single-handedly ruined a great country, sold it to the americans for chewing gum, Bush legs (check wikipedia :)) and pizza (he did a famous Pizza Hut commercial in the 90's), destroyed the Dream of the Bright Future and the list of his purported evildoings goes on and on. Suffice it to say, he is popularly called "mechenyj" (tagged/marked) in Russia alluding to the birthmark. The connotation being that he was thus marked at birth for some nefarious deed he had to perform, i.e. the undoing of the Soviet Union. Of course, I'm talking about Russians who even know the two, a lot of youngsters don't, just not interested in anything soviet.
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@Tstorm731 , I can only offer my take on the 20th century mess that was Russia, so take it with a grain of salt.
Before 1917 Russia was a developing poor country with a lot of angry young men with little patience for slow changes who only got angrier because of WWI drafts. It was only a matter of time skillful politicians appeared who'd know how to channel that explosive energy and unfortunately of all politicians the most skillful in populism and organizing the masses were the more radical Bolsheviks (the communist faction). One of my favourite russian political scientists claims the only thing worth reading in Lenin's works is how to grab and hold the power.
With every new generation of soviet citizens the communist zeal vaned, mores relaxed and the whole idea of building a communist society resulted in the 70 - early 80's way of living that can be summarized as "not great, not terrible" or "stagnation" (zastoy) as it was called even then. I've read recently a telling and witty remark by someone who said that when he was a "pioneer" in the 70’s, he was promised a “bright future” (a popular soviet propaganda trope) by the time he retired and now that he’s retired he’s told that he had a “bright past” when he was a teen. Now a good third (43 mln) of Russia’s aging population is retirees so this view is widespread. It is pretty much on this kind of nostalgia that Putin built his fanbase.
I wouldn’t say Russians en masse love Stalin, they cherry pick, victory in the WW2 under his leadership - yes, Stalin’s purges - no, industrialisation – yes, collectivisation (kolkhozes and destruction of peasantry with a one-way trip to Siberia for kulaks) – no. And Putin is very careful to touch only the bits of collective memory useful to him. Same goes about the recently popular Russian empire. Focus on Peter the Great, empire-builder, Alexander the III, administrator and consolidator – yes, weak and incompetent Nicholas the II, Ivan the Terrible, a recognized thug in his lifetime – no, although some ridiculous attempts at white-washing the latter have been made. And Putin’s praise of Solzhenitsyn is also not that seemingly out of place. Solzhenitsyn while obviously an ardent enemy of totalitarism and communism was very pro-empire himself, he was very pro-Great-Mother-Russia-that-we-lost-in-1917 and let’s go back to patriarchy-orthodoxy of the Russian empire. I’m fairly certain he would applaud Crimea annexation and the return of Ukraine and Belarus and some other territories under Mother Russia's protective wing were he alive. Of course him and Putin saw eye to eye.
Last time I checked Putin's KGB postponed in the '00s the disclosure of Stalin's purges archives until 2044. I don't know who suffered from the purported "guilt created by the media in the 90's" if the best (or worst) is yet to come and the way it looks even 2044 is not a certainty. Russia's terrible demographics ("russian cross") is playing a nasty joke on its politics. Older, more conservative and nostalgic generations by their sheer numbers acquired a bigger importance than is good for the future of the country.
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