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Turned red after finding out that
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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I never realised Lemmy is full of 60+ year olds who would have been old enough to have any meaningful experience of the USSR. (And even then at 61 you'd only just be catching the end where everything was going to shit due to many complex factors).
Ok so you were 14 when the USSR fell and 8 when Gorbachev came to power. You were a child. At that age you simply don't have the depth or breath of experience for it to be meaningful. Same as 14 or 8 year olds now don't have the experience to really have wider political input. If you haven't worked, had to get a house, engaged with the state using your "experience" to derive conclusions about it is nonsense. Not to say younger people can't have opinions but they simply can't defer to experience as generally they lack it but this can be substituted with study, statistics etc.
Edit:
Also again you were 8 when Gorbachev came to power and everything was going to shit you have 0 experience of the pre Gorbachev era. Appealing to personal experience to draw conclusions about that is even more nonsense.
Lol I'm Canadian I'm talking about my friends with the real world experience growing up in the bloc.
And to throw is back how old are you? What is your experience? Pray tell what makes you an expert?
Mid-30's
Personal experience with the USSR? None. But I never claimed to have any. Otherwise experience: I'm Chinese originally rural but through scholarships I was put in the position to be able to earn a PhD and 2 masters and now live in a city. But this really has nothing to do with what we were talking about. I never claimed to have personal experience of the USSR.
I wouldn't call myself an expert but I've read many studies and books about the USSR as well as my second masters being in Marxist Theory so I would call myself relatively informed.
All of this is however a dodge that has nothing to do with the point at hand which is that appealing to experience when in reality you have effectively 0 makes no sense. If you've never worked or engaged with any facets of the state appealing to experience to draw general conclusions about it is plainly ridiculous.
Not the person whom you asked, but
To get a good view on the matter, it would require having worked and having gone through a process of getting new housing both before Gorbachyov and after the fall of the USSR. Something tells me that people who earn, say, 30 000 or so rubles (or an analogous sum) per month today were in a much better spot back before Gorbachyov.
I won't disagree but you're (intentionally?) shifting goalposts.
As already stated and the easiest example is I've been told by multiple friends about waiting in the bread line for their parents for hours. As a North American imagine having to wait for the state to give you your bread for the day and having to wait 6 hours in line to get it. Is this really what people want to glaze?
This is also ignoring the rampant corruption that also existed in the USSR at the time too. You could argue it was more corrupt than we have in North America now.
In what way would this be a shifting of goalposts?
A child is likely not going to have much familiarity with important things that are important in this context - in particular, things like getting a job, prices compared to salaries, not having to deal with layoffs, and being able to get new housing. Those things do need to be accounted for.
We also need to take into consideration that Gorbachyov's administration significantly reduced the living standards, and it was his goal to dismantle the USSR. So, we should compare the years before him with the full on restoration of capitalism that people keep claiming to be an improvement.
Not great that they had to wait for hours, but this is an inconvenience compared to not having access to food at all. Going to remind you that many people do die by being unable to access food under capitalism. Would you actually say that the situation in, say, Africa, or non-socialist Asia, or in post-USSR Russia and Ukraine was somehow better?
You are talking about a place with "food deserts", and where people do die by being unable to access food at all.
Also, consider that most of the world does not live in the Imperial Core. Rather, the Imperial Core's wealth is predicated on plundering the rest of the world. You likely only considered the living conditions in the USSR and in the Imperial Core (and not the Russian Empire, not the post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and not elsewhere).
Also, you do realise that breadlines are sometimes a thing in the US to this day, as well, right?
"Corruption" is a very nebulous accusation that liberals love to throw at NATO's enemies. Anyway, can't exactly compete in corruption with states that have literal lobbying.
It is hilarious to try and negatively compare a country where corruption can sometimes be a threat to the rule of law, to a country where corruption IS the rule of law.
Meanwhile every edgy teenager on .ml is an expert who lived through the entirety of the soviet union
When you can't attack the message, simply attack the messenger.
Of course, this will raise questions later about why a bunch of edgy teenagers are better at predicting the course of world events than you.
I don't think I've seen even a single person on ml claim personal experience but instead deffer to data and other sources which is entirely valid in my opinion
You are keep implying that the vast majority of people lived better in the Russian Empire, and that praising the Russian Empire this way is somehow not edgy.