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Comment by woobar | Hacker News Reader

>Moved to the USA as a child.

Then you have no idea what you are talking about...

He may not necessarily say that owning former state assets is good or evil, but that the perception of entrepreneurs has been tainted by the mafia that took over right after the Soviet collapse. So, stories like these don't evoke the empathy and outrage that are required.

This is perfect point which I agree with completely.

What I don't agree with is OP's blanket statements like 'privatization is theft'. So far the only argument to support his views were his childhood memories.

I could cite a wealth of literature describing what Soviet life was actually like for people other than dissident whiners.

But it would be a waste of time, because 1) it would persuade no one - everyone here appears to have read-only minds on the subject and 2) most of it has never and will never be translated to English.

Please, share your best sources. Russian is my native language. I lived in USSR (Central Russia and Far East, Ukraine, Georgia). My children were born in Russia. Don't mind if I take your literature with a grain of salt though.

PS: And I know for a fact that it was not possible to "get high-quality milk and cheese into peoples' stomachs without American notions of "profit"" in USSR for any reasonable period of time.

Privatization in theory is not theft, the same way communism sounds great on paper. In practice, however, when you're dealing with the level of corruption that was / is present in former communist countries, you can pretty much assume that every privatization involved theft. For somebody who lived through the process is as obvious as saying the US government is influenced by corporations.

the perception of entrepreneurs has been tainted by the mafia that took over right after the Soviet collapse

If that were all he was saying, I wouldn't be arguing with him. I think Russia is a mess right now, and a lot of it has to do with the mafia and former KGB running things. But, that's nowhere near all he's saying...that was just the tip of the iceberg.

So you won't read Gibbon, because he never even set foot in ancient Rome? That impostor.

Most of what any thinking person reliably knows about the world comes from the printed word.

I agree. Unfortunately you did not back any of your outrages statements with anything but you being born in USSR.

All I wanted to point out is that it is not enough.

Out of curiosity, what would be "enough"? Can you even imagine yourself being convinced of the positions I brought up? (Are we dealing with a "religious" difference of opinions here?)

And what kind of biography would the person doing the convincing need to have? (I only brought up my birthplace because someone specifically asked. I fully agree that it is irrelevant. However, there is the added caveat that much of the relevant material on the implicit question of "was the USSR irredeemably Satanic, and are its destroyers automatically saints?" - the material which collectively forms Soviet culture - will never be translated into English.)

I think it is the other way around; You have no idea what you are talking about. How can you draw that conclusion from such a premise?

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