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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions that the parents of the kids who grew up during the transition period were conservative and compliant and didn't make a fuss. They knew the system was not great, but for them, it was what it was. There wasn't much to do but get on with life.

The kids were different, they began to have access to cartoons and other cultural experiences from the West and began to question why they had to make do with so little (during Brezhnev's time, GDP went into guns and away from butter).

In any event, why should people feel happy about living under an oppressive system -a system which stunted their potential? Their "police" were soviet milicija, so in a way they lived under occupation to booot.

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>> why should people feel happy about living under an oppressive system

Because its the only system they know, and they've been told forever its the best system there is.

For example; There exists a system where basic health issues can bankrupt you, where the police are above the law, where citizens can, and do, buy machine guns, where the courts are setup to protect the rich and powerful, where politicians can lie without consequence, that separates immigrant children (babies) from parents (and then has no way to reunite them), that has jailed over 1% of its population. Where people get no paid sick or holiday leave.

Why would people feel happy about living under this oppressive system?

Now you probably had some strong reactions to the question. And therein lies your answer. People everywhere, regardless of the system, believe what they are taught to belive, and they are taught that their existing way is the best.

where citizens can, and do, buy machine guns

Sounds kinda awesome to be honest.

And Soviet corruption sounded pretty awesome for my grand-uncle, and his children, grand-children, and various hangers-on. He had an incredibly lucrative career over his life, floating from one bit of graft to another (He continued to be quite successful at it long after the fall of communism, with his career peaking during an 'obscure' international sporting event that took place in Sochi in 2014).

I'm sure it sounded less awesome to the people he hurt, but hey, it's all relative to where you stand, what you personally value, and how concerned about externalities.

Who are the people who own machine guns hurting?

An argument can easily be made that normalizing gun fetishism, and the prevalence of public carry leads to a society that, during tense situations is often a trigger pull away from escalating to immediately lethal violence.

It's rare for people to get shot and killed at a, say, a political protest in a society without such norms. It's rarer yet for the killer to be found to have been in the right.

You don't see teenagers in Canada think that it's a swell idea to drive across the country so that they could LARP Call of Duty at a protest with an AR-15. The two cultures' outlook on guns is different, and one very actively discourages that kind of behaviour... While the other one seems to encourage it.

No, that's not a valid argument at all. Most people aren't even aware you can buy machine guns.

And what does owning machine guns have to do with public carry? I asked about machine gun ownership.

And what does a teenager driving over state lines have to do with machine gun ownership?

You're really stretching to answer my question.

> And what does owning machine guns have to do with public carry? I asked about machine gun ownership.

'I don't like a society where people can and do buy machine guns' is a pretty obvious shorthand for 'I don't like American gun culture'.

And a lot of people feel very strongly, in both directions, about the consequences of American gun culture.

i cant understand why would anyone other than military (even that for a deterrent maybe) would want a machine gun where every bullet can kill and u can fire so many bullets every second.

The US Constitution makes it clear that the people and the military are not on the same page. The US people is supposed to have access to all the weapons that the military has... According to the old law.

This is a cultural consequence of achieving independence from an oppressor. People who desire control of others will always organize, oppress and build militaries. They invade, so peace is not an option with this personality type. Hence why seemingly normal people can buy machine guns. - There are predators around.

The difference in the US is that the default is you can unless you have a good reason not too.

I recall reading there has never been a crime committed with a legally owned machine gun in the US”. I think that changed a while ago when some criminal murdered someone, but do you believe banning everyone from owning something that had been used in a crime once?

That seems very paternalistic. Which is a fine stance. It’s just not the one the US adheres too.

I can’t follow your logic at all here. You called out specifically machine gun ownership.

You realize people legally own machine guns in Canada, right? Sure, you can’t get a permit now, but former owners are grandfathered in.

What do you think of Canada’s fun (edit: gun) culture?

You "forgot" where the guys who were killed chased and attacked the guy who shot them. You also "forgot" the guy who was shot in the arm had just pulled a pistol with that arm.

As to the "political protest", they were burning buildings and attacking people. (Curiously, many of these businesses were black-owned.)

The people chasing him were responding to what they thought was an active shooter situation, in a country where active shooter situations are a common occurrence. That's also a consequence of American gun culture.

There's a reason you don't see protests and hockey riots turning into gunfights north of the 49th. People don't bring guns to them, because they know that if they use them, they are going to get an absolute world of shit dumped on their heads by the courts.

No, they were career criminals who came there to commit violence with impunity.

> The people chasing him were responding to what they thought was an active shooter situation

Even if we assume that they actually thought that, they attacked someone who they had no reason to believe was involved in said "active shooter situation." The most favorable interpretation is that they were vigilantes who attacked with deadly force.

If Rittenhouse had chased down someone you agreed with politically, claiming "an active shooter situation", you'd want his head.

> Why would people feel happy about living under this oppressive system?

Because you read too much media.

Or you are or know one of the victims living on the wrong side of this arrangement.

Also, there exists a system that so many people are trying to enter, that it has to pass laws to prevent ~70% of the earth from immediately emmigrating there. One that has made more immigrant 1st-generation wealthy than any other. One that directly or indirectly defends the entirely western world with their military, and receives very little monetary payment for doing so. One that has 4% of the global population but 55% of corporate valuation. It also went to the moon first, as it was inventing all the technologies to enable it.

> prevent ~70% of the earth from immediately emmigrating there

Quite an unrealistic percentage and I speak as someone who did move to that place.

> It also went to the moon first, as it was inventing all the technologies to enable it.

USSR: first satellite, first animal in space, first animal returning from space, first human in space, first woman in space, first object orbiting the Sun, first hard lunar landing, first pictures of the dark side of the moon, first space station, first spacewalk, first soft landing on he moon, first probe to another planet, first landing on another planet, first satellite on another planet.

USA: first communications satellite, first weather satellite, first man of the moon (and conveniently the space race ends here).

The real prize from the space race was the ICBM.

Interesting comment. Do you think the only country that has been to the moon somehow lost the space race at some point if you choose to continue the space race til today?

Hard to tell, but it was consistently losing to the Soviet Union by most space-dick measurement metrics. Please don't see me as defending the USSR in any way, it's a widely accepted fact that the USSR was 0.5-2 years ahead in most milestones.

My comment was more in line to contradict the statement of "this country invented everything!" when obviously the Soviets had a strong know how that certainly didn't come from the US [0].

The man on the moon is what it is: an incredibly impressive feat with an objectively terrible risk/benefit ratio, but pulling it off makes it great for propaganda purposes. Once the US did that, the crewed moon landing programs in the USSR, which already had problems, were instantaneously de-funded, as the value of being the first was gone.

It's not casual that since the space race ended, rational thinking kicked in and 100% of surface exploration and analysis has been done with unmanned rovers and sample return missions. And in my opinion, unmanned missions are more impressive from a technical standpoint, but that's another topic.

This is an article on the subject that covers well the main reason why the USSR failed at what they seemed to be winning. [1]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this...

It's a complicated issue. You can perhaps argue both ways. For example, one could say space race definitely didn't end with the Moon landings. Even though there was 1975 Apollo-Soyuz flight, the technology and science went ahead - the whole epoch of space stations, winged spacecrafts, automatic probes and commercial projects happened after "the small step for man".

USSR did have less resources to dedicate to space. USA spent massively more on the Moon race - and while the technology was somewhat conservative in places, they reached the goal. The close call of Apollo-13 could illustrate both how stretched the resources were and how sufficient level of redundancy was. USA won the Moon landing, even though USSR claimed many secondary prizes - Zond flights, automatic orbiting, landing, Lunokhods and probe returns. Even though Luna-24 clearly brought important materials, still the scientific return from - massively more expensive - Apollo flights could be considered higher. Yet USSR spent maybe 1/5 of what USA spent on the Moon race.

Space stations are also somewhat hard to compare. While USSR had much more, and with better capabilities, the Skylab's heritage is still important - even today. Same goes to Shuttle/Buran - while Buran flew just one, rather symbolic flight, and Shuttle run a massive scientific (and others) program, still Energiya-Buran project produced Zenit launcher, family of engines leading to e.g. RD-180, not to mention the development of underlying technologies - e.g. Al-Li alloys and (I believe) friction welding were worked on in the scope of the project. Shuttle can be accused in killing two crews and in being excessively expensive. Buran can be accused in helping to bankrupt the USSR.

USSR had quite good automatic probes at the time of breaking, too. VEGA program was a resounding success, while Phobos was much less so - even though quite ambitious. Only pieces of those capabilities survived - post-Soviet Russia managed to participate well in commercial launch market and practically created space tourism industry, but seems like it works well only initially, and serious investments are hard to come by. Yet coming back to USSR it's hard to disagree that the space program - till the end of the country - was quite robust, despite the loss of the Moon race.

We can still consider the manned Moon flights as the biggest achievement in the manned space. But going back to USSR/USA comparison - we aren't even sure if USA is able to repeat them easily (USA can, but with lots of efforts, which modern programs demonstrate), which shows importance of political will. So it looks like there were different "kinds of sport" and participants showed different results in them, and if we assume that only Moon landings matter, then USA is the clear winner. The reality is probably more complex.

Don't forget Mir! Or how the ISS is built around modules meant for Mir 2.

Yes, I've mentioned space stations - which were the next frontier after the Moon race for manned spaceflight.

USA had a tremendous success with space probes - starting with Hubble. Actually, Voyager - still chugging along - and even Vikings - started massive Mars science - but I'd consider the wave of many space projects - Pathfinder, Galileo, Cassini, many space telescopes etc. - started roughly with Hubble launch.

In manned space USA was arguably tied with Shuttle, which eventually stopped flying in 2011, and had to send astronauts with Soyuzes; only when SpaceX completed the Crew Dragon, USA resumed sending people to orbit again; but these are better known recent events. Similarly USA recently got much stronger in commercial space sectors, including regarding manned space - launches, suborbital space; here modern Russia so far offers the same tourist flights as 20 years ago, while having troubles in modernizing, or even maintaining, the launcher fleet. But that's Russia, not USSR.

So if we stop the clock at the moment USSR dissolves, the relative space capabilities are different than now. In space USSR had - up until the end - enough of achievements to be considered world class.

https://lettersofnote.com/2010/09/07/is-there-a-space-progra...

Speaking as an immigrant, there are quite a few countries out there that are more lucrative for third world immigrants than US. Canada, for example, or even Australia. Generally speaking, it's places with a decent welfare safety net.

You should try living under the Soviet system to get a proper answer for yourself.

Because its the only system they know, and they've been told forever its the best system there is.

People in the late Soviet Union were quite aware they were not living under the best system there is and most of them did not particularly believe being told things to that effect repeatedly any more than people in western societies believe ads.

The soviet Union collapsed because Russia under Gorbachev stopped subsidising all the other countries, which were dependant on Russia for money to buy basic things like food from the west.

It becomes harder to convince people of your position while they are starving. So yeah people stopped believing.

But there's a Long time from 1917 to 1990. And for the bulk of that time people believed enough for the status quo to be maintained.

And plenty of people in Western societies belive adds, and the evidence for this is that companies and parties keep making them...

Your theory of Soviet collapse runs very much against recorded facts that you can easily look up, though. The Soviet union wasn't made up of 'other countries' and Soviet satellite states were not dependent on the Soviet Union for food and no Warsaw Pact country or Soviet republic had starving people in 1989.

They were not utterly oblivious to the outside world and accepting of the government and party line from 1917 to 1990. The last one already sounds completely implausible it should give you pause - that would make generations of Soviet people utter naifs. They weren't.

A comment in a forum seems inadequate to cover the root causes of the soviet breakup, but it ultimately did come down to food and money.

Firstly, the soviet Union was made up of a number of separate countries (as the original article notes things were quite different in Russia, Lithuania and East Germany. While all lead by communist parties, all operated in fear of Russian occupation (as happened in Hungary in 1956 and czechoslovakia in 1968).

Soviet block countries were dependent on Russia for aid, and military support. In the late 80's Russia was unwilling, and unable, to spend the necessary money to cover all the needs, so states prioritised food (on the basis that starving people are seldom compliment). Necessary maintaince of (for example) the border fence between Hungary and Austria is not paid for (by Russia) leading to the first domino falling and a route being opened to the west.

In Poland and Berlin popular movements progress quickly, and in both cases Gorbachev refuses to use the Russian military to prop up those govts.

These are but the broadest strokes though - obviously there are a lot of moving parts, and a lot of different populations in play. But money is at the root of it all, and Warsaw pact countries needed money to import food from the west.

Sure but you're weaseling out of the things you originally said, neither of which are true - that there was universal and broad belief in the ideology of the system because basically people had not heard any better, all the way up to 1989. And that at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Soviet republics or Warsaw countries were starving.

Your newer stuff isn't much better (Hungary didn't let East Germans into Austria because the fence was under-maintained) but that's probably past the point at which should wrap this up.

The simplest way is to look ay net migration between EU and US to realize if things are as horrible as you think they are.

In summary, the emigration of EU citizens to the US is not characterized by overcrowded flights and waiting times. It is, rather, a small and steady flow. Nevertheless, this small flow possesses exceptional skill and education levels. Behind the deceivingly low numbers is a huge potential for wealth creation that is permanently migrating to the US. The effects of this migration can be significant for many countries, especially the UK and France. Therefore, it is important that we know more about why these exceptionally talented Europeans move to the US [1]

[1] https://www.bruegel.org/2015/09/eu-immigration-to-the-us-whe...

Can someone explain why you downvoted the comment? Unless for personal reasons you didn't like the data I supplied

And despite this apparently a million people legally and illegally enter this place despite these issues apparently worse than the Soviet Union.

Why, instead, don’t these million plus seek a life in China or Cuba, if that system is, apparently better than the North American system?

In addition, Americans are actually free to leave but very few do, especially those affected by your examples of suffering from the system. We know people of very few means can emigrate, so given poor Americans have more purchasing power than poor who move here from elsewhere, if it were repressive we’d see an exodus of Americans to greener freer pastures.

Do you understand that your reply proves my point?

There are 200 odd countries in the world, but you belive your country is the best, well, because some number from over there want to come here.

You want to belive your country is the best, your whole life you've been told by your authorities that it is the best, that everyone wants to come live here, and you've heard this as so often you've come to believe it.

This is fine - you are not alone, most people in most countries are perfectly happy with their system. Most people don't want to immigrate - whatever they have, wherever they are, is the home they know.

Unfortunately believing we are the best prevents us from being better. We cannot fix it unless we admit it is broken (whatever It is) and if we start from a position of "we are the best" then it's hard to admit some stuff is broken.

>> (during Brezhnev's time, GDP went into guns and away from butter).

Is there any empirical evidence supporting this? There were many improvements in the life typical citizen in the 1964-1982 era, a lot of better housing(which means more people were able to leave villages for cities, which had infinitely better infrastructure), in my city countless facilities were built in that era.

>> The kids were different, they began to have access to cartoons and other cultural experiences from the West

The cartoons mentioned in the article are Soviet cartoons. Access to Western 'cultural experiences' was more or less present from roughly death of Stalin to start of Perestroika. French films were frequently shown. I think after 1988 or so Western entertainment production flooded the Soviet Union.

>> and began to question why they had to make do with so little That's an interesting take. For example, 'kids' in SU had access to free healthcare and higher education, and a better quality high schools, which the West didn't provide to it's citizens. And the WW2 devastated USSR and there was no Marshall plan. And, for example, Imperial Russia had GDP far below US at 1913 (So these countries were much poorer then the West to begin with)

In any event, why should people feel happy about living under an oppressive system -a system which stunted their potential? I don't think 'oppressive' system is something that has a clear meaning. There were restrictions on travel, on starting and owning the businesses, and political life was structured differently from representative democracy. For some people it was fine, for some it wasn't. As is the current marriage between capitalism and representative democracy.

>> Their "police" were soviet milicija, so in a way they lived under occupation to booot.

Baltic countries were indeed under occupation. They were integrated into Soviet union by military force, compared to other republics, which 'joined' the SU as a result of civil war. That explains that fervent Baltic anti-communism, because socialism was always something brought from abroad, from Russia, something basically not needed.

"milicija" is just a term for police, so that has no relation to occupation.

My grandma (born 1943, 30s in 1970s) says that these times were felt as very stable and carefree. She is a worker class which moved from Moscow to the East of Volga region at WW2, has a financial education and worked as an industrial accountant. Yes she was amazed in trips to Moscow and Eastern Europe, but she also never thought much of how to live a live. Nowadays she feels bad for us new citizens who must try hard to get even basic things. Most of older people in their 70’s I know personally are fond of these times, cause they felt “capitalism” on their own skin in the 90s. That regime solved all the issues any “honest worker” could have, and they weren’t ready or educated to solve them on their own. I know there is a survivorship bias and people who didn’t like it probably either not live here or are dead, but this is how people feel happy about living there. Personally I am not a travel-meet-talk-freedom guy (37yo) and wouldn’t mind living under such regime today, provided modern materials and products, e.g. China. I don’t see how my way of thinking or living would be any beneficial to me in “free western” countries, except maybe if I worked as an US military engineer or something like that, which isn’t realistic.

> during Brezhnev's time, GDP went into guns and away from butter

The peak of shortages happened not during Brezhnev but in the 80's during Gorby's rule.

> a system which stunted their potential

Did launch man in space somehow. Plenty of people realized their potential.

Stores had cigs, vodka, butter and milk and tubers (awesome!!)

And so you stunt the growth not only of Russians but many other non-Russian nationalities so that a few scientists might have a summer dacha and a car and plane trips back to the city for wives to and fro the science town in nowheresville --while they are under threat to have their families sent to gulags if milestones aren't met... nice!

If you read Khalatnikov’s memoirs he realizes that whole country was turned into a gulag ostensibly for scientists’ sake and is remorseful of the fact

>"while they are under threat to have their families sent to gulags if milestones aren't met... nice!"

It was true during Stalin. Not sure about Kruschev era laws. After that nobody would be sent to gulag for not meeting milestones so cut the bullshit. It is like segregation in the US. It was true until it was not. Or that women in Canada could be jailed in specialized jails (they were called differently) for being of wrong moral character. Not true anymore either.

>> Stores had cigs, vodka, butter and milk and tubers (awesome!!)

Where do you get it from? Of course it depended on time and place, but you can buy a lot of stuff in Kyiv (for example) in 70's and 80's. Some things were 'deficit', but they were more of a luxury items. Also the quality was rather good, due to not having cost cutting.

>> a few scientists might have a summer dacha Dachas were not exactly a sign of the elite. Cars, on the other hand...

>> science town in nowheresville These things existed for some sort of top-secret military research, there were plenty of R&D labs in big cities for a more mundane subjects.

You just have an axe to bury with communism, don't you?

> In any event, why should people feel happy about living under an oppressive system -a system which stunted their potential? Their "police" were soviet milicija

They can be happy to live in the US and have police kneeling on their neck until they're dead.

Don't swallow your contraband.

In the US a callous cop gets tried and gets sent to prison.

In the USSR you got taken around the back, shot in the head and dumped in a hole on the ground, or if slightly luckier you got a chance to freeze to death after the commander of the gulag had you tamp down the three foot snow for his truck to drive in in your ragged boots and in your escape attempt you get lost and starve and freeze to death a couple of miles away but the commander doesn’t bother with a search party knowing what your fate is.

It really hurts your credibility when you mix up distinct Soviet eras.

The Gulag system began to be dismantled immediately upon Stalin's death and was fully dismantled by 1960.

Just because it began to dismantle it doesn't mean it was completely gone.

Stories about KGB are popular for a reason, you know.

By late USSR, the KGB wouldn't put a bullet in the back of your head, either. They'd hand you over to "experts" who would declare you insane and shove you into a straitjacket - and even that treatment was generally reserved for active dissidents.

By the way, the police and the KGB often didn't get along. There was a famous case where a couple of cops who were very drunk robbed a high-ranking KGB official (he was carrying food from one of those "special" stores). When their senior found out, he decided that it'd be better to cover it up, and had the KGB guy killed and dumped the body in the woods. The KGB eventually unraveled the case - and many other similar ones, of cops partaking in robberies and beatings.

(https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2020-12-26-%0A---war-of-th...)

So on the whole, I suspect you'd be far more likely to be brutalized by the Soviet cops than by KGB.

His writing style and credibility live on a different planets.

Gulag still lives under a different name: FSIN

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/11/10/new-russian-prison... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/08/i-was-always-s...

Something with not entirely the same effect happens in the US but not often to rich white men.

>In the US a callous cop gets tried and gets sent to prison.

You're forgetting to include the fact that the cop was lucky enough to be recorded by a member of the population, that person had the courage to post the video, and this whole process required riots in all major cities to occur before it became serious enough to for the courts to properly prosecute.

How many other offenses have gone unprosecuted? For example this same officer had a prior complaint from 2017 for hitting a 14-year-old black boy in the head with a flashlight so hard he required stitches and then afterwards holding him down with his knee for almost 17 minutes, ignoring the boy's complaints that he could not breathe.

Thats just this officer, in a country this size there are likely tons of horror stories.

>"In the US a callous cop gets tried and gets sent to prison."

Sure. Whole 2 times when they were caught on video and caused mass movements.

How is the comparison helpful?

If that’s the alternative to being a political prisoner in the USSR, then I’ll take it.

Hey Vitya, we were wondering -- do you actually work at one of those famous troll farms, or are your HN comments just an after-hours gig?

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