My professor for a class on Soviet intelligence was ex-KGB stationed in East Germany who was a spy for MI-5. He pointed out in 1998 that all his colleagues were still very angry about the decline and that most former Soviet citizens were not doing well and would want revenge. I believe this is it.
When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble. There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.
I recommend anyone interested in the topic checking out how the German reunification worked out. It was quite a mess that they plowed through.
The truth is that every soviet country was already in deep economic trouble, that’s what caused the collapse. There was also a ton of corruption before the fall of the USSR. The only difference was that during the cold war, the USSR wanted to pretend that their way of life was as good or better than the capitalist west. That meant that there was a ton of propaganda making things seem better than they were, and a ton of censorship about how it was in the west. It meant that the corruption was kept relatively quiet so that it didn’t embarrass the government so that it looked weak compared to the west.
As soon as the USSR collapsed, they stopped putting all the effort in to censor the west and make the USSR seem great through propaganda. That resulted in people thinking that the economy had collapsed after the USSR, when the truth is that the actual economy was simply finally revealed to them.
how the German reunification worked out. It was quite a mess that they plowed through.
“When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble.”
An economic collapse of your system will do that.
“There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.”
This was true for the nomenklatura in the USSR. The Soviet nations weren’t any less corrupt or any more competent than anyone else has been.
My professor for a class on Soviet intelligence was ex-KGB stationed in East Germany who was a spy for MI-5. He pointed out in 1998 that all his colleagues were still very angry about the decline and that most former Soviet citizens were not doing well and would want revenge. I believe this is it.
When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble. There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.
I recommend anyone interested in the topic checking out how the German reunification worked out. It was quite a mess that they plowed through.
The truth is that every soviet country was already in deep economic trouble, that’s what caused the collapse. There was also a ton of corruption before the fall of the USSR. The only difference was that during the cold war, the USSR wanted to pretend that their way of life was as good or better than the capitalist west. That meant that there was a ton of propaganda making things seem better than they were, and a ton of censorship about how it was in the west. It meant that the corruption was kept relatively quiet so that it didn’t embarrass the government so that it looked weak compared to the west.
As soon as the USSR collapsed, they stopped putting all the effort in to censor the west and make the USSR seem great through propaganda. That resulted in people thinking that the economy had collapsed after the USSR, when the truth is that the actual economy was simply finally revealed to them.
Well, I’m not sure if you can really say that reunification was ever properly completed.
“When you look at the immediate aftermath post USSR collapse, nearly every ex-soviet country got into really fucking deep economic trouble.”
An economic collapse of your system will do that.
“There was also the little fact that pretty much every position of power was achieved by being friends with powerful people, so corruption and incompetence were rampant. Combine the two and it’s no wonder most people would rather go back to the old system, especially in the first 10 years.”
This was true for the nomenklatura in the USSR. The Soviet nations weren’t any less corrupt or any more competent than anyone else has been.