k_o_t@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
that's not very meaningful i'm afraid
say, russia turned out to be like scandinavian countries after the fall of the ussr, russians would have been happy for the fall of the ussr, even though scandinavian countries rely on worker exploitation in third world countries, this only indicates that for a lot of people the quality of life took a plunge after the fall of the ussr
living in russia sucks, welcome to the real world, people are so tired and exhausted that they can't give a shit, just wanting to live a good quality life, without caring about the consequences of their lifestyle, which is very characteristic of capitalism now that i think about it
yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
Of course this is meaningful. The transition from communism to capitalism in the former USSR is a huge scale experiment. If Russia turned out to be like Scandinavian countries then at least it could be said that capitalism didn't make things worse for the people. Yet, quality of life dropped significantly across pretty much all the former republics. Millions of people now have direct lived experience under both systems, and they can see which one works best.
k_o_t@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
sure
i'm not defending capitalism obv, but the reverse happened for some former soviet republics, so imo such a conclusion should be drawn by comparing quality of life not of individual former soviet republics, but rather from all of them as a collection
yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
It's telling that people focus on places like Lithuania or Estonia where the west poured capital to create a bulwark against Russia. Why don't you take a look at what life is like in places like Georgia or Kazakhstan instead.
gun@lemmy.ml 2 years ago
The baltics have a collective population smaller than Houston. The entire former USSR is almost 300 million people. They also are unique because they didn't join the USSR until after WW2, and they are the only ones in NATO and the EU. So this is an extreme case, and none of the other former soviet republics are anything like the baltics.