Eastern Euro pede here (moved here from Australia a year or so ago) I was having this very conversation last night with some locals who lived under the USSR.
I asked them if anyone liked the times 'under Russia's as they put it. Some people did but most didn't. Those who liked it were the locals who were in charge of stores and / or had access to food and clothes in quantities the rest didn't have (truck drivers etc) So basically those who could steal from the system for their own gain.
The other groups that liked it were the ethnic Russians shipped here to breed out the local populations and the unemployed who got jobs and a free shitty apartment out of it instead of being a mud farmer in an old wooden shack.
It would appear the vast majority didn't like it at all and some of the stories you hear are incredibly sad. The levels of alcoholism under the Russians is prodigious and you can still see the social scars today.
Also, just about every single one of the EE countries had their own form of Revolution against the Soviets. Think that kind of destroys any opinion that EE misses them.
Additional fun fact: the Russian mob flooded a lot of these countries with cheap Heroin after the Soviet collapse which fucked them even more in the 90's.
YES!!
Eastern Euro pede here (moved here from Australia a year or so ago) I was having this very conversation last night with some locals who lived under the USSR.
I asked them if anyone liked the times 'under Russia's as they put it. Some people did but most didn't. Those who liked it were the locals who were in charge of stores and / or had access to food and clothes in quantities the rest didn't have (truck drivers etc) So basically those who could steal from the system for their own gain.
The other groups that liked it were the ethnic Russians shipped here to breed out the local populations and the unemployed who got jobs and a free shitty apartment out of it instead of being a mud farmer in an old wooden shack.
It would appear the vast majority didn't like it at all and some of the stories you hear are incredibly sad. The levels of alcoholism under the Russians is prodigious and you can still see the social scars today.
Also, just about every single one of the EE countries had their own form of Revolution against the Soviets. Think that kind of destroys any opinion that EE misses them.
Additional fun fact: the Russian mob flooded a lot of these countries with cheap Heroin after the Soviet collapse which fucked them even more in the 90's.