askchapo

I'm so fucking tired of the "nostalgia" narrative. Any positive mention of past governments in post-communist states is framed this way, which only serves to invalidate those ideas, reduce them to rose-tinted glasses.

Instead of bringing freedom and prosperity, the regime change brought unimaginable suffering, caused millions of excess deaths, largest peacetime life expectancy drop, a gigantic proportion of population reduced to abject poverty, a country of 300 million thrust from first to thirld world overnight with entirely predictable human cost.

Outside of post-soviet states, nobody who's people went through this kind of trauma and loss is asked "awww, are you nostalgic for the times before millions died in vain? are you nostalgic for the times before widespread child prostitution, homelessness, ethnic cleansing, fratricidal wars, hyperinflation, crippling unemployment?"

Not a single person from a post-communist state gets to bring up the immense human cost of capitalism without someone chiming in to bring the word "nostalgia" into the discussion, because people are so conditioned to frame those discussions this way it's like an itch they have to scratch. And this is no matter whether the discussion happens in a post-communist state or in the West, both sides have been equally conditioned.

And I'm just so. fucking. tired of this shit.

For all their flaws, they achieved something that was truly progressive in a society that not too long before was backward and full of violence. It was a mark of progress for humanity. We can and should accept all that and still admit its flaws and mistakes.

Do not let anyone erase that achievement. Do not let anyone convince you that the Soviet Union was a defective system that no longer has any relevance to our society today. Do not let anyone rewrite history. You’ll find yourself fighting an even worse uphill battle if you concede on these grounds.

Socialism is inherently materialist. With other movements you'll see a reverence to some mythological past which is used to try to unify people (e.g. Italy and the Roman empire, Germany and the Volk, America and the 50s) which are all idealist. Socialism is about unifying people based on class. I think we need to move on from the soviet union and not try to romanticize it to try to make it some goal society should strive for. If the goal is becoming the soviet union, then we lose sight of dialectical materialism, why the soviet union developed the way it did, and how to learn from it as social scientists.

Soviet nostalgia and ostalgie are both popular with people who could be nostalgic for that era, which is people who were at least young adults more than 30 years ago. This is a demographic that the European right has very much bought off. It's something to play on, but it's not something you rely on.

The issue you have with soviet nostalgia in eastern europe is that it appeals to the 40+ who are culturally backwards on social issues. In order to keep their 40+ audiences the communists lean into some of that, in part because a good chunk of their groups are filled with older people with that nostalgia.

The problem with this is that the young are significantly less culturally and socially backwards. Many younger people end up being attracted to pro-europe groups and liberal social/cultural policy because of this.

You can not appeal to both audiences simultaneously. Either you appeal to the old with their socially backwards views and nostalgia, or you appeal to the young with their socially progressive views and lose the old. The problem is that the old won't just go on to stop existing, they will organise among themselves as communists and continue to cause an association between socially backwards views and communism. This in turn will continue to make attracting younger people hard.

we should focus our agitprop and work towards the youth of our countries instead of a group of people who ultimately will go "extinct" soon.

I personally think the old probably need to go extinct first before the pendulum will swing hard towards attracting the young. Their very existence is a barrier because you can't stop them continuing to do the work they do that currently keeps communists in that space of only appealing to older people in these countries.

In my country nazbols are quite successful using this. Communist party is afraid to say anything publicly, i guess bcs the aggression from media and power structures would be strong

Why not, but then again, this is only good for a population that is decreasing with time aka pensioners.

Most East European parties are smart enough to maintain a system of pension to satisfy this portion of the electoral population (see Fico's ''socialist party'', Orban's Party, Serbian progressive party and Serbian ''socialist'' party).

If you are going to sell this to the GenX, it's not going to happen since they were the one who toppled the regime.

If you are selling this to the youth (if they didn't left already), the soviet experience is so abstract that it's useless.

Especially on the ostalgie train I think you can look at it in real time not working the fuck out precisely because "look at what we've lost" is much more fascist than communist at it's core. Like for everyone in germany who posts or talks about how the GDR was fairly progressive on queer rights for it's time or whatever you get about 10 times the amount of people who want to build the wall back up but this time it shoots brown people.

Nostalgia is inherently reactionary. Nowhere to go but forward. Makes for nice art sometimes though...

I'm far from an expert but having been traveling through eastern Europe lately i would say absolutely not. The attitude I've seen is mostly that the soviets did some good things but overwhelmingly had a negative impact on the countries culture and history. And the most recent living memories are obviously of the end of that era when corruption was much more common than communist ideals even though things were still done in the name of the party.