Of course it was offensive. The point was to demonstrate how offensive you were being to the millions and millions of people in the former Soviet Union who now live in a poverty that would have been unthinkable during the USSR. There was no poverty in the USSR. In case you have been living in a cave -- NEWS FLASH: There was an economic collapse here in the 1990s!!!!
The grandfather of a friend of mine, a WWII vet who was in the Gulag, died recently in UTTER SQUALOR. In the USSR, he was a respected man, respected and feted. He died in MISERY. The reason for this just happens to be THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM.
"Nostalgic." Good almighty.
I have to go now. On my way home, I will probably give a few rubles to some of the elderly women panhandling in the metro, you know, the base of KPRF support. When I do so, I will make sure to scold them for being "nostalgic" and not living up to the high moral expectations of some guy in Berkeley. I may also pass by a few junkies infecting each other with HIV, something else that didn't happen in the Soviet Union, by the way. When they die, I will be sure to tell their parents not to be "nostalgic."
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