From: budge
On Fri, 14 Feb 2003 at 12:34pm Thomas Seay wrote:
>
> some of these types of people on here to talk about
> their experiences under so-called "real socialism".
> Now, I have yet to hear ONE Chinese say much good
Hmm. You don't get out much, do you? I have heard, from people who left before the 'opening' and the 'market socialism with Chinese characteristics', that there were many basic facts of living that were better under Maoist 'socialism'. These were fairly privileged people that came to the US as post-doc's etc, and stayed.
Last night, there was a better than usual _Frontline_ on teevee. It covered the 1998-2002 'restructuring' as it was going on. Many people. rural peasants and urban workers, expressed affection for the old ways...
Now don't get me wrong, *I* would not wish to live in either Soviet Russia or Maoist China, but I'm doin' OK in Capitalist USA. There are a lot of people that were doing MUCH better under old 'communism' that they are under whatever the abortion of an economic system Russia or China is running just now. So I think it would be trivial to find people who would prefer that system -- fuck, if the dweebs from PBS can find them, they obviously ---
No kidding.Life in the USSR was actually pretty damn cushy. If you were a CPSU member, it was a riot. I know Brezhnev's former dentist. He lived the Life of Riley. (pretty rich now too, but says life was much better when he was tooth doctor to the tsar.)
Go to Moldova, Armenia or Georgia and just try to find someone who says something bad about the USSR. You will have to look under rocks. People lived 10 times as well under Communism in those republics as they do now. Moldova, which used to be wine country, now exports mainly guns, drugs and prostitutes who go to Moscow and Bosnia. There is practically nobody left in Georgia and Armenia, literally 40% of the population has left. There is no economy there. The only people there are the army, children and old people. The able-bodied population are working as migrant workers in Russia.