--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> So how do young people view the USSR these days?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
Depends on the young person. My experience is that, in general, young Muscovites tend to have a negative view of the USSR, or at least of Really Existing Socialism. The dissolution of the country is generally seen as bad though. Young people from the provinces tend to have a positive view of it. This difference is only natural, seeing that Moscow has more than 70% of the money in Russia. Muscovites often live better than they used to. Provincials live much worse. I think things are complicated too by the memory of the USSR as a "great and powerful, feared country," no matter what its political or economic system, and that appears a lot in youth-oriented pop culture. For instance, classic Russian rock group DDT has a song called Born in the USSR, pining for the lost empire, and it's kind of an anthem for the 20-25 crowd. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, TV has been showing a large amount of Soviet WWII movies ("We will annihilate the enemy!"), and people seem to be rallying around those. I see a lot of young people wearing clothes with hammers-and-sickles, sneakers with SSSR written on them, and t-shirts with the Soviet anthem. But I don't think they have much political content. If you're a 20-year-old in the fSU, you probably don't remember the USSR at all.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo