Thomas Seay:
However, my question is (and I will admit to knowing a lot less about the former SU than I do, say, about China) even if we take into account that there is never going to be a utopia, did the SU measure up to even modest expectations as to what a socialist state should be?
-- That's not my point -- I'm not holding up the USSR as a model. It was a product of its historical circumstances. I am more interested in it as a country where people lived (and getting an accurate picture of that country) than as an instantiation of some ideal model. --- Was necessary work time reduced?
-- A great deal. (Here and below I am talking about Brezhnev time.) -- Did people have more vacation time? -- A lot more. Sochi, anyone? -- Were they able to travel freely ANYWHERE they wished? --
Anywhere inside the USSR except the closed cities, yes. Travel outside the USSR, even to other Warsaw Pact countries, was veru difficult. -- Were they able to engage in free expression? --- In the sense of writing stuff critical of the government and getting it distributed other than as samizadat? No.
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Was it even more democratic (and please no long winded discussions about bourgeois democracy...I am not arguing that people should have the "right" to privately own the means of production)
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More democratic than what? Great Britain? Tsarist Russia?
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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