Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

A bus with Stalin's portrait servicing route 187-К in Saint Petersburg in May 2010

Nostalgia for the Soviet Union[1] (Russian: Ностальгия по СССР) or Soviet nostalgia[2][3] is a social phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet era, whether its politics, its society, its culture, or simply its aesthetics. Such nostalgia is observed among people in Russia and the other post-Soviet states, as well as persons born in the Soviet Union but long since living abroad.

In 2004 a television channel Nostalgiya stylized with a hammer and sickle was launched in Russia.

Reasons

According to polls, what is missed most about the former Soviet Union was its shared economic system, which provided a modicum of financial stability. Neoliberal economic reforms after the fall of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc resulted in harsh living standards for the general population. Policies associated with privatization allowed of the country's economy to fall in the hands of a newly established business oligarchy. The sense of belonging to a great superpower was a secondary reason for the nostalgia; many felt humiliated and betrayed by their experiences throughout the 1990s and blamed the upheaval on advisors from Western powers, especially as NATO moved closer into Russia's sphere of influence.[4]

According to Dr. Kristen R. Ghodsee, a researcher on post-communist nostalgia in Eastern Europe:

"Only by examining how the quotidian aspects of daily life were affected by great social, political and economic changes can we make sense of the desire for this collectively imagined, more egalitarian past. Nobody wants to revive 20th century totalitarianism. But nostalgia for communism has become a common language through which ordinary men and women express disappointment with the shortcomings of parliamentary democracy and neoliberal capitalism today."[5]

See also

Communist nostalgia in Europe

References

  1. ↑ Why Russia Backs The Eurasian Union. Business Insider (from The Economist). August 22, 2014.
  2. ↑ Nikitin, V. Putin is exploiting the legacy of the Soviet Union to further Russia's ends in Ukraine. The Independent. March 5, 2014.
  3. ↑ Taylor, A. Calls for a return to ‘Stalingrad’ name test the limits of Putin’s Soviet nostalgia. Washington Post. June 9, 2014
  4. ↑ Why do so many people miss the Soviet Union? The Washington Post. December 21, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Dr. Kristen Ghodsee, Bowdoin College - Nostalgia for Communism".

Further reading

  • Satter, D. It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past. Yale University Press. New Haven, 2012. ISBN 0300111452.
  • Boffa, G. "From the USSR to Russia. History of unfinished crisis. 1964—1994"
  • Mydans, S. 20 Years After Soviet Fall, Some Look Back Longingly. New York Times. August 18, 2011
  • Weir, F. Why nearly 60 percent of Russians 'deeply regret' the USSR's demise. The Christian Science Monitor. December 23, 2009.
  • Houslohner, A. Young Russians never knew the Soviet Union, but they hope to recapture days of its empire. Washington Post. June 10, 2014
  • Weir, F. Maybe the Soviets weren't so bad? Russian nostalgia for USSR on the rise. The Christian Science Monitor. January 29, 2016.
  • Communist nostalgia in Eastern Europe: longing for the past. openDemocracy. November 10, 2015
  • Ghodsee, Kristen R. Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. Duke University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0822369493.

News

Internet societies

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