Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
People did have a massive swing in opinion. I’m aware that dissolution was not an option, but your claim that people didn’t change their opinion in light of the immense political turmoil between that vote and the second vote requires more evidence than “people don’t change their minds that quickly.” Rather, to the contrary, large shifts in opinion do happen more swiftly than gradually.
Further, the fact that the large majority regret the fall of the soviet union is relevant in showing that it clearly wasn’t as simple as saying everyone hated living in the soviet union, but realized how good they had it afterwards. Polling is often inconsistent not because of bad polling, but political instability caused by the immense fuckery of capitalism and imperialism in these countries, and forces like NATO.
Protests were already widespread in the Union. Several member states had already declared nominal independence from Moscow. Gorbachev was doing damage control and trying his best to keep the Union from fracturing further. Elections in member republics saw huge rises in popularity for noncommunist parties.
The referendum was an attempt to gain the political momentum required for reform, in an ultimate effort to keep the Union together. It was essentially a kind of propaganda attempt to display large support for the reformed Union, made possible because dissolution was not on the ballot.
There was widespread civil discontent before the referendum. Elections saw noncommunists rise to power and several member states declared independence. Then I am somehow to believe that the population first swung all the way back to “actually the Soviet Union is great and we don’t want to leave it” and back to “we should leave the Soviet Union” in a matter of mere months? That is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, which you don’t have. The truth is far simpler: at every point once the civil unrest started, the population voted in favour of less Soviet Union and for more independence, and not the other way around.
My point regarding the phrasing of post-Soviet polling is that the wording drastically changes the outcome. Sure, people aren’t happy about how the 90s turned out and they feel they’re not part of a superpower anymore. They’re not happy with being screwed over by western nations. They say those things were better under the Soviet Union. But ask them if they would go back to such a Union, and suddenly support evaporates. And in several former member states even the first few questions don’t find much Soviet sympathies (eg the Baltics). They want to live in a stronger nation, akin to the Soviet Union, but they do not want to go back to what once was. It isn’t a simple case of “boy we sure had it good”, that does a huge disservice to the diverse and complicated opinions of the Union.
Gorbachev had also implemented Perestroika, and his policy of Glasnost had weakened the soviet system. The seeds for radical change for the worse and instability were already there. My point isn’t that there was 0 discontent and it flipped to 100% discontent, but that people, despite the various nationalist movements in some of the member-states, overall did support the socialist project up to the end. After the vote, there was the hardliner coup, dramatic sharpening of contradictions, and the internal, anti-democratic dissolution by Yeltsin claiming legitimacy from the rising nationalist movements.
You have no evidence supporting your claims other than the idea that there was some discontent, which I never denied, and that people ultimately lost faith in the stabilty of the soviet union right at the end itself. Further, support for returning to socialism doesn’t simply “evaporate,” and again, it depends highly on the political fuckery in the region, the purging of communists by westerners, and the sheer devastation these countries went through. Trying to chalk it all up to simple pride in a stronger nation instead of the actual material benefits is an extraordinary claim.
Russia and Belarus, for example, are seeing rising waves of socialist sympathy among the populace. The CPRF is rising rapidly, and people fundamentally feel that capitalism should not last any longer. This represents the large majority of the post-soviet population.
CPRF support rising rapidly? You must live in a fantasy world. Their electoral results have rarely been worse, their 2024 presidential election candidate receiving a mere 4% of the vote (a record low for the party).
They recieved 63,000 new members over 4 years
The CPRF has restored ties with communist parties around the world
Stalin’s popularity in Russia in general is rising dramatically, to the point of being reported in the west
And much more. At the end of the day, the Russian Federation is a bourgeois dictstorship, so it isn’t going to just accept rising communist sympathies at a state level. The nationalists have a balancing act to play, trying to take advantage of rising soviet smpathies without legitimizing socialism.
Party membership is a bad indicator for national popularity, as evidenced by the historically bad election result that followed the first article you linked.
The second article does not have anything to do with the popularity of the party.
The third article contradicts the sentiment you express in your own paragraph; you suggest the Russian government is taking advantage of rising Soviet sympathies, as if it’s “just happening”. But as your article explains, those Soviet sympathies are being expressly fuelled and created by the Russian government, as part of their propaganda efforts to promote the great patriotic war (which Putin now claims they’re in another one of course, fighting the west). It’s artificial, not natural.
A rise in party membership in the CPRF does indeed suggest that they are growing, and further establishing legitimacy. National election results in war-time aren’t a major indicator of popularity of the CPRF. Further, no, the nationalists are not creating soviet sympathies, but trying to take advantage of them. Capitalism has been devestating for Russia, and people yearn for the old days when their needs were better taken care of. The nationalists are appealing to that and trying to turn it into Russian pride.
The idea that the nationalists are just beaming sympathies to the heads of the citizenry, rather than the citizenry longing for a working system after the devastation of cspitalism and the nationalists are trying to take advantage of that, is absurd. That’s not how propaganda works, you have to identify actually felt beliefs and leverage them.
If you look at just about any country anywhere, you’ll find that party membership does not really correlate with election success, but rather with more radical beliefs or activism. The national election results of the CPRF had been on a downward trend well before the war broke out as well. Their membership may have increased, but electorally they lost about 70% support. Even in wartime that’s hard to ignore.
I also don’t think you’ve been paying attention to what the propaganda efforts of the Kremlin have been putting out. As a result, you have cause and effect reversed. They’ve been boosting national pride through the “great history of Russia”, which inevitably means highlighting the Soviet Union and the great patriotic war. But the Soviet sympathies created through it are a side-effect of this.
This also explains why polling suggests that sympathies for the Soviet Union mostly (not fully) consist of cultural and military pride. Yet sympathies for the Soviet economic system is low in comparison. It’s also heavily influenced by current geopolitics. Ukraine used to be the most pro-communist member state, but these days the majority no longer regrets its dissolution. In East-Germany, there’s a significant chunk of people who believe life was better in the GDR, yet that effectively translates into nationalist support for parties like the AfD (who of course are fascist, not communist). In Hungary, a large majority believe they were better off under communism than they are now, yet a large majority of 70% supports the move to a market economy. Uzbeks believe the Soviet government better responded to their needs, yet only a tiny minority believe life was actually better in the USSR.
But this is all largely besides the original point, which is that the graphic showing the Soviet referendum results is used in a misleading narrative that suggests people did not want the Soviet Union to dissolve, as that wasn’t on the ballot and subsequent referendum results showed overwhelming support for independence and dissolution. And as election results in former Soviet states prove, support for a return to communism or a more socialist system is fairly low, despite a complicated nostalgia for the Soviet Union in some member states.
Again, you are confusing how propaganda works. Propaganda doesn’t “create” sentiment, it appeals to underlying sentiment. The working classes aren’t morally just, nor gullible, nor intelligent, but instead rational, and therefore generally seek narratives that conform to their felt conditions.
It’s not that I confuse cause for effect, it’s that I go deeper, the cause is actually the devastation in capitalism compared to socialism resulting in rising socialist sentiment, the effect is that the nationalists take notice and are trying to twist it into Russian nationalism, causing a struggle between Russian nationalism and socialist nostalgia playing out in the Russian Federation, the effect of which is large increases in CPRF membership and restoration of soviet monuments and nomenclature. Cause and effect do not exist in a vacuum, but are instead the result of endless spirals. Dialectics at work.
Further, the CPRF supports Russia United against Kiev in the war, and has taken a stance of critical support. The fact that United Russia is doing better electorally right now doesn’t mean communism is falling out of favor, but that communist analysis is rallying around the nationalists in Russia, and partisans aren’t willing to advocate for overtaking the current system at the moment.
Polling does not suggest this, it suggests that the increase in poverty, austerity, sex work, drug abuse, homelessness, and overall devastation of capitalism wasn’t worth it for the broad majority of society. You seek to explain sentiment derived from real, material economic conditions via culture and vibes, when the culture and vibes are a reflection of the economic base. You did it earlier with the idea that the nationalists are creating soviet pride in a vacuum, ignoring economic conditions, and you do it here again.
As for Ukraine, it’s very convenient that you skip over the Banderite coup in 2014 where the nationalists took political power. Ukraine did used to be more pro-communist, especially in the Donbass region, but after the western-backed Euromaidan coup the nationalists took political supremacy and started punishing communists. Same for East Germany, after reunification the communists were punished in show trials and purged, leaving the right-wing West German political force with supremacy. This purge of leftists created a vacuum for far-right populists and nationalists, as capitalist devastation combined with a lack of leftist organizing results in the faf-right having free-reign.
Overall, when we take your convenient framing of trends and insistence on explaining demographic shifts not by real, material conditions but instead by a battle of vibes and ideas alone, we have to question your entire thought process. It’s clear that you view history not as a long process that progresses in spirals, but as static snapshots, and the ideas held by the people not as coming from their real conditions economically but instead as beamed from above, and these failures in analysis are why you come to incorrect conclusions.