4 ms·

I'm in a post-sov country that is strongly supporting Ukraine publicly and where no one is fearing persecution or bullying for taking in refugees. Nevertheless,

I'm in a post-sov country that is strongly supporting Ukraine publicly and where no one is fearing persecution or bullying for taking in refugees. Nevertheless, there are always (33 years and counting) vocal minority voices that parrot Russian narratives. I strongly believe there are several key factors to this: a similar cultural experience and societal identity for people over 50[1] and a strong influence stemming from the combination of only knowing Russian as their single foreign language and the prevalence of Russian TV channels in the 90s/00s as well as Russian YouTube channels more recently. The 90s were hard in post-soviet countries, many people got disillusioned, some never really got back on their feet. In terms of misremembering the occupation: cognitive biases and flaws[2], nostalgia, regressively conservative, hyper nationalistic, as well as anti-US/Western sentiments, etc. are all abused by Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Some narratives are really textbook political myths[3] about the Savior, the Golden Age (I guess the US got a real taste of this one with the MAGA movement). Much like a significant number of Trump supporters in the US, supporters or Russia in my country are more likely to believe in chemtrails, sovereign citizen claims, global pedophile conspiracies, anti-LGBTQ narratives, etc. 1- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus 2- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect 3- http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/pas/pas201201/pas2012-08.pdf http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/pas/pas201201/pas2012-08.pdf

ivan_gammel 4y ago
> In terms of misremembering the occupation By using the word „misremembering“ you only show the misunderstanding of real experiences of people which lived in that period. They may have experienced oppression, but it could be subtle and perceived very differently. Those people are not necessary living better now, often on the contrary. Transition to capitalism has left many behind, and being old, poor and misunderstood is certainly felt worse today than being young and not being able to buy American jeans back then. Calling it a false memory is intellectual snobbery.

ivan_gammel 4y ago

> In terms of misremembering the occupation By using the word „misremembering“ you only show the misunderstanding of real experiences of people which lived in that period. They may have experienced oppression, but it could be subtle and perceived very differently. Those people are not necessary living better now, often on the contrary. Transition to capitalism has left many behind, and being old, poor and misunderstood is certainly felt worse today than being young and not being able to buy American jeans back then. Calling it a false memory is intellectual snobbery.