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That seems a best a very bad caricature of what happened in the Soviet Union. What's happening in Communist China now?
by soperj 13y ago
That seems a best a very bad caricature of what happened in the Soviet Union. What's happening in Communist China now?
- ahomescu1 13y agoWhat makes you say it's a "very bad caricature"? All the stories I've read and heard (from my relatives and friends in Romania) paint a very bleak picture of what life was like then. I was 4 years old in '89, but I heard a lot form my parents. Essentially they were prisoners in their own country, and the higher layers of the party practically owned all of it.
- soperj 13y agoLife may have been bleak, but that's not what you were saying. You're taking anecdotes from one part of the Soviet Union and applying it to the whole thing. Would you say that Russians are immeasurably better off now than during Communism?
- ahomescu1 13y agoCan't speak about Russia, but other countries are much better off. Poland and Estonia come to mind right now. Also, I haven't heard any contradicting anecdotes from other parts of the Communist bloc. Life seems to have been mostly the same everywhere.
- ahomescu1 13y agoAfter thinking about it, I feel like the comparison to China deserves a discussion. China moved away from pure communism a long time ago, and basically implemented a form of capitalism-on-communism. They're now arguably the most dog-eat-dog capitalist country in the world, very far from a worker's paradise that communism is supposed to be. A more fair comparison would be to North Korea. They're still old-school communist, and really not doing well.
- soperj 13y agoAnd the US isn't purely capitalistic either; public police/fire dept/sewer, has semi public health care in medicare.