How Capitalism Destroyed Russia

Comments · 9.4K

• UB

  @uberfeel · 2 years ago

  My colleague is from Russia, when ever we talk about life in the 90&apos;s he physically looks disturbed because both of his parents were engineers during the soviet union and when it collapsed they lost their job in 1992. His parents had to sell almost all of their belongings so their 4 children don&apos;t starve. His family moved here in Spain, in the late 90&apos;s. <br><br>He told me there was a old joke during that time and it goes &quot;What did capitalism accomplished in 1 year, what communism couldn&apos;t do in 80 years? It made communism look good&quot;

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• AN

  @Andronikos144 · 1 year ago (edited)

  I&apos;m from Georgia. Renowned as one of the richest and most prosperous of all the Soviet republics, also as the birthplace of Stalin himself, Georgia experienced an insane growth during the Soviet times, going from a mostly illiterate periphery of the Russian empire to an industrial and cultural powerhouse, the place where the first Su-25 was built and the iconic Kolkhida Kaz truck factory was located. Not only was Georgia pivotal to the USSR, but also, by that point, USSR was pivotal to <i>Georgia.</i> When the USSR collapsed, market immediately crashed and the nation erupted into a three-way civil war with Georgian civil war, Georgian-Abkhaz war and Georgian-Ossetian war all going on at the same time. A patriotic nationalist government took over, which did have decent promise, but it was immediately overtheown by a pro-Russian high-ranking ex-Soviet official, Shevardnadze (who did partake a lot in the union&apos;s collapse by the way), and his military Junta. The 90s was the most horrible time for Georgian nation since probably the <i>TIMURID INVASIONS,</i> we were practically thrown back decades in terms of progress, there was no running water or electricity, the streets were taken over by the most disgusting of mentalities, suppressed by the USSR but showing their ugly heads during the worst time, Shevardnadze&apos;s Junta — paramilitary &apos;&apos;Mkehdrion&apos;&apos; became unsupressed outlaws who would frequently rob, rape and even kill civilians and businesses alike <i>(Like that one time when my the chemical plant my grandfather works in got looted while staff was held at gunpoint),</i> and that&apos;s just the TIP OF THE ICEBERG. God forbid anybody to be born or raised during that time, but my <i>(and everybody else&apos;s)</i> parents were unfortunate enough to have suffered through it, and according to them, and most sane people from that generation really, it was actual dystopia. I am glad that I only got to know of this from my family&apos;s life retellings, because frankly, I probably wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve survived it a sane being. And to think that this absolute shell of a country was at one point one of the most prosperous places in the world&apos;s second largest economy. All the phenomenal scientists, artists and works of art this nation has made during the Soviet times, all the movies, animations and pieces of architecture, and now look at us, we can barely form a functioning society, even after 35 years of presumed progress!<br>I&apos;m glad you made such a video, it&apos;s rare to see people talking about the real, personal-level effects the 90s entailed for most of the second-world countries.

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• HU

  @Humanistic_ · 1 year ago

  I remember deducing (early on in my studying Marxism) that the stereotype that Russians love to drink vodka came from normalization of this shock therapy period. Many Russians turned to alcoholism to cope with the turmoil

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• ОЛ

  @ОлегШелухин-ь8э · 2 years ago

  Ого! От иностранца я такого анализа не ожидал.

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• EM

  @Emelia39 · 3 years ago

  My dad studies Russian history and lived in the USSR during the 70s. He came back right after shock capitalism was in full force. He said one of the saddest things he saw was old women who’d lived through famines, WWII etc. who got cheated out of their pensions at the last moment selling bread on the subway at midnight in the middle of winter.

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• HE

  @hehehehehehheehhe · 3 years ago

  As a Russian, everything you say in this video essay is so on-point, well-researched and non-superficial mainstream info it&apos;s kind of scary considering you&apos;re not an inhabitant of ex-ussr haha. Kudos man 🫡

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• KA

  @kanadop473 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I&apos;m from Kazakhstan, born in the late 80s, I&apos;m afraid to watch this video because I&apos;ll get re-traumatized. The 90s were horrible horrible time, we barely survived, so many people quietly died, some from hunger, others from despair, alcoholism, drug addiction, murdered by bandits and so on. I freeze from pain when I think about that time and what our people were subjected to, including my parents.

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• EM

  @emiliaerle6030 · 2 years ago

  A &quot;shock therapy&quot; - a neat name for accumulation by dispossession, which is a neat name for stealing

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• CO

  @copper4842 · 3 years ago

  When we were taught Russian history in school (I&apos;m Canadian btw) they start in the late 1800s and carry on to the dissolution of the USSR. There is nothing covered after that. I forgive the textbook for not having more, it was years out of date and printed in the early 90s. I&apos;m pretty sure the curriculum hadn&apos;t been updated since either, which is disappointing. Nothing we were taught about Russia covers these years and it&apos;s very much a blind spot in my understanding of the world.

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• JA

  @jamesdavis727 · 3 years ago (edited)

  I lived in Moscow in this time period. It did indeed happen very quickly. One thing I never forgot was the puzzlement of the &apos;True Believers&apos; who really thought we are building Socialism for a better tomoro. Then it was suddenly all about money. They walked around stunned for a couple of years, then just went for the money.<br>Overall, it was a fairly horrible period and I try not to think about it.<br>I honestly believe I was the only non-Russian on the planet to be standing on Red Square when they hauled down the Soviet flag for the last time in history. The square was barren, dark and cold. Just me and some dude trying to sell souvenir cups to nobody (probably KGB).

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• KU

  @kurt1948 · 3 years ago

  I was born in 1948. I felt a vague sense of alarm when the Soviet Union dissolved. I remember the day in the late 1990s I was considering getting rid of my books about the Soviet Union and Communism. &nbsp;This Second Thought gives me a language to think about events.

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• PR

  @profilore · 3 years ago

  I was born in Russia in 94. My family used to be fairly well-off before the dissolution of ussr, &nbsp;at least enough to live comfortably and provide for my parents once they got married. My mom got a free apartment provided by the government for working on railroads. My dad had a car, my grandfather had a nice apartment in the very center of the city (not Moscow), a dacha (a summer house with a bit of land), a personal fishing boat, an amazing for the time collection of photo cameras, and a shit ton of other useful stuff, and had a decent savings account. By decent i mean enough that i could buy an apartment right now for what it was worth, and i&apos;d have enough for whatever work it needs, and maybe a used car too. My dad studied in Moscow to become an engineer, &nbsp;and was making decent money too.<br><br>Guess what happened next? A few years before i was born inflation skyrocketed so much that all my grandparent&apos;s money poof-ed out of existence and my whole family almost starved. My mom and dad couldn&apos;t take me to go visit mom&apos;s side of the family until i was almost four years old because there was no car and travel became a nightmare. And then of course the roads were not being maintained for literally years, so we crashed our new car and i lost my mom to a ditch 300km from her hometown.<br><br>My entire childhood i never had any clothes of my own - everything came from kind neighbors and distant family. My grandmother raised me, and she always had food on the table, but i distinctly remember not being allowed to buy anything in stores aside from milk and bread, &nbsp;and very very occasionally a chupa-chups. I hated myself for forcing my dad to work three jobs just to be able to buy and make livable another apartment to take me in again, &nbsp;and grew up to have a constant feeling of intruding on other people, always afraid of taking more then was acceptable in my mind. <br><br><br>Rn im an adult married woman, but we &nbsp;still live in my mom&apos;s apartment and there is no way my husband and i could make enough to buy another property, not even if we double both incomes. We can barely scrape by without going too badly in debt just from groceries and necessities, and that&apos;s only because by last grandma gives me half of her veteran pension in exchange of me taking care of her health, working in her home and cooking. Oh, and we don&apos;t qualify as poor.<br><br>I&apos;m fully expecting that if i have kids they will have to learn to live off the land and make a fire by rubbing sticks together.<br><br>I&apos;m not saying everyone is this bad off, &nbsp;but my story is not out of the norm here.

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