100 years since the Russian Revolution

[Goat Boy]

If you have an hour to spare - this is the first part (of three). Really enjoyable BBC series.

I enjoyed that and will watch the other ones too.

I thought it tried to squeeze a lot into one hour but I love seeing the old footage etc

Still looks grimmer than a long weekend in Cumbernauld mind

There are only three. They're all excellent, but the one on Romania is especially gripping. Ceaucescu was a monster but it's fascinating to see how quickly and how dramatically things turned against him.

I’m pretty ignorant about this period and these countries.

It’s strange watching some of the footage because I was old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin wall but I wasn’t old enough to realise what was going on and how momentous this was.

Watching the Czech one last night made me a bit emotional. The poor woman reading out the letter from her mother who was executed. Powerful stuff. The fucking invasion, I mean imagine living though that. And the woman who sang the song to the crowd at the end. Just to think what these people went through, you know? That Plastic People band sound terrible mind. I'm with the state on that one. Aren't the Velvets big over there?

And a lot of them seem to think it was pretty good back then which you can understand. But then you think what the state was doing and the lack of freedom and surveillance etc and part of me thinks “yeah, it was alright for you I guess but what about the poor bastards who were sent to Russia or murdered”. I would expect more outrage perhaps but then if their life was alright then should I? People on the inside see these things differently and I guess folks like myself see it from a national perspective and judge accordingly.

[KeithPratt]

Roger Scruton was involved in the setting up of a secret university in Prague back in the early 80s.

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/books/ro ... lationship

“It had a very big impact on me. As a convinced conservative, I didn’t have any temptation to think anything but negatively of socialism in general and communism in particular. But I hadn’t ever envisaged to myself what it meant psychically, what it meant in the individual psyche of the individual person, and the way in which it invaded and poisoned relations between people. That was an absolute revelation to me, to see this poison around me and the difficulty of doing what Havel recommended, which was ‘living in truth’.”

[naughty boy]

Watching the Czech one last night made me a bit emotional. The poor woman reading out the letter from her mother who was executed. Powerful stuff. The fucking invasion, I mean imagine living though that. And the woman who sang the song to the crowd at the end.

Oh, Christ, that really got to me. Kubišová. She was wonderful.

That Plastic People band sound terrible mind. I'm with the state on that one.

They did some great stuff, really unique. They still play regularly and the remaining members look absolutely ancient. One of them tried to chat up my ex in a pub 10 years ago!

This is the classic album but you're not going to like it if you just listen to the first few minutes. It's one of those things you have to play every night for a week - and then you'll love it.

And a lot of them seem to think it was pretty good back then which you can understand.

When I speak to Czechs and Hungarians they tend to say that. You'd get a different opinion from many Russians, no doubt. And as I said earlier, it depends on which period you're looking at. Budapest was relatively liberal from the mid-80s, they could fuck off to Austria, they had McDonald's, etc. etc.

It's just poncey Liberals like ourselves who wring our hands and say 'oh how terrible' while they just shrug their shoulders and say 'we got on with it'.

[Robert]

It's just poncey Liberals like ourselves who wring our hands and say 'oh how terrible' while they just shrug their shoulders and say 'we got on with it'.

Yes exactly that. There was a sense of being all in it together and making the most of it. Grocery shops were half empty and people dealt with that by going to their neighbours to see if they could swap some salt for sugar or potatoes for band aids.

It is not dissimilar from what you hear from people who lived through the 2nd world war here, there was some serious shit going on but the external enemy caused a natural bonding between the natives.

[naughty boy]

As long as your neighbour wasn't spying on you!

[Goat Boy]

When I speak to Czechs and Hungarians they tend to say that. You'd get a different opinion from many Russians, no doubt. And as I said earlier, it depends on which period you're looking at. Budapest was relatively liberal from the mid-80s, they could fuck off to Austria, they had McDonald's, etc. etc.

It's just poncey Liberals like ourselves who wring our hands and say 'oh how terrible' while they just shrug their shoulders and say 'we got on with it'.

People can put up with a lot of shit if that’s all they know of course.

It reminds me when I’ve gone on holiday to places like India and left wing friends will say shit about holidaying in other peoples misery, that sorta thing and I turn round and say, “well actually I don’t think they are miserable”. I mean life is harder than here but people laugh, they get drunk, they do their thing. They just get on with it. There's something patronising in assuming that they are all living miserable existences, you know?

People are tough.

[KeithPratt]

Well, to a certain extent, after a while life is "normalised" and you accept what is around you.

The reality I guess for most Eastern Europeans is that, with maybe the exception of the Czechs, some Hungarians and some Poles, they lived pretty brutal lives before the Soviet occupation, so it is arguable if there was any real difference in terms of everyday life.

But I didn't see anyone yearning to have the Soviets and Communist rule back after the left.

[Goat Boy]

George Galloway?

[Deebank]

But I didn't see anyone yearning to have the Soviets and Communist rule back after the left.

I've seen plenty of old Russians on TV saying just that - isn't that what we've all just been saying?

I suppose there's a lot to be said for that level of predictability and stability (even if it did turn ultimately out to be an illusion).

[Robert]

As long as your neighbour wasn't spying on you!

Sure that happened too, but not everywhere in the same measure. It was not like Ukraine or the Baltics had something similar to DDR's Stasi.
Some of the Soviet satelites were far worse than Russia itself. Romania, Albania, DDR.

[Robert]

But I didn't see anyone yearning to have the Soviets and Communist rule back after the left.

I've seen plenty of old Russians on TV saying just that - isn't that what we've all just been saying?

I suppose there's a lot to be said for that level of predictability and stability (even if it did turn ultimately out to be an illusion).

Some people that lived though it will say that but I think it depends on their position in society. People born after perestroika are unlikely to say that. But as time passed also older generations are increasingly unlikely to long back for it, but again, it depends on what place they build themselves in society.

[Deebank]

But I didn't see anyone yearning to have the Soviets and Communist rule back after the left.

I've seen plenty of old Russians on TV saying just that - isn't that what we've all just been saying?

I suppose there's a lot to be said for that level of predictability and stability (even if it did turn ultimately out to be an illusion).

Some people that lived though it will say that but I think it depends on their position in society. People born after perestroika are unlikely to say that. But as time passed also older generations are increasingly unlikely to long back for it, but again, it depends on what place they build themselves in society.

I have this image of WW2 veterans with their medals saying it.
Perhaps they were treated as a golden generation?

[Robert]

I've seen plenty of old Russians on TV saying just that - isn't that what we've all just been saying?

I suppose there's a lot to be said for that level of predictability and stability (even if it did turn ultimately out to be an illusion).

Some people that lived though it will say that but I think it depends on their position in society. People born after perestroika are unlikely to say that. But as time passed also older generations are increasingly unlikely to long back for it, but again, it depends on what place they build themselves in society.

I have this image of WW2 veterans with their medals saying it.
Perhaps they were treated as a golden generation?

I wouldn't be surprised. They will be on a fixed retirement pension while their surroundings have been catapulted into a full fledged capitalist economy. Before perestroika, especially people working for the government, like army staff, would be provided an apartment at a small cost.
Those days are gone now. Typically a retirement payment would be about 200 to 300 euro. There is just no way you could rent anything vaguely decent for that in the bigger cities. Lucky for a lot of people, lots of people were given the chance to buy the apartment they had sofar been renting at a low price. I think that was early to mid nineties.

[copehead]

But the idea that Britain's industrialization wasn't equally state driven is a little naïve, it wasn't a natural process that just happened.

They just didn't have a blueprint like the Russians did to allow them to accomplish it in a generation

It wasn't state driven in the same manner as Russia or China because it was happening all around them and they weren't aware of being "industrialised" or "modernised".

We are aware obviously of the fact that we are in the middle of an even more significant information technology revolution, and there are by-products and causes of what is happening that we can only react to. Most changes in societies and culture are essentially by-products rather than being enacted through planning.

My point is that through planning the Soviets and the Chinese murdered tens of millions of people. Their deaths were not a by-product; they were liquidated for a reason.

I’m not really sure I can see that much of a difference other than in time scale and that leading to the process becoming rather mote obvious, for instance I cannot see any real difference between a Soviet Gulag and British transportation

The reasons were the same, pour encourage les autres

I don’t think we have any moral high ground here and as our ancestors were more likely to have the ones oppressed rather than the oppressors in the main I am not sure why we would be desperate to find one

[mission]

Every now and then I trawl through this tumblr of contemporary Russia and my mind is completely fucking blown.

http://miloserdie.tumblr.com

Do not read while drinking; you will fucking choke.