Thread: person who spent half of his life in a socialist paradise

A story by a person who spent half of his life in a socialist paradise

Forward to the Past

By Leon Weinstein
Thursday, October 22, 2009

I was born in the Soviet Union, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, majestic St Petersburg. I knew it was majestic because all the history and guide books were telling the same thing – that St Petersburg is a jewel of the world, it is beautiful beyond imagination and has no comparison anywhere.

My grandfather was telling me about the city as well. How beautiful it was when he came into it in after graduation from the law school in 1916 to practice law. I believed him more than all the history books combined.
In fact, St Petersburg of my youth was a gray, quite boring and enormously dirty city. All it’s palaces, sculptures and other wonders were covered by a thick layers of dust and corrosion. We lived in a historical center of the city and my grandfather (in Russian you call your grandfather for short “Dedaâ€

[quote]The system we are offered now by Barack Obama called socialism. It is not new, actually it is quite old and quite proven time after time to be bad to us the people. So I am hoping for the best while repeating an old Chinese proverb “God forbid to be born at the time of major changes!â€

Russia did have entrepreneurship in the late 19th century--probably due to the old Russian saying that "God is high and the tsar is far away." That all ended in 1917 with the Soviet revolution. Later Gorbachev started relaxing the communism and Yeltsin let capitalism get out of hand. A business magazine I was reading on Finnair in 1996 said more than 40 percent of the businesses were owned by the Russian mafia. Then in came Putin whose first major crackdown was Yukos Oil, throwing the founder into prison and nationalizing the company.
The history and mindset of the US and Russia are two completely different tangents. We are free to go anywhere in this world--I could even dash off to SC if I wanted, not asking permission of anyone. But travel within the USSR was only granted to the uber-loyal party members. Application to a good university was also dependent on your party record.
These people learned from an early age to steal everything they could, and you expected to get a bonus because you showed up to work--not that you did anything to deserve it.
There is a huge difference between socialism and out-right communism, where the government owns every breath you take.
We are not going there.