[PEN-L:33700] Re: Majority of Russians Prefer Soviet Union

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Melvin wrote:

> At least half of the one-third that said "the fall
> of Communism was inevitable," were Trotskyites. One
> half of the one-third were degenerate bureaucrats,
> whose social position allowed them to live off the
> labor of the Soviet working class and the rest were
> composed of the various strata in society.

Well Melvin!

When I was a graduate student, majority of graduate students in
my math department were either from China or from Eastern Europe
and there were many from the former USSR as well. And I had never
heard anything positive from any of those friends about their
experiences in China or former USSR, irrespective of the stratum
they came from. The situation may be different now, as my
graduate student days ended in the early 1990s but later, I
mingled together with many Russian Jews until about last year.
Indeed, almost all of my recent "business partners" were Russian
Jews, like Yevgeny, Sasha and Dimitry, and none of them were
counter-revolutionaries in any sense of the word. They just did
not care and after all the mandatory courses on Marx that they
had to take as kids, they find the topic "funny" to say the
least. Indeed, one of them, Dimitry, admired Ayn Rand and viewed
me as a weird one but I don't feel angry at him.

Maybe, he had a reason.

I am sure those Russians who now prefer the former USSR have
reasons too.

Best,
Sabri