Tel-Chai Nation

The left-wing Christian Science Monitor (via Hot Air Headlines) reports that in Russia, nearly 60 percent regret the USSR's demise:

Older Russians invariably recall the Soviet era as a time of stability and social security, if not prosperity, and feel they have suffered unfairly from the social turmoil and repeated economic crises of the past two decades.

“You could buy a loaf of bread for 16 kopeks (cents), and that was a stable price for many, many years,” says Alevtina Dimitrieva, a Moscow pensioner. “Now the price is different every day. The authorities promise to raise our pensions, but even when that happens, rising prices gobble up the increase immediately.”

Lack of money has blocked most pensioners from taking advantage of the expansion of personal freedoms, economic opportunity, and social mobility that many younger Russians began to enjoy in the wake of the Soviet collapse.

Well, they needn't worry too much, now that the Soviet structure has been resurrected under Putin and Medvedev. Russian society today has many old people in it, as their own birthrate declines, and also, lest we forget, as many as 25 million Muslims, and the socialist structure could one day become even worse with them around.

It's sad how some things have failed to change in all this time, and free economy never really succeeded in gaining a foothold in Russia, since the outgrowths of the commies were waiting right around the corner to retake the control they'd lost, and that, alas, was not for long.

Labels: Moonbattery, Russia