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Vacations in the Soviet Union

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Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#411

Post by gdy »

badpun wrote: post #312
gdy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just sovietophobic fiction. I remember the slogan "Family is the unit of society" and childless people had to pay a special tax. Also infidelity in marriage was frowned upon and could negatively affect the career.

> That's just sovietophobic fiction. From what I've read, the dismantling of families was really implemented in the 1920s and perhaps 1930s. That's when a kid [1] who ratted on his own father (likely sent him to Gulags) was glorified as a huge Hero of Socialism. After that period though, Communism was gradually less about implementing its distopian ideology and more about naked power of people on top, so the destruct…

Civil wars split families, yes.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#412

Post by mannerheim »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #410
mannerheim wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IOW nothing I said was wrong.

> Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten. That's the bailey, the wide-ranging generalization about China as dystopian hellhole that you want to make. When you get pushback, you retreat to the defensible motte of: Well, there were some lockdowns for limited time periods in some pla…

And? Was there anything I said that was strictly wrong?

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#413

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

mannerheim wrote: post #412
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe you should have gone to China last year or the year before to enjoy the authentic Chinese experience of living in a cage without food because grocery shopping was verboten. That's the bailey, the wide-ranging generalization about China as dystopian hellhole that you want to make. When you get pushback, you retreat to the defensible motte of: Well, there were some lockdowns for limited time periods in some pla…

And? Was there anything I said that was strictly wrong?

Yes. The "authentic Chinese experience" is not living in a cage without food. The "authentic Chinese experience" is living in a massive, bustling city with great cuisine, terrible traffic jams and awesome public transit.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#414

Post by mannerheim »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #413
mannerheim wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And? Was there anything I said that was strictly wrong?

Yes. The "authentic Chinese experience" is not living in a cage without food. The "authentic Chinese experience" is living in a massive, bustling city with great cuisine, terrible traffic jams and awesome public transit.

Ah, the videos of Shanghai I saw on Weibo last year must have been part of a CIA psyop, then.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#415

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

mannerheim wrote: post #414
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. The "authentic Chinese experience" is not living in a cage without food. The "authentic Chinese experience" is living in a massive, bustling city with great cuisine, terrible traffic jams and awesome public transit.

Ah, the videos of Shanghai I saw on Weibo last year must have been part of a CIA psyop, then.

That's an extreme outlier within China, and it was for a limited period of time. People were not kept in cages: they lived in their apartments. It was difficult to order food at first, but people managed, and the initial supply problems were alleviated.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#416

Post by mannerheim »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #415
mannerheim wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, the videos of Shanghai I saw on Weibo last year must have been part of a CIA psyop, then.

That's an extreme outlier within China, and it was for a limited period of time. People were not kept in cages: they lived in their apartments. It was difficult to order food at first, but people managed, and the initial supply problems were alleviated.

Truly their experience must have been an inauthentic one, then.

> People were not kept in cages

What a hilarious nitpick at an obvious turn of phrase. Do you think I actually meant to say people were literally kept in little cells with bars?

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#417

Post by lnsru »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #382
lnsru wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why soviet union had communism written on the facade and caste system inside. Party members had every luxury westerners had. And stupid dissidents silently disappeared to some far far away places behind Arctic circle.

I wouldn't say they had everything, but they surely had more. It's basically like in 1984. If nobody has chocolate and you have a little, you already feel richer.

I am king if I have original Levi’s jeans :-)

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#418

Post by kfrzcode »

dubcanada wrote: post #170
kfrzcode wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't think the ideology of communism is the issue, on paper it's a very sound ideal. The problem is when greed/other human attributes gets involved it stops working. As with any of them, it's all about the people and how they implement it. I don't think capitalism sounds good at all on paper, but has worked for quite a while, mostly due to some degree of working standards and unions. Remember most of these haven't…

Also, ideology is great but implementation is what actually matters.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#419

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

mannerheim wrote: post #416
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extreme outlier within China, and it was for a limited period of time. People were not kept in cages: they lived in their apartments. It was difficult to order food at first, but people managed, and the initial supply problems were alleviated.

Truly their experience must have been an inauthentic one, then. > People were not kept in cages What a hilarious nitpick at an obvious turn of phrase. Do you think I actually meant to say people were literally kept in little cells with bars?

Everything you said was ridiculous hyperbole. That's not a "nitpick." You took the most extreme thing that ever happened anywhere in China during the pandemic, wildly exaggerated it, and then presented it as normal life in China.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#420

Post by mannerheim »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #419
mannerheim wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly their experience must have been an inauthentic one, then. > People were not kept in cages What a hilarious nitpick at an obvious turn of phrase. Do you think I actually meant to say people were literally kept in little cells with bars?

Everything you said was ridiculous hyperbole. That's not a "nitpick." You took the most extreme thing that ever happened anywhere in China during the pandemic, wildly exaggerated it, and then presented it as normal life in China.

I said it was the authentic Chinese experience. Would you say the twenty some million denizens of Shanghai had an inauthentic experience?
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