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Thank your for your comment. What's interesting is that if you look above you'll see essentially this same type of a comment from another user but it's about the Democratic Party. It's curious that both sides (Democrats and Republicans) associate USSR with their opposition.

Thank you watching and commenting! I love writing and researching history, and I have many such stories in my archives, so I promise to keep making these videos if keep watching them! :)

You're absolutely correct that Mongol evasions played an important. That's definitely another aspect to investigate.

Thank you for you comment, English is not my native tongue either. It's true that Novgorod Republic was way ahead of it's time. However, that period ended with Novgorod conquered by Ivan the Great and Novgorod returning to be ruled once again by a dictator (a czar in this case), did it not?

@elvirabary Thank you for the answer. Yes, Novgorod was conquered, and the age of the Veche system (direct elections) was ended, but the Sobor system remained and became the main one (a meeting of the estates to make decisions) Nevertheless, the Sobor system was also abolished when Peter 1 the Great returned from Europe and started his European-style reforms in Russia (army, economics, management, and yes, politics) Also, in my opinion, 1920 was a chance for the Russian democracy (Lenin dreamed about a social-democratic state of the working people, but Stalin destroyed everything Lenin started) and 1991, when the Post-Stalin system collapsed. Sadly, Yel'stin was just too bad. Most of people, who grew up in the 90s, still think, that democracy = anarchy, poverty etc, mainly because of him. It's like a collective trauma. I hope things will get better after Putin, I just hope.

Great question. Yes, it would be very useful, it would be the same as marrying into royal family in England for example. Possible, but most likely very difficult to do and not for mere mortals. :)

Actually, you're quite right! Georgian republic enjoyed special privileges in Soviet Union, most likely due to Stalin being Georgian and having a soft spot for his birthplace. In Georgia, there were less restriction on private enterprises, such as wine making for example, which resulted in Georgians being wealthier than the average Soviet citizen.

You're welcome!

Leftist, liberals and progressives (reformists) are not the same as the far authoritarian left, the socialists/marxists/communists. These are the true believers, the radicals, the revolutionary. They hate the left more than the right

Excellent and insightful comment, thank you!

❤

Thank you for your comment. I think I mentioned it before, many people (perhaps even myself included) tend to remember more positives than negatives from the past, which makes the past better than it actually was.

​@@elvirabary there's this phrase I kept hearing "Happy Soviet Childhood." I haven't heard it recently but I heard it enough in the past couple of years. Then I think I made it through everybody who could have said it and I didn't hear it anymore. Like someone said lots of people thought that their childhood was happy just because they were children. If things were terrible, they didn't know it. Okay there was that one little kid who stood in the farmer's market and said "Grandpa why don't we get *another* pig?" Oops. He was quickly shushed. Thankfully no one got in trouble. Offhand I know three or four people who lived through the Soviet Union when they were young or in some cases just younger. One of them doesn't speak English and I don't speak Russian so... Not a lot of info there. One of them mostly wants to talk about where Russia is going now and how it's going back. But sometimes he tells us stories. The other one has lots of memorabilia and lots of stories and mostly talks about that. One lives in the US and the other fled Russia two years ago plus a couple months But he did live in the US for 9 years during and after college. It's all fascinating and scary. And So amazing that so many Americans think that the traditional values which Russia talks about are the same traditional values the US believes in. I guess propaganda still works. I still remember Ronald Reagan and his evil empire. He had the guts to say it. I remember Gorbachev and then I stopped watching the news and when I heard about people doing bad things I thought, oh I thought they changed! I guess they changed back. Gradually, like boiling a frog. Wherever you are, stay safe. I had a co-worker in the '80s in Boston who was from Poland and a boy that I liked whose family left there when he was seven. So I started reading books. There were not a lot of books at the library but there were at least three. I wish I could remember what that one in library binding was about or who it was by or anything at all. But it was all so long ago. Recently I found the obituary of my coworker. It was definitely her. I think she was like 30 years older than me when I knew her. Her life story in her obituary was fascinating. All the countries that she lived in before she moved to Boston. Actually she moved to the suburbs but she worked in Boston. It didn't occur to me to ask her anything and also I was too shy. And I think she left by the time she was 13, according to the obituary.

@@elvirabary Not really. I experienced a bit of the old regime in Eastern Germany, and the question it all comes down to is what a person really wanted out of life. The German reunion pretty much immediately decreased a lot of people's standard of living, and introduced new worries to their lifes. Sure, there was more opportunity now, too, but if you belonged to the group of people who felt they had made it all work for themselves before and now were laid off, you didn't care much for that. Life may not have been great under communism, but it sure was easier. The rules were clear, and when you played the game as the authorities wanted it, life didn't have a lot of uncertainties. Being fully responsible for oneself takes effort, and can feel stressful if you never really had to do it. That's where a lot of the frustration comes from.

@Volkbrecht That's a very insightful comment about life being easier under a totalitarian rule. I think there is a lot of truth to it. When many choices are made for the individual by the government, life could definitely seem easier. This would be especially true when there is nothing to compare your current life to. I would love to learn more about East Germany, it's such a fascinating case. In an experiment on a grand scale, where one nation was essential divided into two (East and West) and separated by a wall. It's like twins separated at birth. Comparing the two societies after 50 years of separation would be so interesting.

@pamelajaye Thank you for sharing your stories. I am truly amazed by the responses under my videos. In the last 2-3 days on TH-cam I read more cool, personal stories left as comments under my videos than I probably read in the 2-3 years on the Internet. The personal connections that are made between and a creator and the audience on TH-cam are truly astonishing and it is something I never expected to be honest. Thank you so much! P.S. I now live in Southern California, so I feel very blessed and safe - thank you for your thoughts!

But the hacks might still be applicable. :)

Thank you for your support! Please let me know if there are other topics you'd like me to cover in future videos.

So interesting, this is probably the 3rd or 4th comment drawing parallels with my video and corporate America. To be honest I find it surprising and unexpected, as I have very little experience with the corporate structure, here, in the US.

I grew up in Communist Hungary and I work in the American corporate world. An average American company is really almost the same as a Communist country. Strict hierarchy, the CEO is making all the decisions, the average worker has zero influence on how the company will move forward. He can be scared that they can fire him any day, just like the Communists sent people to the Gulag. At least that's how I see it. 👍

Thank you and Merry Christmas to you as well.

Thanks for your support! I've actually researched freemasons for a book before, it's a fascinating organization.

@elvirabary Here's a start Ms Bary. Look into the City of London where it has a lot churches connected to it in the square mile and the Grand lodge of England. Enjoy.

Thank you for your comment. Technically, no one knows what Communism is like, as it's never really been implemented by any state. Even Soviet Union was at best a Socialist state.

​@@elvirabaryThanks for that clarification which I have also heard before. How would you define North Korea? I was listening to someone who grew up there, on a TH-cam video this afternoon and it sounded even worse. Possibly not worse than Stalin, I'm not sure but worse than Russia is currently and I'd say maybe worse than the USSR. I don't know, the USSR went through various periods I hear. Even a bit of free market in the '60s. I keep forgetting the names of the people involved. There were two of them. I don't want to look them up at the moment. When everything happened in August of 1991 I totally missed it because we were having a hurricane in Boston. I actually had to look that up because I can't imagine how something that big could have been missed. Especially when they did an entire special on ABC News and it's on TH-cam and I watched it. And I always watched ABC News. But it's possible that since we were having a storm, we weren't having any national news but only local news. That sometimes happens in Florida when we have a hurricane. They just override the national network news. In the meantime there is a mouse in my bedroom and I hear it again so I guess I should go look for it though I really don't see the point because what can I do if I find it? The other day I blocked it into the bathroom and went to get somebody else and by the time someone came they couldn't find it. Real helpful guys. I wish it could spend the night in somebody else's bedroom.

Dictatorships with a pervasive bureaucracy incentivise the same defensive behaviors

My mom grew up in the SU and shes been mentioning how she sees similarities now in the US to how things were like there

How would you know considering you're jobless

Thanks for your support. I didn't realize how well these tips would resonate with many other organizations/societies.

Thanks! That's an interesting point I hadn't thought of. But I think at many levels bureaucracies are all the same, no matter what political system is like.

The answer is some do, but most don't. Older generations get all of their information from highly controlled state television channels. Newer generations do use Internet, but even in that case, you have to actively seek out that dissenting information, and I bet many simply do not.

@@elvirabary I've been playing with an online ChatBot. (Be careful if you use one - they make mistakes although the one I was using corrected itself very quickly). It doesn't have any information about its hardware and there's a lot of information sources it doesn't have access to. I wonder, if the use of A.I. catches on, will they be used to supply only the information their owners want us to see. A.I. doesn't have an ego so could be very 'useful' to the powers that be.

I think lots of people have very favorable impression of the past and pessimistic of the present. For example, most people in US would say they fell less safe now than in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s. However according to all the statistics violent crime has been going down in US every single decade.

@elvirabary It's your opinion, I respect it, but my opinion US always was danger, a lot of psyhopats, but Yugoslavia, yes crimes was in any time, but we didn't have mass murders like today, child killed other children with gun in Serbia in school. We believe all this things came to us from west.

It is exactly the same in UK and Europe ... life is safer and far more comfortable but people's perception is almost the opposite .

There are a lot of trolls / совок s who are regurgitating nostalgia and ultra-nationalist Russian propaganda myth about the past . . . . . . . . . . . . It is a disaster that 90 000 Ukrainians and 200 000 Russians have paid with their lives for this evil and disgusting ideology .

@@barbarcreighton6726 In UK in London you talking on street with phone, than guy come and fast steal your phone from hand. I saw in Germany q lot of people who left UK because there is danger.

Good point. Soviet regime wouldn't have survived if not for NEP (New Economic Policy), where some restrictions were lifted private economic activity was allowed in Soviet Union between 1921 and 1928.

There was no 'Nicholas III'. The last Russian monarch was Nicholas 2nd. You don't know what you are talking about.

Thanks for noticing! All those are my own creations. :)

​@@elvirabaryI was just about to ask the question of who those lovely paintings. Would you take the original painting's and make prints to sale? Interested!!

@@elvirabary Very Nice.

Thank you so much! I hope you enjoyed the video. It's so great to see positive response to my content, it's inspiring me to create more. :)

I like Suvorov's works as well!

@@elvirabary His work, 'Icebreaker', on how the war with Germany began caused much controversy.

Seriously, it's not even close.

West is too general of a definition, even within Europe there are major differences. Look at Nordic countries vs Western Europe vs Easter Europe for example. Canada and US have major differences too in terms of how much the government controls. North Korea is probably the closest you can get to what USSR was like.

In the USA you mean?

@@elvirabary when I was growing up in Denmark. Your media was covering different views. Our political parties had very different views. We were working towards something called near democracy. Now our media are dependent on government fonding, so they only cover one point of view. Now all political parties that are not totally mad. Are having the same view. And any kind of democracy that is based on the need and will of the people are deemed populistiske and dangerous. so we are of course not like the ussr yet. But your democracy are being eroted away. And after covid and the war in Ukraine. Things have really taken a turn to the worst. Now we are being told the most evil person in the world is Putin, and that the evil Russians horde is coming to kill us all. No nuance just black and white.

That's a good point, I didn't actually think of other regimes, but you're right!