[ivan_gammel]

I will not dispute that there was scarcity of basic things, but within that system things were perceived very differently by people and what I said remains true. Nostalgia about those times does exist, so “nobody” is a strong and incorrect word here.

[realusername]

On the nostalgia subject, the main country where people are having nostalgia is Russia and it's not exactly because of the opportunities but because the soviet union was basically also the last colonial empire in anything but by name and some people still haven't moved past the power that goes with it.

[vintermann]

No, that's not true. There s word for it in German, "Ostalgia", so it's safe to say that some former East Germans feel it, too.

It was also the wealthiest eastern bloc country, and the one with most "economic freedom" relatively speaking. And despite the infamous totalitarian surveillance system, there was a lot more open, civic defiance like conscientious objection to military service, than there was in Russia.

I do think there's a lot more longing for the empire than for the planned economy in Russia today - but that's not so different from the nationalist movements in Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. They just have other ideas of past greatness.

[ivan_gammel]

This is another baseless conspiracy theory, sorry.

[realusername]

Which part exactly? You can verify the nostalgia per countries affected on surveys.

[ivan_gammel]

The reasoning, of course.

It is normal to feel nostalgia about good old times when we were younger, yet you assume the motivation is a “colonial empire” (SU was very different from British or Spanish empire in that sense, I’m not sure “colonial” even applies to it economically — this is a political narrative of former republics, which were colonies of Russian empire).

[realusername]

When you see the current political climate in Russia, it's not really a stretch to link the nostalgia to the power against eastern Europe.

[ivan_gammel]

It is a stretch. Majority of Russian population couldn’t care less about the statehood of the former Soviet republics and nostalgia for SU is not the base of the current regime (ideology of which is a conservative nationalism very similar to MAGA). This nostalgia existed in 1990s too and has same nature and features as in Germany.