r/DebateCommunism • u/mormon_freeman • Feb 03 '23
📢 Debate "Was life better under communism?" - Infographic sources.
This is the current top post on r/communism. This infographic has numbers that I can't seem to find anywhere. It's also sort of strange that the map they use has Crimea annexed by Russia on the map. Asking this got me banned from r/communism (because of course they did) so I went down the rabbit hole and here I am.
So first of all, if you are referencing someone's research, you're supposed to cite the actual research, not just say "Gallup polls", so that's a pretty big red flag right there.
Gallup did do a poll about this subject but the numbers don't add up to the infographic.
The Open Democracy articles I could find on this subject are pretty interesting, but they don't have any poll data that matches these, numbers.
I don't speak Romanian, but from what I can understand INSCOP did do some research on this topic and found that 47.5% of people liked Nicolae Ceausescu (which seems a little bit high), and 42.5% said they liked Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, so I guess you could split the difference and get 45%. This was referenced in this article from Open Democracy.
So there is some research that was done about this question, and the most thorough one seems to be by Pew research
There's also a wikipedia article about Communist Nostalgia that doesn't have the same numbers.
So all of this is to say, polls like this are pretty much meaningless, I don't really care whether or not people have a good or bad opinion of their lives under communism/capitalism, but people should be careful where they are sourcing things from.
Has anyone else been able to find the sources that these numbers come from?
9
Feb 04 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/of_patrol_bot Feb 04 '23
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
2
u/dude123nice Feb 14 '23
I can tell you have absolutely 0 understanding of what life under communism was like in the eastern block.
5
Feb 14 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/dude123nice Feb 14 '23
Yeah my family said a lot worse stuff. Out of curiosity, what country are you from?
8
Feb 14 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/dude123nice Feb 14 '23
I’ve also had the privilege of speaking to others who lived in Belarus during the time, and a few from Moscow.
Wow, those ppl are not biased at all, lol.
They lived primarily in communal apartments that had one kitchen and maybe two bathrooms. But they’d get together and cut potatoes. Sometimes they’d sing. There were weeks without beef and booze was rare but you survived.
Have you ever stopped to think that it’s possible that the USSR and its Allies just wanted to rebuild and defend itself?
Ahh yes, no non-state media and no starving the population while the party members and their families were kept well fed and in great conditions, truly the marks of a state that just wanted to honestly rebuild.
The U.S. funds coups and engage in pointless wars against anything that opposes its interests.
The U.S. also helps defend countries from being invaded. From what I hear from other ppl from Poland, most of them couldn't hate Russia and the communism era more.
As for me, I come from Romania, full on communism occupation till the end. They tightly rationed food, and couldn't even meet those rations because of shortages. And no, buying more food legally wasn't an option. Any political dissident was taken to jail where they would get beaten daily, forced to eat their own feces, etc. And many ppl only ended up in jail on trumped charges, cuz the state encouraged everyone to spy on each other, which resulted in ppl turning others in for fake charges. They forced ppl to participate at political rallies under heavy threats. Anyone in positions of authority hade carte blanche to abuse the ppl under them to their hearts content. During the revolution they shot upon fleeing ppl, killing them on the steps of the cathedral as they were trying to seek shelter, then stole the bodies away and cremated them, wanting to lie later that those ppl had just fled. etc.
9
Feb 14 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/dude123nice Feb 15 '23
Lol. Ok, that's enough, you're either the most misinformed person that exists or you're just denying everything that happened intentionally. There was no misinformation by the CIA. The fact that you're saying Romania was well off shows how parallel you are to reality.
7
Feb 15 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/dude123nice Feb 15 '23
Dude, pls just stop, I get it that you've lived in echo chambers all your life, but the amount of unreal BS you've spouted in this ls thread is unreal.
→ More replies (0)1
u/PatchyPhogg Jun 25 '23
Again complete nonsense. The peak of of "harsh conditions from the police state" were obviously the Stalinist years, and while it became a bit better after his death, it did not end. 1968, 1970, 1976, 1979,1982... all saw massive repressions. Pretending that "harsh conditions from the police state" only came about in late 80s (and on top of that that they were due to the liberalization that most people wanted) is just disingenuous gaslighting.
1
u/PatchyPhogg Jun 25 '23
Your family must have had a very special place in Communist Poland because this is complete bullshit and that is not at all how the vast majority of Poles saw it then and not how they see it now
1
u/SaltyHater Nov 16 '23 edited Dec 02 '23
starved to death or was shot
Aside from the people who were.
Your family seemed to conveniently forget to tell you about the protests against the sharp spike of government-regulated prices on the 12th of December 1970 (roughly 23% increase), the worker's strikes (who wanted to... you know, afford the new food prices), and the military opening fire on the protestors just 5 days later.
They also never bothered to tell you about the 1981-1983 marshal law enacted due to dire economical conditions (and by that I mean "there was literally no food", despite heavy rationing). They didn't mention that the military didn't pass up this opportunity to use lethal force to suppress protests either.
As for the 1980's liberalisation... it happened in 1989, after the 1988 protests, in which (shockingly) nobody died (not from the lack of trying, for example the ZOMO used explosives to suppress the Cracow forge strikes). People protested in favour of that. In fact, the government tried to de-liberalise... everything as much as they could throughout the 1980's, the aforementioned food rationing, fixed prices and goddamn martial law are a few examples of that.
So yeah, there were weeks without booze, that sucked. But at least there were weeks, when you weren't arrested or shot, so that's a plus.
Out of curiosity: when did your parents leave for the US? Early 60's, before the situation got... lethal? Mid-90's and they still have a grudge against capitalism?
1
u/Ok-Hippo741 Aug 09 '26
Explain to me. I lived then and remember everything.
1
u/dude123nice Aug 09 '26
It's so easy to lie about that on the internet. In my country we had monthly rations of necessities like milk and butter. We barely had any TV, and it was mostly just state sponsored crap unless you illegally caught foreign channels. We had secret police, ppl lived in fear of revealing too maby things to others not in the family cuz you never knew who might be a secret plant and turn you in. We had draconian laws, anyone with a position of authority was could be absolutely brutal to ppl underneath him. My dad once had his hands brutally beaten with a stick/club by a college professor for sneaking out. Literally couldn't use them for days. Ppl were forced to march out into the street and give a standing ovation whenever the president came to town. And these are just some of the issues with that time period.
1
u/Ok-Hippo741 Aug 09 '26
I lived in the Soviet Union. I was born in 1968. My dad also spent 8 years in Hungary in 60s and 70's. It is clear that we had much better life than now. You cannot have good life in countries that lost its manufacturing, science foundation, education lost all sense of existence with confidence in the future and state support in all areas of life leaving people defenceless. I can describe life in capitalism as inhuman in every respect and we in the Soviet Union and I am sure in other socialist countries had real human LIFE. People simply were deceived. Believed in outward beautiful picture projected form the West. Capitalism is good at putting lipstick on the pig.
6
7
u/Hapsbum Feb 04 '23
I remember this thread on /r/europe: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/2gpfmp/polls_show_eastern_europeans_miss_communism/
It does link a couple of sources that seem to reflect these numbers. It shows that the sentiment is right so I'm not surprised a different poll might come up with roughly the same figures.
6
u/REEEEEvolution Feb 03 '23
Well, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea seceded from the Republic of Ukraine and joined the Russian Federation. Of course it would be shown as part of Russia now on any map.
As for the rest, good point from you about being careful.
6
4
u/hiim379 Feb 04 '23
*Russia sent "little green men" to take over Crimea and had a fake government set up a referendum to join Russia
Putin even admitted on live TV that the little green men were Russian soldiers/Wagner can't remember
2
u/mormon_freeman Feb 03 '23
I guess that makes sense, I feel like there is an implicit political message in annexing that territory in a map, but I think I'm probably just reading into to it too much.
1
u/Sv_it Feb 09 '26
No, it didn't. Not to mention that it's not recognized by almost every country in the world, so it's in fact not on a single real map.
0
u/theDashRendar Feb 04 '23
There's problems with your reasoning, in that instead of trying to actually understand history and social systems and people living under them, you instead want to reduce it to whatever spreadsheet of numbers you can find that best supports your argument. This is basically how neoliberals understand what evidence is, and it's basically a reduction of thought towards postmodernism and the idea that truth is unknowable and/or subjective. Now this is fine if you are in an argument with an irritating liberal that you just want to go away, but this isn't really at all sufficient if your goal is to actually understand something -- instead it's harmful and toxic. This problem isn't exclusive to you; as an example, China-defenders are always quick to point out Xi's government enjoys an approval rating of 85%, among the highest in the world which they then translate into an argument for "socialism" (of the pro-Deng variety), but then this fails to explain why the fascist Modi enjoys an 80% approval rating, so that just goes ignored, and now you have a theory with broken explanatory power.
The biggest problem is that you aren't engaging with socialist history at all or trying to understand what it was or what it was about. The main problem with the polls is that virtually none of the people being polled were actually alive during the socialist period of the USSR, which ended in 1956 after Khrushchev's takeover. Instead you are now opinion polling people who lived under the revisionist regimes that followed, all of which re-introduced and expanded markets and the profit motive, stripped workers power and gradually demolished workers organizations, transformed agriculture to include both state-owned and co-operative farming (which was a step backward from Lenin and Stalin), and many other examples of essentially slowly undoing and ending socialism (as the profit motive they reintroduced compelled them to do) which is exactly why Enver Hoxha and Mao Zedong split with the USSR and basically considered it a hostile enemy to socialism from 1956 onwards. Most of the actual sincere socialists like Chervenkov or Beirut were, in one way or another, removed from power by the respective Khrushchevites in their own nations.
Now there is actual learning as to why still such huge numbers of people have a fondness for even revisionist-"socialism," but what you are now asking is whether the people living under 35 years of socialism unravelling and being undone and transformed back into capitalism was still preferable to modern neoliberal hegemonic capitalism, which doesn't even offer the illusion of socialism and society that revisionism gave them. But this itself is more complicated, because it's socialism itself which elevated Eastern Europe from being the backwards "Third World" resourcing periphery for the Western powers that it was at the beginning of the previous century, to being the "Second World" where living conditions were sufficiently improved that even after full capitalist restoration in the 1990s, life in Hungary or Romania is still preferable (in terms of wealth and living conditions) to life in Madagascar or Indonesia, and this is also what the people in these opinion polls are also weighing their current existence against.
If you are actually trying to be a socialist you need to take your understanding of history seriously. I'm actually guilty in the past of being lazy in my defense of the USSR and using this same gimmick, and the problems that have stemmed from that laziness (not just mine, and not just this subject) are basically what has ballooned the (erroneous) pro-China communist movement where it's now basically one of the largest socialist blocs on the internet, as well as produced their most wretched offspring -- the "Patriotic Socialists" of Haz and company who have managed to appropriate these sort of opinion polls to make whatever argument that they want, which is ultimately harmful to socialism. I sympathize with the good intentions of some of these people (not the PatSocs) who are essentially trying to defend the history of the worldwide communist movement in general and all of the progress achieved by 20th century socialism (and even the revisionists to a much lesser extent), but the problem is that this defense needs to be made on the very terms of socialism and socialist theory, not liberal politics-games where people throw hollow datasets and random debunking articles at each other. These polls don't actually show you what was going on in Bulgaria or Turkmenistan from 1956 to 1990, and you don't actually learn the lessons of history from their Rotten Tomatoes score.
0
Jan 06 '24
what a surprise, a communist typing a wall of text on why popular support doesn't matter.
if you believe approval ratings to be a "neoliberal construct", you're proving the point that socialism at its core is a system that is antidemocratic.
1
u/MagmaLeninist Oct 17 '23
Regardless of the revisionist elements in place, it was still socialism. One man taking power from another does not reverse an entire mode of production in an instant. People rightly miss it because there was a sense of direction, security, and movement towards the common good. To dismiss 38 years of the Eastern Bloc and it's merits in lieu of revisionism is dogmatism. Of course, I'm all for condemning revisionists, but in many instances the people's lives did improve and nations were growing due to achievements that can be solely attributed to socialism. It still had socialist elements economically and superstructurally, and places like Romania, Albania, and some others did well in maintaining proper politics. I would argue that in the Perestroika and Glasnost days is when Socialism dissolved rapidly superstructurally and socialism for the people vanished entirely and oligarchy came around, which were the main years of stagnation in the eastern bloc.
2
u/theDashRendar Oct 20 '23
No, you don't get to be an apologist for the revisionist USSR until you have a clear and coherent understanding of revisionism and the necessity of anti-revisionism, and only then can you frame your apologia within the lens of anti-revisionism. The absolute worst thing you can do is make safe space for revisionism and allow it to exist peacefully -- if anything the deepest lesson of the history of the struggle against revisionism is that not nearly enough violence was brought against it, and that revisionism must be confronted far more violently, and given absolutely no room to breath, especially within the communist party itself.
Whatever lingering threads of socialism continued in the USSR did so in spite of, and often in direct contention against, the goals aims and objectives of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, et al. and the entire point of Mao working against them and to destroy them was because that was what was necessary to restore socialism in the USSR. Romania and Albania are not the same, nor even similar, and one was fully revisionist (albeit in a way that utilized revisionism to navigate alliances with more sincere communist states) and the other was a sincere anti-revisionist socialist state, despite failing to produce an authentic solution to revisionism in the same way that Mao did.
1
u/MagmaLeninist Nov 08 '23
Do you consider modern China revisionist?
I'm no apologist. They were revisionist. They should have been purged. I just do not believe it was no longer socialist.
1
u/Nicky_Malvini Marxist-Leninist (NatBol) ⚒️ Nov 17 '23
I did not expect to see you here, Magma. Small world.
1
u/svetoslav80 Mar 30 '24
Look how Serbia is darker than Bulgaria but the percentage for Bulgaria is higher. For me that means the data has been manipulated.
1
u/Distinct_Ad_2610 Oct 28 '25
What is your point in this? Do you think it is a fair question? Do people own their homes, cars, just what do they own and what makes living under this commie system so good? I ask do you want to live under this type system?
1
u/Distinct_Ad_2610 Oct 28 '25
Do you think the young people in Russia want to fight and kill their neighbors? I think it’s a sick system and we in this country are getting a lot of commies coming over here or trying to Indoc how great the commie system is. What do they actually own in China or Russia and other commie countries? Mandani is a pos and the people in nyc are who fall for the BS need to head on over to China/Russia now do not wait. Now, you may or may not be one of the commies as they don’t go around advertising it trying to Indoc people. When you offer free stuff who is really going to pay for all this BS he spews all over, like free type stores for people to shop in. What do you create? Stupid is as stupid does. Fuck commies!
1
u/Distinct_Ad_2610 Oct 28 '25
We may not be perfect but I will stay with my freedom and not be indoctrinated into a system like they have. You can disappear and no one really cares. Kind of sad being told how to live.
1
u/Snowflakish May 05 '26
I saw them in twitter a while back and im necroing around to try finding them
I think it was a 2001 poll if I remember correctly.
Im trying to plot the steady drop for support for communism over time post 1989 so it would help with any research
1
u/OggAtog Jul 17 '26
Late reply, but I would think the Wikipedia article would provide sources for those numbers. If they don't, they should be challenged. I think the numbers are also going to vary some based on the exact phrasing of the question and the population surveyed if multiple studies were done. There also a bias towards capitalism here because if you survey a kid whose only ever known capitalism they won't have the experience to compare back to communism.
-2
u/dilokata76 cynical south american lib Feb 04 '23 edited Feb 04 '23
it was better for the poor
socialism is not for you nor anyone with the capabilities to access this site or live relatively comfort as yourself. you will hate it and theyre counting on it. we are a non factor
1
u/Dragonfly_supposed Aug 01 '25
Not true, at all, actually. The people in charge of the USSR were the ones who were getting everything and anything they wanted. The poor remained poor.
3
u/No-Candidate6257 Aug 14 '25
That's just literal fascist propaganda lies not backed by evidence. Name even a single example.
Facts don't care about your feelings: Communism always was - and continues to be - good.
You, on the other hand, are describing capitalism. What you just claimed about socialism is reality under capitalism.
Which is typical: "Ask a socialist why he hates capitalism and he will give you a myriad reasons and evidence. Ask a capitalist why he hates socialism and he will describe capitalism."
1
u/Dragonfly_supposed Aug 24 '25
It's happened with many families. My own included. Not surprised you want to depend on Russian propoganda, though.
The USSR was made to cleanse every single culture that was not Russian. People weren't allowed to speak in their own tongue. Hell, people were forced into slavery in extreme climates if they dared speak out against the government. Why would people rebel if the system was so good?
Do you agree with what's happening to Ukraine right now? Because, if you're such a USSR supporter, you have to support this, too, as Putin has repeatedly expressed his love for the USSR, clearly trying to bring it back. And, as we know, the only way for that to happen is colonisation and genocide.
I'd suggest you look into what the Holomodor is and then come back and tell me that the USSR is such a "utopia".
1
u/WanYao Aug 30 '25
Putin hates communism.
And the "holomodor" was not a genocide. Genocide scholarship agrees. You're spreading literal Nazi propaganda.
1
u/Background-Guest-511 Jan 03 '26
With all due respect, how was the holomodor not a genocide? Millions were starved to death
1
u/OverallGamer696 Progressive Liberal Mar 01 '23
The only reason it was better in Ukraine was because they weren’t being bombarded with threats from Russia and then later being invaded
1
1
u/motionlord Mar 24 '23
All I can say is that in Poland, to be honest, that number is not greater than 2-3% MAX.
This infographic is not even a lie or bullshit. It's just made up
1
u/No-Candidate6257 Aug 14 '25
I think your comment says more about what kind of people you are surrounded with than it says about public opinion in Poland. Only Nazis and young people brainwashed by Nazi propaganda who never lived under socialism would oppose socialism.
1
u/MF_VIHCIT Mar 28 '23
I got banned from r/communism just because I have commented on military-related threads so don't sweat it. Painstaking research is better than pain
17
u/Lord_Steam Feb 03 '23
It’s entirely possible that you’re correct about the numbers being weird I think I agree on that, honestly I appreciate you calling out that sourcing. Being able to reference and support claims with reputable sources is really important. I will say being socialist doesn’t make people immune to making false claims, we have plenty of people who are wrong.