These dudes are obviously old white dudes who by their own admission were pretty well off already, but the objective things they are relaying blew my mind. I already knew about the QOL of the USSR and how sharply it declined following its collapse but I had no idea that it had rebounded. I’m already used to not believing anything Americans say about other countries, but I admit I had no idea modern Russia had this much good going for it domestically and had a vague idea only based off of the West’s negative fictional horseshit.
Do our Russian comrades here attest to this?
Also if you like the video check out the channel’s newer videos, the journalist is in the Donetsk!
How well-off foreigners experience life in a semi-peripheral country like Russia is not exactly the most representative of the experiences of the average Russian. They tend to stay within in a certain milieu, usually the wealthier and more cosmopolitan cities, and mostly only interact with people from there.
That being said Russia has indeed experienced an enormous rebound over the past 20 years and this is not something anecdotal, it is shown by virtually all social and economic indicators. But it must always be remembered that this is only relative to the absolute rock bottom post-apocalyptic conditions of the 1990s.
Compared to the conditions before 1990 and especially before Gorbachev’s disastrous reforms that destroyed the socialist economy, there is still a long way to go, and it is probably not something that capitalism, even an industrial capitalism like Russia’s with a large state sector can achieve.
I still am unsure of the direction in which Russia will go, it may be that the current conflict with the West pushes them in the direction of a more state led economy and a rejection of neoliberalism out of necessity, in which case they would eventually be better off than the rapidly declining Europeans.
Or it may be that their ruling class has learned nothing and they will still stubbornly cling to liberalism in which case Russia will begin to resemble the West more and more and the benefits of the recovery will not reach the working class and the rural regions.
It remains to be seen whether the Russian ruling class are as short sighted as the Western bourgeoisie. They must know that if they do not continue to improve conditions this will lead to increased social unrest and a political strengthening of the communists.