One Hundred Small Apes.

More than a third of a century after the liberation of leftists from that 'iron cage', where exactly has the slew of glorious new revolutions built on innovative theories been? Why is every single major surviving and thriving socialist state led by a vanguard party that upholds the legacy of the Soviet Union as a monumentally positive influence? Why is the left, supposedly freed from the shackles of doctrine produced by an actual revolutionary superpower, struggling with a record degree of disorganization, alienation and dilution in the face of new fascisms?

The only 'liberation' that the fall of the USSR created for the left was the freedom to peddle ahistorical, revisionist and dilettantish nonsense dressed up in the robes of bold new theories, the freedom to engage in asinine debates on basic points clarified long ago by Soviet theory and practice, and the freedom to practice the kind of rank opportunism among imperial core leftists that leads inevitably into either malnourished social democracy or shameless social fascism.

Without seriously studying and examining the USSR in all its history- not just till Lenin's death, but right up to its final decade- as a serious socialist project that worked as a positive force in the world, made sincere attempts to combat imperialism, contended with serious internal and external issues of encirclement and revisionism that all successful socialist parties shall inevitably face, and produced, despite its ultimate failure, an incredibly diverse body of data and experience that is of vital educational value for the left, there will be no socialist movement that can surpass its achievements. The path beyond the USSR's era is not away from it, but through it, through an honest and comprehensive engagement with its tactics, struggles, errors, reversals and strategies, carried out from a place of deep engagement with the material and ideological conditions that it had to navigate, not with some projected fantasy of what it could have been.

id say it depends on the person and their conext (age, region, rural vs urban, etc). i talked a bit about pensioners attitudes a while back, but in general id say the population is pretty split. id say views on socialism are more positive overall in slovakia than czechia (around 17-35% in czechia but 42-66% in slovakia)

also depends on rural vs urban areas - generally, rural areas are actually much more favorable to socialism than urban areas, due to the massive amounts of investment brought by the former socialist government. the same thing on a regional level; poorer regions (like the east of slovakia) generally look back upon socialism much more favorably. particularly here in slovakia (i assume the situation in czechia is very similar or the same but i am more educated about my own country), many easterners miss socialism a lot because of how the socialist government tried to fix the massive regional disparities within czechoslovakia, but the current bourgeois slovak government has been investing almost exclusively in the west, in particular in bratislava

i wouldnt really say ive met too many anticommunists, in particular those above 45 or so. i mean, they often tell me "back in my day, lenin was mandatory reading... i used to think it was really boring. but its great you have such academic interests. however, are these books not illegal now? Where are you getting them from?". which i think is pretty funny but entirely anecdotal

but id say younger people, like people in their teens-early/mid 40s feel more negatively about it, mostly because there is just so much media (movies, radio broadcasts, news...) about how "awful" and "totalitarian" the "communist regime" was. but generally its not that hard to convince them of some things so i do usually have hope in debating them

during socialism, the romani population of the country was granted opportunities to work alongside non-roma, live in the same apartment complexes, etc.

however, this has changed. following the velvet revolution, most roma were expelled from their jobs, as employment was no longer compulsory, meaning employers could suddenly fire anyone they wanted

there were also many pieces of legislation openly pushing for the segregation of roma, such as the 1995 košice housing law, pushing many of them to live in very overcrowded, unsanitary, impoverished parts of towns. in the last few decades, many have actually lost utilities, and educational segregation has also increased since 2016, at least in slovakia

Lancaster’s report is corroborated by Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) maps, which show that shelings that violate ceasefire arrangements have indeed been carried out mostly by the Ukrainian government.

A resident of the Kyivsky district of the city of Donetsk whom Lancaster interviewed, Zoya Tumanova, said that the Ukrainians had shelled her village often since 2015 and burned half of it down. She asked Lancaster: “when will it end, when will Putin come? When will he come to save us?” [...]