- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Yes, there are many women working at science institutes in post-soviet countries. As lab technicians with extremely low wages. There are almost no women directors or women lab heads. These are all men. In Russia, women occupy majority of work places in education and, yes, science. But mostly as low-paying teachers and lab technicians. There are of course exceptions. But this post doesn’t really show the reality and gives false idea about women experiences in soviet and then post-soviet countries.
Edited to say that I know it’s in memes, but I just got triggered…
What about trans women?
Seems like the soviet government was more responsive than contemporary western governments, but not as much as east Germany: https://artsmatter.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2025/01/28/trans-visibility-in-the-late-soviet-union/#%3A~%3Atext=First%2C+they+became+visible%2C+at%2Crecognized+as+ordinary+Soviet+citizens.
This is more of an indication that the USSR had a functional public education system, and the dictatorship style, top down style education is indeed good at hammering (STEM based) academic skills into young brains. Arguably, most other non third world countries are doing a better job at the public school system than the US
Yeah because working outside and still doing all the domestic work is so much better than being confined to the house. Who needs feminism?
No doubt the Soviet Union was a huge step forward for women but this is just a dumb thing to say. Women doing unpaid household labour and emotional labour has always been the case.
The USSR was also the first country on a large scale to move unpaid domestic labour into the paid socialized sector: it created communal kitchens, communal child-care, all paid for by the state. The PRC followed that same model.
How are you liberals this ignorant of these attempts? Marxist feminists started the domestic labor debate, and were the only ones who attempted to put solutions into practice.
You don’t need all of these communal things if a family simply raises their kids in a traditional way. What you’re describing is the commoditization of the nuclear family. It’s roundabout and worse overall. No one will love your kids and care for them like you will. Also the state pays for nothing because the state makes no money. It comes from the labor of the people. So really the mom is forced into the workforce to pay for childcare. Lol.
Hello I have one nuclear family to sell in the form of watching their child for a few hours. I am also in the market to buy. I also buy them by watching their kids.
The word I use for that is commoditization. That’s what it means.
Thank you.
Yeah exactly. Mom is going to work to pay for someone to watch her kids when she could just do it herself.
So you just woke up from your mother’s womb today and experienced the concepts of ‘division of labor’ and ‘commerce’ for the first time, huh?
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The reason I’m ‘ignoring’ your point is because you’re a fucking moron acting in bad faith. You took the existence of child care as a state service and morphed it in your mind palace to mean parents aren’t raising their children anymore.
And ‘forced’ to go to work? Are you a fucking child? Work is how food and shelter happens literally everywhere they exist and in every possible economic system. Your ‘point’ is saying normal things in a scary voice. So the only productive way to engage with you is through mockery and insults. Because you’re fucking stupid, buddy.
Because the former Soviet Union, with all its defects, never gave much of a shit about gender roles, you are going to learn science even if it takes your whole life. I guess some of that cultured stayed after Ussr collapsed
Yes and also everyone is supposed to work if they can (ideally). No mooching under socialism.
Women were supposed to perform all the domestic labour. All of it. That myth of liberated soviet woman shatters the second you learn about any aspect of the soviet existance.
30 years later, and I still can’t convince my mom that doing all the domestic work and be toe-to-toe with men in a workplace isn’t something all women are just have to do.They very much cared about gender roles, but also pretty early figured out that women in the workforce are economically beneficial. So the situation was (and unfortunately is) that women are shamed if they don’t earn money OR don’t look good OR don’t cook/clean/care about children. I am honestly fascinated how average woman manages these three shifts. In academia btw there’s still a huge gender bias even when women make the majority of students and generally perform better.
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Way to turn the communist acheivement of women’s empowerment into something negative.
I literally said it’s a positive thing, just that motivation of people in power is cynical. Also I didn’t mention communism, I meant it in general regardless of regime
If like every bog-standard anticommunist, you’re going to impute cynical motives on every objectively good thing communists do, we’re not going to take you seriously.
Removing gender roles in order to more equitably distribute the workload is progressive. You can remove morality from that equation and it still works, ergo it is absolutely something we should support and there are no reasons to perpetuate backwards gender roles.
to perpetuate backwards gender roles
I never even suggested that. Where did you get that from? All I’m saying is, people in power aren’t your friends.
Although is it a good thing that me and my wife work like crazy to keep our family going? Is this really what life is about? I’d love to be stay at home dad, yet I can’t
People in power are not necessarily your enemies either, by virtue of being “in power.” Administration is a necessity in maintaining a large and complex society with intricate production methods and staggering scales of logistics. There will always be a need for administration, of some sort.
The fact that you and your wife work incredibly hard for your family is a byproduct of a highly unequitable distribution of the products of labor. Making labor equitable and more socialized as production gets more complex increases the output and minimizes the number of over or underworked people. We can move to universal 4 day work weeks or even 3 day eventually, by making labor more equitable and socializing the outputs of labor.
That’s why arguing for gender roles, ie a portion of society to perform unpaid domestic labor, is the wrong way to view labor. Domestic labor should be paid labor from the social fund, and childcare should be free at point of service so that this burden of labor is more equitably spread.
Doubles the workforceRemoves the artificial societal limit that arbitrarily cuts the workforce in halfFTFY
Tad rude to refer to children as “artificial limitations”
You can raise children while both parents are working. Billions of families do it every day. Especially if you also get rid of the notion that raising children is mostly a mother’s job while the father is free to drink beer and watch TV after work.
Yeah, and no fault divorce keeps the workforce happier and reduces domestic violence (meaning less injured and killed workers), abortion on demand makes it easier for people to continue working, and socializing former domestic labor improves the efficiency of that work and frees up labor for leisure or other labor, but those things are still good and part of the socialist feminist project.
Both of these things are good.
Maybe a bad choice of words on my part, maybe I should write “not because it’s right, but because it doubles the workforce”
Although whether “double the workforce” is good or bad, I’d keep that for a discussion, see my other comment for more info: https://lemmy.world/comment/16185467
Are you trying to imply doubling the available workforce is not good? Its usually a good thing. While their motivations are cynical, those leaders are doing good.
…or are you trying to imply that keeping women out of the traditional work force (by only allowing them to work unpaid in the home in domestic servitude, labor that capital does not value) increases the value of male labor through scarcity, which would be preferred?
Sorry that second question kind of reads as an attack. A shitty coworker of mine said that to me unironically and tried to play it off as a joke when I pushed back.
It would be nice if one salary, no matter the gender of the breadwinner, could sustain a family.
We shouldn’t have to work to sustain a family, this idea is archaic.
I think this inherently accepts the narrative that the work women were doing before had no or little value.
That care and emotional labour should not fall solely on women and we should all have the opportunity to partake in meaningful work but we shouldn’t accept having to accept less time for care (and leisure) on some trumped up definition of what’s productive/economic or not.
As labor is further socialized (basically centralizing and then running itself without capitalist intervention) you end up having labor done by men and women and women still being responsible for more domestic duties which are labor but not considered labor(because those being done for free subsidizes capitalist profit) the solution though isn’t to keep women in the household, it is to do socialism, where domestic labor can be socialized (it isn’t under capitalism because why would you socialize labor you’re already getting for free?)
Sorry for late response and I see the comment is now deleted by a mod but whatever (well we’re on .ml after all).
What I was trying to point out, was the “cynical” part of it. That people in power often don’t do it because they want to empower women or help people, more often than not it’s just that it brings more people into their “meat grinder” - regardless of the regime. In case of capitalism it’s obvious but it doesn’t need to be money necessarily; in the case of Stalin - pardon me if I don’t believe that he did it for “supporting women rights and making the world a better place ✌️”, he did it for the raw economic power to compete with US during cold war and so his own country wouldn’t collapse because of his stupid actions.
Whether doubling the workforce is a good thing - that I’d keep up for a debate. I deliberately didn’t want to say anything in that area, I’m just saying that the motivation of people in power is cynical, not saying if result is good or bad.
But if you’d want my personal stance - I do believe that in order to achieve welfare/prosperity, not all the people have to work. And I do believe that there are more important things in life than working. I’d love to be a stay at home dad, but I can’t. Even though my country sort of supports it, my pay would cut dramatically and we as a family wouldn’t be able to survive.
But honestly thank you for asking. It’s very refreshing to meet a person who asks and tries to understand the motivation of the commenter rather than jumping right to the conclusion (as almost every other response here)
Thank you, mods, for protecting us from different opinions and discussion.
Stalin
The right for women to work wasn’t instituted by Stalin’s government. Women were granted equal rights by the Bolsheviks in the revolution. It is worth noting that, before the revolution, workers had longer workdays, and letting more people into the workforce allowed for less working hours.
Regarding their motivations - their goal was to bring about communism, and they believed that, to achieve this, the working class had to be united, and thus that women and men should be equal.
I do believe that in order to achieve welfare/prosperity, not all the people have to work.
A large fraction of the labour done in the present-day is excess. It is possible to meet every person’s needs with less work in total. If the workload required was distributed equitably, people would have more time outside of their jobs.
It doesn’t matter to me whether the man or woman has the job, what matters to me is that one working person could support a family, kids, owning a home, some vacations and still had enough money to save up and be generally not very concerned with finances.
Are you trying to imply doubling the available workforce is not good? Its usually a good thing.
Women not being forced to do the reproductive labour in the family? Good.
Families being coerced into having two incomes to make ends meet, meaning they don’t get as much time with their children as they like? Bad.
Mysagony: the Silant Killar
Is this a meme ?
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I think you should use your experiences in Azerbaijan as a push to confront some of your biases, and re-examine your understanding of Socialism in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t “totalitarian” by any stretch either. The benefits of the Socialist economic structure are pined for precisely because they worked, and did so for the common people. There are improvements that can and have been made in other Socialist countries, but these improvements would not have been possible without the brave Soviet people pioneering Socialism as it exists in the real world.
Not totalitarian you say?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purges_of_the_Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
My experience in Azerbaijan also included tales of when they were children passing curds to starving prisoners through chain fences in Kazakh gulags. The Soviet Union did more harm than good to the leftist movement and is used as the scary example every single time someone begins to think twice about the capitalist system they live under. Socialism is forever tainted by the USSR and severely struggles to remove that image. Fuck the USSR.
Things were different in the periphral nations, than in the center. Those who read your comments with heritage from the peripheral will understand you, and the others will not.
I am aware of the Soviet Union expelling fascists and Tsarists from the party, and punishing those found corrupt, criminals, or had been members of the White Army. I am aware of the GULAG administration that formed the early Soviet prison system, read Russian Justice for more on how that functioned. I am aware of the famine in the 1930s. I have read these articles, as pretty much every Western Communist has had to, these are not “gotchas.”
The real truth of the matter is that the western anti-Communist “Left” that denounces the USSR and every real attempt at building Socialism plays into the hands of the US Empire. The Soviet Union was a massive victory for the working class, the first real Socialist state in history, and with it came dramatic improvements in key life metrics and working class dignity.
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Life expectancy doubled.
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The economy was democratized, following the method of Soviet Democracy
- Wealth inequality shrank, while economic growth boomed:
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Large expansions in social safety nets were made, such as free and high quality education and healthcare.
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Housing rates skyrocketed, and literacy rates over tripled to 99.9%.
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Food security was achieved in a country that was always food insecure.
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The Red Army defeated the Nazis, with 80% of the combat of World War II on the Eastern Front.
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The Soviet Union supported countless liberation movements, such as in Cuba, Algeria, and more.
And many, many more achievements. People who denounce the USSR maintain unstated approval for the other Great Power, the United States, which without the USSR would have been entirely unopposed. The US, which committed Imperialist slaughter and even genocide in Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Angola, Palestine, and many, many more countries, was opposed primarily by the Soviets.
The Soviet Union was by no means perfect, nobody asserts that, but to claim that the Soviet Union did “more harm than good to the Leftist movement” is ludicrous. This is the sentiment of Western Chauvanists that don’t want to support Socialism unless they are the ones who acheive it. Jones Maonel was spot on in Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, but not Real Revolution.
You should read Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, or at the very least the sections on “Left” Anti-Communism.
“Tens of millions died, but lines went up!”
You know, you’d probably make a better capitalist than you think.
Tens of millions? I suppose it was the USSR’s fault that the Nazis declared war and committed genocide? Or are you crying for the Nazis? Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.
You’re right it was only about 5 million. The tens of millions was from Mao.
Keep peddling debunked Black Book of Communism mythology, I guess.
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You would’ve had the image of leftists destroyed no matter what, the faults of USSR is ever present and has even been maximised to the point of hilarity where it is compared with the Nazis, even if false or inaccurate or misrepresented
You could see the victories of socialism and communism within USSR and read and learn about it, but also critique the system that Stalin created alongside it which allowed repression, where it lead to millions dying in Ukraine and millions to suffer in prison, but these have been exaggerated as part of western doctrine to deface communism as much as possible, so never take it at face value
It’s extremely unfortunate that communism was cursed as not only the biggest enemy of the developed world as it was just only developing, but also had the misfortune to be lead by a leader who had little regard for democracy or democratic values in politics and which lead to later on revisionism, inefficiencies and the collapse.
but also had the misfortune to be lead by a leader who had little regard for democracy or democratic values in politics and which lead to later on revisionism, inefficiencies and the collapse.
Yeah, fuck Khrushchev
There’s a saying in the ex socialist republics. “Those who don’t miss the USSR have no heart, but those who want it back have no brains.” Think that about sums it up.
100% agree : I won’t deny the nostalgia factor !
That’s not what the science says btw. If you go to Russia and ask old people about how they feel about the USSR, they are significantly more likely to have favourable views of the USSR than young people who didn’t experience it. If you are interested, you can also look at Generational and Geographic Effects on Collective Memory of the USSR.
Old people in Russia will not remember the Stalin era, but the Khrushchev era (the post-gulag era, famous for de-stalinization) and the Brezhnev era. Old people also tend to romatisize their youth. And romatisizing the Soviet Union is mixed with ethno-nationalism in current days Russia.
I consider myself a socialist, but stalinism is dog-shit.
The world owes Stalin and the people of the USSR a debt that can never be repaid for being the only country to try to stop Nazi Germany before the war and the country which bore the brunt of the casualties and hardship.
Any “socialist” who shit talks them is suspicious as fuck in my book, chauvinist at the very best and probably a snitch.
Khrushchev was an opportunist piece of shit and the world would have been better if he had been kicked out of the party.
Oh yes. The only country. the people who stood up and fought for their independence from that murderous shit hole just were brain washed by all those western capitalist comforts and luxuries. Ups sorry no they were even worse off with the capitalists because they really were enslaved and unhappy and taken advantage of.
but alas at least they chose. Socialists chose for you. If you don’t like the choice fuck off to the gulag.
The soviets saved the world, but Stalin was a monster ntl.
You’re joking, right? Never heard of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact? Funny fact: all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
The non-aggression pact that was signed well after Nazi germany had signed pacts with Britain and France? The one that was signed after Stalin’s pleas for an alliance against Hitler’s Germany fell on deaf ears because Western powers were still dreaming that Germany would attack the USSR first and succeed where they’d failed immediately after the 1917 revolution? That one?
Historically illiterate westerners read a single fucking line and memorize it and think that’s an earth-shattering gotcha like we haven’t seen your cookie cutter shit a hundred times. Serious socialists who actually read history can contextualize history, and I’ll repeat it: fuck anyone who diminishes the sacrifices of the Soviet Union against the Nazi tide, it’s barely notch above outright holocaust denial.
all anti-fascist literature was removed from libraries along with general line of censorship to praise nazis after the pact.
Back up your claims with a serious source. I’m sure such a comically extraordinary claim will have hard evidence behind it and not just a vibe.
You do know that the USSR signed a trade deal with Nazi Germany even in 1940, right? When the rest of the world was already blockading Nazi Germany for… being Nazi’s. In fact, in 1940 the Soviet Union delivered about 75% of Nazi Germany’s imports, mostly in oil & steel. Stalin could’ve joined that blockade, and not supplied the necessary materials for the Nazi war machine – but he didn’t.
You can acknowledge that, and still acknowledge the USSR took the brunt of the force fighting the Nazi’s. It’s not a sports game, you don’t have to pick sides.
Check Wikipedia/Хронология советской цензуры and references 45 and 46 there. I don’t particularly like mixing here several topics together as interchangeable statements: soviet people sacrificed greatly to stop the nazi aggression. Stalin is another great woe of soviet people. Stalin was very much on the same page with nazis when it came to dividing the territories, bad that the leopard ate his face.
Checks out with what I have heard, when I lived in a city of the former East Germany
Sure. People like to romanticize the past and the Wiedervereinigung was a shitty process that fucked many people over. But it is nice, not to live in a Planwirtschaft, to travel to other german cities without being shot at or running through mine fields and not to have a quarter of your neighbourhood spy on you to be brought to one of the Stasi torture prisons for not being socialist enough.
Wow, that sounds horrible, I bet there were a lot of prosecutions of the people who carried those things out once the government reunified!
Oh, and the physical evidence and documentation of those torture dungeons after the wall fell, there must be so much evidence of all the horrors committed!
And all the violence the evil communist government must have done to keep itself in power and prevent reunification must have been really evident, I bet we can find newspaper clippings and even video on the widespread violence that happened in an effort to hold on to power.
Wait, I’m getting reports that none of those things actually happened, fuck. It would have lined up so nicely with the narrative taught to me by American education and popular media, that’s a real bummer.
Who needs evidence when you have it repeated in so many western movies?
Wow, your education system really has failed you.
Please link me to sources then.
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/en/stasi-records-archive/
Mate it’s right there.
I won’t deny the scientific studies.
I am speaking from personal and family experience
I used to live in Chemnitz, and that’s exactly what o have done, the answers were not as I expected, most people said that, one or two things were better, the quality of life generali has gotten worse.
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I don’t think communism and ussr were saints free of all sin but on the other side of the coin I also think there is a lot of things about communism that were made up to make it look worse than it was, I mean capitalism did some propaganda. I used to live in a city that was formerly East Germany and I did ask around what people remember what it was like and what they thought was better, and most of them said they preferred the old system, one or two things are better now but the general quality of life now is worse. Me, being Portuguese, and therefor bombarded with capitalist propaganda since birth was completely 🤯
100% this. Im from Russia and I have heard many horrible stories from older relatives about previous generations and life under the USSR. Life is definitely shitty now, but it’s still better than those years
Lol you’re not even allowed to have your own personal experiences here, that’s apparently in conflict with the glorious Data.
I’m not surprised lol. For some reason, foreign fans of communism like to ignore how real people actually lived back then. +It’s funny that I also quite often came across old people who praised the USSR, but their words always sounded like “yes, we had a terrible shortage in our country, we didn’t have normal clothes, food, or medicine, and my parents were afraid to even talk about politics, BUT ice cream cost three kopecks and was tastier than now!". All the love for the USSR from them is just nostalgia for the times when they were carefree kids
All the love for the USSR from them is just nostalgia for the times when they were carefree kids
Yeah bro only enlightened westerners are smart enough to recognize why they preferred a certain economic and political system, dumb easterners just want ice cream. They definitely didn’t have a better political education than you. Hell, they probably didn’t even read Animal Farm!
Fucking chauvinists I stg.
What? Please learn to read first, this is not at all what I said. I just described my experience as a Russian who talked to a bunch of old post-USSR people about what life was like in those years. And like I said, they described horrible things that I wouldn’t want to experience, but some of them looked at them with love because they were younger and healthier then
“political education” do you mean endless propaganda, life in a country completely cut off from the rest of the world and censorship of literally everything? Yes, in that case I think I have a better political education. At least I studied at a time when Russia was freer than then and now
Yeah the nostalgia angle sounds tough. And then you have the x-sov states that are backsliding (hungary, a bit of Czechia), I assume, based on some level of love for the authoritarian nostalgia.
Edit: apparently we can’t even accept that hungary has turned into an authoritarian state. Amazing.
I’m not sure how this would be considered good, it’s still oppression. The result just happens to be desirable but that doesn’t justify the way it was achieved.
If we want gender equality, it will have to be forced.
Ah, right! This is among the reasons why Russia has the lowest share of seats held by women in politics (won’t go into business) in Europe (Statista).
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“Mysagonist” misogynist… Typo or am I missing a joke about agony under Stalin?
Nothing makes you feel agony quite like free healthcare and education.
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libtard
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