Soviet society in my time had a lot of very serious shortcomings, but, as I am looking back, these days, into the past and across the distance of half the globe, I can also see its wonderful strengths, stemming from its socialist founding principles, too solid, even in decay, to be spoiled by their imperfect practice.
In those days, education was excellent and free, plus some rather small, but livable scholarships were given to college students. Salaries were very low, but sensible, considering large subsidies on the necessities, and numerous free services to the public. Health care was modest, but it was free and with a personal touch, as the doctors were making house calls routinely, and most of them followed the social moral code, by behaving nicely and considerately with the patient. Housing was barely adequate, but heavily subsidized, and with no slums for people to live in. Homelessness was of course outlawed, and so was unemployment. Basic foods were quite accessible and of good quality, and they were heavily subsidized. Fancy foods were available, but an effort had to be made to find them and to spend extra time and money to purchase them. Personal cars were a matter of rare luxury, but public transportation was quite extensive, and the fares, including taxi cab fares, were ridiculously low. (I am talking here about the lives of the regular folks, and mainly in the large cities. Privileged persons everywhere enjoyed special perks, not so much in wealth, which no one had in loads of plenty, as in somewhat better living conditions, and in access to goods in short supply, which other people could only have by spending a lot of time chasing after them, and by a stroke of good luck as well.)
This all ended, as I understand, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with the sudden advent of what the West calls free market capitalism, while the Russians call it a pandemonium of greed and profiteering. Suddenly, the society was split into a few very rich and a great many very poor. Suddenly people were out of their homes and living in the streets, finding out for the first time in their lives that there were such bad things as hunger, destitution, and shockingly un-Christian social indifference. Capitalism had revealed its ugly face in the allegedly impregnable bastion of socialism and Christian morality, which had been Soviet Russia. Capitalism was unleashed upon Russia just like criminal lawlessness and primeval chaos had been unleashed upon her in the early years of the Soviet power. Was it there to stay, or was it like the Bolshevik horror of the earlier times just a scary thing that came to pass (literally)?
Some welcomed it with glee, others cursed it with dismay, but I would not be either that optimistic or that pessimistic, treating that new Russian capitalism of the Yeltsin era (which has indeed spilled into the Putin comeback of great-Russian nationalism) as a thing with any staying power. Capitalism can never triumph in Russia. All we can be talking about is the post-Soviet and current crisis of her natural, inherent socialism. Under Putin, we have already seen some elements of socialism creeping back into the Russian life, but so far not on the banner of the knight on the white horse, sweeping away the filth of the despicable impostors daring to proclaim themselves Russia’s new owners, but as an overly cautious and still frightened refugee, returning to his home town, previously taken over by a gang of criminals, in the rear of a rather ambiguous liberating posse, which has welcomed the old residents back, but has not yet punished or even dispossessed the evil intruders.
But, I propose, a full reinstatement of Russia’s Christian-minded, and Christian-hearted, socialism is only a matter of time. Russia’s infamous billionaires-oligarchs may look big on the Forbes Rich List, but they are all colossi with the feet of clay, as they wield no political power in Russia and are quite defenseless against the combined historical forces of the State-Church Duumvirate, and of Russia’s 500+-year-old Third Rome destiny.(The next entry will continue the subject raised in this one.)
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