I am right now visiting my motherland, haven’t been here for a while. I talked with some of my friends/pals and we came to one interesting conversation. Somehow Russian population seems to have no interest in politics of their country and USSR has some part to play in the problem. In the USSR involvement in the politics by an average citizen was low compared to other countries, some just blindly trusted their leaders, while some were just not interested in politics. Those who blindly trusted their leaders were so sure that no one in the party would fumble something, that they simply became also not interested in the politics. In result we now have a population of people letting a guy to rule for 20+ years, basically allowing the same guy to hold power after the fall of USSR. In turn we now have a population whose interest in politics higher than the “that candidate bad cause he is X” is practically non existent. We as Russians should be blamed for our politic inactivity. While Americans are playing the two faced-same coin politics, they at least have something to choose and discuss. While Russians have only one faced plane of United Russia that holds the majority for whatever the fuck amount of time passed since it’s inception in the 90s(I guess??)
Yeah this is low quality rant from me while I was standing in a line for a museum. So please say if I am wrong in some parts. Which am probably am. I will be thankful and also interested in your replies.
I think your critcism is valid. I do think the USSR had political rot, that’s why it collapsed. Whether it was the citizens not being properly motivated to participate in politics or some other rot, I don’t feel educated enough to comment on.
As far as “free speech” and our “open elections goes”, you seem to long for them anyways? It’s kinda weird, like we don’t actually get to discuss them, if we advocate for actual change and get popular enough we get arrested/assassinated, and the ruling class decides who gets to be the candidates for us to elect. It’s really not any different
When I was saying about that, is the small but somewhat existent choice of racists and past racists. It is not significant in the bigger picture but at least imposes a view of a politically involved country.
Except we aren’t politically involved, only 66.8% of eligible voters voted in the 2020 elections (highest ever btw, and only because of COVID and how easy they made it to mail in votes). Our participation rate in elections other than presidential are way way way lower