You could always ask the people who lived there during that era, which is what I’ve done.
All nearly 1.6 million of them? Never mind that hundreds of thousands of people left after the USSR’s dissolution…
Your family in particular might not be particularly representative, or there might be other context we’re missing, such as why they wouldn’t want the USSR when it was increasing its people’s standard of living.
All nearly 1.6 million of them? Never mind that hundreds of thousands of people left after the USSR’s dissolution…
Your family in particular might not be particularly representative, or there might be other context we’re missing, such as why they wouldn’t want the USSR when it was increasing its people’s standard of living.