Vladimir Bukovsky

I have really great respect to this man, a dissident and Russian patriot. Recently an unofficial candidate for post of president of RF. I’m aware that he has very small chances to won this race but what I would like to know from our Russian posters is how they and most of Russians consider Bukovsky? He is strong opponent of both Putin and Russian oligarchy ala Berezovski .

Rzeczpospolita wrote:

I have really great respect to this man, a dissident and Russian patriot. Recently an unofficial candidate for post of president of RF. I’m aware that he has very small chances to won this race but what I would like to know from our Russian posters is how they and most of Russians consider Bukovsky? He is strong opponent of both Putin and Russian oligarchy ala Berezovski .

Man, unofficial candidates have no chances at all, just because they are unofficial.

I think he's great. As a dissident and Russsian patriot. I'll ask around about him and let you know..

NowhereMan wrote:

Man, unofficial candidates have no chances at all, just because they are unofficial.

He lives quite a long time outside of Russia, so they might prevent him to register as a official candidate.

Rzeczpospolita wrote:

NowhereMan wrote:

Man, unofficial candidates have no chances at all, just because they are unofficial.

He lives quite a long time outside of Russia, so they might prevent him to register as a official candidate.

Well, I'm sorry but this is the law one has to obey.

His advocates say that he hasn't been alowed to come to Russia to live here for all these years thus it wasn't his fault... I don't think it's true actually... (If this is the case, why didn't he say that before?)

Anyway, I do hope that he and all the others will proceed the registration successfully and will become official candidates. But, speaking frankly, he and people like him will never win. Not because they are too good and all the others so bad and won't let them, but just because they are, for the lack of better words, wishy-washy and don't understand what's really going on in Russia; they don't know people's problems and people will never support them. Kasparov, Kasyanov, Yavlinsky and even Bukovsky are ordinary losers. The only reason why they are still in politics is that they pretend to be opposition to Putin. That is the only thing that attracts attention to them. Sad but true.

So this is already decided I see, I wasn’t sure whether such law exist in Russia. Don’t you find this ironic that the guy who by all means resisted Soviet regime all the time is excluded while those faithful servants of communist party are all welcome? What is more the latter are considered to be the only one whom really understand Russian problems. Could you name at least one person who in your opinion understand Russian problems and is not a part of Purin’s squad?

Rzeczpospolita wrote:

So this is already decided I see, I wasn’t sure whether such law exist in Russia. Don’t you find this ironic that the guy who by all means resisted Soviet regime all the time is excluded while those faithful servants of communist party are all welcome? What is more the latter are considered to be the only one whom really understand Russian problems.

Nothing is decided yet. It is not my job to decide who will be a candidate and who will not. I didn't know about that law too, I'm not a lawyer you know

No servants of communist party are welcome and I wasn't talking about them, don't be silly.

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Could you name at least one person who in your opinion understand Russian problems and is not a part of Purin’s squad?

No, I can't. That's the problem.

One thing I know for certain - Russia isn't USSR and no one will buy old tricks with howls about amorphous democracy and human rights. You can't feed your children with democracy, can't you? You can't spread human rights on bread and eat it up with a cup of tea for breakfast, eh? And I bet, you can't buy a car paying by freedom of speech instead of Visa Gold.

The biggest mistake our "democrats" (Kasyanov & Limonov (nazi bolshevik) are in the same party -- HA-HA-HA) make is pointing at their own problems and telling everybody that they are being mistreated. What do they expect me to do? Pity them? Fuck them all!! I work at two jobs to make ends meet and I don't give a shit about THEIR rights! I need to survive in the new capitalistic reallity!! I (and everybody) want to have more money 'cause in this cruel, cynical world it's the only fucking thing that really CAN give me freedom and right to travel, to speak, to be heard, and sometimes even to be loved.

Instead of yelling about democracy they could have pointed at social and economical problems in Russia, which is pretty hard to do actually, because evil Putin is doing much better in this field than they (the democrats) did.

So, as for the elections, it will be a difficult choice for Russia. I just hope we'll have a choice anyway...

NowhereMan wrote:

No servants of communist party are welcome and I wasn't talking about them, don't be silly.

So, about whom you were talking? Putin team consist from former communist only, with strong representation of Petersburg’s KGB school. Those people did not raise a finger to oppose the party, otherwise, they worked for this party.

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One thing I know for certain - Russia isn't USSR and no one will buy old tricks with howls about amorphous democracy and human rights. You can't feed your children with democracy, can't you?

This is just your eristic trick to escape from this problem. Lets reverse this way of thinking. Does same lack of democracy feed your children? Rather not, so Russian problem is not democracy itself. Everything depends from the way how one want to deal with the problem, nearly everything could be destroyed when thieves and idiots are responsible for such job. So the point is to find proper people to push eventual reforms. No by incident I raised the question of Vladimir Bukovski and not idiot Limonov or “Misha two cents” Kasyanov.

What most of Russians always confuse is democracy and this oligarchized period of Yeltsin. This is not the same! I think that every post-communist country has such period just on lesser scale that in Russia. While they mostly recovered and increased standard of living, your country stayed in hands of apparatchiks from the old regime. Standard of living even if increased, because it was hard to fall below starting level, is still far from the level of averagely-developed countries. Most probably reached its the highest possible level and wont improve anymore.

Of course if Russians reject democracy, even if I think that they have no clue what they are talking about, others should respect this choice.

I agree with you. I just tried to give you an idea about the position of some (maybe most) of the people I know.

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Lets reverse this way of thinking. Does same lack of democracy feed your children? Rather not, so Russian problem is not democracy itself.

Don't like to play with words, but... now, when we lack democracy, as everybody says, we don't lack food, like it was in the 90s when in some villages people had to feed their kids with fodder. Can you blame them for not liking something that everybody called democracy then?

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Standard of living even if increased, is still far from the level of averagely-developed countries.

It's true, and like I said this should be discussed and explained to the people. The problem is that nobody seems to care about it. "Putin's company" says everything is great and so-called opposition just talks about itself.

People are too tired of all those scrapes and just want stability... That's a bit dangerous 'cause it (stability) might turn into stagnation very easily... So how to keep "food on the table" and get democracy? That is the question...

P.S. When they say there's no democracy at all in Russia they're lying. There's not so much of it maybe, but the situation isn't so bad at all

Soviet Union was never communist if we are talking about theory of communism. Those whom fought in communist revolution consisted from two groups communist idealists and power hungry thugs. When they beat Tsarist forces (called “Whites” duo to their white uniforms) thugs wiped out communist idealists (like Trocky) and took the power. Installing communism in the country was just a pretext for those people to keep the power. Joseph Stalin himself was responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler, add another mass murderer Vladimir Lenin and there rest of this Soviet clique. For example they intentionally starved to death more than 10 millions of Ukrainian people. All over Soviet Union they installed concentration camps called Gulags. No opposition to this supposed communism was tolerated.

This was not normal country. It is normal when a husband cannot trust wife and otherwise? Better to not talk about some issues even at home not to mention neighbors or friends. I have heard about situation when wife spied husband and otherwise, both were not aware what the second is doing. If a child would hear something at home and later repeated in school, parents could have serious problems. This is just sick.

If somebody claims that Soviet Union was OK, it means either he/she was completely brainwashed or just he/she was young at that time. People sometimes remember only good things from the times when they were young.

Same communist ideology is impossible to install, because always some bad people take control over the situation. Look at Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, he is great example, another enemy of freedom claiming that he will make everybody equal. Remember that rights can and are equal in democratic countries but never social position of people duo to different level of individual talents.

So if somebody wants communism, it means that either he is naive like a child or dangerous thug.

NowhereMan wrote:

Can you blame them for not liking something that everybody called democracy then?

One have a brain to use it. Russians never really did much in this intention. This is deeply rooted in Russian mentality I think, the cult of leader.

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People are too tired of all those scrapes and just want stability... That's a bit dangerous 'cause it (stability) might turn into stagnation very easily... So how to keep "food on the table" and get democracy? That is the question...

We have such a saying in Poland “Dla chcacego nic trudnego” (For somebody who want, nothing is difficult). Russians will find the way if they really want.

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P.S. When they say there's no democracy at all in Russia they're lying. There's not so much of it maybe, but the situation isn't so bad at all

I know as long as you have no political ambitions in opposition and live far from the Caucasus.

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One have a brain to use it. Russians never really did much in this intention. This is deeply rooted in Russian mentality I think, the cult of leader.

Bulshit!! Not even gonna argue about it.

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We have such a saying in Poland “Dla chcacego nic trudnego”

There is the same saying in Russia

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I know as long as you have no political ambitions in opposition and live far from the Caucasus.

There are loads of parties and politicians. Their life isn't easy but they are okay.

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If somebody claims that Soviet Union was OK, it means either he/she was completely brainwashed or just he/she was young at that time. People sometimes remember only good things from the times when they were young.

And sometimes they remember only bad things. Especially when the brainwasher changes

NowhereMan wrote:

Bulshit!! Not even gonna argue about it.

I could be wrongly understood. I meant that Russians never did much to reach democratic standards and not that they never use brain I have seen once, about two years ago, photo of Russian Health Ministry building (if I recall correctly) and Putin's image above the main doors. Old habits die hard, I don’t claim that this was Putin’s order, just some layckers failed to find more civilized way to express their loyalty.

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And sometimes they remember only bad things. Especially when the brainwasher changes

Sometime yes. On other hand we could also talk about good sides of Hitler reign in Berlin.

bobhatersfriend wrote:

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And sometimes they remember only bad things. Especially when the brainwasher changes

Sometime yes. On other hand we could also talk about good sides of Hitler reign in Berlin.

didn't hitler treat everyone who fitted his "race" idea thingy well or something?

Nazis someimes treatead people better if they considered them to be Germanic/Aryan. For example if a child looked in their opinion Germanic, they could stole this child from his parents and transport to Germany. The fundamental difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union is that Nazis treated their own people much better than they treated people from occupied countries of Eastern Europe. While Soviets treated their own people much worse than they treated people from their satellite countries. Nazis killed mainly foreigners while Soviets mainly their own citizens.

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the Soviet Union was only bad during when Gorbachev was leader and perhaps when Stalin was right?....my mother told me when Gorbachev was leader people were shot and people died...

The Soviet Union was bad from the beginning of its existence to the end. Gorbachev in comparison with Stalin was an angel.

If you are interesed, you can read sometning below and later make a conclussion what Soviet Union and communsim were all about.

bobhatersfriend wrote:

ok i'm going to get hated for this but

whats so bad about Soviet Russia? my mom lived a normal life in Soviet Russia and so did my grandma, and my grandparents, great uncles and great cousins... so can someone please explain to me what was so bad about it?

my mom also said there was no communism in Russia, what she told me is that they tried to make it a communist country but it never happened

and communism is about equality right? so whats so bad about that?

You are not going to get hated for this as you simply don't have enough information about this.

You know if anyone says "Stalin was right", then for most of the residents of the Eastern Bloc it is completely the same if someone started telling why "Hitler was right".
Rzeczpospolita has already told you the historical stuffs, now I tell you
something else.

My family was tortured all through the years of communism. My great-grandfather was executed because he had other opinions about the reforms of the agriculture than the communist leaders (and on top of all that, imagine he was so naughty that he was religious! - such a person really deserves death!) so he was executed for all these dirty and horrible sins in 1951 on the 16th birthday of his son. That son was simply taken to a work-camp. Self-evidently the fiscal-standing of the family was made to be really about just to get by.

From the mid 1960's when the system started to loosen in Hungary (unilke in some countries) it seemed like if life really became milder for some people. Well, not for everybody. My mother was just at her grandmother's place (widow of the executed one) when constructional workers came to bulldoze the house. They told that the state had already sold the house from above her head and now it must be destroyed. As a compensation she was offered to move into a one-roomed flat for rent in the outskirts of the city, where there was no running water while her house had all modern comforts and was in the city-centre. In the end she managed to move into a better flat by the help of connections. It happened in the mid 1970's when life was considered to be so happy.

As for education, my mother and her sisters got worse marks than children of party-members at school, sometimes it was already so obvious...When was at the entrance exam for tertiary-school a daughter of a communist-party member was asked "which was the first slave-keeper civilization in the ancient ages...?...You know, where there were pharaos...?..."That girl won entry to the school. My mother was asked to tell Finnish faschists...She didn't win entry. She said she can never forget this.

Some relatives weren't let to make their house/flat more comfortable - not even by their own money - just because they were born into a bad family.

Of course Soviet tanks were always marching on the streets, once my brother was almost killed by one. Human life was never important for them.
I could tell you many sexual-related abusements as well from my family - all made by Soviet soldiers,party-functionarists, police.
The story of my family isn't unique. The amount of those who suffered such a treatment during communism can be expressed with a two-numbered percentage. And remember that Hungary was called "Goulash-communism" or "The happiest military camp" , "The Switzerland of Eastern-Europe" because life was the least strict, the mildest and the happiest here.Now imagine what could go in in the USSR.

Of course about these stuffs one should never speak, you could never know who was the spy around you. Everything must stay in secret. That is why some people didn't want to believe that there happened bad things too.
I remember, a friend of my other grandmother was just telling what was her life like when she was taken to work in Siberia in the work-camps, when my grandmother said "AAH, there was nothing!" and "No, it didn't happen!" A significant amount of people are like that, because they didn't experienced such things and of course they had nowhere to hear it from.

So, when your relatives say, life was so fantastic, they surely didn't know about these things as nobody dared to speak about it.

Some photographical documentation is necessary I think, it may look funny these days but at that time it was not. Just a trivia.

Comunist era butcher shop in Poland:


Long line of people waitning to buy stupid toilet paper!


WOW! They brought oranges!


State owned bus.



Instead of Coca-Cola

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Exactly, I hope nobody thinks about "equality" when hears about "communism in the Eastern Bloc"

International Hate wrote:

What's wrong with soda water btw? If woda sodowa means that...

Nothing was wrong with soda water itself. This is all about hygienic, dirty machine and lack of one use plastic beakers.

Typical situation, when deand is highier than supply... If the prices were higher, the demand will be smaller, and there will be less people in the line. Because not eveyone will have cash to buy that food. But again Rzepa will say that this is a bullshit...

The cost of toilet paper is meaningless. If this toilet paper would be available all the time in many places, then there would not be any lines.

Rzeczpospolita wrote:

The cost of toilet paper is meaningless. If this toilet paper would be available all the time in many places, then there would not be any lines.

I'm so sorry you have suffered from the lack of toilet paper... must have been your darkest days since it's the only thing from your childhood you can recall

PS You could have used Soviet newspapers instead

This comment deserve my strong response!

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Once in communist era Poland

An American, a Russian, and a Pole have agreed to meet at 6:00 pm at a certain pub to have a beer. The American and the Russian arrive on time. One hour later, the Pole shows up. "Sorry I'm late," says the Pole, "but I had to stand in line for one and a half hours to buy a ham."

"What's a line?" asks the American.

"What's a ham?" asks the Russian