Haim, things are not black and white, and all "-isms" are about idea-marketing, not about defining things. If a debate contains an -ism word, it's almost a sign of misunderstandings.
Soviet Union did not introduce Communism as defined by Karl Marx, but many of the ideas were certainly introduced, and the communist countries had a "communist world order" that went into a different direction than the western world.
That's why people from the former Soviet Union still have problems to see the problem in Georgia - they do not consider country borders as important as others. Even the concept of nationality is much different - I have heard at least three different definitions of "being a Russian".
I learned some Russian, and I was surprised to see, that even the language has a lot of constructs, which seem more socialist than not. I don't know how old these constructs are, and whether they were in common use before socialism was invented.
Russia is a huge country with lots of resources, and they have a huge problem with their communist past. How can communism be that bad if it won over Hitler, in a war that killed 20 million Russians and takes care of the ill and old?
All these things mean that Russia will take time to change. It is difficult to say whether Russia is a democracy or not, but we can hopefully agree, that there is not much freedom of press and not much opposition, which is not good. Let us hope that the internet, and things like Google Translate buttons will change that. |
