In Russia, nostalgia for Soviet Union and positive feelings about Stalin

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/29/in-russia-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-and-positive-feelings-about-stalin/

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. “Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory,” Putin said in a 2005 speech.

While not all Russians necessarily agree with Putin’s characterization, most do view the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 as “a bad thing,” according to a Pew Research Center survey of Russia and 17 other countries in Central and Eastern Europe conducted between 2015 and 2016. And this view is not limited to Russia. 

For example, in Russia, as well as in the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Moldova, roughly seven-in-ten or more view the Soviet collapse as “a bad thing,” and, in Belarus, 54% see it in a negative light. Of the five other former Soviet states surveyed, adults in the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which were forcibly incorporated into the USSR — are among least likely to view the Soviet breakup as a bad thing, with three-in-ten or fewer in each country holding this view.

A more recent 2017 Pew Research Center poll in Russia shows a 10-percentage-point drop in the share of Russians who say the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a bad thing for their country (59% in 2017, compared with 69% in 2015). This change goes hand in hand with an improved overall economic outlook among Russians. Still, a majority of Russians continue to say the collapse of the Soviet Union has been a bad thing for their country.

[CaliCat 3,957]

How dare you! How dare you speak ill of the leader of the free world!!