Russia was and is a culturally conservative country. The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later. Russification under the Czar–trying to get all the diverse ethnic minorities to just be Russian–was simply turned into a Stalinist version of the same thing. The fundamental authoritarianism of the Czar never left, but it was given a Marxist coat of paint.
The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. The Soviet Union was the first European country to legalize abortion - and after banning it again, they became the second European country to legalize abortion when they re-legalized it, and their commitment to women’s health surpassed any other country for decades as the Soviets provided abortion on demand rather than after a laundry list of restrictions as most of their contemporaries did. The Soviets also had universal childcare, freeing women from the tyranny of domestic servitude decades before any other developed country would, and the legacy of this effort is so strong that even the capitalist successor regimes in Eastern Europe outperform the ones in the West in terms of having female scientists, heads of government departments, etc. The women of the Soviet Union were the freest women in the world for the entirety of the USSR’s existence.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
Not even completely true. After the civil war and prior to the crackdowns of the 30s, gay marriage was legalized, and there were soviet scientists already proclaiming that gender was more akin to a spectrum than to a binary. Sadly, that progress was lost forever after Stalinism.
Unfucking it and refucking it and unfucking it again is not exactly success. No more so than recent changes to abortion in the US. And there’s a whole lot more to Feminism than abortion.
Unfucking it and refucking it and unfucking it again is not exactly success
…are you sure? Because if you end up with it unfucked, while in the rest of the world it is still fucked, then I would call that a success even if there was a rocky road to get there.
And the rest of my comment is about how it wasn’t just abortion. You should read it.
Yes, I’m quite sure in the context of my original argument that Russia was and is culturally conservative. A society that goes backwards like that never had a solid feminist culture to begin with.
All across the west we’ve seen rollback of feminist issues over the past decade, do you think that that nullifies all of the victories that have been won? Liberation struggle isn’t like a tech tree that you climb in one direction, it’s a constant back-and-forth battle being waged between the oppressed and the oppressors.
No, you do not see comrade. All of the people of mother Russia are Eurasians, which is it’s own unique people that have a culture that just so happens to be identical to Russian culture. You westerners just wouldn’t understand our eastern ways…
Having lived 20 years abroad, including my core years of personal adult development, and having returned to my homeland were I became a member of a small Leftwing party, I keenly notice just how much people are, seemingly unaware of it, frequently shaping their thinking and even practice of being Leftwing on local cultural factors: pushing up in the party the sons and daughters of old hands or selecting people for positions of responsibility based on liking them rather than merit isn’t really being Leftwing (it’s quite literally the opposite of Fair and by being unmeritocratic one actually reduces the chances of success of the party) and people making speeches of the “give shit to my group” (women, teaches, pensioners, whatever) variety isn’t being Leftwing, it’s disguising one’s greed as being “for the group” and has little to do with the common good.
The point being that all political ideologies get adjusted by those who practice tehm and they do it based on what they thing is normal, and most people think “normal” is what they’ve seen around themselves their whole lives, so it’s expect that the political ideologies that end up being successful in a country “go along with the grain of the wood” and adopt the local’s ideas of “normal”.
Russia was and is a culturally conservative country. The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later. Russification under the Czar–trying to get all the diverse ethnic minorities to just be Russian–was simply turned into a Stalinist version of the same thing. The fundamental authoritarianism of the Czar never left, but it was given a Marxist coat of paint.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. The Soviet Union was the first European country to legalize abortion - and after banning it again, they became the second European country to legalize abortion when they re-legalized it, and their commitment to women’s health surpassed any other country for decades as the Soviets provided abortion on demand rather than after a laundry list of restrictions as most of their contemporaries did. The Soviets also had universal childcare, freeing women from the tyranny of domestic servitude decades before any other developed country would, and the legacy of this effort is so strong that even the capitalist successor regimes in Eastern Europe outperform the ones in the West in terms of having female scientists, heads of government departments, etc. The women of the Soviet Union were the freest women in the world for the entirety of the USSR’s existence.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
Not even completely true. After the civil war and prior to the crackdowns of the 30s, gay marriage was legalized, and there were soviet scientists already proclaiming that gender was more akin to a spectrum than to a binary. Sadly, that progress was lost forever after Stalinism.
Unfucking it and refucking it and unfucking it again is not exactly success. No more so than recent changes to abortion in the US. And there’s a whole lot more to Feminism than abortion.
…are you sure? Because if you end up with it unfucked, while in the rest of the world it is still fucked, then I would call that a success even if there was a rocky road to get there.
And the rest of my comment is about how it wasn’t just abortion. You should read it.
Yes, I’m quite sure in the context of my original argument that Russia was and is culturally conservative. A society that goes backwards like that never had a solid feminist culture to begin with.
All across the west we’ve seen rollback of feminist issues over the past decade, do you think that that nullifies all of the victories that have been won? Liberation struggle isn’t like a tech tree that you climb in one direction, it’s a constant back-and-forth battle being waged between the oppressed and the oppressors.
Nullifies, no. Shows that the west doesn’t have a solid feminist culture, yes. Same goes for the old USSR.
No, you do not see comrade. All of the people of mother Russia are Eurasians, which is it’s own unique people that have a culture that just so happens to be identical to Russian culture. You westerners just wouldn’t understand our eastern ways…
Having lived 20 years abroad, including my core years of personal adult development, and having returned to my homeland were I became a member of a small Leftwing party, I keenly notice just how much people are, seemingly unaware of it, frequently shaping their thinking and even practice of being Leftwing on local cultural factors: pushing up in the party the sons and daughters of old hands or selecting people for positions of responsibility based on liking them rather than merit isn’t really being Leftwing (it’s quite literally the opposite of Fair and by being unmeritocratic one actually reduces the chances of success of the party) and people making speeches of the “give shit to my group” (women, teaches, pensioners, whatever) variety isn’t being Leftwing, it’s disguising one’s greed as being “for the group” and has little to do with the common good.
The point being that all political ideologies get adjusted by those who practice tehm and they do it based on what they thing is normal, and most people think “normal” is what they’ve seen around themselves their whole lives, so it’s expect that the political ideologies that end up being successful in a country “go along with the grain of the wood” and adopt the local’s ideas of “normal”.