Anonymous wrote:
The words 'may be true' is not an admission that the statement is, in fact true. Women may have similar opportunities to education and work but that doesn't mean they enjoyed equitable wages or partnerships. The with few exceptions, the USSR is highly patriarchal.

Wages in centrally ruled USSR were set from the top and didn't make a distinction for gender. If you want to argue that culturally, the USSR was highly patriarchal in that women were expected to take care of the home and children, then that is true, but a single generation ago, where in the world wasn't that true? Only in this generation of American women are husbands expected to shoulder the burden of housework and childcare equally and it is STILL not working perfectly. Fathers of 30- to 40-something American women probably rarely changed diapers or folded laundry; is it fair to expect more of Soviet men of the same generation? Looking at the laws of the USSR, you'd be hard pressed to find anything that specifically discriminated against women with regard to voting, education, employment, access to justice, access to public services, you name it. Paid maternity leave and free childcare didn't hurt either.

Anonymous wrote:I have to wonder what your experience in the former USSR is as you seem to have so little actual experience - or perhaps you're just a toady. Russian language and Russian people had preference no matter where they lived.

I'm a person born and raised in the USSR whose experience differs from yours - is that so extraordinary to merit name-calling? It was a big country you know.

Anonymous wrote:Of course, in the other republics there were some figureheads from the ethnic majorities but there was no doubt ethnic Russians were the dominating group and their culture dominated.

What? Nowhere in the other republics ethnic Russians dominated anything. The leadership of, for instance, Soviet Armenia was 100% ethnic Armenian; the same for Soviet Tajikistan, Georgia, Kazakhstan and the rest of them. Schools, theaters, newspapers, poetry all existed in local languages. In fact, you can make an excellent argument that it was much better to be a Tajik in Moscow than an ethnic Russian in Dushanbe.

Anonymous wrote:Anyone not 'Russified' could not expect to advance in any area. The discrimination was very prevalent within the same ethnic group.

I don't know what you mean by Russified. Certainly fluency in Russian was necessary for advancement in a multi-ethnic state but since Russian was taught in schools and spoken widely, it wasn't exactly hard to attain. In a multiethnic state like the USSR, there had to be a lingua franca, and Russian took that role. If you want to argue that these enclaves should never have been integrated into a single state, that's a valid point, but they were, and as such, needed a common language. They found it Russian.

Anonymous wrote:Discrimination against Jews, especially, occurred at all levels, not just the 'upper echelons of power'. (It's thanks to Russians we have the word 'pogrom'. )

Jews were discriminated against but not to the degree you claim. They were widely present at the top of arts, sciences, medicine, academia, and the creative class. The word "pogrom" may be Russian but if you want to have a serious discussion of anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, you have to perhaps acknowledge that the most famous pogroms took place in Odessa, Kishinev, Gomel, Kiev etc. - Ukraine, Moldavia and Belorussia - enclaves that were part of Russian empire but ethnically non-Russian.

.....First, you already admitted that discrimination, whenever it existed, was gender blind so it wasn't about being female.

Second, overt piety and religious observance in the USSR was a career-ending move, no matter what religion. You could be an observant Russian Orthodox, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, it didn't matter. So it wasn't really about being a minority, it was about a blanket lack of welcome toward religion in public life.

Third, there was no really such a thing as a minority in the USSR. Remember, the country was made up of fifteen ethnically distinct enclaves, so you could be a member of an ethic minority in one of them and an ethnic majority in another. Every republic (the "R" in USSR) had its own elite, composed mostly of members of the ethnic majority in that particular R. Some of them were majority Muslim so they most certainly didn't discriminate against their own! So membership in a particular ethnic group didn't really hurt one's prospects.

Fourth, the above did not apply to Jews, who experienced real discrimination when it came to upper echelons of power. That said, they were very amply represented in the arts, sciences, medicine, academia etc. so it was more like a few paths were closed off but others were open.

Fifth, Jehova's witnesses really weren't a thing in the USSR.

The words 'may be true' is not an admission that the statement is, in fact true. Women may have similar opportunities to education and work but that doesn't mean they enjoyed equitable wages or partnerships. The with few exceptions, the USSR is highly patriarchal.

I have to wonder what your experience in the former USSR is as you seem to have so little actual experience - or perhaps you're just a toady. Russian language and Russian people had preference no matter where they lived. Of course, in the other republics there were some figureheads from the ethnic majorities but there was no doubt ethnic Russians were the dominating group and their culture dominated. Anyone not 'Russified' could not expect to advance in any area. The discrimination was very prevalent within the same ethnic group. Discrimination against Jews, especially, occurred at all levels, not just the 'upper echelons of power'. (It's thanks to Russians we have the word 'pogrom'. ) Oh, and the reason Jehovah Witnesses weren't really a 'thing' in the USSR is because so many of them were shipped off to Siberia and the gulag. Having met a number of them in the former USSR, I can assure you their treatment is probably as bad as the Jews and the Roma.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Even if it applied equally to men and women, how could that make women more, so to says, sexually empowered and satisfied than womem in the West? I'll repeat, and if you grew up in the USSR you know it perfectly well, - Soviet culture was extremely prudish. Sex was a huge taboo. The idea that women were more content in communist countries is too absurd to even discuss.

I don't know about sexual empowerment. I do know that politically and socially women were empowered close to equally with men. No one in the USSR made a big to-do about women running for office, performing surgery, working, voting, or going on paid maternity leave. It was a society poorly ran in many ways but these ways were equally available to both genders.

Prudishness about sex was not specific to the USSR, there was a time when the whole world was prudish about sex. It probably lasted longer in the USSR than before. I don't really know if you can make an argument that at one point of time in history, women of West German were less prudish than their eastern sisters.

Sexual contentment comes from many things. Lack of stress about tomorrow certainly plays a role.

In regards to the bolded statement - that may be true only if the women weren't minorities. Jews, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, etc., were/are heavily discriminated against whether they were male or female.

If you look at the Soviet elites, beginning from Stalin's surrounding, they were mostly Jews. they may change their names , but there were a lot of Jewish at the top of the communist party.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Even if it applied equally to men and women, how could that make women more, so to says, sexually empowered and satisfied than womem in the West? I'll repeat, and if you grew up in the USSR you know it perfectly well, - Soviet culture was extremely prudish. Sex was a huge taboo. The idea that women were more content in communist countries is too absurd to even discuss.

I don't know about sexual empowerment. I do know that politically and socially women were empowered close to equally with men. No one in the USSR made a big to-do about women running for office, performing surgery, working, voting, or going on paid maternity leave. It was a society poorly ran in many ways but these ways were equally available to both genders.

Prudishness about sex was not specific to the USSR, there was a time when the whole world was prudish about sex. It probably lasted longer in the USSR than before. I don't really know if you can make an argument that at one point of time in history, women of West German were less prudish than their eastern sisters.

Sexual contentment comes from many things. Lack of stress about tomorrow certainly plays a role.

In regards to the bolded statement - that may be true only if the women weren't minorities. Jews, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, etc., were/are heavily discriminated against whether they were male or female.

Well it's all a good bit more nuanced than that. Let's go over it in no particular order.

First, you already admitted that discrimination, whenever it existed, was gender blind so it wasn't about being female.

Second, overt piety and religious observance in the USSR was a career-ending move, no matter what religion. You could be an observant Russian Orthodox, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, it didn't matter. So it wasn't really about being a minority, it was about a blanket lack of welcome toward religion in public life.

Third, there was no really such a thing as a minority in the USSR. Remember, the country was made up of fifteen ethnically distinct enclaves, so you could be a member of an ethic minority in one of them and an ethnic majority in another. Every republic (the "R" in USSR) had its own elite, composed mostly of members of the ethnic majority in that particular R. Some of them were majority Muslim so they most certainly didn't discriminate against their own! So membership in a particular ethnic group didn't really hurt one's prospects.

Fourth, the above did not apply to Jews, who experienced real discrimination when it came to upper echelons of power. That said, they were very amply represented in the arts, sciences, medicine, academia etc. so it was more like a few paths were closed off but others were open.

Fifth, Jehova's witnesses really weren't a thing in the USSR.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Even if it applied equally to men and women, how could that make women more, so to says, sexually empowered and satisfied than womem in the West? I'll repeat, and if you grew up in the USSR you know it perfectly well, - Soviet culture was extremely prudish. Sex was a huge taboo. The idea that women were more content in communist countries is too absurd to even discuss.

I don't know about sexual empowerment. I do know that politically and socially women were empowered close to equally with men. No one in the USSR made a big to-do about women running for office, performing surgery, working, voting, or going on paid maternity leave. It was a society poorly ran in many ways but these ways were equally available to both genders.

Prudishness about sex was not specific to the USSR, there was a time when the whole world was prudish about sex. It probably lasted longer in the USSR than before. I don't really know if you can make an argument that at one point of time in history, women of West German were less prudish than their eastern sisters.

Sexual contentment comes from many things. Lack of stress about tomorrow certainly plays a role.

In regards to the bolded statement - that may be true only if the women weren't minorities. Jews, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, etc., were/are heavily discriminated against whether they were male or female.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More leisure time in Communist countries.

Capitalists - and their worker bees - are over-scheduled.

If you consider standing in endless lines for basic necessities that were always in short supply to be leisure time, then yeah, okay.

If the stuff is in short supply, then what's the point in standing in line. They would ran out before you get there. There were no lines since there was nothing to buy.

Let me tell you how it went. You are walking back from work and see a line forming outside a store. You immediately stand there without knowing what will be sold. Start asking: what will they be giving? Some say women’s shoes (bonus if Czech or East German), or children’s jackets, or bananas, or whatever. You continue standing because you don’t know for sure “what they will be giving” but wherever it will be, it would be useful because unless you buy it now, there is no guarantee that in 3 or 6 or 12 or 24 months down the line, it will be sold somewhere again and you would have to look everywhere for it. This is why you would stand in that line. Same thing for food stuffs, you find out the day before that they will be giving out meat (by giving out it means selling), you run at 5:30 or 6 am to book your place in line. You come back at 2 or at 3 or 4 whenever the time is, and take your place in line (that you booked in the early AM) and buy 1 or 2 portions of the meat, because they ration it. Hope this helps to understand. This was the situation in the 1970s and 1980s, towards the collapse. May be it was different in 1950s and 1960’s for food stuffs, but for consumer goods, this was pretty much it.

I spent 3 years in Soviet Central Asia in the early 90s. You nailed the whole 'standing in line' thing! It was still going on even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were also gray/black markets where you could get stuff but it was far more expensive than getting the same stuff in a store. A lot of people just couldn't afford the gray/black market.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what explains their low birthrates?

Government funded abortions and who the hell wants to raise a kid in that hell? Also, at least in Red China, one child policy. Cramped living quarters, alcoholism, low-calorie diet, poor health care, waiting lists for everything, etc.

Not true. I grew up there. Birth control was available, and it was cultural and still is to have 2 kids the most, maybe 3. Big families were not cool, longer story.

Correct. The norm in two-parent families was two kids, sometimes one. The only non-ethnic families to have three kids were the ones hit with twins on their second try. Ethnic families, especially in Muslim-majority communities, had as many as they wanted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So what explains their low birthrates?

Government funded abortions and who the hell wants to raise a kid in that hell? Also, at least in Red China, one child policy. Cramped living quarters, alcoholism, low-calorie diet, poor health care, waiting lists for everything, etc.

Not true. I grew up there. Birth control was available, and it was cultural and still is to have 2 kids the most, maybe 3. Big families were not cool, longer story.

It was low quality and unreliable. The chief form of birth control was abortion.

Nonsense. In the eighties, pills and condoms were widely available, without prescription, I might add.

Anonymous wrote:The main cause was probably that those Communist countries were strongly paternalistic. They did not fill their women's heads with feminist nonsense that blamed men for everything and increased female dissatisfaction. Instead, women were expected to play traditional roles. And so they did.

The idea is that, because women were more financially independent, they didn't trade sex for economic security and, therefore, weren't as inclined to put up with bad sex or relationships

Totally incorrect. The standard of living was lower in the USSR and GDR than in the West. Women had fewer options economically. Women in the West were free to feel, and express, their dissatisfaction with men. Women in the USSR and GDR were pretty much stuck.

Nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Even if it applied equally to men and women, how could that make women more, so to says, sexually empowered and satisfied than womem in the West? I'll repeat, and if you grew up in the USSR you know it perfectly well, - Soviet culture was extremely prudish. Sex was a huge taboo. The idea that women were more content in communist countries is too absurd to even discuss.

I don't know about sexual empowerment. I do know that politically and socially women were empowered close to equally with men. No one in the USSR made a big to-do about women running for office, performing surgery, working, voting, or going on paid maternity leave. It was a society poorly ran in many ways but these ways were equally available to both genders.

Prudishness about sex was not specific to the USSR, there was a time when the whole world was prudish about sex. It probably lasted longer in the USSR than before. I don't really know if you can make an argument that at one point of time in history, women of West German were less prudish than their eastern sisters.

Sexual contentment comes from many things. Lack of stress about tomorrow certainly plays a role.

Anonymous wrote:

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Even if it applied equally to men and women, how could that make women more, so to says, sexually empowered and satisfied than womem in the West? I'll repeat, and if you grew up in the USSR you know it perfectly well, - Soviet culture was extremely prudish. Sex was a huge taboo. The idea that women were more content in communist countries is too absurd to even discuss.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

1917 - the first no-fault divorce law, the right to vote for women... and the right to do pretty much anything and work anywhere. This is at the time when women in US still couldn’t dine in a nice restaraunt alone.

Yes, on paper, it all looked great.

Women had a right to divorce but divorce was stigmatized enormously. It was impossible to buy an apartment for a single person, so even when couples did divorced they often continued to live in one tiny apartment (like my parents did for years -and they were pretty well off by Soviet standards).

Here comes the 'best' part, hold on to it - If colleagues at work learnt that you have an affair (even emotional) you would be grilled for it in front of all of your coworkers.

The whole culture was extremely prudish so I cannot imagine how women could have better sex than in the West.

It is the innate hypocricy of Soviet ideology that makes it so difficult to explain the truth to outsiders.

People in totalitarian regimes have no rights, be they women or men.

And anyone who will tell you things were not so bad in the USSR is either a clueless outsider or (most probably) does not value freedom and definitely supports Putin.

Everything you described - grilling in front of your colleagues, the lack of real estate options - applied to men in equal measure. There was nothing woman-specific in it.

I grew up in the USSR, and I'm actually agnostic on Putin. There were many things that sucked about USSR, and there were many that didn't. Chief among those that didn't was education and extracurriculars available to all children. I live in a million-dollar house in one of the highest-cost of living areas in the country. Yet we struggle, financially and logistically, to give my children the same education and extracurricular options that were available in the old country to all and sundry, for free. It is what it is.

Yes life there sucked in many ways, but there were ways in which it didn't. There was generally no such thing as worrying about finding a job, affording education for your children, getting medical treatment, or surviving retirement. There was low-level stress from the lack of consumer goods but in other ways, it was less stress.

Anonymous wrote:The main cause was probably that those Communist countries were strongly paternalistic. They did not fill their women's heads with feminist nonsense that blamed men for everything and increased female dissatisfaction. Instead, women were expected to play traditional roles. And so they did.

The idea is that, because women were more financially independent, they didn't trade sex for economic security and, therefore, weren't as inclined to put up with bad sex or relationships

Totally incorrect. The standard of living was lower in the USSR and GDR than in the West. Women had fewer options economically. Women in the West were free to feel, and express, their dissatisfaction with men. Women in the USSR and GDR were pretty much stuck.

What? That's nonsense. Blame the Communists for many things, but they generally did great in the women empowerment department way before the West.

Anonymous wrote:I got the impression from the article that men were having a lot less sex in communist countries. If you got rid of a lot of the truly awful sex that women often put up with because they're dependent on a particular man for financial support, then there could still be a lot of bad sex and struggles while *still* being better than what women were going through in non-communist countries where women were slower to get even the nominal rights that women had in the communist countries.

Look both man and women put up with bad sex. So just stop with all women put up with bad sex and men do not.

The issue with this study is East Germany was a totalitarian state. The people there knew what answer you were supposed to give when asked. If someone was asking questions, they worked for the state. Even after unification, this bias would still be there.

Also the Soviet Union/ communism in the block states was not a paradise for women or men. If a low level party official or secret police agent saw a woman he wanted, he would take that woman.

This man was a member of the Politburo.

At Beria's trial in 1953, it became known that he had committed numerous rapes during the years he was NKVD chief.[24] Simon Sebag-Montefiore, a biographer of Stalin, concluded the information "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity."[25][26]

His case files in the Soviet archives contained the official testimony from Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraia, two of Beria's most senior NKVD bodyguards. They stated that, on warm nights during the war years, Beria was often driven slowly through the streets of Moscow in his armored Packard limousine. He would point out young women to be detained and escorted to his mansion, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. Beria's bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left Beria's house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. In one incident, his chief bodyguard, Sarkisov, reported that a woman who had been brought to Beria rejected his advances and ran out of his office; Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway, prompting the enraged Beria to declare, "Now it's not a bouquet, it's a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" The NKVD arrested the woman the next day.[25]

Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freeing their relatives from the Gulag. In one case, Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from NKVD prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her: "Scream or not, it doesn't matter."[27] Beria, however, already knew that her relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria