Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

In some E European communist countries birth control of any kind was highly criminalized. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.irishtimes.com/news/health/legacy-of-romania-s-contraception-ban-lives-on-1.958842%3Fmode%3Damp

Anonymous wrote:My extended family grew up in Soviet Armenia. Their birth certificates are written in Armenian. Their names are unmistakably Armenian. Family language was always Armenian though everyone is fluent in Russian with an accent. There goes your Russification theory.

Anonymous wrote:

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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Np here. 19:39 pp, pls take off your rose glasses. I just want to address 1 issue - Russification that you don't seem to realize existed. It doesn't refer to Russian speakers having an advantage or Russian being used as a common language, it refers to ethnic people who were deported and then replaced with ethnic Russians. 10% of schools taught in ethnic languages, so in Ukraine as an example out of every 10 schools, only 1 taught in Ukrainian. Universities taught in Russian, heck even names were Russified. This is going well beyond relationship discussion but as a person who was born in ussr, I am amazed at deliberate closing of eyes to the tragedies of totalitarian regime. It was a totalitarian regime that perished millions of people through gulag, holodomor, deportations, social injustice, a system that prevented free movement of people - but hey, women who managed to avoid all those, had better sex than their western sisters.

My grandparents spoke Ukrainian their whole life. My dad moved to Russia and speaks two languages, but his extended family speaks only Ukrainian. They understand some Russian but we can’t have a conversation because I don’t speak Ukrainian. They grew up and got educated in the USSR so I am not sure how well the Russification work.

Also not sure about the Russified names in the USSR. My uncle’s name is Mykola, he’s 50. I am yet to find a Russian Mykola.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sex sucks in the US because of the macho silent type militarized culture where men disrespect women at every opportunity. Look at who is in charge of the country here.

You think the USSR didn’t have a macho militarized culture?! This was the country were everyone reportedly took exercise breaks instead of coffee breaks. Their military was famous for having the best, toughest, most brutal soldiers.

Also well known that they were/are very disrespectful of women. Most women I know from former Soviet countries won’t date or marry men from their home country.

As a Westerner, what I mostly heard about Russian men was that they were alcoholics. That can't have been good for the women's sex lives.

That's like saying, all I heard about American men is that they like McDonalds.

For a dose of reality, here are the top alcohol-consuming countries. Russia made top ten but guess who else did? Australia. Czech Republic. Portugal. What do you hear about Australian men?

Moldova (17.4 liters per capita over 15+ years)
Belarus (17.1)
Lithuania (16.2)
Russia (14.5)
Czech Republic (14.1)
Romania (12.9)
Serbia (12.9)
Australia (12.6)
Portugal (12.5)
Slovakia (12.5)

https://vinepair.com/articles/map-countries-drink-most-alcohol/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Np here. 19:39 pp, pls take off your rose glasses. I just want to address 1 issue - Russification that you don't seem to realize existed. It doesn't refer to Russian speakers having an advantage or Russian being used as a common language, it refers to ethnic people who were deported and then replaced with ethnic Russians. 10% of schools taught in ethnic languages, so in Ukraine as an example out of every 10 schools, only 1 taught in Ukrainian. Universities taught in Russian, heck even names were Russified. This is going well beyond relationship discussion but as a person who was born in ussr, I am amazed at deliberate closing of eyes to the tragedies of totalitarian regime. It was a totalitarian regime that perished millions of people through gulag, holodomor, deportations, social injustice, a system that prevented free movement of people - but hey, women who managed to avoid all those, had better sex than their western sisters.

My grandparents spoke Ukrainian their whole life. My dad moved to Russia and speaks two languages, but his extended family speaks only Ukrainian. They understand some Russian but we can’t have a conversation because I don’t speak Ukrainian. They grew up and got educated in the USSR so I am not sure how well the Russification work.

Anonymous wrote:Np here. 19:39 pp, pls take off your rose glasses. I just want to address 1 issue - Russification that you don't seem to realize existed. It doesn't refer to Russian speakers having an advantage or Russian being used as a common language, it refers to ethnic people who were deported and then replaced with ethnic Russians. 10% of schools taught in ethnic languages, so in Ukraine as an example out of every 10 schools, only 1 taught in Ukrainian. Universities taught in Russian, heck even names were Russified. This is going well beyond relationship discussion but as a person who was born in ussr, I am amazed at deliberate closing of eyes to the tragedies of totalitarian regime. It was a totalitarian regime that perished millions of people through gulag, holodomor, deportations, social injustice, a system that prevented free movement of people - but hey, women who managed to avoid all those, had better sex than their western sisters.

Anonymous wrote:

+1
I never participate in the discussions about the life in the USSR anymore. Americans who’ve watched a movie or two on the topic feel they know better and like to tell me how it really was. God forbid they are also academics and have visited once in the 90s, then I am out of luck completely - they treat me as a barbarian who was unaware of her surroundings and condescendingly preach.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sex sucks in the US because of the macho silent type militarized culture where men disrespect women at every opportunity. Look at who is in charge of the country here.

You think the USSR didn’t have a macho militarized culture?! This was the country were everyone reportedly took exercise breaks instead of coffee breaks. Their military was famous for having the best, toughest, most brutal soldiers.

Also well known that they were/are very disrespectful of women. Most women I know from former Soviet countries won’t date or marry men from their home country.

As a Westerner, what I mostly heard about Russian men was that they were alcoholics. That can't have been good for the women's sex lives.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting to read all these Russian comments. I thought Jeff said there are no Russians on this thread.