To some extent that is true. Terms like “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”, “ethical” and “unethical” are born out of convention, not nature. Before there were societies those terms did not exist. But does that mean they are insignificant? There is a reason why societies - *all *societies - have invented those terms and live by them. Otherwise they would be entirely unable to function.
You will argue now that the definition of what exactly is “good” and “bad” varies from one society to the next. That much is true, at least to an extent. Furthermore your point seems to be that people outside one society should strictly refrain from interfering with the values of that society. Here we disagree.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which you consider to be a “travesty” has been introduced in 1948 under the impression of the events during world war two, an event that made it quite clear that the international community cannot and must not always leave a society to its own devices based on the creed of non-interference.
The UDHR has been shaped by western authors and you are not the first to critisize it as being “western” in content. Debating the content is one thing - saying that there should not be such a thing as universal human rights is quite another.
All rights that go beyond the right of the strongest depend on some form of government. That is not a “Western” thing.
Where do you get that “clearly are” from? Sure - if you ask the current ruling class, they will tell you to leave them alone. “Everything is fine - we are living according to the values of our society here. Do not meddle.” If you ask the people under their thumb, they might sing a different tune.
But I will answer your question: If a country would be best served by a dictatorship, I would support it. I just do not believe that such a country exists.
There is a great deal of nostalgia for the life that has been among East Germans. That goes along with a proclivity to whitewash the past. However, if you take a closer look at the numbers in your quote, you will find that while 57% of those polled say the GDR had more good than bad sides, only 8% go as far as to say that life there was happier and better than in reunified Germany today.
That is in line with more recent polls. This one was performed this year among 1001 citizens of the Land Brandenburg (smack in the middle of former East Germany). Asked whether they would like the GDR back 9% said yes, 86% said no (and 5% did not know).
CarnalK was already kind enough to link it (see above). So now I know where you’re coming from. But the headline of that article is misleading, because the people polled do not say that life was better under communism than it is today. They just say there was more good than bad. Only 8% say life was better then.
You can prefer a historical era that you weren’t alive for.
In a Levade Center poll earlier this year asking Russians ‘what form of government and economics is most legitimate’, the communist political system beat liberal democracy by 35% to 10% (‘the present political order’ was a third option, less popular than communism but more popular than democracy), and central planning beat free market economics 55% to 25%.
But Russia doesnt have any tradition of liberal democracy. How can they know? Again, a majority of Russians werent alive when the USSR crumbled. They have no memory of the KGB or the labor camps, or of the lack of consumer goods.
the oldest cohorts are the most pro-Communists, and they at least remember the past.
people that idealize communism generally idealise the Brezhnev era, not the Stalin one. (A disturbingly high percentage of Russians still like stalin, though Stalin is even more popular in the liberal-democracy golden child Georgia). Likewise, people who consider themselves patriotic Americans are usually idealizing aspects of American history other than Jim Crow, Native American genocides etc.
in terms of material standard of living relative to the west, the average Russian was probably about as well off under Brezhnev as today, and since inequality was much lower than than now, the poorest Russians were almost certainly much better off. Again, relative to the west. (I’m quoting from Anatoly Karlin’s analysis here, and he’s distinctly not a communist sympathiser).
Russia did have a purportedly liberal democracy for about ten years (though there are widespread allegations the communists were cheated in the 1995 election). That’s almost as long as Nicaragua had socialism, and you’ll find a lot of right wingers claim that ten years was enough to show that socialism failed Nicaragua. (Mostly thanks to our policies towards the government, but that’s a separate issue).
I hate to burst your bubble, but they were propping up dictators long before the Cold War, and a lot of the motivation was simply business and imperialism. (Look up United Fruit Company) Communism was merely an excuse.
Remarkable figures - especially given the fact that the fall of communism was not really forced upon the Soviet Union from the outside. And now, a quarter century later they still believe it is the best political system - but they do not seem to undertake any serious attempt at restoring it. Why is that?
As far as the questions asked in the OP, I am not sure what conclusions we are to draw from this. As far as Russia is concerned, I do not see any Western attempts at forcing our style of democracy upon them. At best we are advertising it to them.
The USA was never an imperialist power. Sure we acquired Cuba and the Phillipines as a result of the Spanish American war but we didnt colonize the Americas. And we werent a presence in the rest of the world pre WWII…we were isolationist. Business on the other hand…
Putin’s too powerful today for anyone to make any serious attempt at constructing any alternative form of government, communist, liberal or otherwise. He’s not immortal though, so we’ll see what happens when he dies.
So they *have *Putin’s autocracy. What they *want *is communism, which they cannot get because of the former. They probably *could *get it, if their society was more liberal, which is the *last *thing they want. Twisted.