Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

Ever since the fall of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc, annual polling by the Levada Center has shown that over 50 percent of Russia's population lamented its collapse, with the only exception to this being in the year 2012 when support for the Soviet Union dipped below 50 percent. A 2018 poll showed that 66% of Russians regretted the fall of the Soviet Union, setting a 15-year record, and the majority of these regretting opinions came from people older than 55.[6][7]

In 2011, a poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 82% of Ukrainians, 61% of Russians and 56% of Lithuanians believed the standard of living has had a bad influence since 1991, respectively.[8] It also found that a further 34% of Ukrainians, 42% of Russians and 45% of Lithuanians approved the change to a market economy.[9]

A poll in 2013 conducted by Gallup found that a majority of respondents in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Russia, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus claimed that the breakup of the Soviet Union has casued more harm than good. A further 33% of Georgians and 31% of Azerbaijanis also agreed with the statement.[10] A 2012 survey commissioned by Canrgie Endowment found that 38% of Armenians concurring that their country "will always have need of a leader like Stalin".[11]

In 2017, another poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 69% of Russians, 54% of Belarusians, 70% of Moldovans and 79% of Armenians claimed that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing for their country. With the exception of Estonia, the percentage of people who agreed with the statement was higher amongst people aged 35 or over. 57% of Georgians and 58% of Russians also said that Joseph Stalin played a very/mostly positive role in history.[12]

Wall advertisement at the "Soviet Times" pub in Moscow

According to polls, what is missed most about the former Soviet Union was its shared economic system, which provided financial stability.[13] Neoliberal economic reforms after the fall of the USSR, in particular privatization and austerity, resulted in harsh living standards for the general population, with sharp increases in unemployment, poverty and mortality rates.[14][15][16][17][18][19] Policies associated with privatization also allowed much of the country's economy to fall in the hands of a newly established business oligarchy.[20] The sense of belonging to a great superpower was a secondary reason for the nostalgia; many felt humiliated and betrayed by their experiences throughout the 1990s and blamed the upheaval on advisors from Western powers, especially as NATO moved closer into Russia's sphere of influence.[13]

According to Kristen Ghodsee, a researcher on post-communist Eastern Europe:

Only by examining how the quotidian aspects of daily life were affected by great social, political and economic changes can we make sense of the desire for this collectively imagined, more egalitarian past. Nobody wants to revive 20th century totalitarianism. But nostalgia for communism has become a common language through which ordinary men and women express disappointment with the shortcomings of parliamentary democracy and neoliberal capitalism today.[21]

According to the Levada Center poll (November 2016), the people mainly miss the Soviet Union because of the destruction of the joint economic system of its 15 republics (53%); people lost the feeling of belonging to a great power (43%); mutual distrust and cruelty have increased (31%); the feeling that you are at home in any part of the USSR was lost (30%); and connection with friends, relatives lost (28%).[22] Levada Center sociologist Karina Pipiya says that economic factors played the most significant part in rising nostalgia for the USSR in the 2018 poll, as opposed to loss of prestige or national identity, noting that a strong majority of Russians "regret that there used to be more social justice and that the government worked for the people and that it was better in terms of care for citizens and paternalistic expectations."[23] A June 2019 Levada Center poll found that 59% of Russians felt that the Soviet government "took care of ordinary people". Joseph Stalin's favorability also hit record highs the spring of that year.[24]

The Victory Banner and a Z symbol on a Russian military vehicle in Kazan.

The flag of the Soviet Union has been on many Russian tanks.

The Soviet-era Victory Banner has been flown in many occupied towns and cities in Ukraine.

In some cases, the red-azure flag of the Ukrainian SSR is sometimes used in opposition to the blue-yellow flag of Ukraine.

Following the invasion, many Russian tanks were shown flying the old flag of the Soviet Union alongside the pro-war Z military symbol. American political scientist Mark Beissinger told France 24 that the purpose of using these symbols was not necessarily to do with communism, but rather a desire to re-establish "Russian domination over Ukraine", noting that the use of Soviet symbols in most post-Soviet states (with the exception of Russia and Belarus) is often seen as a provocative act.[25]

In addition to symbolism, the Bolshevism of the Russian forces manifests itself in their toponymic policy: the occupiers everywhere "return" their Soviet names to the captured settlements and cities (as well as to those they want to capture). This is officially motivated by the desire to restore historical justice. In fact, as a rule, anti-historical names given by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 1930s are restored instead of either returned historical (pre-revolutionary) names or Ukrainianized names obtained as part of the company for the decommunization of the country in 2014-22. Examples: Artemivsk instead of Bakhmut, Krasny (Red) Liman instead of Liman, Volodarske instead of Nikolske, Stakhanov instead of Kadiivka, etc.[26][27][28][29]

Events

Artwork of the "Grandmother with a red flag", Anna Ivanovna, used in Russian propaganda.

In April 2022, a video of a Ukrainian woman named Anna Ivanovna[30] greeting Ukrainian soldiers at her home near Dvorichna, whom she thought to be Russian, with a Soviet flag went viral on pro-Russian social media, and featured on Russian state-controlled media. The woman said that she and her husband had "waited, prayed for them, for Putin and all the people".[31] The Ukrainian soldiers gave her food, but went on to mock her and trample on her Soviet flag, after which she said "my parents died for that flag in World War Two".[32] This was used by Russian propagandists to prove that the Russian invasion had popular support, in spite of the fact that most Ukrainians – even in Russian-speaking regions – opposed the invasion.[32] In Russia, murals, postcards, street art, billboards, chevrons and stickers depicting the woman have been created.[31][33] In Russian-controlled Mariupol, a statue of her was unveiled.[32] She has been nicknamed "Grandmother (Russian: бабушка, romanized: babushka) Z",[31] and the "grandmother with a red flag" by Russians. Sergey Kiriyenko, a senior Russian politician, referred to her as "Grandma Anya".[34]

Anna told the Ukrayinska Pravda that she met the soldiers with a Soviet flag not out of sympathy, but because she felt the need to reconcile with them so that they would not "destroy" the village and Ukraine after her house was shelled, but now feels like a "traitor" due to the way her image has been used by Russia.[30] According to Ukrainian journalists, Anna and her son later fled to Kharkiv after their house was being shelled by the Russians.[34][35]

On August 26, the Soviet Victory banner was hoisted over the village Pisky, a fortified area just off Donetsk whose capture is strategic for Russia, further pushing Ukrainian forces away from Donbas.[36]

Additionally, many of Lenin statues, which had been taken down by Ukrainian activists in the preceding years, were re-erected by Russian occupiers in Russian-controlled areas.[37][38][39][40]

• Communist chic
• History of communism in the Soviet Union
• National Bolshevism
• Neo-Sovietism
• Neo-Stalinism
• Sovietwave, a Russian musical subgenre of synthwave
• Soviet patriotism
• Soviet imagery during the Russo-Ukrainian War

• Satter, D. It Was a Long Time Ago and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past. Yale University Press. New Haven, 2012. ISBN 0300111452.
• Boffa, G. From the USSR to Russia. History of unfinished crisis. 1964—1994
• Mydans, S. 20 Years After Soviet Fall, Some Look Back Longingly. New York Times. August 18, 2011
• Weir, F. Why nearly 60 percent of Russians 'deeply regret' the USSR's demise. The Christian Science Monitor. December 23, 2009.
• Houslohner, A. Young Russians never knew the Soviet Union, but they hope to recapture days of its empire. Washington Post. June 10, 2014
• Weir, F. Maybe the Soviets weren't so bad? Russian nostalgia for USSR on the rise. The Christian Science Monitor. January 29, 2016.
• Communist nostalgia in Eastern Europe: longing for the past. openDemocracy. November 10, 2015
• Ghodsee, Kristen R. Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism. Duke University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0822369493.