for pointing out there was very real nostalgia for the Soviet system in a lot of areas. After getting bagged for such an unorthodox post, I promptly supplied half a dozen links to articles about it and asked if they needed more. Crickets.
The truth is that a lot of people did very well in a system that gave them ideals to believe in, even if the reality at the top wasn't much different from the old Czarist system. Most people also saw their standard of living rise a little bit every year. A lot of people are just fine with totalitarian systems that tell them what to think as long as their lives are orderly, especially if the standard of living is rising.
I think Beau is likely onto something when he mentions such people in Moldova as the likely culprits. Of all the countries that went to hell after the collapse of the USSR, Moldova arguably went the farthest, thanks to kleptocrat after kleptocrat.
Now they've confused those old Soviets that kept everything in good repair (via slave labor from the gulag system) with the Russian system as it is now, a system that approved their series of kleptocrats that left the coumtry to fall into ruin. Pro Russians don't see it that way, they only remember their country was better off 30+ years ago and they want it back that way.
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