The number of Russians mourning the collapse of the USSR has grown to a maximum in 10 years

The number of Russians regretting the collapse of the Soviet Union has reached its highest level in more than 10 years. These are the results of a survey conducted by the Levada Center. The results of the study are published on his website.

Фото: Depositphotos

It follows from the survey that the share of those who would like to avoid the collapse of the USSR was 66%. A year ago, such people were 58%, writes Air force.

This year's results are the highest in more than 10 years of surveys: the figure of 65% was last recorded in 2005. The absolute record was set in 2000 - then 75% of respondents regretted the collapse of the USSR.

Of the respondents surveyed by the Levada Center this year, 60% believe that the collapse could have been avoided - and this is also the maximum for 13 years.

Romance of all Soviet, especially among young people

More often than others, people between the ages of 55 have regretted the collapse of the USSR, but in the last two years, such sentiments have been growing among Russians from the ages of 18 to 24.

The main reasons why Russians would like to return the USSR: the destruction of a single economic system (54%), the loss of people's sense of belonging to a great power (36%), as well as an increase in mutual distrust and bitterness (34%). And 26% noted that due to the collapse of the USSR, ties with relatives and friends are destroyed.

The minimum number of nostalgic for the USSR was recorded in the 2012 year: then 49% of respondents stated this.

According to Levada Center sociologist Karina Pipia, quoted by the Vedomosti newspaper, one of the reasons for the growth of nostalgia for the USSR was the increase in the retirement age.​

“The population always explains their nostalgia for the USSR mainly by irrational ideas about the strong economy and welfare of those times, forgetting about deficits and ration cards, especially against the backdrop of growing concern about problems of welfare in the present,” she said.

“Increasing regrets about the collapse, romanticization of everything Soviet, especially among young people, where history is poorly known, can lead to a reassessment or rehabilitation of previously consensus or unacceptable topics in post-Soviet Russia - justification of Stalinist repressions, rewriting history, complete devaluation of the democratic transformations of the 1990s and so on,” said Pipia.

Putin and the USSR

The Kremlin also called inappropriate nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

“If we talk about the feeling of a great power, then hardly anyone can argue with the fact that now it is difficult to talk about great powers, and, probably, it is not so appropriate. But the fact that Russia is a sovereign power, of which the vast majority of the population of our country is proud, can hardly be argued with,” Peskov said.

“Some sociologists will say an absolutely standard phrase that a person always tends to embellish what happened to him in his youth, what he had in his youth always seems tastier, more reliable, and more majestic,” added Vladimir Putin’s press secretary .

Putin himself previously called the collapse of the USSR an “unconditional” and “obvious” tragedy. “The Russian people turned out to be the greatest divided people in the world,” he said in October 2015. In April 2005, in a message to the Federal Assembly, the Russian president assessed the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

In March of this year, two weeks before the presidential elections, Putin, answering a question about what event that had already happened in Russia he would like to change, said: “The collapse of the Soviet Union.”

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