Communist nostalgia
[1][2][3] Examples of such nostalgia can be observed in East Germany, Poland, the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania,[4][5][6][7] the Czech Republic, Albania, and Slovakia.
[8] Dominik Bartmanski notes that after the anti-communist revolutions of 1989, the specific perspectives of the development remained unclear for some time, they were expressed in generic terms such as "return to Europe", "to Western values" and the like.
[3] According to Kristen R. 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.
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.
[12] In a 2009 Pew survey, 48% of Lithuanians said life was worse economically nowadays compared to the Soviet era.
[10] In a 2005 survey, 66% of Russians said they agreed "It is a great misfortune that the USSR no longer exists", while only 30% disagreed.
The most common reasons listed for regret are the end of the unified economic system, and them no longer being citizens of a superpower.
[18] In a 2020 Levada Center survey, 75% of Russians agreed that the Soviet era was the "greatest time" in the history of Russia.
In a 2006 survey, only 42% of Ukrainians agreed that "It is a great misfortune that the USSR no longer exists" compared to 49% who disagreed.
[13] In a 2009 Pew survey, 62% of Ukrainians said life was worse economically nowadays compared to the Soviet era.
[11] In a 2009 Pew survey, 62% of Bulgarians said life was worse economically nowadays compared to the Warsaw Pact era.
[23] In a 2009 Pew survey, 39% of Czechs said life was worse nowadays economically compared to the Warsaw Pact era.
[27][28] A 2010 Pew poll found that 72% of Hungarians said that most people in their country were worse off economically than they had been under communism.
[29] However, a 2019 Pew poll found that 70% of Hungarians approved of the shift to a market economy.
[30] Polls indicate that nostalgia for the Communist János Kádár era remains widespread in Hungary.
A 2010 poll conducted by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy provided similar results.
[32] According to opinion poll held in 2010, 41% of Romanians would have voted for Communist Nicolae Ceaușescu if given the opportunity[33][34] and 63% felt their lives were better before 1989.
[34][35] In 2012, a survey showed that 53% of Romanians said they would return to communism and that Ceausescu's regime was badly applied.
[38] A 2009 Pew survey showed that 48% of Slovaks said life was economically worse nowadays compared to the Warsaw Pact era.
[15] A 2018 poll in Slovakia found that 81% agreed that people helped each other more during communism, were more sympathetic and closer to each other.
79% asserted that people lived in a safer environment during socialism and that violent crimes were less frequent.
However, the poll also noted that "Most of the respondents did not want to return to the communist-time economy and preferred a market or social market economy, but in the answers to specific questions they favoured a greater role of the state, with guarantees and social certainties".
[24] However, a 2019 Pew poll found that 71% of Slovakians approved of the shift to a market economy.
[40] In a 2015 survey of Croatians above 45 from the magazine Moje Vrijeme, 74% said they could live in a one-party state and 83% said they did not experience discrimination during the Yugoslav era.
