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Is it was so great, why did most of the conquered nations run west as fast as they could as soon as they could? Must have been because the USSR was so 'progressive'.
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The Soviet people voted overwhelmingly in favor of retaining the Soviet Union, albiet with reforms, in a referendum that was ignored when the leaders of the USSR’s constituent republics agreed behind closed doors to dissolve the nation.
The referendum (the only one they ever had) with it being in 1991 it was already a much different Soviet Union than we usually think and very late in its life as an effort to somehow keep it together, even though in a pretty different form. The wording makes it so that there was very little reason to oppose it unless you were a hardline independence advocate (so you might not respect their authority anyway or don't want to give them credibility etc) since independence or no, it was promising more independence, human rights, freedom and so on. And in some countries that was tied to "let's become independent at the same time but also keep in this new federation or what have you". So it wasn't even a "should we keep Soviet Union or not" but rather "should we make the union different, better", which again, not much reason to oppose it no matter what you thought. Keeping it as it had been was the hardliner approach of keeping the older style Soviet Union and that wasn't very popular.
And the new treaty was never signed because communist hardliners tried a coup to reverse the course. The attempt backfired horribly and just lead to even swifter dissolution. But I'd say it was already heading towards that anyway with people seeking to break away from Moscow and the whole system in a turmoil over reforms (to some too radical and to some not radical enough). In hindsight it feels like they would've needed a miracle to keep it together in any recognizable form.
Not to mention that the vote was boycotted by Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova.
They were sooooo keen to return to the Russian embrace (/s).
Kirghizia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan also added in the referendum a question about them being independent and only joining the new union as independent members. After the coup attempt Ukraine moved not to sign the treaty and held a referendum on just becoming independent.
Progressive at first, but then sorta forgot about it.
At the start, women were given rights that suffragists in the UK or USA could only dream of. Then it stopped. By the 1960s, women in the USSR found that they were still expected to do all the same old household chores while also holding a job outside the home. Meanwhile, western feminism had developed a strong second wave, and later a third (arguably more since, but that gets complicated). Those waves dealt with increasingly abstract issues in the patriarchy, including the problem of household chores.
This simply didn't happen in the USSR. Developing one would have required greater freedom of speech than anyone had in that country.
implying that corrupt scumbag Brezhnev was a proper communist
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