Nostalgia

[Nick Moser]

I have a question that is not a matter of theology or liturgy but more of a cultural question for a specific subset of cradle Orthodox Christians. Why do some Orthodox Christians have nostalgia for the communist days of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union? It is akin to Armenians being nostalgic for being under the Ottoman yoke. I know it's not everyone but I do know there are a few people who are devout Christians but you have the nostalgia

 

[Nick Moser]

I I figured it's kind of like with the old neo con generation (Wilsonian-Trotskyist) that utilize WWII and the atrocities of the Nazis to induce guilt and ideological conformity

 

[rusmeister]

I have a question that is not a matter of theology or liturgy but more of a cultural question for a specific subset of cradle Orthodox Christians. Why do some Orthodox Christians have nostalgia for the communist days of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union? It is akin to Armenians being nostalgic for being under the Ottoman yoke. I know it's not everyone but I do know there are a few people who are devout Christians but you have the nostalgia

Actually, based on my experience of the people I know, it’s that they had protected childhoods in a society that guaranteed everyone a basic minimum - on a low level, but when you’re a kid, you don’t care about that. You knew nothing of oppression, of church attendance being punished, of food shortages and desperate parents trying to feed their kids and keep them healthy. You just remember that ice cream was 5 cents a cone, that anyone could take extracurricular courses that were all free, family vacations to the Crimea that cost essentially nothing, happy memories of school days, and as an adult in a world gone mad, where people struggle to survive, it just doesn’t occur to you that your parents also struggled in different ways. You voluntarily wear rose-colored glasses about the past. It’s a normal human thing; unfortunately, what they have chosen to forget is quite deadly.

 

[ArmyMatt]

my guess would also be that back then, the USSR was the competing superpower to the USA, so there would be a sense that there was some degree of greatness that was lost.

 

[E.C.]

I have a question that is not a matter of theology or liturgy but more of a cultural question for a specific subset of cradle Orthodox Christians. Why do some Orthodox Christians have nostalgia for the communist days of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union? It is akin to Armenians being nostalgic for being under the Ottoman yoke. I know it's not everyone but I do know there are a few people who are devout Christians but you have the nostalgia

Without watching the video, it likely has more to do with some cultural nostalgia or the fact that life was probably more stable in some ways. For example, those Germans who lived under the GDR, there's a certain nostalgia for brand-name foods from that time period and certain cultural quirks of East Germany. Like the fact that the cross-walk guy wore a hat.

I doubt that any Orthodox Christian from those areas would be nostalgic for the persecutions and hard times for the Church. However, like rusmeister pointed out, society guaranteed a basic minimum. I don't know if that basic minimum exists today. The world was also seemingly more stable then.

As for the ROCOR statement, I find it odd that they consider the activities of secular Russian society to be so important to comment on when they allow rapist priests to continue serving without repercussion or consequence.

 

[rusmeister]

As for the ROCOR statement, I find it odd that they consider the activities of secular Russian society to be so important to comment on when they allow rapist priests to continue serving without repercussion or consequence.

The Stalinism and Sergianism is in the Church. No argument about hypocrisy, but they’re right about this one.

 

[E.C.]

The Stalinism and Sergianism is in the Church. No argument about hypocrisy, but they’re right about this one.

If only there was an Autocephalous Local Church they could sign up with that also had a Russian character without the Sergianism. It'd be even better if this Local Church were somewhere outside of the Old World. Like, as if she were the Orthodox Church, but in America