Spoiled by USSR

Translation of the picture: "Humane relations and mutual respect between people: Human to Human is a friend, comrade and brother!"

Vikenty Veresaev has noted about Leonid Andreev, that he does not acknowledge “the scariest and the most saving human feature — ability to get used to anything.”

This feature makes people’s life easier and more difficult at the same time. They get used to good and bad. After some time they start treating it just normal. People accustomed to good are called spoiled, accustomed to bad - corrupted.

If I actually do not know that air is clearer, people are kinder and taxes are lower somewhere else, then I can enjoy the views of the “concrete jungles”, where I can cheaply and cheerfully fall into oblivion on Fridays. But once I learn anything better - they is no coming back.

It so happened, that from many immigration waves many Russian immigrants come back to their hometowns covering their noses, walking on tiptoes and worrying about being outside after dark. Indeed, the immigrants may look with disgust on their compatriots after living abroad in civilized countries of Europe and America with streets well lit and smiling (at least politely) passerbyers. This is an expression of their spoiledness with high living standards...

But there is also the actual corruption. It is expressed, when an average Soviet or post-Soviet individual converses about Life with an average Western individual. The Soviet feels superiority and impotence simultaneously. When the culture code imposes goal setting of a higher level, lowering it is boring and dreary. For ages Russian civilization was thinking about and taking actual steps towards building a just way of living. Therefore, arrangement of own living conditions and status-factors are far beneath it. Chess has 64 cells and tic-tac-toe has only 9. Hence, one matrix of meanings, understandings and longings is wider than the other.

The current generation, spoiled by the two worlds, has at least three choices:

• to constantly migrate from civilization to civilization, while never finding everything, that they accustomed to, in one place;
• to get used to living in one civilization, using “the scariest and the most saving” human feature — “ability to get used to anything”;
• to aim their potential at creation of such lifestyle and such global civilization, where work on societal transformation in direction of humaneness and social justice would be perfectly balanced with comfortable and prosperous living.

Initially published by our representative at http://medium.com/i-m-h-o/d5654de348b1 (original Russian version).