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Unfortunately I think the parroting is not without basis at all, with certain qualifications, that is. The fact is that the period roughly between 1955 and 1980 (that is, between the consolidation of the post-Stalinist political order and the critical period of economic stagnation, energy shortage and the foreign debt trap) was, according to the standards of their own history, an era of prosperity and peace for every country in the Soviet bloc. For local men born between 1935 and 1955 (for simplicity’s sake, let’s look at men only here), their experience as teenagers and young adults was roughly this:
If you have enough human agency to complete your education and to work a job, you’re not a cripple or a retard, and you aren’t some career criminal or alcoholic bum either, society basically gives you a guarantee that you’ll have a stable job, a pension, food on the table and some place to live. If you’re willing to make extra effort, you’ll maybe even have a car, a fridge and a cottage in the country.
Should you leave your job for whatever reason, you can just find another similar one.
There’s no blanket expectation towards the youth that everyone gets a college degree. You can have a respectable existence as an average normie without attending college.
Due to the lopsided sex ratio that disfavors women and a cultural environment that is markedly different from today, unless you’re a cripple, a retard, a bum, an alcoholic or a crazy person, and you aren’t hideously ugly or disfigured either, then finding a non-obese, non-addict, non-crazy, non-slut wife who’s 3-5 years younger than you and isn’t a single mom either is rather easy. As a man you can considerably raise your social status just by not being a drunkard.
You very obviously have a better life than your parents and especially than your grandparents. Society is generally in consensus that your offspring will have even better lives than you.
Life may be boring but also predictable. You have limited options but you can also make reasonable plans. Your general impression around you is that everything is getting more or less better. Energy is cheap, so is credit.
By the time the political transition of 1989 takes place, you already have a house/apartment, a family, a career and status. Even though bad times are ahead, you’re an established citizen. Most of your life is already behind you. You won’t need to adapt to the new order.
Now, compare this to the average life experience of men from the same region of the world born between 1970 and 1980, or between 1990 and 2000, and you’ll notice that the difference is like night and day.
Noted, the generation I described above aren’t the equivalent of Boomers in a strict chronological sense; they’re older than them. But that is beside the point. (It’s also true that the locals born between 1960 and 1970 or so faced rather negative consequences of the transition period after 1989, because they were expected to adapt but were generally too old to do so, and they were also too young to take part in the general looting of state assets i.e. privatization.)
The issue, I think, either in the USA or in Eastern Europe isn’t that young people think Boomers had it so much better, it’s that Boomers apparently think that their grandchildren have the same opportunities that they did, while at the same time actually having it so much better because they can buy shiny new gadgets with touchscreens, and are both baffled and angry when they don’t have the same outcomes in life as they did.
I can talk specifically about Slovakia or back then Czechoslovakia. The boomers born after WW2 reached their prime in 1970s, which was post 1968 invasion of Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia and period of so called Normalization. This was era of economic and cultural stagnation, purges, stifling cultural environment and disconnection of regular people from public life. Your career prospects were politically tied, there was feeling of ubiquitous demoralization and sclerosis in the system.
The US vs Czechoslovak comparison of "opportunity" is absolutely off. Young people in Czech Republic or Slovakia now have much more opportunity than boomers had in 1975 Czechoslovakia. It goes beyond gadgets, we are talking about basic stuff ranging from opportunity to travel, opportunity to study what you want, even opportunity to buy something or even having long hairs at school or Lenin forbid - to go to the church. The cultural and social institutions in USA vs Czechoslovakia were almost as if from other planet.
What is interesting is that acknowledging that boomer pensioners have it tough is "common knowledge", that is why acceptance of boomer vs millennials theme is so interesting. It is part of common speak, even jokes. Let me tell you one from early 2000s that I find hilarious, dark humor is hallmark of tough times:
Pensioners in Slovakia are the lowest of the low. Here is a 2022 article from Slovakia how 27% of our 1,1 million pensioners are living bellow the poverty line of EUR 424 a month, especially women as they live longer, had lower wages during their lives and their pension did not keep up with inflation. There is a reason for poor "babushka" or "babička" trope in Eastern Bloc, our seniors do not go for vacations to Mediterranean in their old Mercedes. Yeah, you can look at such an elderly women who romanticizes her youth, how fun it was to go with her "pioneer" friends from school to some socialist potato brigade and how happy she was. There is certain dignity to how many of them carry themselves despite their circumstances. But the truth rings different if you look at her way of living, actually having some kind of envy or resentment for how she has it so much better than you to me seems insane.
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