>>11818207A Gallup poll from last year showed that many people in the former Yugoslavia look back fondly at their former homeland.
In Serbia, around 81 percent of people think that the breakup of Yugoslavia harmed their country in its current context. Bosnians are not far behind, with 77 percent expressing regret over Yugoslavia’s dissolution.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/210866/balkans-harm-yugoslavia-breakup.aspxCitizens’ negative assessment of their current government relative to the Soviet one
might come as a surprise to outsiders. Over the years foreign politicians, journalists, and
scholars, particularly those in the West, have portrayed Soviet governance foremost as
oppressive rule. The term “evil empire” became part of the Cold War political rhetoric in the
U.S.; with greater openness, or glasnost, in the late Soviet era the Western media reported on
revelations about the purges under Joseph Stalin; and, today, in the post-Soviet period, professors
continue to introduce their students to the totalitarian model, which attributed to the Soviet
Union a “terroristic” police, communications monopoly, and pervasive state ideology, among
other features. Yet, citizens of post-Soviet countries do not remember only the limited political
freedoms and episodic terror of the Soviet era. In fact, many cast the Soviet period in a positive
light and even view Soviet rule as superior to current governance.
https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/nceeer/2005_818_09_McMann.pdf 