History Main / WhyWeAreBummedCommunismFell

--->'''Wayne:''' We're used to Russia being just this pink blob.
** '''#9''': Is Creator/YakovSmirnoff out of a job?[[note]]Since his RussianReversal jokes may no longer be relevant.[[/note]]

** '''#6''': "[[CerebusSyndrome The fall of Communism will deal a major blow to the trade union movement. Labor relations will revert to industrial revolutionary social Darwinism]]." ''[beat]'' "Okay."
** '''#5''': Will the [[Music/TheBeatles Beatles]] song be changed? ("Back in the Commonwealth of Independent, Back in the Commonwealth of Independent, Back in the Commonwealth of Independent Staaates.")
** '''#4''': Soviets can no longer be the go-to bad guys in spy movies. ("In the future, spy stuff is gonna suck. Who's [[{{Film/JamesBond}} James Bond]] gonna spy on now, the Guatemalans?")

--->'''Wayne:''' Remember Live Aid, that band Autograph? I mean, ex-squeeze me, a-baking powder ([[DontExplainTheJoke Wayne-speak for "Excuse me, I beg your pardon"]])?\\
'''Garth:''' I kinda liked them.\\
'''Both:''' ''Nyet!'' (Subtitle: "Not!")
** '''#1''': They won't be the first ones to say on Russian television, [[CatchPhrase "Live! From New York! It's Saturday Night!"]]

* A running theme in ''ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX'' story ''Mother Russia'', which opens with a Russian immigrant in a bar complaining about how the fall of the Soviet union has made Russia weak. Later in the story, Nick Fury moans to Frank about how nobody's wary of the Russians anymore.

Any work that deals with the SoWhatDoWeDoNow environment after the UsefulNotes/ColdWar. Everything seemed to shift. What was relevant now? What was irrelevant? These works either asked those questions or focused on how people dealt with them.

And it can often be discussed in relation to modern conditions, such as comparing life back then and now, or military policy then and now.

* The plot of the second ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}'' movie revolves around a terrorist plot intended to show the world how vulnerable the military budget cuts brought about by the end of the Cold War have made people. [[spoiler:At least it was before Tsuge hijacked the plan for his own personal vendetta against the apathetic citizenry and the people who hung him out to dry when his attempts to develop a HumongousMecha school of combat fell apart]].

With the worsening of relations between Russia and the west in TheNewTens and TheNewTwenties, plus improved Russian ties with China (something that was a nightmare scenario for the west during the Cold War), this is increasingly becoming a DiscreditedTrope. The allegiances of the Cold War are still in function, there just isn't the same level of ideology involved that there was during the original run.

* ''Series/ColdCase'': In the episode "One Fall" one of the suspects was a professional wrestler in TheEighties who made a living playing a villain called "Red Scare". His entire wrestling career was built on his ability to do a Russian accent and it ended with the Cold War.

* ''Film/CompanyBusiness'' (1991):

--->Grushenko: Whose ass you Americans going to "kick" now?\\
'''Boyd''': Well... always got Fidel.\\
'''Grushenko''': ''(laughs)'' Us, too.

* Richard Foreman wrote a show for the Ontological Theatre in 2001 entitled ''[[http://www.ontological.com/RF/rfproductionfiles/2001communism/index.html Now That Communism Is Dead, My Life Feels Empty!]]'', but [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible good luck understanding anything Foreman writes.]]

This is somewhat TruthInTelevision -- [[TooGoodForExploiters many people from the Eastern Bloc regret the fall of state-socialism.]] For more on this, see the Real Life section.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* UsefulNotes/VladimirPutin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest disaster of the 20th century".
* The book ''Revolution 1989'' describes UsefulNotes/MikhailGorbachev as a man who did "the right thing for the wrong reasons". Gorbachev did not relax the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe because he wanted to see the Soviet bloc go capitalist. He did it because the Eastern Bloc countries had become a serious economic drain on the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was, in fact, a committed Communist, and his program was quite similar to Alexander Dubcek's "socialism with a human face" in Czechoslovakia a generation before. He thought that political repression was not necessary to maintain communism, genuinely believing that his own country and the USSR's satellites would choose communism of their own free will. To his credit, about 80 percent of Soviet citizens wanted to keep the Socialist state together; it's just that many members of the Communist Party thought there was no good way to turn back what had already been damaged, and decided to just end the state all together.
* Fundamentalists had to rewrite their interpretation of the End Times, the Biblically-extrapolated sequence of events leading to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. Whole shelves of books and pamphlets had been written predicated on the God-revealed fact that somehow, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were the mechanism the Antichrist would use to work his dastardly Godless plan for world domination. When the USSR imploded, those doggedly awaiting Rapture and Apocalypse were bereft of an obvious Antichrist. Until 9/11..'
* R. James Woosley, who was about to become Director of Central Intelligence, testified to Congress in 1993 about the downside of the end of Soviet Russia, at least so far as intelligence gathering was concerned (with a subtext of "so please don't cut our budget"):
-->'''Woosley''': We have slain a large dragon. But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of.
[[/folder]]

** ''Metal Gear Solid 3'' gives us a case of "Why We're Bummed Communism is ABOUT to Fall" when Naked Snake [[spoiler: a.k.a. Big Boss]] meets Aleksandr Granin, the head of a Russian weapons lab. In between moaning about his glory days and how his recent projects have failed, Granin shows he sees the writing on the wall that the Soviet Union is not long for this world anymore, but he's too loyal to his country to leave.

* Defied in ''WebOriginal/ZhirinovskysRussianEmpire'', a story on Website/AlternateHistoryDotCom in which, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the infamous Russian far-right gadfly Vladimir Zhirinovsky (nowadays little more than Putin's court jester) becomes {{President|Evil}} of UsefulNotes/TheNewRussia and turns it into a fascist dictatorship. The Bear only gets ''angrier'' after the fall of the Soviet Union, meaning that communism is simply replaced by neo-fascism and the UsefulNotes/ColdWar still goes on up to at least 2003 (the year when he's finally overthrown). Whether there's a "Why We're Bummed Zhirinovsky Fell" moment afterwards remains to be seen.

* Many former Soviet superheroes in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, especially ComicBook/IronMan specific enemies created during the Cold War -- Titanium Man, The Crimson Dynamo. (A few of them tried forming teams of good guys like the People's Protectorate and later the Winter's Guard, but as heroes, they just couldn't garner much PopularityPower.) Even Creator/DCComics gets into it with former teams such as the Rocket Red Brigade.

-->'''Frank:''' Word is, the Russians are our friends now.
-->'''Fury:''' ARE they, now?

* In a 1991 ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' strip, a passerby is flabbergasted to see Opus the Penguin playing "cowboys and Indians" with his friends. [[DeliberateValuesDissonance "You're fighting Indians in 1991?" the stranger asks.]] Opus concedes the point and then declares "Let's fight Commie spies!" No way, declares the stranger; they're too busy [[BurgerFool slaving away at the fryer]] in the new [=McDonald's=] in Moscow. Opus tries again: [[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror "Arab terrorists!"]] Sorry, comes the reply; they're now our allies. "[[Franchise/StarTrek Klingons]]," begins Opus, getting desperate now -- but he's quickly informed that [[TheWorfEffect a Klingon warrior]] is now serving on the crew of the ''U.S.S. Enterprise''. Let's face it, the stranger concludes; it's the "end of history," and there are simply no more bad guys.
* A 1990 ''ComicStrip/BrendaStarr'' plot has Brenda brainwashed to kill a target at a conference by figures on various sides (U.S., Russia, arms dealers, etc) who realize the end of the Cold War is an end to the business that's made them rich.

* A plot to kill Gorbachev and keep the Cold War going was the subject of ''Film/ThePackage1989''.
* Parodied in ''Film/HudsonHawk'' with a CIA agent.

* In the spy movie ''Film/CompanyBusiness'' (1991):

[[folder:Myths & Religion]]
* Fundamentalist Christians had to rewrite their interpretation of the End Times, the Biblically-extrapolated sequence of events leading to the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ. Whole shelves of books and pamphlets had been written predicated on the God-revealed fact that somehow, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were the mechanism the Antichrist would use to work his dastardly Godless plan for world domination. When the USSR imploded, those Christians doggedly awaiting Rapture and Apocalypse were bereft of an obvious Antichrist. Until 9/11.....
[[/folder]]

* Patrick Mulcahy from ''Webcomic/AGirlAndHerFed'' yearns for simpler times.

* This subject is bit of a recurring theme in Webcomic/{{Polandball}}.