This morning I watched the morning program, where the presenters vividly discussed the poll: "What was good about the USSR"; many votes were given for the item "Then all people were kinder and treated each other better."
Guys, I’ll immediately say straight out: when the scoop, I, consider, did not live. I was born, immediately Leonid Ilyich left for the rainbow, then perestroika, and more or less I begin to realize something there already from the age of five or six, when the scoop has already practically bent. However, I dare to consider that I have something to say on the topic, because after all, my rotten memory contains something, well, nobody canceled the stories of the ancestors.
And you know, I personally don’t know why they are so warmed up there for good people. "Ah, we all played in the same yard and could go to any of us to drink water, and we went to school ourselves, and the neighbors went to each other for salt and arranged holidays."
In my opinion, this is a little different than kindness. Firstly, these are childhood memories, and in childhood everything is always sweeter.
Secondly, these trips for salt and neighboring holidays were based only on the fact that people settled, as a rule, in houses from factories and factories. You work as a turner at a pipe-rolling plant, you get a hut, and your neighbors will be the locksmith Lekha, the electrician Petruha, the adjuster Valerka and the merry welder Abdulla. Well, what if Abdulla's wife does not give salt to Valerka's wife? It's inconvenient, not neighborly. And if Petrukhin's wife does not look after Lekha's son, who came home from school early, how then will she come to Lekha's wife so that that daughter feeds them lunch?
Even in the villages under the tsar, everyone was kind. One village with one landowner, whether the peasants need to fight with each other, nevertheless, in front of each other and half are relatives.
So all these squeaks-squeals "It was wonderful and marvelous, preleeeestno, preleeeestno!" come from the usual then jerks, who now wrinkle their asses in open spaces.
Well, if you look at life soberly, through the eyes of an adult? Everywhere you are beaten. The cops do not stand on ceremony, if poddatenkie, throw in Bobby, and sober. And you will get stuck - on the kidneys with a stick or a leg.
Tomuscho militia - worker-peasant, flesh from flesh.
In the store, the saleswoman talks to you through her lip; Shukshin perfectly describes how a normal person could easily be humiliated in front of his own child. And you will not achieve anything, no truth: "There are many of you, but I am one." The queue will also give you a boost - there is nothing to distract a busy person, it is said that you are an asshole, which means you are an asshole, get out. "And he also put on a hat with glasses, a lousy intellectual! You are smart!"
"Accounting", "Gone to the base", "No beer", "Sanitary day" - well, all the time and everywhere. From about the age of five I ran to the Priroda store on Begovaya, and how tired I was of these eternal records and sanitary days. It just froze, constantly something was taken into account and sanitized everywhere. Well, what to do? Kindness in all fields.
Get n * zdyuley? Yes, easily. Kind people kindly stuck knives into other kind people because of a shitty fawn hat. Children waved from district to district and school to school, all these gangs, the crime of working districts, that's all. I don’t argue, now they probably also exist, but they are somewhere in the shitty depressive assholes, and not in such numbers. Then they got into gangs, because there was nowhere to go. Nowadays smart people they immediately fall out of their holes, and those who remain are not so active and smart as to organize something there.
I won’t even mention the communal apartments, the kindness and mutual respect of the neighbors in the communal apartment are well known to everyone.
Well, yes, well, they gave apartments. B is good! You work at the machine, and then ON you a kennel in an open field, to the kennel of a food store, a household store and a grimy bus to the factory. So this is how it is now, a mortgage for an apartment in the residential complex "Noble Grandee" is called. And then, now you bought it and * you get it, and then you * you get it, and only then you get it.
And what else was there then, what is no longer there, and why is it worth mourning? Like nothing more. So, as I understand it, the people who tease on the scoop would like to return it and become a schoolboy there again. Or some bump to live sweetly.
But no, here's an installer's place for you, a communal apartment, three shops around, a cinema and stand in line, get it, write down the numbers on your hand. Drink vodka from hopelessness, beat your wife, beat your children, wear dumb things, lie on the sidewalk, f*ck from the view from the window, cover the TV with a napkin, sort old things into pieces so that in ten years you will finally need this old pipe or piece of wire .
Stand in the waste paper line to get a book to read in the waste paper line to get a book to read in the banana queue.
Telegrams, teletypes, rotary telephones, "Two in one hand", you won't go to the sea, get it, "Where are you climbing ?!" thrown out, "Tell me, what is everyone behind?", "Return the cans to grandma", "Let's go weed potatoes", recording on TV.
And all people are kind, it's just that they were forced to be evil. And they were so kind.
Vladislav Inozemtsev, Ph.D. PhD, Director of the Center for Post-Industrial Society Studies:
“Today, one can often encounter frank praise of the Soviet system, including the economy of that time. What remains in memory is that in 1985 the RSFSR produced almost 6 times more trucks, 14 times more combines, 34 times more tractors, 91 times more hours and 600 times (!) more cameras than, for example, in 2010 in Russia. But at the same time, today the country collects 118 million tons of grain against the then 97 million tons, and everyone has a camera, even if it is in the form of a smartphone.
Worked for "shaft"
Could the Soviet economy be reborn and fit into the modern global world? Nothing can be ruled out - especially if you look at the progress of China. But for this it was necessary to start p-perestroika earlier, at least in the late 1960s, until the most serious negative features of the socialist economy were fully manifested in the USSR. What I mean?
First of all, the growing inefficiency, which was embodied in production for the sake of production, when the economy grew without visible consequences for the level and quality of life. Let's take the dry statistics of the State Statistics Committee: from 1960 to 1985, cement production increased by 2.89 times, and the commissioning of residential buildings - by 3.4%; tractors were produced 2.46 times more, mineral fertilizers - 10.1 times more, while the number of cows increased by 21%, grain harvest - by 7.7%, and potatoes even fell by 13.5%. The list goes on. For the last 20 years, the Soviet economy has been working for the notorious "shaft", and not for the end consumer.
The biggest problem was the quality of the products. In the USSR, they produced 4 pairs of shoes per person per year, almost 50 square meters. m of fabrics. But almost half of the light industry goods sold were supplied from the countries of the socialist camp - domestic products simply were not in demand. Despite the leadership of the USSR in space exploration and the development of weapons systems, color televisions and video recorders were mastered by the Soviet industry 20-25 years later than in Japan or Europe (I'm not talking about computers or copying equipment).
The entire economy of the USSR was focused on the reproduction of the deficit - its distribution was one of the forms of building formal and informal power verticals. The heads of regional committees and directors of factories in Moscow knocked out the necessary equipment, ordinary citizens made useful contacts (blat) to get the necessary goods. The idea of the rarity of any good was almost a “national idea” in the USSR; the entire pyramid of the planned economy rested on it.
No economy, no freedom
The least valued was a person's free time. Average Soviet people spent in queues up to 2.2 hours a day; up to 1.4 hours - in public transport. In the Soviet Union, household appliances that were available to any European family in the mid-1980s, such as coffee makers and dishwashers, microwave ovens, and much more, were never introduced. The Soviet man was considered necessary by the authorities only at the workplace, after the end of the working day he had to fight the system created by his own labor.
The life of the people was quite strictly regulated. I'm not talking about traveling abroad (today 53% of our air passengers fly on international flights, in the USSR there were less than 2% of them); there were no free sources of information, no real freedom of movement within the country. There was no housing market, changing jobs was a big problem; career growth in most cases was determined by considerations of political maturity and loyalty to superiors. Of course, such an economy could not be flexible.
Until recent years, private entrepreneurship did not appear in the Soviet Union, and when it did, it undoubtedly became associated with nothing more than bargaining and speculation, since the only thing it was capable of at that time was to fill commodity niches. through the sale of state resources. However, even minor easing led to the fact that the mighty Soviet economy quickly ran into financial problems that hastened its collapse.
What, to sum up, was the main problem of the Soviet economy? In my opinion, that it was not an economy in the proper sense of the word, which implies individual initiative, competition, efficiency and technological progress; private property, taxes, and the separation of public and private. Everything that the USSR could create is the notorious National economy, which collapsed as soon as they tried to introduce it for real economic elements. You can regret it, but it's impossible to return it...
USSR: faith in tomorrow
Nikolai Burlyaev, director, people's artist of the Russian Federation:
- If you look at life philosophically, then the collapse of the USSR can be assessed both as a catastrophe and as a reason for Russia to make another leap forward.
Was the collapse of the Soviet Union a disaster? Undoubtedly! Because any revolution is the roar of Lucifer. And the collapse of the great power, which our ancestors collected bit by bit, principality after principality, and which three people allowed themselves to destroy over a bottle of vodka in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, is a crime. And the descendants will still pass their judgment on him.
Knowledge was given to everyone
The further the era of the USSR goes down in history, the better we will understand how much good was in the Soviet Union, what was destroyed by our young reformers and traitors to the Fatherland, who were sitting in the country's leadership. Let's start with education. It was in those decades one of the best in the world, although the West pretended that it was not. I got two higher education- Shchukin school and VGIK. And I know for myself what kind of knowledge base was laid for students in the field of humanitarian disciplines. We knew both the Western school of painting and world literature. Coming to America, we could talk about the subtleties of the lyrics of their poet Whitman so that they opened their mouths in surprise. We knew more than the Americans knew about their own literature and culture.
AND school education It was an order of magnitude better than both the current one and the Western one. First of all, it is better because it was general, and not sectoral, as they do now, when you study in depth only a few subjects, and you can not study everything else at all. But this principle is wrong! An unconditional plus of the USSR and numerous circles that all children without exception could go to, which were free, that is, publicly available. That is why in the deep provinces such nuggets appeared as Sergey Bondarchuk,Andrei Tarkovsky,Vasily Shukshin- our Lomonosov from cinema, breaking through from Siberia to the capital. At present, the Shukshins will no longer break through - now education is paid. And this is a crime against Russia - paid education.
Next is medicine... Although the service in Soviet clinics was not as elitist as in the same America or today in expensive medical centers, nevertheless, there was a guarantee that you would be seriously treated by professionals. And now the purchase of diplomas is flourishing, and sometimes a surgeon cannot even cut off bread, let alone perform a complex operation.
The principle of dedication
There is such a common phrase: a country is judged by how children and the elderly live in it. When I retired a few years ago, I came to the social security office to draw up documents. They counted 7 thousand to me. I ask: “Does something rely on for the title of People’s Artist of Russia?” “Yes,” they say, “another 300 rubles.” And with this money - 7-9 thousand rubles. Today millions of older people are offered to live. We, pensioners, do not have tomorrow with such incomes. And in the USSR there was tomorrow. Everyone has. Nobody even thought: will there be tomorrow? Will there be work? Will they be evicted from the apartment? Will there be something to feed the children? And now this question is before everyone - everyone! - human.
Confidence in the future is not just a bunch of words, it is the basis of life. And she, confidence, was one hundred percent among the entire population of the country. Graduating students knew that they would definitely get a job. And today I do not know how my children - and I have five of them - will be able to get settled, feed themselves. What's in store for them? And they all have excellent education, which is not very much in demand now. The old people understood that yes - the pension is small, but you can live on it. And also help the kids. The young worker knew that the enterprise where he works would help with an apartment and give children a place in the kindergarten. Everyone lived then from paycheck to paycheck, not rich. But all are on an equal footing. There was no such glaring gap between the rich and the poor.We were plunged into capitalism without any referenda, without asking the people: do we want this or not? Forgetting that the ruble has never been the main thing for Russia. The mysterious Russian soul, which rows not towards itself, but away from itself, had other fundamental values. In the West, they have the most important principle - self-affirmation, while in our country the principle of self-giving has always been the main thing. And, no matter how hard they tried to switch us to this principle of egoism, they failed to do it.
The collapse of the USSR was a disaster. But Russia is so powerful that, being under the protection of the Mother of God, it managed to grind through all the negative moments and in a crisis, under the onslaught Western countries, under the sanctions again made an incredible leap forward.
Chronicle of decay
06/12/1990. The Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty, establishing priority Russian laws over the Soviets.
March 1991 At the referendum on the preservation of the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, 76% voted “for” (the Baltic republics, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, which had previously declared independence, did not participate). On August 18-21, 1991, the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), created by functionaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, members of the USSR government, representatives of the army and the KGB, seized power for 3 days in order to stop the collapse of the USSR. The August coup failed.
12/8/1991. The heads of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed an agreement on the establishment of the Commonwealth in Belovezhskaya Pushcha Independent States(CIS).
25.12.1991. USSR President M. Gorbachev announced the termination of his activities in this post "for reasons of principle".
The patient's face becomes peaceful if he has successfully given an enema.
(author's observation in a medical institution)
Today, the faces of people in our cities and villages most often bear the stamp of concern, anxiety, mixed with a grimace of anger and aggression. Take a closer look, there are practically no good-natured faces, as before, say, in the eighties of the last century. Those people, as far as I can remember, were happy with their albeit dim, but simple happiness. Even if one can say so: “stagnant” happiness (from the name of that era). I remember those faces of ordinary people, even though I staggered around like a disheveled boy.
And now - in our days. Here is a fat man stomping, “two inches from the pot”, a real “bun”. He breathes heavily, rushing after him a four-legged friend - a dog. Puffs and the peasant, and the animal. IN Soviet time such fat men were distinguished by natural kindness. And now the paunch with hatred "yapps" at his little dog: "Where are you going under my feet, bitch!" A snarl of anger was imprinted on his face. The doggie, because of the owner’s scolding, carries the same evil expression of the muzzle to those around him. The faces of people and even animals, it seems to me, have changed radically these days. What generates the aforementioned hatred and such a cruel expression of faces right now? Why didn't this happen before? Here are some postulates, seemingly unshakable, and other points that partly explain the reason for the change in the expression of people's faces.
1. My home is my castle
Previously, every Soviet person knew that, no matter how “shitty” he was, he would always have a roof over his head. Now people see that the postulate “my house is my fortress” no longer works. Any cunning combination of "black" realtors, sometimes behind your back, and you are already deprived of housing! Not without the help of interested officials. This is followed by a kick, I'm sorry, "under the ass", and you are a bum. In Soviet times, there were no homeless people. Everyone relied, albeit sometimes tiny, but a corner. And when a person has an awareness that the state takes care of him, then his face is straightened. I think the feeling of fear of losing HOME, cozy, dear, is one of the reasons for the anxious, aggressive faces of the beginning of the 21st century.
2. Be healthy, Soviet citizen!
In Soviet times, the state inspired a person with the postulate: take care of your health! Don't you want to? Then, get an order for the entire enterprise and go to the doctors forcibly. Mass, total medical examinations were carried out among all segments of the population. The level of knowledge of medicine of ordinary doctors from the clinic sometimes amazed even foreign colleagues. You could come with a complaint about your throat, but thanks to the attentive eye of the doctor, the medical examination data, some other ailments were found in you and they immediately began to treat them. Before entering Kindergarten- blow on medical examination! Before school - again for medical examination.
Before the army, going to work - if you please, be sure to go through all the doctors long list, yes to hand over a heap of analyses. If you don't want it, we'll make it! The postulate that the builder of a communist society must be healthy was propagated everywhere. Indeed, to implement the ideas of Marx, healthy individuals are needed, and not rotten drug addicts. Now - everything is different. Why does the builder of a capitalist society have to be a goner? Why does he have to sip beer in buckets and always have a smoke and a joint on hand? I don't understand this policy. Where did the mass medical examinations at enterprises go?
3. Food. Water
The quality of drinking water and food products of those years was incomparable with what is on our shelves and splashing in bottles now. Yes, then, in the eighties, almost all products were in short supply, but what people ate and drank was subject to strict control for compliance with GOSTs. The assortment was limited, but if you bought sausage, then it was SAUSAGE, and not a stick of incomprehensible ingredients. High-quality, albeit simple food is gratefully accepted by the body and adequately processed.
Therefore, the slagging of human organisms in those years was much lower. Cleaner metabolism - a happier face, easier gait. Remember the most popular song of Soviet times by Yuri Antonov with the words:
"Flying gait you came out of May
And disappeared from the eyes in the veil of January.
This is how Soviet girls moved. And now, with a hamburger in one hand, a can of beer in the other, a cigarette between her teeth, the girl rolls out into the street in a panty miniskirt, where she is overcome by shortness of breath. And her face is thirsty for oxygen, it frowns, but does not correspond to the flying gait.
4. A person's feeling of himself as part of a huge powerful whole. Community way of life.
The Soviet system, the state, as a method of organizing space and human resources at that time was approaching high level accordance with the spirit of the people. Community, family, if you like, the feeling of belonging to the largest and most powerful (albeit only in some areas) country in the world - all this resonated with peace and contentment in the attitude of the Soviet person. The socialism of the 1970s and 1980s, oddly enough, for all the atheism of Marx's teachings, came closest to the Christian worldview. Collective farms, state farms, cooperatives, design bureaus, research institutes, factories - all these were essentially communal organizations that are close to the way of life of our ancestors.
5. Financial stability of the family.
Every inhabitant of the Soviet country in "stagnant" times knew that he would have an advance and a salary. He will give so much for utility bills, so much for a cooperative contribution, so much for a garage, etc. But this amount will remain for food, clothing, entertainment, a summer residence, and so on. They lived then, for the most part, not richly, but that was a very decent, worthy socialist poverty. Now we see either flashy, flashy wealth, with yachts and Bentleys, or miserable, true poverty.
6. Labor.
In Soviet times, if you look at things sensibly, everyone found a use for themselves, at least some kind of work. Sometimes the most simple, even seemingly meaningless, at first glance. Another thing is more important: the postulate was unshakable that every inhabitant should be provided with work. Moreover, the state insisted on your work: if you live in the USSR, then if you please, benefit the country! Do you prefer to be idle? Then you will be attracted for such a Trutnev existence. "Work - ennobles a person!". Now, many are hanging around idle and anger, including on their faces, is seen more and more clearly.
7. Fear of being unemployed
We are talking about ordinary people. The nouveau riche worry less about being unemployed. Our real middle class is now already tiny, but it is the representative of this conscious and creative stratum of the population that is most vulnerable in terms of job stability. He can, in principle, be dismissed politely / rudely, at any time. Let's climb a little higher: it is quite easy for an entrepreneur to lose a business built with such difficulty today. It is enough for a more aggressive and powerful competitor, who has enlisted the support of the bureaucracy, to "keep an eye" on your business, and - write - it's gone! Almost the entire country is at risk of being left with nothing, and even worse - hanging out at the dumpster along with other similar poor fellows. Does it add a taste to the joy of life? By no means! From this sensation, people's faces become sour.
8. Literacy
Now a generation has grown up, many of whose representatives do not really know how to read and write. Especially if the guys come from the outback. And this illiterate army also rushed to the cities in search of a better life. What's going on with education? You can be a “dunduk - dunduk”, but if you regularly pay for tuition at a university, no one will expel you! "Triplets" are still provided to you.
For if you are driven out of the "building of science", then by inertia, the money of your parents for study will also disappear from the cash desk of the institute. The building of science and knowledge will have nothing to exist on! But if you are “seven spans in the forehead”, smart guy / smart girl, but you didn’t find the “dough” for training - if you please get a pendal, and roll head over heels from admission committee. Preferably to the West. For your smart brain convolutions do not pay salaries to teachers.
Price list: want to become a bachelor? Please! Thirty thousand USD Let the knowledge you have with the "gulkin's beak", it does not matter. Bachelor - not glamorous? But for sure, it looks like a sale of groceries in a general store. Doesn't sound. And here's the MASTER... After all, it resonates: MASTER! MASTER of white and black magic, for example. Or - MASTER in Economics. Excuse me, but the masters are now for fifty thousand USD.
The school is not respected at all. She is being walked around in droves. And what a huge number of children do not know, and do not want to know, what kind of thing such a school is! If you go there now, then just hang out. Smoke a joint. With the TV series "School" to compare and once again decide that the school - "sucks" and only cripples the child's psyche.
Or crawl into the classroom to beat up an elderly teacher, as was the case near Irkutsk. Or film the bullying of weaker students, and upload the video to the Internet. Who needs knowledge for such things? Here you should be able to press the "record" button, and put out the "bulls" of thin cigarettes on the weak. Accordingly, we also have faces in the style of “Tear-u-u!”
Libraries are a special item. In the distant Soviet times, almost every secluded corner, almost in tiny villages, had its own, albeit miniature, library. The library is the starting point of culture in the countryside and in small towns! Whole villages are disappearing now (there are no people), let alone libraries. Hence the cultural face of an ordinary village dweller disappears.
9. Creativity
When a person creates, his face changes. If many people create in a territorial and ethnic community, the face of the nation is transformed. In Soviet times, scientists, doctors, historians and other creative people made such discoveries that they amazed the whole world. A phenomenal number of ordinary Soviet citizens were engaged in creative search. Even the joke was this: “There is no one to work in the country!” Everyone comes up with something. They invent, compose, rhyme, dance, embroider, act, weave beads. So good! Because of that, there were incomparably more joyful, creative, bright faces on the streets in those years than now.
Look: earlier such a super-popular magazine was printed - "Technology of Youth", where our Soviet "Kulibins" shared their ideas, experience, drawings. Showed how things could be improved. How to solder a domestic receiver so that it catches frequencies no worse, or even better, than the Japanese one. How to assemble one or another useful, and sometimes not very, but wonderful mechanism or unit in terms of its set of functions. How to create an outlandish sculpture from a broken stool and much, much more. I repeat, an incredible number of people in the USSR came up with something.
And the cunning and far-sighted Japanese were already buying up copies of the Techniques of Youth magazine and similar publications in the USSR with might and main. After that, our own inventions, published for all-Union familiarization, surfaced in the form of mechanisms, units, devices, etc., embodied in reality. in the Land of the Rising Sun. That's how appreciated and still appreciate our inventors!
So, people in the Soviet era gravitated toward being creative. Now creativity has changed: everyone wants to make money. What is better? It's not the same for everybody. And yet, a thought from the cycle “How to make money?” leaves its heavy imprint on the faces of our contemporaries among ordinary passers-by. But not only them. Businessmen. Bankers. politicians. Almost everyone.
10. Entertainment
When someone entertains you, and if you are not an insensitive "doldon", then your face sparkles with smiles. Leisure, rest, really affect facial expressions. It's only at first glance, it seems that there was less entertainment in the Soviet Union than it is now. Remember the honorary title of the most reading nation. For a ticket to the theater, to the exhibition, to the stadium, people stood in queues for hours. The number of museums has skyrocketed.
But the most basic feature - all cultural events were available and the audience was pleased with real artists, and not plywood performers or unfortunate comedians. Now the faces of today's young people are often not at all clouded by the seal of intellect because they do not go to cultural institutions. But in a nightclub - please! And there, after all, not dietary meals and drinks are served, and not aspirin for the sick. Recently they showed how the service for combating drug trafficking conducted a raid at night in one of the clubs in Moscow. Syringes on the floor, torn wrappers from "wheels" (pills used in psychiatry), ecstasy and so on.
A THIRD of young people were found to be drug intoxicated. The expression on their faces is blank. Running pupils. Both boys and girls have difficulty understanding what they are being asked. And so - every third! This is not dancing at the country club for you. Soviet power. Then try, appear in this form. Instantly sent to the police station. Then - for treatment. What kind of soulful faces are there if every third person in a particular club is inadequate!
In conclusion, I would suggest that people in last years threw off the mask of Soviet hypocrisy and showed their true colors. That is, freedom not only untied the hands and tongues (perestroika, glasnost), but also revealed to the world the true face of the layman. Is it so? Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer here. But the fact that there were hundreds, thousands of times more happy faces in the early eighties of the last century is a fact. Moreover, many of today's embittered faces sparkled with joy and quiet happiness three decades ago. Yes, times were different. Yes, those people were young then. But why now the young and young have a completely different expression on their faces? The above ten points, I hope, shed some light on this mystery.
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There is nothing surprising in the fact that some people have nostalgia for the Soviet Union. After all, everyone knows the property of human memory (the bad, as a rule, is forgotten, the good is remembered). In addition, the USSR evokes positive feelings mainly among the oldest or already elderly generation (of course, taking into account the extreme generations that also made the USSR). The reason for this is simple. Everyone was young then. And about the bygone youth, usually, everyone remembers with regret and often nostalgic for the most memorable, bright glimpses of the life of that period. In 2011 or 2012, by chance, at one of the forums, I came across a brief sketch of life under the USSR. I will try to convey it (with minor changes and additions).
In the USSR, there was much less chernukha. People tried not to focus too much on the negative and, thanks to this, lived more cheerfully. In those days, whiners and grumblers were perceived precisely as whiners and grumblers, and not as truth-telling heroes. Roughly speaking, a person who trumpets about a bad life, bestial working conditions, the regular use of children's, voluntary-compulsory, unpaid, hard labor, etc., was perceived in society precisely as a whiner, and not as a fighter for the rights and freedom of people, capable of change something. In the opinion of the majority, it was still impossible to change something in politics, attitudes towards religion, freedom of speech, etc. So why shout about it? And a person, as a rule, obeyed this majority, forgetting that the Majority, at all times, were followers (subordinates, "gray mass", "herd"), and the Minority, trying to change something in the lives of millions of people, were leaders . The majority, by definition, cannot be leaders. And vice versa. In addition, public opinion played a very important role in the life of a Soviet citizen ("What will people say, huh?"). But he did not even think about what, in fact, such "public opinion" was, and he was very afraid of it and listened to it, discussing "forbidden" topics "in the kitchen."
The Soviet people had a level of pride in the country, but not very high. Everything foreign was valued much higher than Soviet, even if there were no special reasons for it (as we know, nothing has changed in our country with this). In the USSR, the cult of holy foolishness paradoxically coexisted with the petty-bourgeois cult of things. Now it's hard to believe, but in the USSR they could easily be killed for jeans (yes, for them!). And it was not at all the oppressive poverty in which many Soviet citizens lived. Everyone had enough money for bad food and bad clothes. It was precisely in the cult of things, which in the USSR reached simply incredible heights. Now it’s ridiculous to even think about it, but, in Soviet times, adults seriously considered a well-furnished apartment to be one of the main indicators of success in life, can you imagine! Poor, by modern standards, carpets hanging on the walls (to save scarce wallpaper and covering holes in these same wallpapers), worth ten average salaries (the average salary of very many citizens was 120 rubles), scarce "walls" (performing, on top of everything other things, the same function as carpets), filled with scarce books and crystal, household appliances and foreign-made knick-knacks, suede jackets (three jackets), foreign movie cameras, etc. - all this was an indicator of status. About such scarce, at that time, but banal, today, foreign-made things like cigarettes, cosmetics, alcohol, perfumes, chewing gum (yes, yes!) and much more, I think it’s not worth mentioning. Many Soviet people were willing to exchange their lives for the pursuit of rags and other junk. Now (thanks to capitalism) the cult of things is still far from being so relevant. We (meaning adults) have already learned to use things in a purely utilitarian way. It is to use, and not to possess in a Plushkin way. In fairness, I note that the extraordinary passion of Soviet people for things was largely caused by simple circumstance: things were more liquid than money. Simply put, a good thing was easy to sell, but hard to buy. When people who lived in the USSR resent the fact that inflation ate their money, they forget that this money was much more like coupons than money. You could buy as many canned seaweed with rubles as you wanted. But, for example, there are no normal clothes, household appliances, or normal cars. Because of this, in the Soviet Union, hunting for scarce goods (often for the purpose of further, profitable resale) was a national sport. Instead of just going out and buying the right thing, as it is happening now, the Soviet person had to unwittingly become a huckster (which, by the way, was severely punished by law, being called speculation). Moreover, a person became a huckster in the bad sense of the word. As the most innocuous example: seeing scarce women's boots or foreign tights, a Soviet person (even a man) bought them immediately, without thinking and without looking at the size. He knew that later he would always be able to find among his acquaintances a lady with a leg of the right size and exchange for these, say, boots, some thing he needed for himself. And not always, by the way, a thing. It was completely normal to pay the representatives of the most ancient profession with foreign wardrobe items or, say, cosmetics (because, for obvious reasons, these things were valued above Soviet money). In addition, the corruption associated with things was simply total and permeated the entire Soviet society. Without a bribe to the butcher, one could only count on a frail chicken frozen to a crystal state. Fresh, fresh meat, for most Soviet citizens, was something unrealistic (with the rare exception of citizens of large cities). The recreation infrastructure was completely undeveloped. Suffice it to say that in order to get into a restaurant, it was often necessary to either give a bribe or stand in line for several hours. Japanese cuisine or pizza delivery services were non-existent. For some reason, I remembered the first opening of McDonald's in Moscow.
Free education, of course, was. But those who studied well studied for free. As, however, today. In addition, applicants, citizens of the USSR, were often divided along national lines, giving preference to more "convenient" candidates of Slavic affiliation. For example, Jews (being citizens of the USSR) had some restrictions on their rights when entering a university. Of course, no one spoke about this out loud, as well as about drug addiction, pedophilia, prostitution, etc. among students. However, today, with regards to education, things are similar (it is much "more convenient" for a school or university to accept, for free education, 30 Russian children (Russian nationality) than 15 children, for example, of Chechen or Uzbek nationality, but also citizens of the Russian Federation). Enter a prestigious university educational institution, under the USSR, not having connections or means to give a bribe was a problem. By the way, the son, let's say, aram-zam-zam. the secretary of the district committee of the party, upon entering the university, had much more privileges over "mere mortals" than today the son of some official of the same level has over the majority of "common people-opponents". Almost everywhere there was a big competition. "Official" paid education then it wasn't. They did it for bribes. Moreover, for the medical and law faculties, the amounts appeared quite considerable.
In the USSR, medicine was indeed free. But it was very backward and of poor quality. There were no medicines (and the simplest ones). They said this: "To be treated for nothing, for nothing to be treated!" Standing in line at the clinic for several hours, and then, for lack of medicine, leaving without salty slurping was the most common thing. About the peculiar, banned in many developed countries already at that time, "anesthesia", prosthetics of the teeth or about the "brilliant green" with Castellani, I generally keep quiet. Unbelievable, but true, "brilliant green" is still sold in pharmacies!
There were theoretically different kinds of water parks and attractions, but compared to what we have now, they looked rather wretched, just like the cinemas of that time. I don’t even mention trips to different Maldives, Thailand or Egypt, car tours in Europe. For a Soviet citizen, it was some kind of completely unreal, transcendent chic. The theaters, of course, were at their best in the Soviet Union (according to at least in major cities). But again, corruption was not without corruption there. Ticket speculation was commonplace. By the way, about tickets. A gigantic queue for air tickets was quite common in the Soviet Union. Tickets, like many other things, had to be "gotten". By giving a bribe, for example. Or, as an option, when defending queues. Queues in general were the eternal problem of socialism. They cursed and fought. Comedians said that the Soviet people know why they live. To stand in line. A huge part of life was leaving in line. By the way, the fear of queues has passed through several generations and, as if, has already been absorbed into the DNA, first of the Soviet, and then, already in the DNA of the Russian citizen. Has anyone, at present, paid attention to people, for example, in trams or buses? Often, many people (both the older generation, who have experienced for themselves what it is like to live in lines, and the younger generation, taught by the elders), even before the bus or tram stops, jump out of their seats and try to be the first to get up at the exit, even if no one else is there. and won't come out. That is, these people (including elderly people, roughly speaking, barely moving their legs), on the move of the same bus, dangling from side to side, move around the cabin, counting change, and sacrifice their safety for the sake of an extra 10-30 seconds of possible downtime in exit queue. Banks, clinics, post office, etc. can not be mentioned. That's about the service, in the USSR, and even more so have not heard. Everywhere rudeness, abuse. And for your own money. Of course, one could be satisfied with the meager set of goods and services that was freely available in stores. But not all women wanted, for example, to walk in quilted jackets. Consequently, they first had to get things somewhere, and then also alter them for themselves (it was not always possible to get a thing of the right size right away). Again, sometimes I wanted meat. And fresh meat rarely got on the table of "mere mortals." Unless, in some oases of well-being. As well as quality fruits and vegetables. In general, many people associate the smell in the fruit and vegetable stores of that time with the smell of dampness, mold, rot (often compared to the smell in the cellar).
There is a myth that in the Soviet Union everyone had pockets full of money. This is both true and false at the same time. On the one hand, yes. Some people had much more money than they had time to spend in empty stores. And the director of a plant in Moscow, for example, lived much more prosperously and more interestingly than, for example, a teacher in some provincial town. But, on the other hand, many people lived on the very verge of poverty: they bought rotten products (fruits, vegetables), darned, for several years, holes in the same wardrobe items (the concept of “growth” gained popularity precisely in the USSR), saved every penny. In general, no matter which side (banal and everyday, in our time) you take, everywhere we will see that it was necessary to spend either time or “blat” on it. Here, for example, books. Some books were available in stores. However, very many good books(foreign), it was necessary to either exchange it for waste paper or buy it at semi-underground book markets (in which some "Three Musketeers" could well cost twenty-five rubles - a solid amount at that time). Or auto parts. No, the car itself was a luxury item in the USSR. Owning a Volga then was much more prestigious than owning, say, a new Mercedes today. But after all, the car also needs spare parts and gasoline, which had to be obtained either by pull or for a lot of money. Sailors who traveled abroad were incredibly rich in the USSR against the general background. Since they could spend the pennies given to them in foreign currency in normal stores: to buy electronic watches, electric kettles, irons and other cheap nonsense, which is now lying around in hypermarkets in baskets with a "sale" sign. In addition to their own lack of goods in the store, there was also a lagging factor. For example, VCRs, which became popular in the West in the seventies, timidly began to appear in our country only at the end of the eighties. Diapers, without which young mothers spent a lot of time and effort washing diapers, did not appear in the USSR at all.
The housing issue deserves a separate discussion. In the Soviet Union, he was one of the most ill: at that time, one person accounted for 16 square meters. Significantly less than now. To get an apartment, one had either to have a very good connection, or for a long time, for decades, to stand in line (without any guarantees of success). A simple example: "Now we will give you these two rooms in a communal apartment. But you agree, because there are prospects. An old woman of seventy years old lives there, and when she dies, you can take her room." They could be deleted from the queue, for example, due to the death of one of the family members. There were ways to get an apartment in just a few years. It was necessary to get a job in some desired country hard work. For logging, for example. Or a builder. By the way, about construction. Every filthy board, every bucket of paint, every roll of good wallpaper had to be "gotten". It took an incredible amount of time and effort. Work was also lousy. I usually had to work on outdated equipment. For computers, for example, the backlog was often under twenty years. Besides, the right tools, often, it was not corny, as well as the necessary spare parts. I had to, again, somehow play around, negotiate. Or even "to show socialist enterprise" - to steal. Yes, such a curious nuance. Theft in the USSR was not something shameful. Stealing a wheelbarrow of bricks or a set of wrenches from work was completely normal! It’s funny, of course, but whoever did this was considered not a petty thief, but simply a clever and courageous person! And one more thing at work. Leaving was difficult. A person who changed more than three jobs in a lifetime was considered a "flyer". Running your own business was, of course, forbidden! It was also impossible not to work! There was even a special article "for parasitism" (which, by the way, at the suggestion of senile people, is again being initiated to be introduced into modern legislation). Because of this, people with a freedom-loving character and with a sense of personal freedom (not weak-willed "slaves", to the biting sounds of the whip, going to a ghostly mirage of well-being) suffered incredibly. They didn’t want to lie down, sorry, like a prostitute, under a party whose ideology they did not share, or under an unloved, corrupt and deluded team for one and a half hundred Soviet rubles, and the life of a “lone wolf” in the Soviet Union was very difficult.
Special mention deserves drug addiction on an immense scale, penetrating not only the bohemian society (artists, singers, etc.), but also "ordinary" citizens (drugs, initially, were freely sold in pharmacies, grown in the backyards - agriculture was developed !). After the ban on the free sale of narcotic substances in pharmacies, speculation with prescriptions for these drugs unfolded. Of course, during the total control of citizens (with the assistance of the most severe censorship in the press and on television), data on all measures to seize a colossal amount of drugs (mainly heroin, hashish and hemp), for example, only in the Omsk and Amur regions, are strictly were kept secret. As well as data on pedophilia, prostitution, rape, abortion, lesbianism and other indecency that discredits the Great Power (now they are already in the public domain - declassified after a statute of limitations). In addition, in the USSR, ethanol addiction reached incredible levels. Everyone drank. On the non-drinkers viewed with great suspicion (with this in the country, too, not much has changed). Vodka and alcohol were the universal currency. A lot could be exchanged for them. Many managers were forced to endure drunken workers (there were no others). Yes, and I wonder why people got the idea that there were neither rich nor poor? This just doesn't happen. There was already an example about the plant director and teacher. In addition, after all, someone should, for example, sweep the yard, and someone should follow this and give the janitor a salary, right? This is the most banal example. And, as a rule, the one who pays the janitor's salary is a priori richer than this janitor. It has ALWAYS been like this! It's easy to understand things! But it strikes me even more when I hear: "All people, under the USSR, lived in abundance!" or "At that time, people did not need anything!". In what abundance? Did everyone have cars, balanced, high-quality food, luxury goods, the opportunity to travel freely (not to Bulgaria or Uzbekistan, but, for example, to the USA, Japan or France)? Did everyone have the opportunity to be treated with high-quality medicines, to make good repairs in their apartment, etc.? Of course, if the concept of "prosperity" means only calming down one's stomach with the meager set of products that were in stores, then everything falls into place. Did people need anything? And even in the banal freedom of choice (the choice of products, the country to visit during the holidays, the choice of work, etc.), freedom of speech, religion, etc.? People, what are you talking about? Forgot about the notorious 120 rubles? A very large number of Soviet people had such a salary! Living on it and raising children was very difficult. Especially in conditions of total deficit and corruption.
A little about ideology. The Soviet people were brainwashed from everywhere (radio, television, cinemas, the press). They talked about the correct policy and about "the decay of the West (although very few people had the opportunity to go there and check it out)". Now, looking back, one is amazed at what naive fools people can be, what a criminal ideology can do to them! Take a look at North Korea. Do they live well there, in your opinion? That's exactly the same way, from the outside, prosperous countries looked at the USSR. The political system of the USSR was false from beginning to end. It spoke about the freedom and happiness of the people, but everything turned out to be quite the opposite. You can talk for a very long time about insanity Soviet period. What are the repressive measures under Andropov, when during the day, on the street, people were stopped and asked: "Why are you not at work?" There is one common phrase. " Soviet Union was a great power! Everyone was afraid of him! ". And how is greatness measured? By the presence of warheads? By the fear that others experience? By the size of the country? The Soviet Union was a big great prison. You can travel inside the country, but on vacation abroad (by and large) don’t even think Leaving is a whole problem. Characteristics, recommendations, a meeting of the party committee, an exit visa, etc. After all, prisoners are never proud of what kind of prison they are in, small or large. Notorious stability (in prices for necessary goods or services, in work , in the roof over your head), which many are proud of, mentioning the USSR, is also present in many prisons and is strictly observed. And when someone tells me that the USSR was a Great Power, the image of a man sitting in the pose of an eagle immediately comes to my mind , in a rural toilet and squeezing in his hands, the world-famous Kalashnikov assault rifle.The walls of this toilet and all its contents are the territory, the country of this person.It is forbidden for a person to leave the walls (or borders) of this toilet eno. To condemn and complain about the conditions of "residence" is also prohibited. Praying, discussing "bosses" is also forbidden to him. And when someone "encroaches" on his territory (on this toilet), even with good intentions (to get him out of this, excuse me, shit), the person clangs the shutter of the machine gun and shouts: "Do not condemn and do not defame my toilet (my country )! Stay away from my toilet (my Great Country), I have weapons (warheads)! Fear me!". They say to him: “Man, you, being a weak-willed slave, are sitting waist-deep in shit! Get out of this swamp! You are mistaken, considering your toilet a Great Power. warheads, but the well-being and happiness of the people living in it. And the man replies: “You are wrong, I live in abundance and prosperity, I have everything. Besides, this is my element and I like everything! I am a patriot and I am happy. Thanks to our “leader” (sometimes feeding me) for given me a roof over my head! Glory to the USSR!" Clang clang shutter ...
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