This morning I watched a morning program where the presenters lively discussed the survey: “What was good about the USSR”; many votes were given for the item “Back then all people were kinder and treated each other better.”
Guys, I’ll tell you straight away: I don’t think I even lived under the Soviet Union. I was born, immediately Leonid Ilyich left for the rainbow, then perestroika, and I’ve been more or less beginning to realize something about it since I was five or six years old, when the little scoop was practically gone. However, I dare to think that I have something to say on the topic, because after all, my rotten memory contains something, well, no one has canceled the stories of my ancestors.
And you know, I personally don’t know why they are so keen on good people. “Oh, we all played in the same yard and could come to any of us to drink water, and we ourselves went to school, and the neighbors went to each other for salt and had holidays.”
In my opinion, this is a little different than kindness. Firstly, these are childhood memories, and everything is always sweeter in childhood.
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 mechanic Lekha, electrician Petrukha, serviceman Valerka and cheerful welder Abdulla. So what if Abdullah’s wife doesn’t give salt to Valerka’s wife? It’s inconvenient, not neighborly. And if Petrukha’s wife doesn’t look after Lekha’s son, who came home early from school, then how will she then come to Lekha’s wife so that she can feed their daughter lunch?
Likewise, in the villages under the king, everyone was kind. One village with one landowner, do the peasants need to fight with each other, after all, in full view of each other, and half are relatives.
So all these squeaks and squeals, “It was wonderful and wondrous, wonderful, wonderful!” they come from the usual jerks of that time, who now wrinkle their asses in open spaces.
Well, if you look at life soberly, through the eyes of an adult? Everywhere you are bullied. The cops don't stand on ceremony; if you're a little compliant, they throw you into Bobik and into the sober bin. And you’ll get hit on the kidneys with a stick or a knife.
Tomuscho the police are workers and peasants, flesh and blood.
In a 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 achieve nothing, no truth: “There are many of you, but I am alone.” The queue will also give you a kick – there’s no point in distracting a busy person, it’s said that you’re an asshole, which means you’re an asshole, get out. “And he put on a hat and glasses, you lousy intellectual! You guys are so smart!”
“Accounting”, “Went to base”, “No beer”, “Sanitary day” - well, all the time and everywhere. Since I was about five years old, I’ve been running to the Priroda store on Begovaya, and how tired I am of these eternal accounting and sanitary days. It was just freezing, they were constantly taking things into account and sanitizing everything. Well, what can you do? Kindness in all fields.
Get some p*ssies? Yes, easily. Good people kindly stuck knives into other good people because of a shitty fawn hat. Children swung from district to district and school to school, all these gangs, crime in working-class districts, that’s all. I don’t argue, now they probably exist too, but it’s somewhere in the fucking depressive assholes, and not in such quantities. It was then that people joined gangs because there was nowhere to go. Nowadays, smart people immediately get out of their holes, and those who remain are not so active and smart as to organize something there.
I won’t even mention communal apartments; the kindness and mutual respect of neighbors in communal apartments is well known to everyone.
Well, yes, well, they gave me apartments. B - good! You work at the machine, and then you have a kennel in an open field, a food store, a hardware store and a grimy bus to the factory. So it still exists now, a mortgage for an apartment in the Znatny Velmozha residential complex is called. And then, now you’ve bought it and you’re hurting, and then you’re hurting, and only then do you receive it.
What else was there then that is no longer there, and what is worth grieving for? It seems like nothing more. So, as I understand it, the people who jerk off to the scoop would like to return it and become schoolchildren there again. Or some kind of bump to live sweetly.
But no, here’s a place for an installer, a communal apartment, three shops around, a cinema and stand in line, get it, write down the numbers on your hand. Drink vodka out of hopelessness, beat your wife, squeeze your children, wear creepy things, lie on the sidewalk, be amazed by the view from the window, cover the TV with a napkin, take old things into pieces so that in ten years you will finally have use for that old pipe or piece of wire .
Stand in line to drop off waste paper to get a book that you will read in line to drop off waste paper to get a book to read in line to buy bananas.
Telegrams, teletypes, rotary phones, “Two in one hand,” you can’t go to the sea, you can’t get them, “Where are you going?!” thrown out, “Tell me, what is everyone behind this?”, “Return the cans to grandma,” “Let’s go weed potatoes,” recording on TV.
And all people are kind, they were just forced to be evil. And they were so kind.
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It is not surprising that some people have nostalgia for the Soviet Union. After all, everyone knows the property of human memory (bad things are usually forgotten, good things are 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 experienced the USSR). The reason for this is simple. Everyone was young then. And everyone usually remembers the past youth with regret and often feels nostalgic for the most memorable, bright glimpses of life of that period. In 2011 or 2012, by chance, on one of the forums, I came across a short sketch of life under the USSR. I will try to convey it (with minor changes and additions).
There was much less chernukha in the USSR. 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 child labor, voluntary-forced, 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 change something. In the opinion of the majority, it was still impossible to change anything 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, the “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 didn’t even think about what “public opinion” actually was and 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 particularly high. Everything foreign was valued much higher than the Soviet one, even if there was no particular reason for this (as we know, nothing has changed in our country). In the USSR, the cult of holy fools' non-covetousness paradoxically coexisted with the bourgeois cult of things. It’s hard to believe now, but in the USSR they could easily kill for jeans (yes, just for them!). And it was not at all a matter of the oppressive poverty in which many Soviet citizens lived. Everyone barely had enough money for bad food and bad clothes. It was precisely the cult of things that reached incredible heights in the USSR. Now it’s funny 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 this same wallpaper), costing ten average salaries (the average salary of many citizens was 120 rubles), scarce “walls” (which, in addition, served other things, the same function as carpets), filled with scarce books and crystal, foreign-made household appliances and trinkets, suede jackets (three jackets), foreign movie cameras, etc. - all this was an indicator of status. I don’t think it’s worth mentioning such foreign-made things, which were in short supply at that time, but banal today, such as cigarettes, cosmetics, alcohol, perfumes, chewing gum (yes!) and much more. 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. To use it, and not to possess it like Plyushkin. In fairness, I note that the extraordinary passion of Soviet people for things was largely caused by a simple circumstance: things were more liquid than money. Simply put, a good thing was easy to sell, but quite difficult to buy. When people who lived in the USSR are outraged that inflation has eaten up their money, they forget that this money was much more like coupons than money. You could buy as much canned seaweed with rubles as you wanted. But, for example, there are no normal clothes, household appliances, or normal cars anymore. Because of this, the national sport in the Soviet Union was the hunt for scarce goods (often for the purpose of further profitable resale). Instead of just going and buying the right thing, as is happening now, a Soviet person had to inevitably become a huckster (which, by the way, was severely punished by law, called profiteering). Moreover, the person became a huckster in the bad sense of the word. As the most harmless example: seeing scarce women's boots or foreign tights, a Soviet person (even a man) bought them immediately, without thinking or looking at the size. He knew that later he could always find among his acquaintances a lady with feet of the right size and exchange with her for these, say, boots, some thing he needed for himself. And not always, by the way, a thing. Paying representatives of the oldest profession with foreign wardrobe items or, say, cosmetics was completely normal (since, for obvious reasons, these things were valued higher than Soviet money). In addition, the corruption associated with things was simply total and permeated the entire Soviet society. Without a bribe to the butcher, you 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 absolutely undeveloped. Suffice it to say that to get into a restaurant you often had to either pay a bribe or stand in line for several hours. There were no Japanese food or pizza delivery services. For some reason I remembered the first opening of McDonald's in Moscow.
There was free education, of course. But those who studied well studied for free. Just like today. In addition, applicants, citizens of the USSR, were often divided according to nationality, giving preference to more “convenient” candidates of Slavic origin. 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, the situation is similar (it is much “more convenient” for a school or university to accept, for free education, 30 Russian children (of Russian nationality) than 15 children, say, of Chechen or Uzbek nationality, but also who are citizens of the Russian Federation ). It was a problem to enter a prestigious institution of higher education under the USSR, without having cronyism or the means to give a bribe. By the way, the son is, say, aram-zam-zam. Secretary of the district party committee, upon entering the university, had much more privileges over “mere mortals” than the son of some official of the same level has today over the majority of “common opponents.” There was great competition almost everywhere. There was no “official” paid training back then. They did it for bribes. Moreover, for the medical and law faculties, the amounts involved were quite considerable.
In the USSR, medicine was indeed free. But it was very backward and of poor quality. There were no medicines (even the simplest ones). They said this: “Treatment is free, treatment is free!” Standing in line at the clinic for several hours, and then, for lack of medicine, leaving without a sip was the most common thing. About the peculiar “anesthesia”, dental prosthetics, which was already prohibited in many developed countries at that time, or about the “green stuff” with Castelani, I am generally silent. Incredible, but true, “green stuff” is still sold in pharmacies!
In theory, there were various kinds of water parks and attractions, but compared to what we have now, they looked pretty poor, 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, transcendental chic. Theaters, of course, were at their best in the Soviet Union (at least in large cities). But again, there was corruption there too. Ticket speculation was the most common thing. By the way, about tickets. A gigantic queue for airline tickets was quite common in the Soviet Union. Tickets, like many other things, had to be “obtained”. By giving a bribe, for example. Or, as an option, when standing in queues. Queues in general were an eternal problem of socialism. They swore and fought. Comedians said that Soviet people know why they live. To stand in lines. A huge part of my life was spent waiting in line. By the way, the fear of queues passed through several generations and, as if, had already been absorbed into the DNA of first the Soviet, and then into the DNA of the Russian citizen. Has anyone nowadays paid attention to people, for example, on trams or buses? Often, many people (both the older generation, who have experienced what it’s like to live in queues, 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 stand at the exit, even if no one else is there. and is not going to go out. That is, these people (including older people, roughly speaking, who can barely move their legs), while the same bus is moving, dangling from side to side, move around the cabin, counting small change, and sacrifice their safety for the sake of an extra 10-30 seconds of possible idle time in queues to exit. You don’t need to mention banks, clinics, post office, etc. In the USSR, they had never even heard of service. There is rudeness and swearing everywhere. And for your own money. Of course, one could be satisfied with the meager range of goods and services that were freely available in stores. But not all women wanted, for example, to wear quilted jackets. Consequently, they first had to get things somewhere, and then also alter them to suit themselves (it was not always possible to get an item of the right size right away). Again, sometimes I wanted meat. And fresh meat rarely found its way onto the table of “mere mortals.” Perhaps, in some oases of well-being. As well as high-quality fruits and vegetables. In general, many people associate the smell in fruit and vegetable stores of that time with the smell of dampness, mold, rot (a frequent comparison is 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 not true 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 a much more prosperous and interesting life than, for example, a teacher in some provincial town. But, on the other hand, many people lived on the very brink of poverty: they bought rotten food (fruits, vegetables), mended holes in the same wardrobe items for several years (the concept of “growing up” gained popularity precisely in the USSR), saved every penny. In general, no matter what side (banal and ordinary, in our time) you take, we will see everywhere that it was necessary to spend either time or “blat”. For example, books. Some books were available in stores. However, many good books (foreign) had to be either exchanged for waste paper or bought on semi-underground book markets (in which some “Three Musketeers” could easily cost twenty-five rubles - a substantial amount at that time). Or auto parts. No, the car itself was a luxury item in the USSR. Owning a Volga back then was much more prestigious than owning, say, a new Mercedes today. But the car also needs spare parts and gasoline, which had to be obtained either through connections or for a lot of money. The sailors who went abroad were incredibly rich in the USSR. Since they could spend the pennies given to them in foreign currency in normal stores: buying 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 the store’s own lack of goods, there was also a backlog factor. For example, video recorders, which became popular in the West in the seventies, timidly began to appear here only in the late 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 sickest: then there were 16 square meters per person. Significantly less than now. To get an apartment, you either had to have a very good connection, or stand in line for a long time, for decades (without any guarantee of success). A simple example: “Now we will give you these two rooms in a communal apartment. But you agree, because there are prospects there. An old woman of seventy years old lives there, and when she dies, you can take her room.” They could be removed from the queue, for example, due to the death of a family member. There were ways to get an apartment in just a few years. It was necessary to get some hard work needed by the country. 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 “taken out”. It took an incredible amount of time and effort. Things were also lousy with work. I usually had to work on outdated equipment. For computers, for example, the lag was often close to twenty years. In addition, the necessary tools were often simply not available, as well as the necessary spare parts. Again, we had to somehow fuss and negotiate. Or even “show socialist entrepreneurship” - steal. Yes, such an interesting 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 brave person! And one more thing about work. It was difficult to quit. A person who changed more than three jobs in his life was considered a “flyer.” Running your own business was, of course, prohibited! 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 being reintroduced into modern legislation). Because of this, people with a freedom-loving character and a sense of personal freedom (not weak-willed “slaves”, under the biting sounds of the whip, heading towards 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 misguided collective for one and a half hundred Soviet rubles, and the life of a “lone wolf” in the Soviet Union was very difficult.
Special mention should be made of drug addiction of immense proportions, permeating not only bohemian society (artists, singers, etc.), but also “ordinary” citizens (drugs, initially, were freely sold in pharmacies, grown in the outskirts - agriculture was developed !). After the ban on the free sale of narcotic substances in pharmacies, speculation in prescriptions for these drugs began. 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 activities to seize colossal amounts of drugs (mainly heroin, hashish and cannabis), for example, only in the Omsk and Amur regions, are strictly classified. As well as data on pedophilia, prostitution, rape, abortion, lesbianism and other obscenities that discredit the Great Power (now they are already in the public domain - they have been declassified due to the statute of limitations). In addition, in the USSR, ethanol addiction reached simply incredible levels. Everyone drank. People who didn’t drink were looked at with great suspicion (not much has changed in this regard in the country either). Vodka and alcohol were universal currencies. A lot could be traded for them. Many managers were forced to tolerate drunken workers (there were simply no others). Yes, and I wonder why people got the idea that there were neither rich nor poor? This simply doesn't happen. There was already an example about the director of the plant and the teacher. Besides, someone must, for example, sweep the yard, and someone must monitor 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! These are simple things to understand! But it amazes me even more when I hear: “All people, under the USSR, lived in abundance!” or “At that time people didn’t need anything!” How rich are you? 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, make good repairs in their apartment, etc.? Of course, if the concept of “wealth” only means calming your stomach with the meager set of products that were in the stores, then everything falls into place. Did people need anything? And even in the banal freedom of choice (choice of products, country, to visit during vacation, choice of job, etc. ), freedom of speech, religion, etc.? People, what are you talking about? Have you forgotten about the notorious 120 rubles? A very large number of Soviet people had such a salary! It was very difficult to live on it and raise children. Moreover, in conditions of total deficit and corruption.
A little about ideology. 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).” Now, looking back, you are amazed at what naive fools people can be, what a criminal ideology can do to them! Look at North Korea from the outside. Do they have a good life there, in your opinion? This is exactly how, from the outside, prosperous countries looked at the USSR. The political system of the USSR was deceitful 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 the insanity of the Soviet period. Just look at the repressive measures under Andropov, when during the day, on the street, people were stopped and asked: “Why aren’t you at work?” There is one common phrase. "The Soviet Union was a great power! Everyone was afraid of it!" How is greatness measured? The presence of warheads? The fear that others experience? The size of the country? The Soviet Union was a great great prison. You can travel within the country, but don’t even think about going on vacation abroad (by and large)! Leaving is a whole problem. Characteristics, recommendations, party committee meeting, exit visa, etc. Prisoners are never proud of what kind of prison they are in, small or large. The notorious stability (in prices for necessary goods or services, in work, in the roof over one’s head), which many are proud of when 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 eagle pose in a village toilet and clutching a world-famous Kalashnikov assault rifle in his hands immediately comes to mind. The walls of this toilet and all its contents are the territory, the country of this person. A person is prohibited from leaving the walls (or boundaries) of this toilet. Condemning and complaining about the living conditions is also prohibited. He is also prohibited from praying and discussing “the authorities.” And when someone “encroaches” on his territory (this toilet), even with good intentions (to get him out of this, sorry, shit), the person clangs the shutter of his machine gun and shouts: “Don’t judge or defame my toilet (my country )! Don't come near 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 in considering your toilet a Great Power. You forget that the Greatness of a country is measured not by the size of its territory, not by the number of warheads, but by the well-being and happiness of the people living in it." And the man replies: "You are wrong, I live in prosperity and prosperity, I have everything. Besides, this is my element and I like everything! I'm a patriot and I'm happy. Thanks to our “leader” (who sometimes feeds me) for giving me a roof over my head! Glory to the USSR!" Clang-clang of the shutter...
The patient's face becomes peaceful if he has had a successful enema.
(author's observation in a medical institution)
Nowadays, 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 was wandering around like a disheveled little boy.
And now - in our days. Here is a fat guy stomping, “two inches tall from a pot,” a mere “bun.” He is breathing heavily, chasing his four-legged friend - a little dog. Both the man and the animal puff. In Soviet times, such fat men were distinguished by their natural kindness. And now the pot-bellied man “yaps” with hatred at his little dog: “Where are you getting under my feet, bitch!” A grin of anger was etched on his face. Because of the owner's scolding, the dog bears the same angry expression on his face to those around him. The faces of people and even animals, it seems to me, have changed radically these days. What gives rise to this hatred and such cruel expressions on faces right now? Why didn't this happen before? Let us present 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 bad things were for him, he would always have a roof over his head. Now people see that the postulate “my home is my castle” 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 concerned officials. What follows is a kick, excuse me, “in the ass,” and you are a homeless person. In Soviet times there were no homeless people. Everyone was entitled to a corner, albeit sometimes a tiny one. And when a person realizes that the state cares about him, then his face straightens out. I think the feeling of fear of losing HOME, cozy, dear, is one of the reasons for anxious, aggressive people at the beginning of the 21st century.
2. Be healthy, Soviet citizen!
In Soviet times, the state instilled in people the postulate: take care of your health! Wouldn't you like it? Then, get an order for the entire enterprise and go to the doctors forcibly. Massive, total medical examinations were carried out among all segments of the population. The level of medical knowledge of ordinary doctors from the clinic sometimes amazed even their foreign colleagues. You could come with a complaint about your throat, but thanks to the attentive eye of the doctor and the medical examination data, they discovered some other ailments in you and immediately began to treat them. Before entering kindergarten, go for a medical examination! Before school - again for medical examination.
Before joining the army or going to work, please be sure to go through a long list of doctors and take a bunch of tests. If you don't want to, we'll force you! The postulate that the builder of a communist society must be healthy was promoted everywhere. After all, to implement Marx’s ideas, healthy individuals are needed, not rotten drug addicts. Now everything is different. Why should the builder of a capitalist society be a goner? Why should he drink buckets of beer and always have a smoke and a joint on hand? This policy is incomprehensible to me. Where did the widespread medical examinations at enterprises go?
3. Food. Water
The quality of drinking water and food products of those years was incomparable with what lies on our shelves and splashes in bottles now. Yes, then, in the eighties, almost all products were in short supply, but what people ate and drank was strictly controlled to ensure compliance with GOST standards. The assortment was limited, but if you bought sausage, it was SAUSAGE, and not a stick of unknown ingredients. High-quality, albeit simple, food is gratefully accepted by the body and processed adequately.
Therefore, the level of slagging in people’s bodies in those years was significantly lower. A cleaner metabolism means a happier face and a lighter gait. Remember the most popular song of Soviet times by Yuri Antonov with the words:
“You came out of May with a flying gait
And disappeared from view in the veil of January.”
This is exactly 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 miniskirt and panties, where she is overcome by shortness of breath. And her face thirsts for oxygen, it wrinkles, but in no way corresponds to her 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 a high level of compliance with the spirit of the people. Community, family, if you like, the feeling of belonging to the largest and most powerful (even if only in some areas) country in the world - all this resonated with peace and contentment in the attitude of the Soviet person. Socialism of the 70s and 80s, oddly enough, despite 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 were close to the way of life of our ancestors.
5. Financial stability of the family.
Every resident of the Soviet country in “stagnant” times knew that he would have an advance payment and a salary. He will pay so much for utility bills, so much for the cooperative fee, so much for the garage, etc. But this amount will be left for food, clothing, entertainment, a dacha, etc. People lived then, basically, poorly, but it was very decent, dignified 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 simplest, even seemingly meaningless at first glance. Another thing is more important: the postulate was unshakable that every resident should be provided with work. Moreover, the state insisted on your work: if you live in the USSR, then please contribute to the country! Do you prefer to be a parasite? 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 are less concerned about lack of employment. Our real middle class is now tiny, but it is the representative of this conscious and creative layer of the population who is most vulnerable in terms of labor stability. He can, in principle, be fired politely/rudely at any time. Let's climb a little higher: today it is quite easy for an entrepreneur to lose a business that has been built with such difficulty. It is enough for a more aggressive and powerful competitor, who has enlisted the support of the bureaucrats, to “set his eye” on your business, and - lo and behold - it’s gone! Almost the entire country is at risk of ending up with nothing, or even worse, hanging out at a garbage container with other such poor souls. Does it add a taste of joy to life? Not at all! This makes people's faces and feelings turn sour.
8. Literacy
Now a generation has grown up, many of whose representatives really do not know how to read and write. Especially if the guys come from the outback. And this illiterate army also rushed to the big cities in search of a better life. What's going on with education? You may be a “dunk-dunduk”, but if you regularly pay for studying at a university, no one will expel you! “Triplets” are still guaranteed for you.
Because if you are driven out of the “building of science,” then by inertia, your parents’ money for studying will disappear from the institute’s cash register. The building of science and knowledge will have nothing to exist on! But if you are a “best student”, a smart guy, but you haven’t found the money for training, then get a kick and get out of the admissions office. Preferably to the West. Because your smart brain convolutions do not pay salaries to teachers.
Price list: want to become a bachelor? Please! Thirty thousand USD Let your knowledge be with your “gulkin’s beak”, it doesn’t matter. Is Bachelor not glamorous? But it sure looks like a grocery sale in a general store. Doesn't sound. But the MASTER... After all, it resonates: MASTER! MASTER of white and black magic, for example. Or - MASTER of Economics. Excuse me, but masters these days cost fifty thousand dollars.
School is not held in high esteem now. She is skipped en masse. And how many children don’t know, and don’t even want to know, what kind of thing school is! If you go there now, it’s just to hang out. Light a joint. Compare with the TV series “School” and decide once again that school “sucks” and only cripples the child’s psyche.
Or storm into a classroom to beat up an elderly teacher, as happened near Irkutsk. Or film the bullying of weaker students and post the video on 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 a weak one. Accordingly, we also have faces in the style of “I’ll tear it!”
A special point is libraries. In 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 rural areas and small towns! Now entire villages are disappearing (there are no people), let alone libraries. This is where the cultural face of an ordinary village resident disappears.
9. Creativity
When a person creates, his face changes. If many people in a territorial and ethnic community create, the face of the nation is transformed. In Soviet times, scientists, doctors, historians and other creative people made such discoveries that amazed the whole world. A phenomenal number of ordinary Soviet citizens were engaged in creative search. There was even a joke like this: “There is no one to work in the country!” Everyone comes up with something. They invent, compose, rhyme, dance, embroider, act, weave beads. That's good! That’s why there were incomparably more joyful, creative, bright faces on the streets in those years than there are now.
Look: previously such a super popular magazine was published - “Technology for Youth”, where our Soviet “Kulibins” shared ideas, experiences, and drawings. They showed how something could be improved. How to resolder a domestic receiver so that it picks up frequencies no worse, or even better, than the Japanese one. How to assemble this or that useful, and sometimes not very useful, but remarkable in its range of functions mechanism or unit. 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 in full swing buying copies of the magazine “Techniques of Youth” and similar publications on the territory of the USSR. After which our inventions, published for all-Union information, surfaced in the form of mechanisms, units, devices, etc. embodied in reality. in the Land of the Rising Sun. This is how our inventors were and still are valued!
So, people in Soviet times gravitated toward creativity. Now creativity has changed: everyone wants to make money. What's better? It's not the same for everybody. And yet the thought from the cycle “How to make money?” leaves its heavy imprint on the faces of our contemporaries from 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 "dork", then your face sparkles with smiles. Leisure and rest really influence facial expressions. It is only at first glance that it seems that in the Soviet Union there was less entertainment than now. Remember the honorary title of the most reading nation. People stood in lines for hours to buy tickets to the theatre, exhibition, or stadium. The number of museums was off the charts.
But the most important feature is that all cultural events were accessible and the audience was delighted by real artists, and not by fake performers or would-be comedians. Nowadays, the faces of modern young people are often not at all overshadowed by the mark of intelligence because they do not go to cultural institutions. But to the nightclub - please! But they don’t serve diet food and drinks there, and they don’t serve aspirin for the sick. They recently showed how the anti-drug trafficking service carried out a raid at night in one of the clubs in Moscow. Syringes on the floor, torn wrappers from “wheels” (pills used in psychiatry), ecstasy, etc.
A THIRD of young people have been found to be drug intoxicated. The expression on their faces is absent. Shifting pupils. Both boys and girls have a hard time understanding what they are being asked about. And so - every THIRD! This is not dancing in a village club under Soviet rule. Then try and appear like this. They will immediately send you to the police station. Then - for treatment. What kind of inspired people are there if every third person in a particular club is inadequate!
In conclusion, I will assume that people in recent years have thrown off the mask of Soviet-era hypocrisy and shown their true colors. That is, freedom not only freed hands and tongues (perestroika, glasnost), but also showed the world the true face of the average person. Is it so? Unfortunately, there is no clear 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, these people were young then. But why do young people now have completely different expressions on their faces? The above ten points, I hope, shed some light on this mystery.
Vladislav Inozemtsev, Doctor of Economics PhD, Director of the Center for Research on Post-Industrial Society:
— Today you can often come across open praise of the Soviet system, including the economy of that time. What remains in my memory is that in 1985 the RSFSR produced almost 6 times more trucks, 14 times more combines, 34 times more tractors, 91 times more watches 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 only in the form of a smartphone.
Could the Soviet economy have been reborn and integrated into the modern global world? Nothing can be ruled out - especially if you look at a progressive China. But for this it was necessary to start 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 that 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, 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 worked for the notorious “shaft”, and not for the end consumer.
An equally important 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 industrial 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 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 deficit - its distribution was one of the forms of building formal and informal verticals of power. Leaders of regional committees and directors of factories in Moscow knocked out the necessary equipment, ordinary citizens made useful contacts (blat) to obtain 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 was based on it.
A person's free time was valued the least. On average, Soviet people spent up to 2.2 hours a day in queues; up to 1.4 hours - in public transport. The Soviet Union never introduced household appliances that were accessible to any European family in the mid-1980s, such as coffee makers and dishwashers, microwave ovens, and much more. The Soviet man was considered necessary to the authorities only in the workplace; after the end of the working day, he had to fight the system created by his own labor.
People's lives were 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%); 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 enterprise never appeared in the Soviet Union, and when it did, it undoubtedly became associated with nothing other than trading and speculation, since the only thing it was capable of at that time was filling commodity niches through the resale of government resources. However, even minor easing led to the fact that the mighty Soviet economy quickly faced financial problems that accelerated its collapse.
What, to summarize, was the main problem of the Soviet economy? In my opinion, it was not an economy in the proper sense of the word, which involves personal initiative, competition, efficiency and technological progress; private property, taxes and the separation of public and private. All that the USSR was able to create was the notorious national economy, which collapsed as soon as they tried to introduce truly economic elements into it. You can regret it, but it is impossible to return it...
Nikolay 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 disaster 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 a great power, which our ancestors assembled bit by bit, principality by principality, and which three people allowed themselves to destroy over a bottle of vodka in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, is a crime. And his descendants will still pass their verdict on him.
The further into history the era of the USSR goes, the better we will understand how much good there was in the Soviet Union, which was destroyed by our young reformers and traitors to the Fatherland who sat in the country's leadership. Let's start with education. In those decades it was one of the best in the world, although the West pretended that it was not so. I received two higher educations - the Shchukin School and VGIK. And I know from myself what kind of knowledge base was laid for students in the field of humanities. We knew both the Western school of painting and world literature. Coming to America, we could talk about the subtleties of their poet’s lyrics Whitman so that their mouths opened in surprise. We knew more than the Americans knew about their own literature and culture.
And school education was an order of magnitude better than both the current one and the Western one. It was better, first of all, because it was general, and not sectoral, as they do now, when you study only a few subjects in depth, and you don’t have to study everything else at all. But this principle is wrong! An undoubted advantage of the USSR was the numerous clubs that all children without exception could attend, which were free, that is, accessible to the public. That is why such nuggets as Sergei Bondarchuk,Andrey Tarkovsky,Vasily Shukshin- our Lomonosov from cinema, breaking through from Siberia to the capital. In modern times, the Shukshins will no longer break through - now education is paid. And this is a crime against Russia - paid education.
Next is medicine... Even if the service in Soviet clinics was not as elite as in America or today in expensive medical centers, there was nevertheless a guarantee that you would be seriously treated by professionals. And now the purchase of diplomas is booming, and sometimes the surgeon cannot even cut bread, let alone perform a complex operation.
There is such a common phrase: a country is judged by how children and old people live in it. When I retired a few years ago, I came to the social security office to fill out documents. They counted me 7 thousand. I ask: “Is there anything 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 a place to live. We, pensioners, have no tomorrow with such income. But in the USSR there was tomorrow. Everyone has. No one even thought: will there be a tomorrow? Will there be work? Will they be evicted from the apartment? Will there be anything to feed the children? And now this question faces everyone—everyone! - a person.
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. Students graduating from universities knew that they would definitely get a job. And today I don’t know how my children - and I have five of them - will be able to get settled and feed themselves. What awaits them? And they all have an excellent education, which is not very much in demand now. The old people understood that yes, the pension was small, but they could live on it. And also help children. The young worker knew that the enterprise where he worked would help with the apartment and would give the children a place in the kindergarten. Everyone lived then from paycheck to paycheck, not rich. But everyone is on an equal footing. There was no such glaring gap between rich and poor.We were plunged into capitalism without any referendums, without asking the people: do we want this or not? Forgetting that for Russia the ruble has never been the main thing. The mysterious Russian soul, which rows not towards itself, but away from itself, had other fundamental values. In the West, their most important principle is self-affirmation, while our main principle has always been the principle of self-giving. And no matter how they tried to switch us to this principle of egoism, they failed to do so.
The collapse of the USSR was a disaster. But Russia is so powerful that, under the protection of the Mother of God, it was able to overcome all the negative aspects and, during the crisis, under the pressure of Western countries, under sanctions, it again made an incredible leap forward.
06/12/1990. The Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a declaration of sovereignty, establishing the priority of Russian laws over Soviet ones.
March 1991 In the referendum on preserving the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics, 76% voted in favor (the Baltic republics, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova, which had previously declared independence, did not participate). August 18-21, 1991 Power was seized for 3 days by the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP), created by functionaries of the CPSU Central Committee, members of the USSR government, representatives of the army and the KGB in order to stop the collapse of the USSR. The August putsch failed.
8.12.1991. The heads of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed an agreement in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
25.12.1991. USSR President M. Gorbachev announced the termination of his activities in this post “for reasons of principle.”
