Do you now live a thousand times better than during Soviet times?

[peacetraveler22]

If time travel ever becomes possible, I would transport myself back to Moscow or the province in the 1970's or 80's to better understand the realities of life in Soviet times. Looking at old photos in books or online, I can hardly envision such a system of life where everything is so structured and predestined. This is the eternal debate amongst my older Russian friends and readers - the pros and cons of life in the USSR vs. modern day Russia. Tonight I read an article written by a man who was only nine years old when the Soviet Union collapsed. However, he claims this was long enough to form a strong enough opinion about life in the USSR to know that he never wishes to return. His observations seem a bit shallow and naive on the surface. He takes a few of the most commonly expressed strengths of the Soviet system, and explains why they are misconceptions. Please remember these are not my personal views, but the opinions of a former resident in the Soviet Union. Let's begin with education...

Myth 1: The Soviet education was the best in the world



There's a common belief that education in the Soviet system was good, perhaps even the best in the world.  However, this was largely a result of propaganda, and it's important to ask the primary question of how a "great" education should be measured?  It's clear that scientific progress in the West was no less than in the USSR.  Moreover, if everyone was so smart in the USSR, why couldn't they make good cars and VCRs? Something is wrong here, and doesn't add up.

Myth 2: Soviet medicine was better

Obviously, the quality of medical care was worse in Soviet times.  It has always been worse when compared to decaying capitalist countries. Life expectancy in the USSR was lower than the "enemy" at all times.

Reasons for lower life expectancy are simple - lack of modern medicines and treatments. While every effort was being made to create the next warheads, citizens died without having access to advanced diagnostics or care.

Myth 3: Free housing

A common misconception about the USSR is that everyone lived for free. In fact, there was no free housing but cooperatives, which cost an average sum, payable through reasonable installments for 25 years. Everyone in the USSR had a roof over their head, but the quality of housing was horrible and inferior in quality. After the collapse of the USSR, the owners of these apartments were faced with the need to privatize for big money, otherwise the housing became the property of the city. What, in general, makes housing better during Soviet times? Nothing.



Myth 4: In the Soviet Union, there was no unemployment or homeless

The main problem here was the equalization of labor in low wages, where many people lived paycheck to paycheck, creating a low standard of living for the majority. It's better to provide economic incentives for high quality work, rather than simply handing people wages. The latter creates lazy and entitled workers. Side note from me: I dont' understand employment during Soviet times? How were people hired? They picked their own jobs, or the choice was made by the government?

Myth 5: The most powerful army in the world!

Classic point of discussion for lovers of the USSR! Yes, the Union had a strong army, to the "defense industry" money was never spared. The Soviet forces were greatly feared abroad, but there are two important points. (1) A strong army has no effect on the lives of ordinary people, except in the negative direction (when all power goes to the creation of tanks, there remains no funds for infrastructure and other improvements); and (2) the Armies of Western countries were no less strong.

Myth 6: Products and clothes were better in the USSR


This is complete nonsense according to the author. In Soviet times, everything was worse with clothing and consumer choice. People wore shoes for ten years, and it was the same with all other clothes which were of poor quality. Remember how everyone was so desperate for Levis and other American jeans?

In his opinion, the absolute worst part of life in the USSR was the lack of choice in everything - education, work, food, clothing. Soviet citizens couldn't leave the country or really choose the accommodations which best fit their own personality, goals or comfort.  Individuality was suffocated. The government planned human life from birth to death. In general, it completely ruined the country and strangled motivation.

The author's final words - "God forbid that we all go back. Now we live a thousand times better." Do you agree?

P.S. - is the term "совок" offensive and derogatory, or it's okay to use?

Comments

[verniy-leninetz.livejournal.com]

Hello. Maybe you remember me, I always read your posts, but not always feel myself possible to mark my opinion correctly.

I was born during Gorbytime, so all of my suggestions can be easily torn to pieces by older mates. Maybe.
But surely I was surrounded by elders and I was graduated as modern history schoolteacher, so I hope I can make an honest contribution to this topic.

I'll try to make my suggestions on this "five myths" and after that I'll continue with my own explanation.

Myth 1: The Soviet education was the best in the world

Like all the matters it's complicated. Soviet schools were definitely not the best in the world. Not the worst either. The whole point of mass education was in... mass education, yes. There were specialised schools in most of the cities, which population was over 200'000. They provided the specialised education for kids with sharp abilities in math, biology or languages. If ypo lived in the small citiy or in the rural are, you must satisfy yourself with average schooling facilities. Equality was guaranteed, so you'll receive free books and free school chess or gym club, but rarely more. I don't think this is very bad in comparison with our times. State was very interested in mass education and mass indoctrination, bound together, so it was an honest deal, imho. My aunts were school teachers and during soviet times they spent a lot of time with poor or undeveloped kids - you simply cannot allow yourself to be a bad pupil, everyone must help you! Now no one is spending money on additional courses or forces the bullies and dummies to study harder - it's up to you, socialism has gone! :) Like most things in SU this was like parental control, and, surely, someone liked it, someone hated this "nurturance".

On the higher education tiers there was a lot of possibilities to escape this parental control. Soviet state was not almighty and was not going to be a sitter-hen. Most of social science was heavily influenced by stubborn marxism-leninism, but you could always choose something like philology or ancient history and escape the choke of ideology. Margareth Thatcher once said that you need to be a very wealthy person to allow yourself a course of history or philology. In the socialist state, where you're mostly free from day-to-day money grinding, you could allow such a "useless" profession. It was one of the strange fringes of equality - state was very interested in heavy and aerospace industries, but allowed thousands of students to spent their entire life dissecting ancient languages or discussing archeology with their respective colleagues.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

Hello! Thanks a lot for your comment and insight. Do you work as a history teacher now? If so, what age of students do you teach?

[verniy-leninetz.livejournal.com]

I used to teach students, which were 15-17 years old. But...

Originally I finished specialised math school, so my first try in tertiary study was in radiophysical college like most of my mates.
But in the middle of my terms I realised how I ran out of steam with all of this abstract math and physics. If I'd continued this path, I would bind myself with serious scholarly endeavor for my entire life.

I was already part-time junior quality assurance engineer, thanks to my friends and their job community, so I've left my radiophysics college as ungraduated student and began with quality assurance and quality control trainings.

Now I'm an advanced QA engineer and I'm working for IT industry now. This "pedagogical history" grade was my hobby grade unrelated to my main profession, I was always interested in modern history and psychologies of youth. But I had one year of probation training as one of the teachers in one of the town schools during my graduation. Many of my relatives were school teachers or school authorities, so there is kind of teacher blood in my veins :)

I hope I could try myself as school teacher one more time, when I'd became tired of business logic, fail-safe testing and countless testing checks of QA industry :)

Unfortunately, school teaching is very tricky profession in the modern Russia.
It's get slightly better with money and school environment nowadays, but overwhelming bureacracy, formal paperwork and constant experiments falling from the Ministry above... this makes modern teaching very obstruct. All of my friends working in the school or university education speaks about "more paperwork, less gentle education and human contact" rule.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

I think teachers never get the pay they deserve, even in America. Math and physics - I'm very bad in these areas! I don't have a technical or scientific mind. :)

[verniy-leninetz.livejournal.com]

I don't think the root cause is still the payments only.

Of course, you can never relax end juct enjoy your noble educational cause somewhere in the middle of nothere.
In rural areas or in the very small villages teachers are still ,essentially, very poor.
But they may be the most educated or the most respected people in the entire district - they are still the symbols of something bright or something promising. People usually respects education, especially in backwater districts.

In towns the situation is different. Teachers are often respected as another kind of servitude. You can be a private teacher, maybe even well-paid, but you are still in need to do an AWFUL lot of bureacracy and paperwork. And you job is just another kind of civil service - you're the talking machine.

[verniy-leninetz.livejournal.com]

Myth 2: Soviet medicine was better

Soviet medicine was worse than Western analogues during 1970-1990. Not much worse, but something like 0.7-0.8 of the Western technological capabilities.

Another question is - was it more accessible?
You see, much of the russian problems takes root in the infrastructure. Country is extremely huge. Maintaining adequate coverage in the every area was the main target of soviet medicine system.

I live in Nizhny Novgorod, former Gorky city. Now it's 3th or 5th most populated city in the Russia. In our town we have three or four federal medicine centers: emergency medicine, disasters medicine, burn injury medicine etc. During late Soviet times (1975 and later) there were built several helipads for emergency transportation needs. Now this helipads are neglected and unusable - it's much cheaper, but, of course, much time-consuming to use transportation by cars. In the Gorky district were many small towns with their own medicine helipads. It was usual to transport somebody injured for 100-150 km, gasoline was cheap and state subsidied this efforts.

Now another modern plague is "restructurisation" and "centralisation". It's another name for cost reduction. Imagine the entire district. Every town and big village has it's own local hospital. Now the authorities are closing every 3-4 local hospitals and they opens ONE centralised hospital center instead. Of course, it's more supported and effective, but... more distant. You need to spent entire day just travelling to reception. And another day to the doctor. And another day to receive the analysis resullt or medical reports. And there is queues. Entire human wave from this towns are waiting for their turn. Your guaranteed secondary health care time is significantly decreased: queues can't wait, you must move quickly, doctors are overbusy, because personnel is cut off too.

And this kind of situation is everywhere - post offices became liquidated or agglomerated, local culture centers, schools and entire social infrastructure are merging in the name of economy. Small towns without their own cultire centers, schools or hospitals begans to wither and die.

Personally I'm in on the bright side - I live in the giant city. My own opportunities rose significantly, amount of modern medical aid too, but this is only for the big cities. I can understand someone who was frustrated by soviet healthcare system - yes, it was not so modern, but it was virtually everywhere, and almost everyone could receive equal help. I heard stories about my relatives who had cancer or kidney disfunction - and they could receive the modern help for granted (including transportation and rehabilitation in Moscow or republican capitals). Maybe you could not just stump up and receive immediate first-class help, but the entire system was created for mass treatment, not the single causes.

I still cannot decide what's better - not so technically advanced, but still effective medical help round the every corner or the entire might of modern medicine, but marred with the your own money, transport or infrastructure problems.

[peacetraveler22.livejournal.com]

"entire day just travelling to reception..." and what if there's a medical emergency such as a heart attack or stroke? Such people in these remote areas simply die, with no chance of survival? I think a lot of my Russian readers, like you, are living in Moscow or larger cities where infrastructure is decent, yet they never travel outside of these areas to villages or other regions to see how the majority of the country lives. This is one of the things I value most about traveling with my Russian friend - I get to see many places in Russia that even natives have never stepped foot in. :)

[verniy-leninetz.livejournal.com]

As you may know, ambulance network and urgent medicine is still maintained reasonably fair, so this poor man with heart attack or his family could phone this central medical center and request his immediate transportation.

Unfortunately, due to increased length of routes due to centralisation this journey still may take 3-4 hours.

I think, emergency causes like stroke or snake bite will be treated well, but many chronical diseases lack supervision and control due to this logistic problems.

Imagine: every morning you feel yourself not especially well, your liver hurts a bit. But local central hospital is located in approximately 70-80 kms and you must use public transport. Probably you'll try to just overcome your feelings. Many elders simply neglect their diseases due to their unwilling to travel.

P.S. Yes, I'd like country tourism too. It's wonderful, really.