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peacetraveler22) wrote2015-09-19 10:34 pm
Do you now live a thousand times better than during Soviet times?
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?
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1. Education was free, but it was not as good as sovok-worshippers used to say. It depended on how lucky you were with your teachers. And with school at all. Many of my schoolmates never bothered to learn. They knew they will be tansferred to the next class and the next and graduated and then stuffed in professional school somehow, and then get "distributed" and then work till the pension. So why woud they want to overstrain themselves with studying? They preferred to bully those unlucky ones who studied properly.
And mind you that people with higher education were usually paid less than workers. The salary of a Soviet engineer was a running gag at a time. "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" and so on.
2. I was lucky to be pretty healthy kid and went to hospital only once. My verdict was: NEVER AGAIN! Nurses and doctors just hated us. They bullied cryinh kids into silence.
An example from my mother: she had the thyroid resection which left her with an ugly scar across the neck. And surgeons never told her that from now on she has to take tyroid hormones pills. They thought it's the therapist's job, and the therapist thought it is done by surgeons, so she left hospital knowing nothing about her hypothyreosis and her health state had become worsening day by day until she was told by my aunt (not by the doctor!) to go get a receipt and take hormone pills.
But that medicine servise was fot free, ha-ha-ha.
3. My father got his apartment for free from the factory he worked in. That was a 1-room (not 1-bedroom, 1 room at all!) apartment of 18 m2, and four of us lived there: dad, mom, me and sis. We shared one bed with my sis until I was 15. And my dad was underpaid all the time he worked in that factory. Can you imagine an IT-man who earns 366 $ a month? And he was never considered an OWNER of that apartment. To get himself a proper living, he had to leave his position in a construction bureau and starte to work at a building site as a common worker fir 3 years. And he was lucky to have such a possibility.
4. As it was said, it was ILLEGAL not to have work. If you had no work you were judged for "parasitism" and jailed.
5. God spared me, I was born a woman...
But, mind you, there was a time I DREAMT to enlist despite I was a girl. There were so many movies about how good our army is. But when my male relatives had known of it, they started to tell me about terrible reality.
6. FUCK WHAT? Clothes of Soviet productuon were mostly ugly and uncomfortable to wear. You should see my first bra... Sometimes I wish I did a picture of it to show to all the female USSR-fans^ THAT's what you'd had to wear, were you born in SU, stupid hens!
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http://22-91.ru/statya/zarplaty-v-sssr-srednjaja-zarplata-sovetskogo-cheloveka-165-rublejj-75-kopeek-v-mesjac/08.08.2011
My aunt was a nurse. She could make a living only taking extra shifts and patronage patients. Surgeons and dentists were paid better because they took bribes. When not bribed, they did their cut-and-stitch as they did it to my mothers.
And most drugs were out of date and of terrible quality.
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Some drugs were more or less outdated , the quality was slightly worse than in the rest of developed world. But overall medical service was BETTER than in the West.
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In Ukraine and many other peripheral areas people were much poorer. Actual pay was different everywhere. If you don't know even this thing, stop pulling this crap, you'll fool no one.
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That was funny to read...
You obviously did not get sick much in those days...
It started right at birth: staph infection was rampant at birthing hospitals; there was no anesthesia; Caesarian sections were extremely rare and may babies died or had severe trauma due to inability of women to give birth quickly.
Wait times for most basic visits at local clinics were very long: people could wait several hours in line to see a doctor. There was not enough modern advanced cancer fighting medicines, modern prosthetics, physical rehabilitation after major surgeries was poor in most cases. Dental care was horrible. I was surprised how well educated average American doctors and especially nurses were compared to Soviet ones. I had an abdominal surgery when I was 10, at a leading Moscow hospital for children - and I had to spend three weeks there because they did not sew me up cleanly, I had surgical wound infection and ugly wide scars for the rest of my life (which were treated at the hospital with full bathing in tap water bath, with industrial disinfectant in it). There was no nurse around when I woke up after general anesthesia in the middle of the night (it was done with ether) and I was in so much pain that it was impossible to get up and go to bathroom (and where would I find a bathroom - I was never told in advance?!) Other kids who slept all the way 'till the next morning, had to be woken up by nurses slapping them on the face rather hard (they could slip into coma otherwise). We had good care afterwards - caring doctors, games to play, snacks, TV - but it was rare, I think, and did not make up for how poorly the surgeries were prepared. Psychiatric care hospitals were horrible too but I can't compare them to American ones of that time since I don't know what they looked like.
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So, during my childhood and teen age there were only granny panties for me. OK, they were at least of natural cotton.
But it was not a big deal. Imagine much worse thing: no tampons and no pantyshields at all, no breast napkins, no diapers. That was the hell on Earth!
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2. I'm wasn't lucky as you so I remember my 2 or 3 times in the hospitals in USSR. First one when I was just 5 years old and stayed without my mom 2 weeks in a hospital after appendectomy. I still remember how the nurce yeld to us, and how I cried when I looked in the window and wait my mom who brought me the homemade food because it was impossible to eat hospital's one.... and it's not only one story. It's too sad but my family had a lot of "bad" stories about soviet medical care.
3. You dad was a rich man. :))) My parents and grandparents were engineers. Our apartment was received by my grandfather from the Malyshev's factory. It was in 60th before I was born. It was 3 rooms for 9 people: my grandparents, my aunty and her family(2 adults and 2 kids), my parents with my brother.
Actually, I remember that my mother's salary was 210 rubles.
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