Since the beginning of the 90s, the Soviet past has been subjected to harsh criticism, or rather, criticism, from all sides. He was branded with shame by economists, politicians, historians, scientists, public and religious figures. Not all, of course, but most means mass media the word was given precisely to those who in every possible way denounced the Soviet system. This campaign of persecution of everything Soviet continues to this day, although now it has calmed down a bit, has acquired more streamlined forms, nevertheless, for any attentive TV viewer it is obvious that spitting, as it were, in between times in Soviet history is for the majority of those who are present on the TV screen, a sign of good taste.
The anti-Soviet campaign was and is of great importance in shaping the consciousness of the younger generation. Obviously people are more middle age Those who have stable views on life, their own value system, are less exposed to propaganda. Nevertheless, the breaking of the stereotypes of consciousness, the restructuring of the entire worldview has overwhelmed this part of society, what can we say about the youth, whose consciousness was formed just during the years of the fierce anti-Soviet information campaign. The main anti-Soviet postulates deeply entered her consciousness. The new generation began to be brought up on other values, ideals, images than the previous one. As a result, the traditional conflict between fathers and children in Russian society has crossed all normal boundaries. There was a huge gap in understanding between generations.
It still remains a mystery to me whether those who spread anti-Soviet sentiment understood and understand what kind of wedge they are driving into the foundation of our society with their actions? From the first years of my life, I fell under the influence of the anti-Soviet movement. Being born in the USSR, I did not understand that this was my Motherland. The Soviet Union was perceived by me as something bad, outdated, long dead. Everything that reminded me of his recent existence caused me negative emotions. I remember very well how I disliked, almost hated, the image of Lenin. Moreover, already at the age of seven I told my “stragglers” friends that V.I. Lenin is not “good grandfather Lenin”, but an evil, bad person, because of whom we still live poorly. I remember how contempt I felt for Soviet money, which had already gone out of circulation at that moment. The coat of arms on Soviet kopecks was strongly associated with some kind of dreary old age, decrepitude.
The image of Stalin and his era was strongly demonized in my mind. I imagined the 1930s as some kind of solid, impenetrable darkness, in which people lived very badly and very scared. This was facilitated by the reading of Solzhenitsyn's books by my older relatives and their statements about what they read. Political anecdotes about the Soviet past, which were published in thick volumes in the first half of the 1990s, had a strong influence on me. The filth and poverty of "communal apartments", a total shortage, idiot leaders, each with his own bells and whistles (Khrushchev with corn, Brezhnev with awards), dullness and rudeness everywhere, the omnipotence of the KGB and the corruption of the bureaucracy - these are the ideas about the Soviet Union that were invested in my head through the efforts of joke publishers, TV presenters, directors and other figures in education, science, and culture.
I was completely incomprehensible at that time by people, mostly of advanced age, who remained true to communist ideals, who wanted the return of everything Soviet into our lives. Television and newspapers then "helped" to understand their motives: almost all communists are "old senile", scoops who do not understand obvious things. Even greater rejection was caused by those who love Stalin and, at an opportunity, exclaim: “Under Stalin, this would not have happened! Stalin would put things in order!
These views remained with me until the early 2000s. The rethinking of everything connected with the USSR did not come immediately, gradually, and I am immensely grateful to those of my acquaintances and those books that allowed me to get to know the Soviet past from a completely different perspective. Today I feel sorry for those young people who still don’t know, don’t understand what the Soviet Union really was, who are still trusting about Solzhenitsyn’s “43 million repressed” and bitter memories of the shortage. But I try to help such peers of mine and I consider this work useful, worthy of the efforts of our entire society.
Today, when the attacks of anti-Soviet ideologists have subsided, it is time to more soberly assess our recent past. Many people who already lived under Brezhnev, who knew only from the stories of their elders the horrors of war and famine, underestimated, sometimes simply did not see the well-being in which they lived. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union by the 70s. an amazing society, unique in the whole of human history, was built. This is a society in which hunger, poverty, unemployment, the homeless, the homeless were practically absent. Crime was reduced to a minimum (we can appreciate this achievement today more than ever), sexual promiscuity, prostitution.
In Soviet society, caring for children was not an empty phrase: on the table, each child had a normal diet, rich in proteins and vitamins. Let those who say that today life in Russia is better than in the USSR tell this tale to hundreds of thousands of homeless children and hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) of those children who do not eat enough!
Some modern social scientists come to the conclusion that part of the Soviet citizens perceived the main material benefits as natural. These included: housing, heating, hot water in tap, kindergartens and much more. A living example of such an attitude to reality is shown in E. Ryazanov's comedy "The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath".
Everyone probably remembers the episode when the heroes of Yevgeny Myagkov and Barbara Brylsky complain about their low salary for their public useful work. They are talking about this at a time when they recently received an apartment in a new building! They did not receive a loan, as in the West, and no one will expel them from this apartment for non-payment utilities, how in modern Russia. The right to housing in the Soviet Union was not an empty phrase, but was constantly implemented. Today in Russia the right to housing is basically the right to buy a home for its full price, or even with interest on a loan. Let those who praise the modern Russian system in comparison with the Soviet one tell our homeless people about this, who no one cares about anymore - they are not even counted (although in 2002 they tried to include them in the census - the state has money for this)!
When today anti-Soviet activists call for an end to the remnants of the Soviet past, which allegedly prevent Russia from developing normally, it is tempting to ask them what they consider to be remnants. Do they refer to the Soviet remnants of factories and plants built in Soviet time, which still partly work and provide us necessary things, do gigantic hydroelectric power plants, thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, which give light and heat to our homes, be classified as Soviet remnants? Is it necessary to put an end to such a "damned" Soviet relic as a strategic weapon that provides Russia with security and sovereignty in such a troubled world? Do critics like such a Soviet relic as the comprehensive school they send their children to, the system higher education, where, according to the "creepy" Soviet tradition, can you still enroll for free? What a sin to hide: around us are only Soviet remnants. We still live on them, today we are actively eating them up, wearing them out. Will we build something to replace these "Soviet vestiges"?
Much of the Soviet heritage has already been lost, something is irretrievable. But thanks to these losses, people are now more quickly beginning to understand what they have lost in the face of the USSR. Much earlier than Russians, residents of some former Soviet republics understood this, especially those where blood flowed as a result of interethnic conflicts at one time. Let anti-Soviet-minded citizens tell poor illegal immigrants - Tajiks or Uzbeks, who go to work in Russia at their own peril and risk, that the USSR was a terrible "evil empire", that Russia oppressed and exploited the national outskirts! But now she (or rather, part of her) really exploits them.
No, I am by no means trying to idealize or embellish Soviet reality. It was in the USSR both good and bad. But today, for some reason, they prefer to inflate everything bad, without saying a word about the good. The bad is inflated, often far-fetched problems are popularized. Let us turn, for example, to the problem of scarcity, about which so much has been said and written. Amazing things are happening in the minds of society: in the Soviet Union, for example, milk production was twice as high as today in Russia, but for some reason no one talks about the current shortage. In the USSR, there was enough food for everyone, even if some foodstuffs were not enough: everyone still had the most necessary on the table. Today, not only the consumption of Russians as a whole has fallen, but the amount of protein, vitamins, and other nutrients in the daily average diet has sharply decreased. Yes, today there is no shortage on the shelves: often because the population simply does not have money, and the goods are not bought, but flaunted in the window. On the other hand, today a lack of weight and a lack of health among a part of the population, especially the young, is absolutely real. Our military registration and enlistment offices have already faced this problem: there is no one to call.
Still, there were real problems in the USSR - it's hard to argue with that. Much has already been said about them, much has been written. Of course, if these problems did not exist, the USSR would have survived to this day. There was both bureaucracy and the careerism of some communists (later they turned out to be “democrats”), there was a lack of freedom, there was also a certain poverty (still after such a war!), There was also the development of a petty-bourgeois worldview, recorded by talented writers: B. Vasiliev, Yu. Trifonov, A. Likhanov. There were problems, but there was also an opportunity to solve them peacefully, gradually, without breaking the fundamental foundations of society. Today, some scientists are beginning to understand what exactly caused the problems in Soviet society. Then, truly, "we did not know the society in which we live."
Soviet society was born in the hardest time for our country. The Russian Empire, struck by a deep systemic crisis, weakened by the war, fell apart in 1917 before our eyes. The coming to power of the Bolsheviks, who replaced the incapacitated Provisional Government, aggravated the internal conflict in Russian society. The situation was exacerbated by foreign intervention. The civil war clearly showed what at that moment the majority of the country's population, mainly the peasantry, wanted. The peasants did not want the bourgeois order on their land, they did not want to leave the community and become private owners, they did not want the domination of foreigners, even if economic, on their land. Our peasant country, the keeper of the ancient Christian Orthodox tradition, eternal commandments, has chosen a special path for herself. We have turned off the beaten path of capitalist modernization and begun to pave the way for such modernization, which would preserve the basic foundations of traditional society. Russia, deliberately renouncing the omnipotence of the market, free competition, chose the path of fraternal relations between people and between entire nations.
As a result, a society of a special type arose, showing the peoples of the world a real alternative to capitalist development. Today, the phenomenon of Soviet society is underestimated and poorly studied, and we are increasingly called upon to build a civil society in Russia along the Western lines. These claims are highly questionable. Firstly, because they sound from those who until recently called to build communism. The ideal of communism has gone, but the "builders" have remained and are now calling us to build democracy, a state of law and the notorious civil society. Secondly, I strongly doubt whether such a society can be purposefully built at all: in the West, the process proceeded spontaneously, by itself, was due to objective reasons and lasted for several centuries. Western civil society would not have appeared without the Reformation, without revolutions like the Great French, without the extreme individualization of consciousness - is it really that our "builders" are calling us to this? And thirdly, none of the callers say what kind of society we lived in before - after all, there was some kind of society.
Now we can answer this question: we lived and partly continue to live in a modernized (modernized) traditional society. The basis of civil society is the principle of the market: everyone trades with everyone, everyone tries to bargain for his own material benefit. Merchants sell goods, workers sell their labor, some sell their bodies, politicians sell programs and promises, make deals with business and the electorate. At the heart of our Soviet society was the principle of the family: all brothers to each other, take care of each other, help in trouble. The state itself was the spokesman for this idea of the family. It took care of children, the elderly and the disabled, it distributed material goods "by eaters" - as in a peasant community. the Soviet Union became common home for the fraternal peoples - no one found out then whose land was here - Armenian or Azerbaijani, Russian or Tatar, Chechen or Ingush - the land was common to everyone, everyone had the right to live on it.
Soviet society immediately after its emergence began to interfere with many external forces. Therefore, in order to preserve it, our people had to endure the most difficult trials on their shoulders. First - a fratricidal Civil War, then - forced industrialization as preparation for a new war. The greatest feat our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers did when they won the Great Patriotic War. In fact, they repelled the onslaught of all of Europe, all of its military and economic power. They delivered the world from the fascist threat and rescued many peoples from fascist captivity. With their blood they proved to the whole world the viability and steadfastness of the Soviet system. Just as the united Russian people returned from the Kulikovo field instead of Muscovites, Ryazans, Tverites with victory, the great Patriotic War came out with victory Soviet people containing over a hundred different peoples and nationalities.
The brotherhood of peoples had common goals and values. Together we built a new society, where there will be a place for everyone's happiness. I have already spoken above about the achievements of Soviet society. You need to understand how big they are, how great, for example, was the deliverance of people from the threat of hunger, from the fear of being left without a home, without work, without the meaning of life. The Soviet Union has often been compared and is still being compared with the West, which is allegedly prosperous, in which everything is there and everyone lives happily. How justified is this comparison? No matter how much! Firstly, because the starting possibilities of Western and Russian civilizations are immeasurably different: the climate is different, the productivity is different, the threat from external enemies, for example, steppe nomads, was different. With all these differences not in our favor, we were able to build a great power, which repelled the onslaught from the West several times. Secondly, because it is necessary to compare not the West with the Soviet Union, but the West and the countries of the “third world” with the Soviet Union, because it is no secret to anyone where Western civilization has drawn and is drawing a large share of its wealth.
Many former colonies of Europeans today are still subject to exploitation - only now more hidden: for example, the salary of a European worker can be several times, or even tens of times, higher than the salary of the same worker somewhere in Brazil, despite the fact that they work in factories one company. The “Third World” is, as it were, the reverse side of the West. As a result of such a more correct comparison, we will see that the average Soviet standard of living was immeasurably higher than what it was and is abroad, in the capitalist world. But even if we only compare the developed countries with the USSR, anyway, the comparison will be in favor of the Soviet system: in the West there are still homeless, street children, and starving people, and such “benefits” of civilization as drug addiction, the sex industry flourish there.
Everything that I said above was realized by me quite recently. Now I am ashamed of my former self, of my former views, that I did not understand obvious things. But now there is great pride in my soul: I was born in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in a great country. This is my homeland. I do not have and will not have another Motherland - the so-called Russian Federation, a country with a terrible present and a vague future, will not replace it. A country going nowhere. The country that is tearing its ties with the parent is the USSR. A country spitting on its own past, having betrayed its former sacred ideals. A country that screams that it is the "new Russia", but at the same time living off everything that was created in the Soviet era, and has not yet created anything comparable in size to what was created in our great past.
Today we can talk as much as we want about the great Russian culture, admire Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Pushkin or Lomonosov, Chaliapin or Repin - all this will be cynicism to a high degree. We admire them, but we betray them at every turn. The eerie images of Dostoevsky's Petersburg have already become a common reality for us. In the worst case, these images are embodied in our reality. Sonechka Marmeladova is now not bashfully, but almost defiantly engaged in her “business”, Rodion Raskolnikov now kills the old woman not for some intricate reasons, but simply because of money, the businessman Luzhin sells everything and everything, generally disregarding conscience and law, Svidrigailov sins even more, and even talks about it with gusto in popular talk shows. Thirty-year-old women returned to our reality with drunken faces, hoarse voices, a confused life, beauty, health, dirty children in rags returned. Our ancestors wanted to save us from all this when they created the Soviet Union. At one time we joyfully returned to all this, having collapsed the USSR.
Today the USSR for me is not just a Motherland. It's a lost civilization, with which you need to urgently restore contact, otherwise - a disaster. The Soviet Union is an important link in the chain of reincarnations of our great Russian culture. Only by rethinking the Soviet experience, we can move on, rediscover the path we have walked for centuries. Restore the lost, restore the connection between generations, tell the youth the truth about our past- this is what we need to do today together, jointly, so that Russia becomes Great again and leads the peoples to a prosperous, happy future for every person!
After the overthrow of centuries of rule royal family Romanovs and the end of the civil war in 1921, on the spot Russian Empire A new state was formed - the Soviet Union. The world's first communist state based on the ideas of Marxism. The Soviet Union was one of the largest and most powerful states in the world, occupying one-sixth of the land until its collapse in 1991.
Birth of the USSR
The Soviet Union emerged as a result of the 1917 revolution. Radical left revolutionaries led by V.I. Lenin overthrew the Russian Tsar Nicholas II. This ended the history of the Romanov dynasty. The Bolsheviks created a new socialist state on the territory of the former Russian Empire.
A long and bloody Civil War. The Red Army, with the support of the Bolshevik government, defeated the White Army, which is a large group of free armed forces consisting of supporters of the tsar, monarchists, capitalists and supporters of other forms. During the period called the Red Terror, the Bolsheviks, using the Cheka as a tool, carried out a number of mass executions supporters tsarist regime and representatives of the upper classes of Russia.
A treaty signed between Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1922 formed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). communist party led by Lenin, took full control over the government of the USSR, attracting more and more new republics to it. During the heyday of the USSR, it included 16 republics.
The reign of Joseph Stalin
Stalin came to power after Lenin's death in 1924. After his reign, he was judged as a tough dictator responsible for the deaths of millions of people. However, from Stalin's rise to his death in 1953, the Soviet Union evolved from an agrarian country to an industrial and military superpower.
Stalin introduced a planned economy and implemented a series of five-year plans designed to stimulate the economic and industrial growth of the Soviet Union. The first five-year plan focused on collectivization Agriculture and rapid industrialization. The subsequent five-year dust plans are devoted to the production of weapons and the build-up of military capabilities.
In the period from 1928 to 1940, Stalin carried out the collectivization of agriculture. Peasants had to join collective farms, livestock and land were confiscated from private owners in favor of collective farms. Hundreds of thousands of well-to-do, high-income peasants were labeled kulaks, stripped of everything, and executed. Their property was confiscated. The communists believed that the amalgamation of individual private farms into large state collective farms would increase agricultural productivity, but the opposite happened.
Big purge
Many peasants resisted collectivization and did not want to join collective farms, as a result, agricultural productivity fell. This led to devastating food shortages. A great famine began, which claimed the lives of millions of people in 1932-1933. The USSR kept the results of the 1937 census secret in order to hide the scale of the tragedy.
Stalin did not allow any opposition to his leadership, exercising tight control over officials and the public through the NKVD. At the height of the great purge, the Soviet Union had 600,000 citizens. Millions of others were deported or imprisoned in Gulag labor camps.
cold war
After the victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, the alliance between the USSR, the US and Britain began to crumble. By 1948, the USSR put its people in charge of the countries it liberated from Nazi control during the war.
The Americans and the British were afraid of spreading to Western Europe and further around the world. In 1949, the US, Canada and European allies formed NATO, an alliance between the countries of the Western bloc.
It was created to fight the USSR and its allies.
In response to the creation of NATO, the Soviet Union united the countries in the Eastern Bloc in 1955 to compete with the Alliance.
The document approving the creation of the Eastern Bloc is called the Warsaw Pact, and the creation of this agreement gave rise to.
During the Cold War, the struggle was fought on the economic, political and propaganda fronts, and it continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Khrushchev's rule and de-Stalinization
After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev came to power. He became secretary of the Communist Party in 1953, and prime minister in 1958. Khrushchev's power fell on the most tense years cold war. He triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 by planting nuclear missiles in Cuba just 150 kilometers from Florida.
However, in his own country, Khrushchev held a number of political reforms that reduced repression. During this period, also known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for his arrests and deportations and took steps to improve the standard of living in the country. He freed many political prisoners, loosened censorship, and shut down the Gulag.
The deterioration of relations with China and the shortage of food in the USSR undermined Khrushchev's authority in the eyes of the party leadership and members of the Communist Party removed him from his post in 1964.
Technical achievements of the USSR
The USSR initiated a space exploration program in the 1930s as part of Stalin's agenda to create an advanced industry and economy. Early space projects were controlled by the military and kept secret. However, by the 1950s space will become another arena for competition between the world's superpowers.
On October 4, 1957, the USSR demonstrated to the whole world the launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in history, into low Earth orbit. The successful launch of the satellite made the Americans doubt their superiority over the USSR in the Cold War.
The tension in this "space race" intensified when, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to walk in outer space.
In response to Gagarin's feat, he made the bold claim that the US would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. On July 16, 1969, US citizen Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.
Mikhail Gorbachev's reign
Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. He inherited a stagnant economy and a ruined political system. He outlined two vectors of development, which, he hoped, would reform the political system of the USSR and help it become a more prosperous state. These vectors were glasnost and perestroika.
Glasnost called for political openness. It also concerned personal restrictions on the freedom of citizens. Glasnost eliminated the residual traces Stalinist repressions such as censorship in literature and the media. Newspapers could now criticize the government, and parties other than the communist could participate in elections.
Perestroika is Gorbachev's plan to restructure the economy. During the period of perestroika, the Soviet Union began to move towards a hybrid between communist and capitalist systems, similar to modern China. The Communist Party's Politburo still controlled the economy, yet the government allowed the market to dictate production and development decisions.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR Communist Party elite quickly gained wealth and power, while millions of ordinary Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union's desire for industrialization at any cost resulted in a shortage of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens were often unable to afford such basic items as clothes and shoes.
The gap between the exceptional wealth of the Politburo and the extreme poverty of Soviet citizens caused negative moods among young people who refused to accept the idea of communism.
The USSR also faced negative influence from abroad. The US under President Reagan isolated the Soviet economy from the rest of the world. This helped drive oil prices to their lowest levels in decades. As a result, oil and gas revenues in the Soviet Union plummeted and the USSR began to lose ground.
Meanwhile, Gorbachev's reforms were also bearing fruit and hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union. The weakening of control over the people of the USSR intensified the movement towards independence in the Soviet territories of Eastern Europe. The political revolution in Poland in 1989 sparked a number of other similar protests and led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. By the end of 1989, the USSR collapsed.
An unsuccessful coup in the ranks of the party in August 1991 put an end to the fate of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev lost power, and democratic forces led by Boris Yeltsin moved forward in his place. On December 25, Gorbachev resigned and the Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991.
Probably, they will argue for more than one decade, and maybe more than one century. If in the first years after the collapse of everything Soviet, many tried to get rid of everything quickly, then in recent times almost the opposite trend is observed. Those who cared about the Soviet Union are trying to preserve what is left of it. For example, courtyard dominoes or dovecotes. Rodion Marinichev, correspondent of the MIR 24 TV channel, recalled how they lived in a country that no longer exists.
Collectors today are ready to give more than one thousand rubles for a penny. Although a quarter of a century ago it was an ordinary means of payment. The Soviet ruble is one of the main monuments to a country that no longer exists. Many still remember the prices by heart, because they have not changed for decades. “The fare was 20 kopecks, Prima cigarettes were 14 kopecks. A fifty-kopeck piece was worth lunch, and you still had 20-30 kopecks left for the cinema, ”recalls Vladimir Kazakov, an expert on numismatics of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
The average salary in the USSR during the times of "developed socialism" is 130 rubles. Those who tried to save kept money in egg-pods, books, underwear, and only then, closer to the 1970s, people began to use passbooks more and more often.
In the film "Love and Pigeons" Soviet life and way of life is shown so truthfully that people often say about this picture: that's how it was in the USSR. The main character Vasily Kuzyakin, by the way, written off from real person, - the most popular hobby: pigeons.
The country began to get involved in breeding pigeons shortly after the Great Patriotic War. The dove is known to be a symbol of peace. The hobby turned out to be so serious that dovecotes began to appear in almost every yard. Small dovecotes were even built according to standard projects. The most avid lovers of pigeons built real mansions for them.
In the sleeping Moscow district of Nagatino, Uncle Kolya's exemplary dovecote today is almost exotic. He started the construction back in the 1970s, when he returned from the army. He says that in his youth it was not a pity to save money for these birds. You don't have lunch a couple of times - and you buy a dove. And then you will also compete with the neighboring yard: whose pigeons are more dexterous. “Earlier, if you saw that the parties were flying, then that’s it, you need to raise your own, otherwise someone else is flying! And all Nagatino in pigeons, ”recalls Nikolai.
There were enough yard hobbies in the USSR. There were also chess, backgammon and dominoes. Today's knuckle lovers treat their hobby as a professional sport. Even a special table, for such championships are held. In the USSR, Alexander recalls, everything was much simpler. The playing field could be someone's briefcase, a box, or just a piece of plywood. “Played in the parks on benches,” says the executive director Russian Federation domino Alexander Terentiev.
Patriarch's Ponds were once a favorite place for domino players, as, indeed, most city parks. Domino entered life so firmly that they sat down for it at any free moment. For example, at lunchtime. “During working hours, we met, people from other workshops came,” says the 2015 Russian domino champion Alexander Vinogradov.
I had to spend a lot of time in someone's company and involuntarily. Indeed, in the middle of the last century, more than half of the country's population lived in communal apartments. Establishing a common life was sometimes difficult. Writer Vladimir Berezin recalls: as a child, he almost never washed in the apartment.
"In a small two-room apartment two families lived. In the bathroom, the housekeeper of the second family was sleeping on boards. I found a bathhouse culture that united people of completely different social origins,” says Berezin.
For most Soviet citizens - almost a second home. At least until the end of the 1960s - the era of Khrushchev and, albeit small, but separate apartments with all amenities. Many went to the baths with their own bowls and soap. Under steam in the same company, a worker and a doctor of science often met.
Bath attendant with 30 years of experience Takhir Yanov remembers well the long queues at the famous Sanduny. Everything has been preserved there since that time. Lovers of the first couple still come at dawn, just like in the Soviet era.
Queues are a special Soviet phenomenon. They originated in the 1920s, then became longer, then shorter, then longer again.
According to the data of the USSR State Statistics Committee for 1985, men spent about 16 minutes on working days on the purchase of goods or receiving services, women - 46. On weekends, even more: men - almost an hour (58 minutes), women - one and a half (85 minutes). In the queues, they got acquainted, solved cases, and sometimes even fell in love and dispersed.
“There was a couple in front of me: a guy and a girl. They declared their love so much that I was even tired of listening. Finally it was their turn. They gave something just a kilogram or a piece. The girl took over, and the young man took over. And she says: "Bunny, give me money." He once-times in his pockets, and it turned out that he forgot the money in the hostel! And this Bunny immediately turned into “a sort of bastard,” recalls singer Lyubov Uspenskaya.
Singer Lyubov Uspenskaya remembers both childhood hungry years and the Soviet word "blat". She managed to plunge into abundance only in the 1970s, when she left for the West. But, in the end, I realized: I did not experience such joy anywhere else as in the Soviet Union.
"On the New Year you get a Christmas tree, some kind, the simplest and ugliest, and what a joy it was to decorate it. And now we do it like an automatic machine, ”says the singer.
A swift farewell to the Soviet life began in the 1990s, but many have not broken with it until now. Today it is something like an exotic that not everyone wants to lose.
They tell me how we, it turns out, shitty lived in the Soviet Union. How bad it was. Like there was nothing in the stores. As the regime did not allow a normal life. What villains were the leaders. Etc.
All this sounds from TV screens and on the air of the radio, creeps into the brain from newspaper pages and magazine pages, generally hovering in the air. But something inside me opposes this mythology, simple worldly logic leads to completely different conclusions.
Let's try to break it all down.
I was born in the 60s. I even managed to live a whole year under Khrushchev. I didn’t feel the famous “Khrushchev thaw”, and my parents talked about cornmeal, hominy, "Kuz'kina's mother" for America and other delights of the "stagnant" time. I can't say anything about it. I did not realize then because.
Kindergarten
When the time came, they sent me to kindergarten. Such a good factory kindergarten. And they fed deliciously - fresh fruits and vegetables in the diet, and they took them to the sea in the summer, and there were plenty of toys. Most importantly, everything is FREE for parents.
But that part of childhood that has lasted so long is ending too.
School
The school was spacious and bright. Later, a new building was added to the post-war building, as well as a gym and an assembly hall. All conditions in general. I remember free milk for elementary school students at the first break and breakfasts for 15 kopecks at the second break. Children from large, single-parent families and whose parents had low wages ate for FREE. Either at the expense of different trade unions, or in some other way. Breakfast and lunch were provided.
At school there was just a bunch of all sorts of circles, where those who wished were literally driven. As you already understood, naturally all this is FREE.
I remember that the parent committee sometimes collected money from parents - for new curtains in the classroom. And all repairs were carried out at the expense of the STATE.
Summer rest
In the senior classes in the summer we were taken to a collective farm, to a labor and recreation camp (LTO). Now they can say: exploitation of child labor. And we really liked it. They harvested when cherries, when beets or tomatoes. Or weeded something. Lunch at the field camp - romance! And after dinner - sport games, trips to the country club, guitar and other pleasures. For us and our parents, everything was FREE, and the collective farm even paid some extra pennies to the school. We were allowed to take from the field "for personal use" up to half a bucket of cherries every day or a bucket of tomatoes. Also kind of like an impromptu salary.
A couple of times I was lucky enough to visit a pioneer camp. The camp was also a factory camp, and the factory was of all-Union significance. Therefore, the children in it were from all over the Soviet Union. So many new friends! With whom we corresponded over the years.
The best schoolchildren were awarded vouchers to Artek (Gurzuf) or to the Young Guard (Odessa).
Sports and leisure
For this, there were departmental and state sports schools, houses of culture and, of course, the Palace of Pioneers. Any sports sections, clubs, cultural and musical all sorts. And don't say it's all FREE. Periodically, coaches and leaders of circles came to the school for "recruitment" - enticing them into these sections.
I also went in for sports. different types until you choose what you like. In all sports sections, sports uniforms were issued for classes. No one demanded to come to circles with their chess, brushes with paints and other equipment necessary for classes.
For athletes in the summer there was a sports camp. It looks like a pioneer, only up to 3 workouts a day, on the beach. We went to competitions monthly, sometimes even 2-3 times a month. Travel, accommodation, meals - AT THE STATE'S EXPENSE.
My passion for music led me to create a vocal and instrumental ensemble (VIA) at school. There were some musical instruments at the school, and the SCHOOL BOUGHT what we lacked. They rehearsed, as it should be, "in a closet behind the assembly hall." Sometimes they competed. True, I had to sing at competitions not what I liked, but patriotic or Komsomol songs.
university
I will not repeat myself, but education in any universities was free. After high school, all graduates were waiting for work. Moreover, it was necessary to work for 3 years. Excellent students with red diplomas received the so-called "free diploma", that is, the right to choose a place of work. In universities, as well as at school, sports and cultural leisure were also fully provided. Plus a hostel for non-residents.
Army
Since I entered a military school, I know firsthand about the army. The army was what we needed. It had both power and strength, and the most modern weapons. And the BATTLE READINESS, now it’s even hard to believe, is such that after a nightly wake-up call, the entire unit would go to a spare area or an exercise area without any problems, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. It was only later, when serving in the Ukrainian army, that the exercises began to be carried out “on the maps” - they (the exercises) are called command and staff. Or even on computers. The imagination draws a general with a joystick in his hands. And what to do when money for a full-fledged combat training, with shooting, flights, military campaigns, etc., they don’t give. The salary (in the army they call it a cash allowance) was very decent, and the service itself was very prestigious. The officer was treated with great respect in society.
Housing
This question has always been before citizens, since the population tends to grow, create new families - cells of society that need new housing. With this in the USSR it was easy. You work or serve, you stand on the apartment register (in the queue for housing). And sooner or later you get an apartment, square meters depending on the number of family members. It was possible to stand in line for three years and ten years. Many factories themselves built housing for their workers - entire villages or districts. And with all the infrastructure: schools, kindergartens, shops, roads.
Work
Standard of living, shops, prices
The USSR is often depicted with empty store shelves. This was not to be seen. Not all goods could be bought easily. It was called "deficiency". Very much appreciated imported goods. Moreover, it does not matter from which country, capitalist or socialist. The main thing is that it is not like ours.
For food, clothes, household items, my parents, ordinary workers, always had enough wages. Large purchases - TV, refrigerator, furniture - were made on credit. Buying a car - that was the problem! And the price is unattainable, and special queues, quotas, etc.
Goods quality
This is worth talking about separately. We still use many goods produced in the Soviet Union. Made soundly, firmly, thoughtfully, conscientiously. There were also defective things, but not so much. But from our fashion light industry constantly lagged behind. First of all, because this very fashion was not a legislator. That's why I worked late. And we were chasing imported clothes, buying “branded” things at exorbitant prices from black marketers.
The medicine
The quality of Soviet medicine is still being debated. In many of its industries, our specialists were the best in the world. This applies to ophthalmology, cardiac surgery. Yes, we had therapy. In some ways lagged behind, not without that. In any case, medicine in Ukraine has not become better, but you have to pay for everything. But preventive medicine, professional examinations for various categories of citizens and, especially, for children - so here the USSR was ahead of the rest.
Industry
The Soviet doctrine of isolation from the rest of the world required complete self-sufficiency in all industries. Therefore, heavy industry, medium engineering (rocket building) was created and brought to world leaders, and, of course, the strong point of the entire system is the defense industry. Hundreds of research institutes (NII) under the name "mailbox number such and such" worked for the defense industry. Salaries were higher there, and there were more benefits.
Light industry, producing consumer goods, in this situation was always in the tail. Both in terms of quality and quantity of products needed by the population.
Ideology
Ideology permeated the whole life of a Soviet person. AT kindergarten- poems about Lenin. At school - Octobrists, then Pioneer and Komsomol. At first everything was real and with youthful fervor, then, in the 80s, with the formalism of Komsomol and party meetings. Permitted and unpermitted topics for conversation. Discussion in the kitchen only with close relatives of “political topics” and fear of the KGB, which I never had to face. Films banned from viewing, records of rock bands and "samizdat" books.
It was difficult to understand that all this crushed, stifled freedom of speech. There was no other reference point, no example for comparison. Therefore, such manifestations of Soviet reality were perceived as certain rules of the game. We knew the rules and played by them. Sometimes pretend, sometimes seriously.
Decay
After Gorbachev's perestroika, accelerations and other political and economic leapfrog, the collapse of the USSR came. And in 1991, at the All-Ukrainian referendum, I, like millions of citizens living on the territory of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, voted for the independence of Ukraine. In those years, thanks to skillfully launched rumors, we all firmly believed that half of the Union was feeding Ukraine. And after the separation, we will ride like cheese in butter. Separate and live their own lives.
If we omit the period of the dashing 90s, when wild capitalism was raging, the deriban of state, public property flourished, inflation and social depression were rampant, now everything seems to have calmed down. Everything is plundered, divided, settled down and brought to the capitalist unfair denominator.
What did we get?
We give children to the few kindergartens that survived from the reprofiling, built back in the Soviet Union. And we pay, we pay, we pay… For all the time of independence, a dozen kindergartens have been built.
Then school and requisitions, requisitions, requisitions. Poor quality of education and paid tutors. Educational circles for money, sports for money, if we can afford it. And if not, then children are brought up by the street, with drug addiction and juvenile delinquency. By the way, so many schools have been built since independence that there will be many fingers of one hand.
If you're lucky, your child will go to university on a budget, if not, then go to private educational institution. Somehow, he will get a specialty, but it is unlikely that he will get a job. And a young specialist will go to trade in the market or work as some kind of office bug, or as a promoter, merchandiser and other riffraff involved in the sale of goods.
And in 90 percent of cases it will be unrealistic for a young family to earn an apartment, they will wait until "grandmother will free the living space."
Factories in Ukraine have either been plundered, destroyed, or passed into private hands and work for "uncles", and not for the public pocket. Accordingly, social programs, construction of housing and sanatoriums for workers and employees are not involved.
Unbiased statistics show that less than fifty kilometers have been built in Ukraine in 20 years railways. Against several thousand kilometers of railway in the Ukrainian SSR during the Soviet Union.
Ideology, on the other hand, we now have the most that neither is, free. And you can say whatever you want. Because everyone is deeply “in the drum” about what and how you talk. Freedom of speech at its finest. And now we have parties like uncut dogs, for every taste. But none of them will protect the interests of the common man.
And how chic it is in our stores. In total in bulk: clothes are imported, electronic equipment from Europe and Asia, products with GMOs and other chemicals from all over the world!
findings
So it turns out that we have acquired as a result of independence. Freedom of speech and abundance of clothes. The first, of course, is a valuable acquisition. Today we can no longer live without freedom of speech. You get used to it quickly, but it is already impossible to get used to it.
Opponents may say that Ukraine will still rise from its knees, develop its economy, and so on. For me, it sounds like a fairy tale, because the age is no longer the one to believe in fairy tales.
The main thing we have lost is social protection, protection of the state, care of the state about its citizens. The social model of the state, when the power provides its citizens with decent education, medicine, pensions, social programs, replaced by liberal. Liberal is from the word liber ("free"). Citizens are given freedom - do whatever you want, within the law, of course. But the state also takes care of its citizens. Freed up. Live as you want. Learn how you want, get treatment, live where you want or don't live at all.
So, I shitty lived in the days of the Soviet Union??? Reconvince me, please. I do not live in poverty now, I do not have depression and I do not complain about life. But I don't want to believe this lie. The Soviet Union cannot be returned, but why blame it? As if that makes it easier for someone.
We continue to use everything that was created, built and produced in the USSR. We wear out, like old clothes, factories, roads, schools and hospitals, without producing anything in return. Is it still long enough?
On a winter day, December 30, 1922, the 1st Congress of Soviets adopted the Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 90 years have passed since then, and we still cannot decide what the "world's first state of workers and peasants" was. An unprecedented leap towards freedom - or an unprecedented experiment on the people, designed to show the whole world how not to develop the national economy?
Power and Justice...
Army. The USSR was one of the two world superpowers, and Soviet army- the most powerful in the world. 63.9 thousand tanks were in service - more than in all other countries. The nuclear missile shield included 1,200 ballistic missiles on land and 62 nuclear submarines at sea. The number of the Armed Forces after the war reached 3.7 million people.
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Equality. The level of well-being of the "bottom" and "top" in the country differed, but not dozens of times, the Soviet middle class made up the vast majority of the population. A skilled worker could earn even more than the director of the factory where he worked.
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Rest. The right to rest was not an empty phrase for the Soviet people. By 1988, there were 16,200 sanatoriums and rest houses in the country, in which citizens partially paid for accommodation and treatment.
...or impoverished slavery?
decline. Vaunted universal education and medical care at the end of the twentieth century. hopelessly behind the world level.
Leadership in the defense industry turned into a failure in the production of industrial goods for the population: consumer goods were produced according to the residual principle and for the most part were of disgusting quality.
Prisons. Between 1921 and 1940 alone, approximately 3 million people were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
In 1930 - 1931 more than 380 thousand peasant families were dispossessed and evicted. At the stage of the formation of the USSR, entire groups of the population were repressed: entrepreneurs, priests, etc. The Gulag became one of the symbols of the Soviet system.
Deficit. The Soviet people have never lived in abundance in history. Even in the relatively prosperous 70s, something was in short supply toilet paper, then pantyhose, then beer, not to mention sausage.
Censorship. Censorship in the USSR covered all areas of life, including the media, literature, music, cinema, theater, ballet, and even fashion. Outstanding writers and poets - Solzhenitsyn, Voinovich, Dovlatov, Brodsky and others - were forced to leave their homeland.