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“We were lucky that our childhood and youth ended before the government bought FREEDOM from the youth in exchange for roller skates, mobile phones, star factories and cool crackers (by the way, soft for some reason) ... With her common consent ... For her own (seemingly) good…” is a fragment from a text called “Generation 76-82”. Those who are now somewhere in their thirties reprint it with great pleasure on the pages of their Internet diaries. He became a kind of manifesto of the generation.

The attitude towards life in the USSR changed from a sharply negative to a sharply positive one. Per recent times There are a lot of resources on the Internet about Everyday life in Soviet Union.

Unbelievable but true: the sidewalk has an asphalt ramp for wheelchairs. Even now you rarely see this in Moscow

At that time (as far as photographs and films can tell) all the girls wore knee-length skirts. And there were practically no perverts. An amazing thing.

Excellent bus stop sign. And the pictogram of the trolleybus is the same in St. Petersburg today. There was also a tram sign - the letter "T" in a circle.

All over the world, the consumption of various branded drinks was growing, and we had everything from the boiler. This, by the way, is not so bad. And, most likely, humanity will come to this again. All foreign ultra-left and green movements would be delighted to know that in the USSR you had to go for sour cream with your own can. Any jar could be handed over, the sausage was wrapped in paper, and they went to the store with their string bag. The most progressive supermarkets in the world today at the checkout offer to choose between paper or plastic bag. The most responsible environment classes are returning the yogurt crock to the store.

And before, there was no habit at all to sell containers with the product.

Kharkov, 1924. Tea room. He drank and left. No Lipton bottled.

Moscow, 1959. Khrushchev and Nixon (then Vice President) at the Pepsi booth at the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki. On the same day there was a famous dispute in the kitchen. In America, this dispute has received wide coverage, we have not. Nixon told me how cool it is to have dishwasher like a lot of goods in supermarkets.

All this was filmed on color videotape (supertechnology at the time). It is believed that Nixon performed so well at this meeting that it helped him become one of the presidential candidates the following year (and 10 years later, president).

In the 60s, a terrible fashion for any machine guns went. The whole world then dreamed of robots, we dreamed of automatic trading. The idea, in a sense, failed due to the fact that it did not take into account Soviet reality. Say, when a potato vending machine pours you rotten potatoes, no one wants to use it. Still, when there is an opportunity to rummage through an earthy container, finding some relatively strong vegetables, there is not only hope for a delicious lunch, but also a training in fighting qualities. The only machines that survived were those that dispensed a product of the same quality - for the sale of soda. Still sometimes there were vending machines sunflower oil. Only soda survived.

1961st. VDNH. Still, before the start of the fight against excesses, we did not lag behind the West in graphic and aesthetic development.

In 1972, the Pepsi company agreed with the Soviet government that Pepsi would be bottled "from concentrate and using PepsiCo technology", and in return the USSR would be able to export Stolichnaya vodka.

1974th. Some boarding house for foreigners. Polka dots "Globe" top right. I still have such a jar unopened - I keep thinking: will it explode or not? Just in case, I keep it wrapped in a bag away from books. It’s also scary to open it - what if I suffocate?

From the very right edge, next to the scales, you can see a cone for selling juice. Empty, really. There was no habit in the USSR to drink juice from the refrigerator, no one was chic. The saleswoman opened three-liter jar poured it into a cone. And from there - in glasses. As a child, I still found such cones in our vegetable shop on Shokalsky Drive. When I drank my favorite Apple juice from such a cone, some thief stole my Kama bicycle from the store's dressing room, I will never forget.

1982 Selection of alcohol in the dining car of the Trans-Siberian train. For some reason, many foreigners have a fixed idea - to travel along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Apparently, the idea that you can not get out of a moving train for a week seems magical to them.

Please note that abundance is apparent. No exquisite dry red wines, which today, even in an ordinary tent, at least 50 types are sold. No XO and VSOP. However, even ten years after this picture was taken, the author was quite satisfied with Agdam port wine.

1983 The worm of consumerism has settled in the naive and pure souls of the Russians. True, the bottle, young man, must be returned to whom she said. I drank, enjoyed the warm, return the container. They will take her back to the factory.

In stores, Pinocchio or Bell was usually on sale. "Baikal" or "Tarhun" was also not always sold. And when Pepsi was exhibited in some supermarket, it was taken as a reserve - for a birthday, for example, to be displayed later.

1987th. An aunt sells greens in a dairy store window. Cashiers are visible behind the glass. The very ones that had to come well prepared - to know all the prices, the quantity of goods and the department numbers.

1987th. Volgograd. In the American archive, this photo is accompanied by a comment of the century: "A woman on a street in Volgograd sells some sort of liquid for the invalids of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for World War II)." Apparently, at the same time in 87, they translated the inscription from the barrel, when there was no one else to ask that WWII invalids were served out of turn. By the way, these inscriptions are the only documentary recognition that there are queues in the USSR.

By the way, in those days there was no struggle between merchandisers, there were no POS materials, no one hung wobblers on the shelves. No one would have thought of giving away free samples. If the store was given a beach ball with the Pepsi logo, he considered it an honor. And exhibited in the window sincerely and for nothing.

1990th. Pepsi vending machine in the subway. Rare copy. Here are the machines that are on the right, they met everywhere in the center - they sold the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, Moskovskiye Novosti. By the way, all soda machines (and slot machines too) always had the inscription “Please! Do not omit commemorative and bent coins. It is understandable with bent ones, but commemorative coins cannot be omitted, because they differed from other coins of the same denomination in weight and sometimes in size.

1991st. Veteran drinks soda with syrup. Someone had already scratched the Depeche Moda logo on the middle machine. Glasses were always shared. You come up, wash it in the machine itself, then put it under the nozzle. Fastidious aesthetes carried folding glasses with them, which had the peculiarity of folding in the process. The photo is good because all the details are characteristic and recognizable. And a payphone half-box, and a Zaporozhets headlight.

Until 1991, American photographers followed the same routes. Almost every photo can be identified - this is on Tverskaya, this is on Herzen, this is near the Bolshoi Theater, this is from the Moscow Hotel. And then everything became possible.

Recent history.

1992 near Kiev. This is no longer the USSR, just by the way I had to. A dude poses for an American photographer, voting with a bottle of vodka to trade it for gasoline. It seems to me that the photographer himself issued the bottles. However, a bottle of vodka for a long time was a kind of currency. But in the mid-nineties, all plumbers suddenly stopped taking bottles as payment, because there were no fools left - vodka is sold everywhere, and you know how much it costs. So everything has gone to the money. Today, a bottle is given only to a doctor and a teacher, and even then with cognac.

With food in the late USSR, everything was pretty bad. The chance to buy something tasty in a regular store was close to zero. Queues lined up for tasty treats. Delicious food could be given "in order" - there was a whole system of "order tables", which were actually centers for the distribution of goods for their own. In the order table, he could count on tasty things: a veteran (moderately), a writer (not bad), a party worker (also not bad).

Residents of closed cities in general, by Soviet standards, rolled around like cheese in butter in Christ's bosom. But they were very bored in the cities and they were restricted to travel abroad. However, almost all of them were restricted to travel abroad.

Life was good for those who could be of some help. Let's say the director of the Wanda store was a very respected person. Super VIP by recent standards. And the butcher was respected. And the head of the department in Detsky Mir was respected. And even a cashier at the Leningradsky railway station. All of them could "get" something. Acquaintance with them was called "connections" and "ties". The director of the grocery was reasonably confident that his children would go to a good university.

1975 year. Bakery. I felt that the cuts on the loaves were made by hand (now the robot is already sawing).

1975 year. Sheremetyevo-1. Here, by the way, not much has changed. In the cafe you could find chocolate, beer, sausages with peas. Sandwiches did not exist, there could be a sandwich, which is a piece white bread, at one end of which there was a spoonful of red caviar, and at the other - one coil butter, which everyone pushed and trampled with a fork under the calf as best he could.

Bread shops were of two types. The first one is with a counter. Behind the saleswoman, there were loaves and loaves in containers. The freshness of bread was determined in the process of questioning those who had already bought bread or in a dialogue with the saleswoman:

- For 25 a fresh loaf?

— Normal.

Or, if the buyer did not cause rejection:

- Delivered at night.

The second type of bakery is self-service. Here the loaders rolled up containers to special openings, on the other side of which there was shopping room. There were no saleswomen, only cashiers. It was cool because you could poke the bread with your finger. Of course, it was not allowed to touch the bread; for this, special forks or spoons were hung on uneven ropes. The spoons were still back and forth, and it was unrealistic to determine the freshness with a fork. Therefore, each took a hypocritical device in his hands and gently turned his finger to check in the usual way how well it was pressed. It's not clear through the spoon.

Fortunately, there was no individual packaging of bread.

Better a loaf that someone gently touched with a finger than tasteless gutta-percha. Yes, and it was always possible, after checking the softness with your hands, to take a loaf from the back row, which no one had yet reached.

1991st. Soon there will be consumer protection, which, together with care, will kill the taste. Halves and quarters were prepared from the technical side. Sometimes it was even possible to persuade to cut off half of the white:

Who will buy the second one? - asked the buyer from the back room.

No one gave packages at the checkout either - everyone came with his own. Or with a string bag. Or so, carried in the hands.

The grandmother is holding bags of kefir and milk (1990). Then there was no Tetrapac yet, there was some kind of Elopak. On the package was written “Elopak. Patented." The blue triangle indicates the side from which the bag must be opened. When we first purchased the packaging line, a barrel was attached to it right glue. I found those times when the package opened in the right place without torment. Then the glue ran out, it was necessary to open it from two sides, and then fold one side back. The blue triangles remained, but since then no one has bought glue, there are few idiots.

By the way, at that time there was no food packaging additional information- no address, no phone number of the manufacturer. Only GOST. And there were no brands. Milk was called milk, but differed in fat content. My favorite is in the red bag, five percent.

Dairy products were also sold in bottles. The contents differed in the color of the foil: milk - silver, acidophilus - blue, kefir - green, fermented baked milk - raspberry, etc.

Joyful queue for eggs. On the refrigerated showcase“Krestyanskoye” oil could still lie - it was cut with wire, then with a knife into smaller pieces, wrapped immediately in oil paper. In the queue, everyone stands with checks - before that, they stood in line at the cashier. The saleswoman had to be told what to give, she looked at the figure, counted everything in her head or on the accounts, and if it converged, she gave out the purchase (“let go”). The check was strung on a needle (it stands on the left side of the counter).

In theory, they were obliged to sell even one egg. But buying one egg was considered a terrible insult to the saleswoman - she could yell at the buyer in response.

Those who took three dozen were given a cardboard pallet without question. Whoever took a dozen was not supposed to have a pallet, he put everything in a bag (there were also special wire cages for aesthetes).

This is a cool photo (1991), here you can see video rental cassettes in the background.

Good meat could be obtained through an acquaintance or bought in the market. But everything in the market was twice as expensive as in the store, so not everyone went there. "Market meat" or "market potatoes" is the highest praise for products.

Soviet chicken was considered to be of poor quality. Here is the Hungarian chicken - it's cool, but it has always been in short supply. The word "cool" was not yet in wide use (that is, it was, but in relation to the rocks)

Until 1990, it was impossible to imagine that a foreign photojournalist would be allowed to shoot in a Soviet store (especially on the other side of the counter). Everything became possible in 1990.

Outdoors at the same time, the color of the meat was more natural.

There are two chickens on the counter - imported and Soviet. Import says:

- Look at you, all blue, not plucked, skinny!

“But I died a natural death.

What if the Soviet Union returned? It was one of the most powerful empires in history. On December 28, 1922, after a conference attended by delegations from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other republics, the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was announced. The Soviet Union repelled Nazi aggression during World War II and then collapsed. What if the Soviet Union were resurrected today?

To begin with, we must determine the countries that will be included in the modern Soviet Union. It will include the following states: Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Soviet Union will be very big country and, of course, the largest republic in terms of area will be Russia, whose area more area Pluto. The Soviet Union will be larger than Australia, Antarctica and South America put together, which will make it a state that is larger than three whole continents. Such a colossal area will create a large time difference between the two ends. Soviet Union when it is 11 pm in one part of the country and noon in another.

Context

I want to return to the USSR

London Review of Books 01/06/2018

CIS - the last breath of the USSR

EurasiaNet 15.12.2017

And the USSR still hasn't gone anywhere

Delfi.lv 26.09.2017 Population

The total population of the Soviet Union will be 294.837 million people. It will be ranked fourth in the list of countries by population after the United States, which is now in third place. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union had roughly the same population in 1991, at 293,048,000, indicating that population growth has been weak since the fall of the Soviet Union. Most citizens of the Soviet Union will be Russians (about 46% of the total population), with Ukrainians and Uzbeks taking an honorable second place. Russian would be the most widely spoken language in the Soviet Union, with approximately 58% of the population speaking it. To recreate the Soviet Union, we must return to the memory of Communist Party as the only legal party with absolute power. Religious people will only be able to perform their rituals in religious centers and will not be able to do so in public. However, only 12% of the population will be atheist or non-religious, but the vast majority of the population, about 54%, will be Orthodox Christian, 3% Catholic, 24% Sunni, 3% Shia and 4% will represent other religions.

Economic and political situation

Speaking of the status and political organization of the Soviet Union, we must guess that its capital will be in Moscow. In addition, the Soviet Union will have a number of large influential cities, such as St. Petersburg, which will be renamed Leningrad, Kiev in Ukraine and Minsk in Belarus. The economy will be strong enough - GDP will be about two trillion dollars. Russia currently ranks 12th in terms of economic development. By joining the Soviet Union, it will reach eighth place in the world, ahead of such countries as South Korea and Canada. The per capita income level would be relatively low, at $6.8, which would put the Soviet Union in 76th place ahead of Bulgaria. The military budget of the Soviet army will be 80 billion dollars, which will put it in fourth place after Saudi Arabia, China and the United States.

However, this will not be a big problem, as the number of troops compensates for the lack of funding. It will take the second place in terms of the number of military personnel after China, with about 1.43 million people. There will be about 2.88 million in reserve. And in total, about 4.32 million people are ready for military action, which is equal to the population of New Zealand. The total strength of the Soviet army would be the same as that of the Chinese army and 42% larger than that of the Americans. Soviet army will have the largest arsenal of weapons in the world, with a total of 7,300 missile warheads, while the US will only have 6,970 warheads. In addition, the Soviet Union will become the largest oil-producing country, ahead of Saudi Arabia and the United States. It will produce about 12.966 million barrels of oil.

Can he be even stronger? Of course, if we add to the Soviet Union all the regions that once belonged to Russian Empire. Let's add Finland, half of today's Poland and all of Alaska. This will increase the population of the Union to approximately 496.313 million, thus overtaking the United States. The economic situation will improve: GDP will reach 2.541 trillion dollars, which will lift the country to sixth place. Thus, she will overtake France and India, but will give way to Great Britain and Germany.

Finally, if the Soviet Union is revived, it will not be much stronger than last time. He will have the largest number missile warheads in the world, the second largest army, and it will become a leader in oil production. There will probably be no alliance between the Soviet Union, the US and NATO, so the Soviet Union will look for alliances in Africa and Asia.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

Leprosy is caused by mycobacteria, which were discovered in the 1870s by the Norwegian physician Gerhard Hansen. So far, the bacteria have been found to be transmitted through secretions from the nose and mouth. The disease mainly affects skin, mucous membranes and peripheral nervous system.

Incubation period leprosy can reach 20 years. The first clinical signs of the disease include deterioration in general well-being, drowsiness, chills, runny nose, rashes on the skin and mucous membranes, loss of hair and eyelashes, decreased sensitivity.

Leprosy in the USSR

Until 1926, there were only 9 leper colonies in the USSR, that is, specialized hospitals for lepers. They contained a total of 879 patients. Later, the number of leper colonies increased to 16.

Every year in the Soviet Union new patients with leprosy were detected. True, the number of cases has steadily decreased every decade. So from 1961 to 1970, 546 cases of leprosy were registered in the RSFSR, from 1971 to 1980 - 159, and from 1981 to 1990 - only 48. The highest percentage of incidence was in Siberia and Far East, as well as to such union republics as Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Karakalpakstan.

Lifetime isolation

Until the 1950s, the concept of "outpatient treatment of patients with leprosy" did not exist at all. The newly diagnosed patients were doomed to lifelong isolation in leper colonies. For example, the decision of the Council people's commissars dated July 10, 1923, read: "Assign the people's commissariats of health to keep an accurate record of all patients with leprosy and take care of the mandatory isolation of patients." Despite the fact that the decree also spoke about the possibility of treating lepers at home, in reality this was practically not carried out.

In fact, patients with leprosy were equated with criminals or enemies of the people. All medical institutions were located more than 100 kilometers from large cities, where patients were sent to eternal exile.

All lepers were subject to strict accounting and control. For each of them, a individual card, which indicated not only the data of the patient himself, but also all the information about the persons in contact with him.

Patients diagnosed with leprosy could not engage in certain activities labor activity, get an education, serve in the army and even use public transport.

Young children of the sick were subject to seizure and placement in boarding schools. Most often, sick parents were forever deprived of the opportunity to even see them.

Those who could not stand isolation and escaped from the leper colony fell under criminal liability, they were put on the All-Union wanted list and rounded up.

During Stalin's leadership, for 30 years, an agrarian, impoverished country dependent on foreign capital has become a powerful military-industrial power on a world scale, the center of a new socialist civilization. Poor and illiterate people tsarist Russia turned into one of the most literate and educated nations in the world.

The political and economic literacy of workers and peasants by the beginning of the 1950s not only was not inferior, but even exceeded the level of education of workers and peasants of any developed country while. The population of the Soviet Union increased by 41 million people.

Under Stalin, more than 1,500 major industrial facilities were built, including DneproGES, Uralmash, KhTZ, GAZ, ZIS, factories in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk, Norilsk, and Stalingrad. At the same time, not a single enterprise of this magnitude has been built in the last 20 years of democracy.

Already in 1947, the industrial potential of the USSR was fully restored, and in 1950 it more than doubled compared to the pre-war 1940. None of the countries that suffered in the war, by this time even reached the pre-war level, despite powerful financial injections from the United States.

Prices for basic foodstuffs in the 5 post-war years in the USSR fell by more than 2 times, while in the largest capitalist countries these prices increased, and in some even 2 or more times.

This speaks of the tremendous success of the country, which only five years ago ended the most destructive war in the history of mankind and which suffered the most from this war!

Bourgeois experts in 1945 gave an official forecast that the economy of the USSR would be able to reach the level of 1940 only by 1965, provided that it took foreign loans. We reached this level in 1949 without any foreign aid.

In 1947, the USSR, the first among the states of our planet after the war, abolished the card system. And since 1948, annually - until 1954 - he reduced the prices of food and consumer goods. Child mortality in 1950 decreased in comparison with 1940 by more than 2 times. The number of doctors increased by 1.5 times. The number of scientific institutions increased by 40%. The number of university students increased by 50%. Etc.

The stores had an abundance of a variety of industrial and food products and there was no concept of scarcity. The choice of products in grocery stores was much wider than in modern supermarkets. Now only in Finland you can try sausage, reminiscent of the Soviet one from those times. Banks with crabs were in all Soviet stores. The quality and variety of consumer goods and foodstuffs, exclusively of domestic production, was incommensurably higher than modern consumer goods and food. As soon as new fashion trends appeared, they were instantly tracked, and within a couple of months, fashion products appeared in abundance on store shelves.

The wages of workers in 1953 ranged from 800 to 3,000 rubles and more. Miners and metallurgists received up to 8,000 rubles. Young specialist engineer up to 1300 rubles. The secretary of the district committee of the CPSU received 1,500 rubles, and the salaries of professors and academicians often exceeded 10,000 rubles.

The car "Moskvich" cost - 9000 rubles, white bread (1 kg.) - 3 rubles, black bread (1 kg.) - 1 rub., beef meat (1 kg.) - 12.5 rubles, pike perch - 8 , 3 rubles, milk (1 l.) - 2.2 rubles, potatoes (1 kg.) - 0.45 rubles, beer "Zhigulevskoe" (0.6 liters) - 2.9 rubles, chintz (1 m.) - 6.1 p. A complex lunch in the dining room cost - 2 rubles. Evening in a restaurant for two, with a good dinner and a bottle of wine - 25 rubles.

And all this abundance and a comfortable life was achieved, despite the maintenance of 5.5 million, armed "to the teeth" with the most modern weapons, the best army in the world!

Since 1946, work has been launched in the USSR: on atomic weapons and energy; on rocket technology; for automation technological processes; on the introduction of the latest computer technology and electronics; on space flights; on gasification of the country; on household appliances.

The world's first nuclear power plant was put into operation in the USSR a year earlier than in England, and 2 years earlier than in the USA. Nuclear icebreakers were created only in the USSR.

Thus, in one five-year period, from 1946 to 1950, in the USSR, in the conditions of a tough military and political confrontation with the richest capitalist power in the world, at least three socio-economic tasks were solved without any external assistance: 1) restored National economy; 2) sustainable growth in the standard of living of the population is ensured; 3) an economic breakthrough into the future has been made.

And even now we exist only at the expense of the Stalinist legacy. In science, industry, in almost all spheres of life.

US presidential candidate Stevenson estimated the situation in such a way that if the growth rate of production in Stalinist Russia continues, then by 1970 the volume of Russian production will be 3-4 times higher than the American one.

In the September 1953 issue of National Business magazine, in an article by Herbert Harris "The Russians are catching up with us," it was noted that the USSR was ahead of any country in terms of growth in economic power and that at present the growth rate in the USSR is 2-3 times higher than in USA.

In 1991, at the Soviet-American symposium, when our "democrats" began to squeal about the "Japanese economic miracle”, Japanese billionaire Heroshi Terawama gave them a wonderful “slap in the face”: “You are not talking about the main thing, about your leading role in the world. In 1939 you Russians were smart and we Japanese were fools. In 1949, you became even smarter, while we were still fools. And in 1955, we grew wiser, and you turned into five-year-olds. All our economic system almost completely copied from yours, with the only difference that we have capitalism, private producers, and we have never achieved more than 15% growth, while you, with public ownership of the means of production, reached 30% or more. All our firms hang your slogans of the Stalinist era.

One of the best representatives of the believing working people, revered by the saint, Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea, wrote: “Stalin saved Russia. He showed what Russia means to the rest of the world. And that's why I'm like Orthodox Christian and Russian patriot I bow low to Comrade Stalin.

Never in its history has our country known such majestic transformations as in the Stalin era! The whole world was shocked by our progress! That is why the “devilish” task is now being implemented - never again to allow people comparable in their inner strength, moral qualities, strategic thinking, organizational skills and patriotism with Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.

But a quarter of a century of unbridled propaganda against Stalin did not bring victory to its organizers even over the dead Stalin.