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Everyday Soviet Nostalgia
- noemit 9y agoAmericans have no clue how nauseating this is to those who have suffered through Soviet occupation and its aftermath.
- ivanhoe 9y agoOrdinary Russians have suffered in the communist regime at least as hard as those occupied by Soviets, and probably more. And these photos are photos of ordinary people, doing ordinary things, as people tend to do under any regime, whether it is USSR or North Korea or wherever... people just try to live their lives, and not every aspect of life back then was bad, so of course there's also a lot of nostalgia involved now, when it's all in the past...
- trm42 9y agoCare to elaborate for people who are not familiar with it? I would say Westerners are quite intrigued about what life was in Soviet Union in good and in bad as that world feels so different from us and the information has been limited and more propaganda than anything else. Been talking about it with my Estonian and Hungarian colleagues and wouldn't mind understanding more about it.
- snikis 9y agoI would recommend reading Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, the recollections she collected helps to understand the emotions of the time. The problem is that a lot of literature on the subject has not been translated to English yet.
- tome 9y agoSorry? A photographic documentary of Russia in the late 1940s is nauseating? [EDIT: I didn't mean to start a comparative discussion of the horrors of various totalitarian regimes. I just thought this particular photo essay was rather innocuous.]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoWould you consider an article titled "Everyday Nazi Nostalgia" nauseating? I would, and so would many people. In terms of oppression, brutality, and body count, the Soviet Union especially under Stalin is at least the equivalent of Nazi Germany. In addition, there is a history of whitewashing Soviet atrocities (https://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-pulitzer-from-30-s-consultant-says.html?referer=https://www.google.com/ https://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/us/times-should-lose-p...). See also Holdomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- coldtea 9y ago>In terms of oppression, brutality, and body count, the Soviet Union especially under Stalin is at least the equivalent of Nazi Germany. Not all brutality is made the same. For Nazi Germany it was because Germans were "superior race" and others the scum of the earth, including Jews and such who were seen as subhuman. Death and destruction was part of their agenda starting from the Main Kampf. For USSR, the persecutions were the result of defensive paranoia and over-reaching (e.g. in the early days) and power plays, but those that were sent to the Gulags or executed were merely seen as traitors, as often happens in revolutions (e.g. 300.000 people executed in the French one) and civil wars. Sure, most of it were ploys from the party elite to keep their power, but that doesn't mean the regular people didn't share a dream of changing the world for the better. In fact so much so, that they inspired people all around the world. Heck, European colonial powers resulted in the deaths hundreds of millions (from Latin American natives, to Aboriginals and to all the proxy wars and land grabs they participated in thousands of miles from their borders were they had no place to be) and enslaved 2/3 of the world (including ALL black Americans before the 20th century), and they are painted as A-OK (because they won and they got to write the history from their perspective). And that was pure greed and cynicism -- not some over-encompassing vision for some free humanity.
- trgv 9y agoI'm not sure I understand your point. Atrocities committed in Soviet Russia/Soviet satellites are different from atrocities committed by the Nazis because one set of atrocities was motivated by racism and the other was motivated by various other stuff? I suppose you can argue that they're different. But I'm not sure how important the differences are. As long as people are being subjugated and murdered to "make the world better," it's all pretty much the same to me. I also don't know why you think that what the European colonial powers did is "painted as A-OK." Maybe some people think that, but as an American I was taught that what was done to native Americans was definitely not "A-OK."
- _delirium 9y agoOddly the only time I've encountered particularly strong nostalgia for the Soviet era is precisely from people from ex-Warsaw-Pact countries who are old enough to remember living under it, though it's much more common in some countries than others. Especially older East Germans and Bulgarians seem quite nostalgic, sometimes to an extent that was pretty surprising to me, and embarrassing to their kids/grandkids who are my age. Much less common among Americans, or among people from those countries too young to remember the pre-1990 era. Many of the older people seem to feel (whether rightly or wrongly) that their standard of living used to be higher under state-socialism than it is now. Older Bulgarians also feel that post-1990 the government has been taken over by gangsters/mafia, and so some have developed nostalgia for the old inefficient bureaucratic government in comparison.
- petermcneeley 9y agoAgreed. The narrative does not align with how people actually feel. Those legitimately interested should try to explain this discrepancy. "Broken down demographically, nostalgia towards the Soviet Union is most likely to be expressed by older respondents. Only 20 percent of people in the 18-24 age group said they expressed regret about the breakup of the USSR, while 42 percent said they didn’t. In the 25-34 age group, there was parity, while groups aged 35-54 and 55 or older had the highest number of respondents who said they felt regret." https://themoscowtimes.com/news/majority-of-russians-regret-soviet-collapse-poll-says-60039 https://themoscowtimes.com/news/majority-of-russians-regret-...
- coldtea 9y agoAnd those who have actually been through "Soviet occupation and its aftermath" don't all consider it bad -- in fact there's a good percentage of the population in ex-socialist countries that thinks lots of things were better back then -- from Ostalgie phenomenon, to surveys that say so (and relic socialist parties getting some chunk of the vote). "On June 2009, a survey conducted in Germany showed that 57% of eastern Germans defend the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Of those polled, 49% said “The GDR had more good sides than bad sides. There were some problems, but life was good there.” The poll was reported on Spiegel Online (which, however, tried to vilify GDR with anti-communist lies) and consists a proof that, according to historian Stefan Wolle, “a new form of Ostalgie has taken shape”." http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-d... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-communism-nostalgia/special-report-in-eastern-europe-people-pine-for-socialism-idUSTRE5A701320091108 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-communism-nostalgia/speci... http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145614 http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=145614
- mantas 9y agoKeep in mind that GDR was the wealthiest country in the whole Warsaw pact. The rest of Warsaw pact saw it as almost-West.
- nickpp 9y agoYeah, so great that the borders patrols killed people trying to escape every day and the state prisons were full of the ones caught. Please do us (the ones who lived the horror) the courtesy of refraining to comment on things you don't understand or simply move to Venezuela or N. Korea where the blessings of communism continue even this day.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post generic flamebait to Hacker News. It takes only a few seconds' thought to remember that people's opinions about this are divided.
- moltar 9y agoThe article feels very much agenda filled. The past was not all so terrible. And remembering the past is just history. It’s good to know history, whatever it is. I know it’s hard for the west to understand that where history has been rewritten numerous times to fit the narrative.
- golergka 9y agoIt was not all so terrible indeed. It was much worse. A couple of American journalists in 1940s USSR? They would see as much of real Soviet life as modern tourists would of North Korea.
- mantas 9y agoUSSR even had a special programme targeting famous artists/writers etc. They'd invite them to Moscow or Leningrad and give them a majestic tour about how nice Soviet life is. We had an interesting situation in Lithuania. A lot of local inteligentsia took the tour in 1930s and initially supported Soviet occupation. Quite a few of them quickly backpedaled when they saw how real day-to-day soviet life looks like. That programme is one of the reasons why a lot of famous people in the West supported USSR during cold war. Old the bad things must be bourgeois propaganda anyway..
- arwhatever 9y agoSolzhenitsyn would say otherwise.
- realandreskytt 9y agoHaving lived pieces of that and seen survivors, I’d say it was pretty bad and quite a bit worse than the article describes. Unless you belonged to the nomenclatura and were ok with being at the mercy of the Aparat.
- michaelcampbell 9y ago> I know it’s hard for the west to understand that where history has been rewritten numerous times to fit the narrative. Or the East. Or any civilization.
- IWeldMelons 9y agoI live in ex-USSR, in Central Asia precisely. The life before the fall of USSR was in many ways much, much better than it is now, and before the Soviet rule it was a medieval swamp. There is still respect towards Russians here, a plenty of Russian schools, despite the fact that the Russians are a small minority here.
- Feniks 9y agoWell what keeps your country from uplifting itself? My own country is one of the safest, wealthiest and politically stable on the planet but just a hundred years ago there were slums with child prostitution and cholera. As recent as the 1950s there were people LITERALLY living in holes under the ground.
- dang 9y agoThis comment crosses into a nationalistic swipe, which is not allowed here, so please don't do it again.
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoWhy on Earth are you saying this? What the OP says is that their country was very poor and now it's now thriving. I was just about to ask what advice he could give to the grandparent when I read your comment and it made me speechless. What do you mean by "nationalistic"? I really, completely have no clue whatsoever what you mean. Maybe you wanted to use a different word?
- dang 9y agoWhat keeps your country from doing admirable X so that it can be more like mine is a loaded, patronizing question. It's also ahistorical and therefore unsubstantive, as if one simply chooses to make things better and then they are. That argument is disrespectful to make about another person, let alone a whole country. Also, to my ear, prefixing the whole comment with "well" is a trivializing gesture, as if to say: "well, what's the matter with you? Pull yourself together and you could be more like me." I realize the comment didn't land with you that way, but I can guarantee you that it would with others, and that is how we get nationalistic flamewars. Moreover, the account has a pattern of making ideological comments. Such accounts are by far the most prone to flamewarring, so when we see signs of that we err on the side of replying.
- diimdeep 9y agoSeems like these new 2017 photos just don't match quality and don't capture same depth compared to 1947.
- ggm 9y agoAgree. Capa had what Cartier-Bresson or Weedgee had. You can't bottle it, its either there or it isn't
- hal9000xp 9y agoI hate USSR, communism and socialism but I'm very nostalgic to late years of USSR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika) and early 1990s. It was time full of hope for new capitalist Russia (inspired by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher). Unfortunately, all these hopes fell short when Russia fell under control of clans which later transformed to Putin's Russia. Anyway, here is my 2 cents of nostalgia: https://www.shrimptoncouture.com/blogs/curated/80026817-reds-vogue-us-september-1990 https://www.shrimptoncouture.com/blogs/curated/80026817-reds... (I got this while listening new Retro Wave music :) )
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoIt's interesting to see the binary view of the world even here, in HN comments. It should be clear that there is no one prevailing, unanimously accepted perception of the Soviet past. There are people who long for it, and there are those who hate it; some people don't have any strong feelings about it. They all have their valid reasons to do so, whether being young and associating pleasant memories with the past epoch or losing a family member in repressions etc. It makes no sense to impose one's views on others and trying to explain it to them why they should perceive the past in a different way than they already do.
- Const-me 9y agoI agree with your comment. But the reason why people are discussing the subject, and for that article to be published now in 2018, is not the past. The reason is Russians have recreated much of that past. KGB rule, human rights issues, military aggression towards neighbor countries, cold war rhetorics and propaganda, state sponsored terrorism, it’s all right now in the present. And it looks like the world either doesn’t care, or doesn’t know what to do about that. Both options are kinda scary.
- cassianoleal 9y agoThe world has yet to find out what to do with the US's version of all those issues. Once we solve that, we might turn to Russia, or perhaps we find a solution for both at the same time.
- archagon 9y agoOn the flip side: in 1935–36, two famous Soviet humorists, Ilf and Petrov, did a road trip around the US and chronicled their experiences in "Odnoetazhnaya Amerika", or "Little Golden America" in translation. Vignettes from the book include encounters with Henry Ford, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and even FDR; amused descriptions of a rodeo, wrestling match, and football game; several captivating conversations with hitchhikers on topics ranging from health care to racism to religion; a visit to the Hoover Dam and a chat with one of the little-known and undecorated head engineers; awe-inspiring looks at the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest; and a ferry ride between the still under-construction Golden Gate and the Bay bridges. (More in my Goodreads review[1].) It's a fascinating, fantastic book, and especially stunning in how so much of the authors' bemused commentary on American culture remains completely relevant to this day — though I feel much of the charm and humor is lost in Charles Malamuth's translation. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486
- woodandsteel 9y agoHowever the USSR might have been good in some ways, it doesn't really matter. That's because its economy was fundamentally dysfunctional and so it was bound to crash at some point.
- fractallyte 9y agoOne significant error: "2017: Circus performances are now held in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre, where Chechen militants took theatergoers hostage in 2002, killing 130." The majority of those deaths were actually due to Russian special forces, who controversially decided to flood the theater with an unnamed chemical agent...