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I’ve been thinking about this a lot and came to a conclusion that because of the fact that in communist/socialist society of Soviet Union money couldn’t buy you

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and came to a conclusion that because of the fact that in communist/socialist society of Soviet Union money couldn’t buy you things you wanted, government really struggled to motivate people. That’s why they resorted to intimidations, threats and physical abuse to force people to perform, as soon as propaganda couldn’t bring the needed motivation anymore. In the west a lot of people work hard because they anticipate some big reward in the end. In Soviet Union, even celebrities lived like peasants, only party leaders had more than others.

eps 8y ago
In Soviet Union there were a lot of people that lived very well, celebrities included.
- dsabanin 8y ago
  You probably mean they thought they lived really well.
  - perfunctory 8y ago
    It's the same thing.
- kingofhdds 8y ago
  It's not the point. They lived better than others because of their loyalty (or sometimes, simply proximity) to "dear leaders", not because of their outstanding skills.
- wolf550e 8y ago
  No, not well, just better than the nobodies in the same system. Plenty of things were unavailable to anyone. For example, you couldn't own a good car, no matter who you were. A party boss could use a luxurious government dacha, but could not leave it to his children because he did not own it.
  - ivan_gammel 8y ago
    It wasn't impossible to get a good car - just quite hard. My grandfather was just an ordinary steel plant worker, who was so good, that he got a short term contract in Egypt and earned enough hard currency to buy one of the first Volga's in the city (a white one, because black was reserved for party apparatchiks). He was not even a member of the Communist Party, on the contrary, when he was young he was conscripted for a forced labor as German ethnic minority.
    - wolf550e 8y ago
      Even a Volga, which was rare in private hands, was not as good as a Western car of the time, and there was (I think) only one model of each brand and a total of four (4) brands of cars you could buy.
      - wolf550e 8y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAZ_Zaporozhets#Second_generation_(1966-1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAZ_Zaporozhets#Second_generat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskvitch_2140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskvitch_2140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Riva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Riva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-24 There were a few models concurrently of the two popular brands, but they were not great.
      - stevespang 8y ago
        My ex father in law of the exact same name owned a Zaporozhets (1994). Had a hand crank accessory for manual starts in case battery failed. He would take apart the battery once a year and steel brush all the lead plates. I finally talked him into a newer Ukrainian car, still was a POS.
    - Fins 8y ago
      Well, after his first ever space flight, Yuri Gagarin was granted, by the order of the Soviet government, among other things, several pairs of underwear. That should tell you all you need to know about how well even celebrities lived in the USSR.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
In the USSR, money could buy you anything, provided you knew the right people.
- dsabanin 8y ago
  Well to me that means that knowing the right people got you stuff, not money.
- nine_k 8y ago
  Yes, large networks of "right people" to set up elaborate barter or quid-pro-quo schemes.
- kingofhdds 8y ago
  While money weren't useless, being close to right people was absolutely necessary prerequisite. Also, one couldn't earn enough money simply by good engineering anyway. So the arguments stands.
- doombolt 8y ago
  No way you could buy an imported car, for starters. You had to be a Vysotsky to pull that off.
rdtsc 8y ago
People were also demotivated because of corruption. They saw their lazy incompetent co-workers steal and lie and get promoted.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  You can rely on humans to turn pretty much any form of political organisation into a hell of corruption, nepotism, status-seeking, short-term exploitation, and resource rationing.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    You can also rely on humans to protect their own interests and stop criminals, but they must be allowed to do so. You have to have a system where the masses who are hurt by corruption have a chance to fight against it, if all power is held by the central party you will see the negative aspects of human nature while the positive aspects are suppressed.
trevyn 8y ago
And now, social media is all about allowing peasants to live like celebrities. Fascinating.
Muromec 8y ago
>money couldn’t buy you things you wanted, government really struggled to motivate people. What money could not buy, your position itself provided. There were queues and there were priorities built in.andit wasn't just party leaders. There was different housing for scientists in fields important for state, for security employees and sometime for army officers and there were nice percs for trusted people who were able to visit conferences abroad and buy nice things there. There were people sailing abroad and they brought contraband with them, which they sold on black market. You could have used your position to ask for retirement and dacha in a nice place on the south if you were in kgb, instead of Frozen Ass Oblast'. All of that plus a credible threat of violence for perceived dissent worked for a while. It's somewhere in between working for large corporation and living in a really large prison. You obviously could bend some rules and things you are not supposed to have.
doombolt 8y ago
There were never any other plan. Leo Trotsky, for example, wrote that Soviet state should exploit its workers to attain its socialist goals, with hopes that at some point things would go sufficiently well that they will no longer feel exploited. If it never happens, too bad. Stalin forced him away but he never had any other policy. Fast forward to 1990, nobody wanted to be a part of Soviet state to lift a finger to keep it whole. And we're talking high ranking officials, army and state security here.
pvg 8y ago
This is directly contradicted by the article - they mention imprisoned scientists and engineers proposing what eventually becomes a sharashka themselves. I think where your logical chain falls apart is the assumption the purpose of the oppression was motivation. The purpose of the oppression, though, was actually just oppression.
avmich 8y ago
I'm in the middle of Strugatsky brothers' "Probationers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice - which paint another picture of motivation than this. Strugatsky brothers are foundational to Soviet sci-fi literature just as Alexander Solzhenitsyn is foundational to Soviet opression literature.

eps 8y ago

In Soviet Union there were a lot of people that lived very well, celebrities included.

dsabanin 8y ago
You probably mean they thought they lived really well.
- perfunctory 8y ago
  It's the same thing.
kingofhdds 8y ago
It's not the point. They lived better than others because of their loyalty (or sometimes, simply proximity) to "dear leaders", not because of their outstanding skills.
wolf550e 8y ago
No, not well, just better than the nobodies in the same system. Plenty of things were unavailable to anyone. For example, you couldn't own a good car, no matter who you were. A party boss could use a luxurious government dacha, but could not leave it to his children because he did not own it.
- ivan_gammel 8y ago
  It wasn't impossible to get a good car - just quite hard. My grandfather was just an ordinary steel plant worker, who was so good, that he got a short term contract in Egypt and earned enough hard currency to buy one of the first Volga's in the city (a white one, because black was reserved for party apparatchiks). He was not even a member of the Communist Party, on the contrary, when he was young he was conscripted for a forced labor as German ethnic minority.
  - wolf550e 8y ago
    Even a Volga, which was rare in private hands, was not as good as a Western car of the time, and there was (I think) only one model of each brand and a total of four (4) brands of cars you could buy.
    - wolf550e 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAZ_Zaporozhets#Second_generation_(1966-1994) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZAZ_Zaporozhets#Second_generat... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskvitch_2140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskvitch_2140 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Riva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Riva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-24 There were a few models concurrently of the two popular brands, but they were not great.
    - stevespang 8y ago
      My ex father in law of the exact same name owned a Zaporozhets (1994). Had a hand crank accessory for manual starts in case battery failed. He would take apart the battery once a year and steel brush all the lead plates. I finally talked him into a newer Ukrainian car, still was a POS.
  - Fins 8y ago
    Well, after his first ever space flight, Yuri Gagarin was granted, by the order of the Soviet government, among other things, several pairs of underwear. That should tell you all you need to know about how well even celebrities lived in the USSR.

KozmoNau7 8y ago

In the USSR, money could buy you anything, provided you knew the right people.

dsabanin 8y ago
Well to me that means that knowing the right people got you stuff, not money.
nine_k 8y ago
Yes, large networks of "right people" to set up elaborate barter or quid-pro-quo schemes.
kingofhdds 8y ago
While money weren't useless, being close to right people was absolutely necessary prerequisite. Also, one couldn't earn enough money simply by good engineering anyway. So the arguments stands.
doombolt 8y ago
No way you could buy an imported car, for starters. You had to be a Vysotsky to pull that off.

rdtsc 8y ago

People were also demotivated because of corruption. They saw their lazy incompetent co-workers steal and lie and get promoted.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
You can rely on humans to turn pretty much any form of political organisation into a hell of corruption, nepotism, status-seeking, short-term exploitation, and resource rationing.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  You can also rely on humans to protect their own interests and stop criminals, but they must be allowed to do so. You have to have a system where the masses who are hurt by corruption have a chance to fight against it, if all power is held by the central party you will see the negative aspects of human nature while the positive aspects are suppressed.

trevyn 8y ago

And now, social media is all about allowing peasants to live like celebrities. Fascinating.

Muromec 8y ago

>money couldn’t buy you things you wanted, government really struggled to motivate people. What money could not buy, your position itself provided. There were queues and there were priorities built in.andit wasn't just party leaders. There was different housing for scientists in fields important for state, for security employees and sometime for army officers and there were nice percs for trusted people who were able to visit conferences abroad and buy nice things there. There were people sailing abroad and they brought contraband with them, which they sold on black market. You could have used your position to ask for retirement and dacha in a nice place on the south if you were in kgb, instead of Frozen Ass Oblast'. All of that plus a credible threat of violence for perceived dissent worked for a while. It's somewhere in between working for large corporation and living in a really large prison. You obviously could bend some rules and things you are not supposed to have.

doombolt 8y ago

There were never any other plan. Leo Trotsky, for example, wrote that Soviet state should exploit its workers to attain its socialist goals, with hopes that at some point things would go sufficiently well that they will no longer feel exploited. If it never happens, too bad. Stalin forced him away but he never had any other policy. Fast forward to 1990, nobody wanted to be a part of Soviet state to lift a finger to keep it whole. And we're talking high ranking officials, army and state security here.

pvg 8y ago

This is directly contradicted by the article - they mention imprisoned scientists and engineers proposing what eventually becomes a sharashka themselves. I think where your logical chain falls apart is the assumption the purpose of the oppression was motivation. The purpose of the oppression, though, was actually just oppression.

avmich 8y ago

I'm in the middle of Strugatsky brothers' "Probationers" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Apprentice - which paint another picture of motivation than this. Strugatsky brothers are foundational to Soviet sci-fi literature just as Alexander Solzhenitsyn is foundational to Soviet opression literature.