4 ms·

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

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.
  - eps 8y ago
    Source required
    - Fins 8y ago
      https://www.kp.ru/daily/26061.3/2969912/ https://www.kp.ru/daily/26061.3/2969912/ if you read Russian has even better descriptions of what cosmonauts were receiving.
  - avmich 8y ago
    The key here is "among other things", with those things, according to the title of provided source, including an apartment, a house and a car.
    - Fins 8y ago
      Sure. But just to think -- a few sets of underwear were something that would be considered among things that you need to have gifted by the government, along with a car or a house. Can you imagine John Glenn being presented with some underwear in the White House?
      - avmich 8y ago
        I don't quite see what's wrong with that part of Gagarin's award. Maybe some items could be of higher comparative value in USSR than they were elsewhere. Military uniform is usually provided by government, and it's not far from that to some element of underwear. What does it mean, in your opinion?
        Fins 8y ago
gandhium 8y ago
> you couldn't own a good car, no matter who you were. Well, theoretically you can. But you have to be a really high on the ladder. Brezhnev had several good _imported_ cars. Gagarin had a sport car (gift from French, I believe). Vysotskiy (think of a Soviet Elvis Presley) had a good car. But other 99.99%... no chance. Of course, I'm not taking into accounts hundreds of "expropriated" German cars which appeared in USSR after 1945.

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.
- eps 8y ago
  Source required
  - Fins 8y ago
    https://www.kp.ru/daily/26061.3/2969912/ https://www.kp.ru/daily/26061.3/2969912/ if you read Russian has even better descriptions of what cosmonauts were receiving.
- avmich 8y ago
  The key here is "among other things", with those things, according to the title of provided source, including an apartment, a house and a car.
  - Fins 8y ago
    Sure. But just to think -- a few sets of underwear were something that would be considered among things that you need to have gifted by the government, along with a car or a house. Can you imagine John Glenn being presented with some underwear in the White House?
    - avmich 8y ago
      I don't quite see what's wrong with that part of Gagarin's award. Maybe some items could be of higher comparative value in USSR than they were elsewhere. Military uniform is usually provided by government, and it's not far from that to some element of underwear. What does it mean, in your opinion?
      - Fins 8y ago

gandhium 8y ago

> you couldn't own a good car, no matter who you were. Well, theoretically you can. But you have to be a really high on the ladder. Brezhnev had several good _imported_ cars. Gagarin had a sport car (gift from French, I believe). Vysotskiy (think of a Soviet Elvis Presley) had a good car. But other 99.99%... no chance. Of course, I'm not taking into accounts hundreds of "expropriated" German cars which appeared in USSR after 1945.