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The reason they were repairable and maintainable was because they shit products and were nightmarishly unreliable. One could not simply own a car and drive it,
by martythemaniak 5y ago
The reason they were repairable and maintainable was because they shit products and were nightmarishly unreliable. One could not simply own a car and drive it, you had to be an amateur mechanic to be able to drive one. And let's not forget that they were also very very expensive and few could afford.
- int_19h 5y agoThis is true of cars, but OP talked about "products" in general. And many Soviet products were extremely reliable (but shit for other reasons, like horrible UX).
- pandaman 5y agoNot in my experience. Electronics, even though most were clones of Western/Asian designs, suffered from faulty components (leaking caps, disintegrating PCBs) and faulty soldering, misplaced wires, broken insulation etc. And the mechanical things had all kinds of issues from the broken tolerances and faulty materials to the braindead designs that would just destroy themselves unless hacked around. Even in the 1990s, when the soviet cars had been freely available, a lightly used Lada (Jiguli in its own country) costed more than a brand new one since it's been proven to work more or less reliably and the first owner had addressed the most serious issues already.
- int_19h 5y agoI remember a vacuum cleaner we used to have. It looked like some kind of military gadget, all metal and heavy. But it worked for over 10 years.
- kybernetyk 5y ago>and few could afford. and if they could afford it there was a looooong waiting list. it was my parent's turn to get their landline phone connected in 2013 ... sadly communist poland collapsed before that and they have to live with smartphones instead.