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>Some of the buildings look quite decrepit but if you look at photos of Britain or France or Germany from the 50’s you will see many similar buildings that need

by lp4vn 3y ago

>Some of the buildings look quite decrepit but if you look at photos of Britain or France or Germany from the 50’s you will see many similar buildings that need painted and cleaned.[0] People don’t look like they are dressed in rags. If anything I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos. You don't have to go back to the 50's. You can see buildings like that in any european capital today. Moscow from the 50's looks very in line with most european capitals by the way. >I didn’t think they illustrated what it felt like to have secret police looking over your shoulder. If you weren’t in trouble with the state or an upper class westerner I don’t think there was a huge difference in lifestyle between East and West Europe for most people until the late 60’s / early 70’s Sometimes I have the impression that Hollywood movies gave people a permanent wrong perception about what it really means to live in a dictatorship with a secret police. For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. That was the case in Latin America at least. I guess the biggest losers in the Soviet Union were the poor farmers and the industry workers who were forced to work, but you will barely hear about their drama because people don't really identify with them. It's much easier to sell police states from the past as low tech minority report scenarios for an urban middle class even if that was not really the case.

leereeves 3y ago
> what it really means to live in a dictatorship with a secret police. For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. 18 million people were sent to gulags. 1.6 million died. I doubt they were all "involved in politics" beyond expressing an opinion Stalin didn't allow.
- lp4vn 3y ago
  Do you really think that 18 million people were sent to gulags for being antagonists of Stalin? Don't you think that it's much more plausible a scenario where the regime needed a lot of cheap work and because of that kept sending people to gulags for lower crimes like petty theft or even customary crimes like not holding a job? The educated middle/high class in Moscow was probably quite critic of Stalin's policies and nothing would happen to them as long as they were not loud enough with their criticism.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    Yes I really do think that the Soviets sent people to gulags for "being antagonists of Stalin". Even before Stalin, under Lenin (who was not nearly so bad as Stalin) about 100,000 people were executed for being "counter-revolutionaries" during the Red Terror.
    - PlkMarudny 3y ago
      Lenin was... As bad or worse.
  - kashunstva 3y ago
    > Don't you think that it's much more plausible a scenario where the regime needed a lot of cheap work… It’s pretty clear that in at least a couple periods of Stalinist history, extreme paranoia led him to imprison or otherwise dispose of enemies in great numbers, e.g. 1937 and again with the Doctor’s Plot toward the end of his life. The late 30’s intensification is, after all, know as the Great Purge and not the great worker shortage. Anne Applebaum’s scholarly account of the gulag is a great read on the subject. I think she would probably agree that the it wasn’t an either/or issue. Labour demands for industrialization were a driver as were Stalin’s own delusions.
    - Carioca 3y ago
      I've been reading up on Soviet Rocket history and both Kurolev and Glushko were sent to Gulags for suspicion of organizing against the government. On the other hand they did do dome engineering work while there, so I suppose there were facilities that didn't conform to today's image of a Gulag
      - thriftwy 3y ago
        It was much worse - why pay scientists and engineers when you can arrest them and exploit them to work for free? It's as bad as privatized incarceration and worse.
- thesz 3y ago
  >18 million people were sent to gulags. 1.6 million died. Please, be aware that Solzhenitsin admitted that he lied about millions sent to Gulag on purpose. Documents from archives do not support that numbers.
  - leereeves 3y ago
    The archives were destroyed: > Russia's Gulag History Museum says a researcher has discovered a secret Moscow directive in 2014 ordering the destruction of some of the last remaining documents on Soviet-era prisoners -- a move it described as "catastrophic" for historians. https://www.rferl.org/a/gilag-history-museum-says-moscow-ordered-catastrophic-destruction-prisoner-records/29281003.html https://www.rferl.org/a/gilag-history-museum-says-moscow-ord... Every source I've seen says about 18 million, including that one: > As many as 17 million people were sent to the Gulag, the notorious Soviet prison camp system, in the 1930s and 1940s, and at least 5 million of them were convicted on false testimony.
    - thesz 3y ago
      RFERL, I guess, is a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is a propaganda machine, not an objective history research institution. These 18 (and up, sometimes up to 40) millions of people in GULAG (notice all caps) numbers are taken from Solzhenitsin's works, if you go through the chain of sources long enough. And Solzhenitsiin's works are not based on any facts or documents. I also wonder where does this "at least 5 millions of them were convicted on false testimony" come from? How this interesting and significant number was obtained? Did the resource you cite analyzed every and all records of these 17 (18, sometiimes up to 40) million people?
kome 3y ago
> Sometimes I have the impression that Hollywood movies gave people a permanent wrong perception yes, people have a very strange image of the soviet union somehow. the 90s have been the worse period by far in the ex-soviet union. before the system was in crisis, but sort of worked for most. and in the 50s, 60s was working fairly well. 70s decline, 80s crisis.
- dustymcp 3y ago
  Fairly well on what scale?
  - Carioca 3y ago
    On the scale that the CIA said the average citizen of the USSR ate better than their counterpart in the US[1], while still having a lot of science and engineering going on. Material conditions in the USSR improved dramatically after WW2. A lot more than, say, here in Brazil, where we never had a communist regime though we did have a US-backed dictatorship [1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R000601440024-5.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R0006014...
    - chrysler 3y ago
      CIA notoriously overestimated the USSR by assuming competence within (what seemed to them) reasonable bounds. Bananas were luxury items and this sad thing was the most popular ice cream, fondly remembered to this day, because there was nothing better: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Plombir_in_der_Waffel.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Plombir_... In some select border regions that could pick up foreign TV channels (Karelia and Estonia), authorities told that the grocery stores shown in commercials were a CIA psyop. Soviet citizens up to to the highest levels of party elite were deeply shaken when they could finally travel and experience them in person: https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When... Imagine coming from that pathetic ice cream and suddenly seeing huge shelves full of everything you can imagine, and not only ice cream, but all other categories too. That was a tremendous cultural shock to anyone who had grown up in the USSR, beyond wildest imagination. The idea that US and USSR were equals or even anything near it is totally absurd. You can see the same tradition continue in how Russia's potential in Ukraine was ridiculously overestimated, and how mundane things like toilet bowls and washing machines are deemed by Russian soldiers and officers as worthy of looting.
adrian_b 3y ago
> I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos. It is very unlikely that any of those cars was owned by an individual. Most likely all cars were state-owned and they were used by various important-enough officials. During that time in USSR, many of those who made efforts to ascend through the hierarchy of the Communist Party hoped to reach a position high enough to be provided with a Pobeda car. Even if the cars were claimed to be "property of all the people of the USSR" those who received them as an official car frequently did not hesitate to use them for their personal interests. It was one of the main perks of such positions. Only a couple of decades later, after a few more car factories for cheap cars, like "Lada", started production, cars owned by individuals became common in the USSR.
vkou 3y ago
The big losers were the farmers - industrial workers (in the later years) had reasonably good pay for the work they were doing. The farmers did not. They worked incredible hours, for little pay[1], and had very few options for leaving for a better life in the city. Access to non-staple consumer goods was, of course, very uneven. The party gets first crack at it, and if anything's left, there's a dograce to pick up the scraps. [1] Gosh, that part sounds just like being a farmhand today. Weird how farming is universally a shitty job.
bitcurious 3y ago
> For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. This was not the case in the Soviet Union, certainly not under Stalin. The secret police was not only a means of subjugation but a means of extraction - if you had a house, a job, an apartment, or even a wife, that someone in the system wanted, you would be accused, tried, and repressed.

by lp4vn 3y ago

leereeves 3y ago

> what it really means to live in a dictatorship with a secret police. For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. 18 million people were sent to gulags. 1.6 million died. I doubt they were all "involved in politics" beyond expressing an opinion Stalin didn't allow.

lp4vn 3y ago
Do you really think that 18 million people were sent to gulags for being antagonists of Stalin? Don't you think that it's much more plausible a scenario where the regime needed a lot of cheap work and because of that kept sending people to gulags for lower crimes like petty theft or even customary crimes like not holding a job? The educated middle/high class in Moscow was probably quite critic of Stalin's policies and nothing would happen to them as long as they were not loud enough with their criticism.
- leereeves 3y ago
  Yes I really do think that the Soviets sent people to gulags for "being antagonists of Stalin". Even before Stalin, under Lenin (who was not nearly so bad as Stalin) about 100,000 people were executed for being "counter-revolutionaries" during the Red Terror.
  - PlkMarudny 3y ago
    Lenin was... As bad or worse.
- kashunstva 3y ago
  > Don't you think that it's much more plausible a scenario where the regime needed a lot of cheap work… It’s pretty clear that in at least a couple periods of Stalinist history, extreme paranoia led him to imprison or otherwise dispose of enemies in great numbers, e.g. 1937 and again with the Doctor’s Plot toward the end of his life. The late 30’s intensification is, after all, know as the Great Purge and not the great worker shortage. Anne Applebaum’s scholarly account of the gulag is a great read on the subject. I think she would probably agree that the it wasn’t an either/or issue. Labour demands for industrialization were a driver as were Stalin’s own delusions.
  - Carioca 3y ago
    I've been reading up on Soviet Rocket history and both Kurolev and Glushko were sent to Gulags for suspicion of organizing against the government. On the other hand they did do dome engineering work while there, so I suppose there were facilities that didn't conform to today's image of a Gulag
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      It was much worse - why pay scientists and engineers when you can arrest them and exploit them to work for free? It's as bad as privatized incarceration and worse.
thesz 3y ago
>18 million people were sent to gulags. 1.6 million died. Please, be aware that Solzhenitsin admitted that he lied about millions sent to Gulag on purpose. Documents from archives do not support that numbers.
- leereeves 3y ago
  The archives were destroyed: > Russia's Gulag History Museum says a researcher has discovered a secret Moscow directive in 2014 ordering the destruction of some of the last remaining documents on Soviet-era prisoners -- a move it described as "catastrophic" for historians. https://www.rferl.org/a/gilag-history-museum-says-moscow-ordered-catastrophic-destruction-prisoner-records/29281003.html https://www.rferl.org/a/gilag-history-museum-says-moscow-ord... Every source I've seen says about 18 million, including that one: > As many as 17 million people were sent to the Gulag, the notorious Soviet prison camp system, in the 1930s and 1940s, and at least 5 million of them were convicted on false testimony.
  - thesz 3y ago
    RFERL, I guess, is a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is a propaganda machine, not an objective history research institution. These 18 (and up, sometimes up to 40) millions of people in GULAG (notice all caps) numbers are taken from Solzhenitsin's works, if you go through the chain of sources long enough. And Solzhenitsiin's works are not based on any facts or documents. I also wonder where does this "at least 5 millions of them were convicted on false testimony" come from? How this interesting and significant number was obtained? Did the resource you cite analyzed every and all records of these 17 (18, sometiimes up to 40) million people?

kome 3y ago

> Sometimes I have the impression that Hollywood movies gave people a permanent wrong perception yes, people have a very strange image of the soviet union somehow. the 90s have been the worse period by far in the ex-soviet union. before the system was in crisis, but sort of worked for most. and in the 50s, 60s was working fairly well. 70s decline, 80s crisis.

dustymcp 3y ago
Fairly well on what scale?
- Carioca 3y ago
  On the scale that the CIA said the average citizen of the USSR ate better than their counterpart in the US[1], while still having a lot of science and engineering going on. Material conditions in the USSR improved dramatically after WW2. A lot more than, say, here in Brazil, where we never had a communist regime though we did have a US-backed dictatorship [1]: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R000601440024-5.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R0006014...
  - chrysler 3y ago
    CIA notoriously overestimated the USSR by assuming competence within (what seemed to them) reasonable bounds. Bananas were luxury items and this sad thing was the most popular ice cream, fondly remembered to this day, because there was nothing better: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Plombir_in_der_Waffel.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Plombir_... In some select border regions that could pick up foreign TV channels (Karelia and Estonia), authorities told that the grocery stores shown in commercials were a CIA psyop. Soviet citizens up to to the highest levels of party elite were deeply shaken when they could finally travel and experience them in person: https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When... Imagine coming from that pathetic ice cream and suddenly seeing huge shelves full of everything you can imagine, and not only ice cream, but all other categories too. That was a tremendous cultural shock to anyone who had grown up in the USSR, beyond wildest imagination. The idea that US and USSR were equals or even anything near it is totally absurd. You can see the same tradition continue in how Russia's potential in Ukraine was ridiculously overestimated, and how mundane things like toilet bowls and washing machines are deemed by Russian soldiers and officers as worthy of looting.

adrian_b 3y ago

> I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos. It is very unlikely that any of those cars was owned by an individual. Most likely all cars were state-owned and they were used by various important-enough officials. During that time in USSR, many of those who made efforts to ascend through the hierarchy of the Communist Party hoped to reach a position high enough to be provided with a Pobeda car. Even if the cars were claimed to be "property of all the people of the USSR" those who received them as an official car frequently did not hesitate to use them for their personal interests. It was one of the main perks of such positions. Only a couple of decades later, after a few more car factories for cheap cars, like "Lada", started production, cars owned by individuals became common in the USSR.

vkou 3y ago

The big losers were the farmers - industrial workers (in the later years) had reasonably good pay for the work they were doing. The farmers did not. They worked incredible hours, for little pay[1], and had very few options for leaving for a better life in the city. Access to non-staple consumer goods was, of course, very uneven. The party gets first crack at it, and if anything's left, there's a dograce to pick up the scraps. [1] Gosh, that part sounds just like being a farmhand today. Weird how farming is universally a shitty job.

bitcurious 3y ago

> For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. This was not the case in the Soviet Union, certainly not under Stalin. The secret police was not only a means of subjugation but a means of extraction - if you had a house, a job, an apartment, or even a wife, that someone in the system wanted, you would be accused, tried, and repressed.