4 ms·

If it was after USSR collapse, we are talking about different countries. Like comparing the Mao China, with millions starving, and the 90's China. Moscow aft

If it was after USSR collapse, we are talking about different countries. Like comparing the Mao China, with millions starving, and the 90's China. Moscow after the USSR was just a city anyone could go, even the poor. During the USSR you couldn't travel freely, much less go to Moscow and look for a job. Getting a job in Moscow was a serious promotion.

thesz 3y ago
The countries are mostly the same due to inertia and, frankly, there were no million excess deaths per year in USSR as there were throughout 90-s in Russia. The inertia of lifestyle is such a massive thing, you cannot overturn it overnight, you cannot change it completely even in ten years. During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now. Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers. Their parents went to Moscow, got a job and then got an apartment to live there.
- lnsru 3y ago
  During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. <- that’s not true. The newcomers in moscow got job and then went to moscow. And got an apartment from the institution that offered the job. Going to moscow without a job would make you бомж (lowest caste of homeless) there.
- stunpix 3y ago
  > During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now. NO! This is a HUGE fallacy (if not a lie). A "kolkhoz people" (kolkhoz stands for "collective farm") had no passports at all till 1974 and they had NO right to leave their living territories without identity documents. Sort of a slavery. As of 1970 the "kolkhoz people" were ≈20% (or ≈50 millions) of the population. > Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers. This explains. Moscow always was a sort of "another world" than the rest of USSR.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable.
    - rdtsc 3y ago
      You could travel for vacations, see family and such. But it wasn’t as simple as get up and move to a new city. You needed a job. The place you lived was often allocated based on your workplace.
    - stunpix 3y ago
      > Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable. That's not how a math working in a communist country: it doesn't mean that the rest 80% were able to do so freely. If you think that you was able to move freely from one city to another "because I wish to try luck at a new place", then think about: how can you move to another city if you can't sell/buy apartments as they almost all owned by the state? You only can move if you got a job at a new place. Given that by the law you can't be unemployed (you could even face a criminal case if not), so you can't just go to "somewhere". If you are usual worker that somehow managed out to get a new job in another city, then you highly likely (not always) will get an apartment from a factory/state for free, but… What was a chance for you to get a something good by being from another city? Provided apartments almost always were tiny, usually no amenities, and overall living conditions were terrible. Often people were getting just rooms in communes. To get a normal apartment you had to "get into a queue" and wait for 10-20 years. Thus in every city was a huge amount of people waiting for their apartment. When in the city a lot of people are waiting their apartments for years, why someone will give something decent to a newcomer? Yeah, highly skilled/experienced managers or scientists were a bit more privileged, so they could expect of getting something good without queueing. Some people were trying to swap apartments with those who wanted to move into their city. Needless to say about chances of getting something in this way. International tourism. It was available mainly to party management and leaders. From time to time a best "workers of socialistic labor" were able to visit other "friendly" (from socialistic block) countries as a "reward", but only after party's approval and only in groups. Never individually. Also such tourism had a strict rules for travelers (what you can bring back with you or what you can visit there). Thus more than 90% of people never were abroad. The only 100% freedom to move was an inner tourism. You was able to visit almost 100% of territory inside the country as a tourist. You also can't travel across the country for a year like modern bloggers because (as I said above) you can't be unemployed. Is that a freedom as you know it?
- otherme123 3y ago
  If I'm reading the article correctly, the pics are taken around 1950, probably around april 1953. None of them after 1954, when the author was kicked from the USSR. And you compared USSR post-collapse (a minimum of 35 years after the pictures) with USSR still run by Stalin, or at least not still de-stalinized by Krushev. I'm from Spain, and nobody here would say that Spain society in the 50's is remotely comparable with Spain in the 80's. Lifestyle turned upside down in the late 70's just swapping peacefully from a dictatorship to a democracy and opening to outside information. Our borders were never too tight: we were 100% free to change residence and to go abroad, and we receive a lot of tourism from Europe and the world. I can't start to imagine the change of an USSR that suddenly opened to a world that most of the people never saw. The most simple search would give you info about the USSR inner passport (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...). You can read that from 1933 to 1991 "According to the 1926 Soviet Census 82% of the population in the Soviet Union lived in rural areas. Kolkhozniks and individual peasants did not have passports and could not move into towns without permission". Also "On 21 October 1953 [...] rural residents could not leave their place of residence for more than thirty days, and even for this leave a permit from a selsoviet (rural council or soviet) was require". You can read also about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union, "Propiska was both a residency permit and a migration-recording tool, used [...] in the Soviet Union from the 1930s. [...] A propiska was certified via local police (Militsiya) registers and stamped in this internal passports. Undocumented residence anywhere for longer than a few weeks was prohibited." The current inner passports used in Russia are inherited from those years.

thesz 3y ago

The countries are mostly the same due to inertia and, frankly, there were no million excess deaths per year in USSR as there were throughout 90-s in Russia. The inertia of lifestyle is such a massive thing, you cannot overturn it overnight, you cannot change it completely even in ten years. During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now. Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers. Their parents went to Moscow, got a job and then got an apartment to live there.

lnsru 3y ago
During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. <- that’s not true. The newcomers in moscow got job and then went to moscow. And got an apartment from the institution that offered the job. Going to moscow without a job would make you бомж (lowest caste of homeless) there.
stunpix 3y ago
> During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now. NO! This is a HUGE fallacy (if not a lie). A "kolkhoz people" (kolkhoz stands for "collective farm") had no passports at all till 1974 and they had NO right to leave their living territories without identity documents. Sort of a slavery. As of 1970 the "kolkhoz people" were ≈20% (or ≈50 millions) of the population. > Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers. This explains. Moscow always was a sort of "another world" than the rest of USSR.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable.
  - rdtsc 3y ago
    You could travel for vacations, see family and such. But it wasn’t as simple as get up and move to a new city. You needed a job. The place you lived was often allocated based on your workplace.
  - stunpix 3y ago
    > Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable. That's not how a math working in a communist country: it doesn't mean that the rest 80% were able to do so freely. If you think that you was able to move freely from one city to another "because I wish to try luck at a new place", then think about: how can you move to another city if you can't sell/buy apartments as they almost all owned by the state? You only can move if you got a job at a new place. Given that by the law you can't be unemployed (you could even face a criminal case if not), so you can't just go to "somewhere". If you are usual worker that somehow managed out to get a new job in another city, then you highly likely (not always) will get an apartment from a factory/state for free, but… What was a chance for you to get a something good by being from another city? Provided apartments almost always were tiny, usually no amenities, and overall living conditions were terrible. Often people were getting just rooms in communes. To get a normal apartment you had to "get into a queue" and wait for 10-20 years. Thus in every city was a huge amount of people waiting for their apartment. When in the city a lot of people are waiting their apartments for years, why someone will give something decent to a newcomer? Yeah, highly skilled/experienced managers or scientists were a bit more privileged, so they could expect of getting something good without queueing. Some people were trying to swap apartments with those who wanted to move into their city. Needless to say about chances of getting something in this way. International tourism. It was available mainly to party management and leaders. From time to time a best "workers of socialistic labor" were able to visit other "friendly" (from socialistic block) countries as a "reward", but only after party's approval and only in groups. Never individually. Also such tourism had a strict rules for travelers (what you can bring back with you or what you can visit there). Thus more than 90% of people never were abroad. The only 100% freedom to move was an inner tourism. You was able to visit almost 100% of territory inside the country as a tourist. You also can't travel across the country for a year like modern bloggers because (as I said above) you can't be unemployed. Is that a freedom as you know it?
otherme123 3y ago
If I'm reading the article correctly, the pics are taken around 1950, probably around april 1953. None of them after 1954, when the author was kicked from the USSR. And you compared USSR post-collapse (a minimum of 35 years after the pictures) with USSR still run by Stalin, or at least not still de-stalinized by Krushev. I'm from Spain, and nobody here would say that Spain society in the 50's is remotely comparable with Spain in the 80's. Lifestyle turned upside down in the late 70's just swapping peacefully from a dictatorship to a democracy and opening to outside information. Our borders were never too tight: we were 100% free to change residence and to go abroad, and we receive a lot of tourism from Europe and the world. I can't start to imagine the change of an USSR that suddenly opened to a world that most of the people never saw. The most simple search would give you info about the USSR inner passport (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...). You can read that from 1933 to 1991 "According to the 1926 Soviet Census 82% of the population in the Soviet Union lived in rural areas. Kolkhozniks and individual peasants did not have passports and could not move into towns without permission". Also "On 21 October 1953 [...] rural residents could not leave their place of residence for more than thirty days, and even for this leave a permit from a selsoviet (rural council or soviet) was require". You can read also about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propiska_in_the_Soviet_Union, "Propiska was both a residency permit and a migration-recording tool, used [...] in the Soviet Union from the 1930s. [...] A propiska was certified via local police (Militsiya) registers and stamped in this internal passports. Undocumented residence anywhere for longer than a few weeks was prohibited." The current inner passports used in Russia are inherited from those years.