6 ms·

The USSR in 100 Photographs

68 points by decimalenough 2mo ago

biscuits1 2mo ago
Number 58 is an American MB Big Trak programmable toy tank. I would find it fascinating if an author did a deep dive into the toy knock-offs in the USSR and how they came to be.
hnl68yz0go 2mo ago
[dead]
Eriks 2mo ago
no photos of KGB prisons or gulags? Not surprising..
- nailer 2mo ago
  There’s a few breadlines
- f6v 2mo ago
  People, on average, were much less unhappy than others believe.
  - ekianjo 2mo ago
    survivorship bias
  - Eriks 2mo ago
    Under occupation people hide their real emotions
    - lnsru 2mo ago
      This topic is very interesting. People from former Soviet states learned what and when to say. Sometimes in brutal inhumane way. Saying that dad brought some sausage or construction material from work was a thing kids learned not to say in public very early. There were many things no to say. Like Xmas or Easter celebrations were topic for family members only. Burial with a priest was tabu. Grandfather fighting Soviet occupation was a big secret kids never knew about. Knowing that having and reading some books were a way to have big troubles. You needed to get mature quickly to live normal life under Soviet occupation. It was really shocking when I arrived in West Germany that guys in their 30s were behaving like Soviet teens.
      - mnky9800n 2mo ago
        It’s not so bad to keep your mouth shut. Americans blab about everything constantly.
        Sabinus 2mo ago
        It actually is a bad experience to live under a totalitarian regime in fear of disappearing forever if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And it's kinda weird you're minimising that.
    - f6v 2mo ago
      I mean, opinions are split. I met some older Estonians who couldn't stop blabbering in broken Russian how they liked it in the USSR (was a freaking awkward bus ride listening about NATO provoking Putin). I'm sure there were political prisoners whose life was absolutely miserable. But life isn't a Hollywood movie where everyone was in Gulag. I can only speak for Estonia. And people built their lives and careers, went to sport competitions, completed their PhDs, etc.
    - IAmBroom 2mo ago
      My Ukrainian (US-raised) coworker was shocked to discover his mother spoke Ukrainian. He was too young when they were in Soviet-controlled Ukraine to trust with the mother tongue of his people. The State might discover they were secretly preserving the language. Fun times.
  - readthenotes1 2mo ago
    I like the picture showing off the full shelf of bread. Which Russian leader came over here and thought he was seeing a potemken village of grocery stores
    - dugmartin 2mo ago
      I think you are thinking g of Boris Yeltsin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to...
    - hagbard_c 2mo ago
      That picture is the USSR equivalent of the pictures of clean streets without homeless encampments made in San Francisco when Gavin Newsom cleaned up the place before the leader of the Chinese Communist Party visited the city [1]. Come to think of it that's quite the telling statement. [1] https://www.scnr.com/article/thats-true-because-its-true-newsom-confirms-san-francisco-was-cleaned-in-preparation-for-xi-jinping_7a2daf28824e11ee92b58693ecc696b7 https://www.scnr.com/article/thats-true-because-its-true-new...
  - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
    Well yes. Those that were unhappy were killed or sent to siberia like some of my relatives
- well_ackshually 2mo ago
  Americans prisons have been historically so much better than USSR prisons, sure <3
  - ekianjo 2mo ago
    you dont have massive death rates in american prisons
  - victorbjorklund 2mo ago
    I would take an American prison over a slave Labour camp in Stalins Soviet camp with massive death rates. Few American prisoners freeze to death, starve to death or are beaten to death by the guards. Stop comparing American prisions to Stalin gulags or Hitlers concentration camps. They are not the same.
    - Arodex 2mo ago
      You know that American prisons are slave labor camps too, right? I am not exaggerating things: the 13th amendment calls it "slavery". https://daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-plantation/ https://daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-pl... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/inmates-at-louisianas-angola-prison-sue-to-end-working-farm-lines-in-brutal-heat https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/inmates-at-louisianas-an...
      - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
        American prisoners are forced to gather weeds to get some form of food?
        Arodex 2mo ago
        If that is your baseline, so yeah, mostly everything is fine compared to it. It "just" black guys picking cotton while watched by armed guys on horses. I am sure American slaves were better treated than Soviet goulag prisoners. After all, slave owners didn't want to "break" too much their property.
- keiferski 2mo ago
  These kinds of articles are only popular in places that had no direct experience of life in the USSR. No one in Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. looks back on the time with fondness.
  - epolanski 2mo ago
    I'm Polish and your statement is absolutely false. Things were simply different. My family had an absolutely happy life for all the generations that followed WW2.
    - keiferski 2mo ago
      I've lived in Poland for the last decade. I'd say 95% of the population looks back on the USSR era with negative views. Poland probably has the best situation it's been in for hundreds of years. The opinions of 20 year olds that weren't alive during the USSR era do not count.
      - epolanski 2mo ago
        Of course, why would I, a Pole from as many generations as I can go back in time, know about it better that an expat? 1. Living in Poland does not mean knowing how Poles think about it 2. > I'd say 95% of the population looks back on the USSR era with negative views This is wrong, opinions about PRL have always been mixed and highly influenced by demographics. [1] And they shifted in time. 2014 was the first time more Poles had a negative opinion on PRL than a positive one, similar polls in 2009 and 2000 had much more people seeing the PRL positively (and better than democratic Poland). [2] 3. The opinions of 20 year olds that weren't alive during the USSR era do not count. True, very true! And ironically this is probably where your wrong ideas come from: talking to your millennial coworkers likely in some tech hub or getting randoms opinions over the internet. Stats show that people that were at least 15 by 1989 have warm or mixed memories about PRL. It's actually younger generations that learn it by history rather than experience to hold negative ones. And this shift is even harsher after 2014 and 2016 as there's less people who lived those times polled and more youth that didn't, let alone the Russo-Ukrainian war pushed more people into harsher stances. Let me tell you how things are: life in Communist Poland was ok, people had jobs, had roofs on their heads, had hobbies, did sports, made friends, love, went on vacations. Lives were normal. Are things better now? They are. But to imagine communist countries as some bleak grey dystopia ala papers please or Orwell's 1984 where people were unhappy is nonsense. Believe it or not people had normal lives, with jobs, roofs on their heads, making friends, love, going on vacations, playing sports, cultivating hobbies, etc. I see this every time the topic of communism in Eastern Europe comes up on socials/internet: people that didn't live the era, nor the country, nor the system, speaking about how the people that lived it feel or think. [1] https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/cbos-44-proc-polakow-pozytywnie-46-proc-negatywnie-o-okresie-prl-u https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/cbos-44-proc-polakow-pozytywni... [2] https://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2009/K_093_09.PDF https://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2009/K_093_09.PDF
- Tade0 2mo ago
  After Stalin's death in 1953 the higher ups became more preoccupied with fighting amongst each other and maintaining the soviet union's status on the global scene than holding a tight grip on society like their former leader. Most of the photos appear to be from the Brezhnev Era, when the soviet union already transitioned away from Stalinism. Also I imagine anyone taking a photo of any of that would find themselves a resident shortly after.
vient 2mo ago
> 53. МИР И ЧЕЛОВЕК Oh wow, a blast from the past. Remember reading and re-reading it a lot when I was very young. Seems it is still printed and updated! You can see the 1988 edition in full here https://samoe-vazhnoe.blogspot.com/2014/03/mir-i-chelovek.html https://samoe-vazhnoe.blogspot.com/2014/03/mir-i-chelovek.ht...
- Tade0 2mo ago
  I had the toy pictured in 59. You could tell that a toy was made in USSR by the fact that it often didn't have any markings indicating the origin.
  - xtiansimon 2mo ago
    #58, I had the US version. How funny to see a Russian version.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
Toutouxc 2mo ago
I grew up in an ex-eastern bloc country, so I’m familiar with some of the aesthetics and even echoes of the Soviet mentality. The images fill me with despair. So much human potential wasted.
- epolanski 2mo ago
  Me too, Poland, but I don't share the sentiment a bit. I'm not denying things are better now, but they are also much more complex, people socialize way less, neighborhoods that were filled with life are now filled by cars taking any corner and you barely see anybody sitting outside and just talking. People are way more anxious and less happy, have no kids at all. Are we better overall? Sure. If you look at the financial angle we are. Are we safer or happier? I don't see that at all.
  - Arodex 2mo ago
    >they are also much more complex, people socialize way less, neighborhoods that were filled with life are now filled by cars taking any corner and you barely see anybody sitting outside and just talking. People are way more anxious and less happy, have no kids at all. This is also the contrast you can see in countries that didn't live under a single-party rule with a secret police that can disappear you at any moment. What you describe is the disease of modernity, and you wouldn't get a safer happier result if the USSR was back or never disappeared.
    - epolanski 2mo ago
      You are right this is a disease of modernity, not much about Polish transition from PRL.
  - twolegs 2mo ago
    That’s a false comparison. People socialising less today has nothing to do with the end of communism. Poland becoming freer, safer and vastly more prosperous is a lot more than just a “financial angle.”
  - lnsru 2mo ago
epolanski 2mo ago
At times I think about how democracies, especially those plagued by winner-takes-all mechanics like presidential and semi-presidential republics, can pretend to be democratic while de facto being very authoritarian. In the USSR, workers (in Soviets) voted their delegates and the delegates in turn elected the top hierarchy of the communist party. So yes, the USSR was obviously an authoritarian regime controlled by a single party, but you still had to lobby and depend on getting elected by your party, whose delegates had to be first elected by the workers. In modern Russia, Belarus, etc? It's arguably even worse, the elected presidents and prime ministers de facto control the opposition which pretends to be an opposition, and real opposition faces either legal issues or direct threats. And yet, you can pretend to be a democracy and tell your people its better than it was once, but is it really? It's been 60 years now till the last parliamentary republic turned authoritarian, Sri Lanka. Every single other country to do so has always been a presidential or semi presidential republic. From the former Eastern Europe, to Asia, to Africa to South America. We should now know that electing a single person to hold executive power is just non democratic and concentrates too much power in a single individual, but we keep falling in love with winner-takes-all elections and loving the idea of a single individual that doesn't need to win his own parties or PMs support every day can fix things quickly.
- victorbjorklund 2mo ago
  Soviet only had elections on paper. You serious think it was possible to vote away Stalin? You must be crazy if you claim there was free elections and anyone could run against Stali.
  - nec4b 2mo ago
    He is also probably not aware of how many people Stalin's KGB murdered or that even kids were supposed to report their parents.
  - NoOn3 2mo ago
    I seriously belive that it was possible to vote away Stalin. But I'm Russian maybe I'm mistaken, but I think the accusations against Stalin are exaggerated. He was not clearly only terrible. There were definitely difficult times, and some of his decisions were bad. But he also did things for the benefit of the people. He didn't accumulate any wealth for himself.
lnsru 2mo ago
Picture 9 with 12 string electric guitar. Extremely rare instrument. Normal 6 string electric guitars were very average quality. Rock music was anyway not desired. Coming from the wrong place. Every piece of popular musicians was reviewed by state organs. Endless censorship everywhere.
iammjm 2mo ago
More like: USSR propaganda in 100 photographs. One “man in space” vs millions of people devoid of plumbing and basic products, all living in a repressive orwellian society. The aftermath is still tangible: former satellite states are even after 30 years behind Western Europe economically, the former USSR republics are either marginalised, autocratic or in active war for their survival against their former colonial masters, and of course there’s Russia itself with its utmost lack of respect for its own citizens’ well being. So sure feel free to enjoy these photographs but don’t let them trick you into imagining USSR as some sort of utopia, because it was definitely way closer to an actual dystopia, and the world is now an actually better place because USSR is no more
- cr1895 2mo ago
  >don’t let them trick you into imagining USSR as some sort of utopia was there some particular risk of this?
  - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
    The whole of US socialists believe it was some sort of paradise on earth
    - IAmBroom 2mo ago
      Absurd polemic take.
  - iammjm 2mo ago
    You’d be surprised how many people there are in the West who picture USSR as some kind of a magical world run by elves and fairies. Left-leaning French academics is one such group worth calling out directly. Their (partly justified) hatred for capitalism plus the lack of direct exposure to communism causes some real cognitive distortions
  - olexsmir 2mo ago
    I see a lot of westerners praise USSR as some sort of lost paradise. And for me, Eastern European, it's crazy
craftkiller 2mo ago
What's going on with the photo of the children standing around a light wearing sunglasses? My first thought was tanning booth but surely they weren't tanning children?
- woodruffw 2mo ago
  “Ultraviolet baths” for vitamin D. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo-of-the-day/photo/ultraviolet-bath-mcnally-pod https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo-of-the-day/photo/ul...
- cogman10 2mo ago
  Likely it was UV exposure to raise the kids vitamin D. I'm guessing this was something for northern parts of russia. (Yes, they were tanning the kids :D) Skin cancer from sun exposure wasn't something I think they'd have considered in the USSR.
  - bloak 2mo ago
    I don't know much about the USSR but I'll just put this here: 1. If the children didn't have enough vitamin D, wouldn't a pill be a much cheaper and easier solution? 2. There seem to be other possible reasons for prescribing treatment with ultraviolet light because I seem to recall a case of someone (in England, half a century ago) having that recommended for some kind of skin condition.
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      > If the children didn't have enough vitamin D, wouldn't a pill be a much cheaper and easier solution? Apparently they did that too. [1] If I were to guess, there was probably a belief that you could be getting some unmeasured health benefits from sunlight that you don't get from a vitamin D supplement. In the 30s in the US the government mandated that all milk be fortified with vitamin D. > There seem to be other possible reasons for prescribing treatment with ultraviolet light because I seem to recall a case of someone (in England, half a century ago) having that recommended for some kind of skin condition. My grandpa was treated with radiation for his eczema as a kid. IIRC, he was blasted with xray radiation. While he lived into his 90s, he had some of the worst skin I've ever seen in my life. That treatment ruined his skin for life. He was actually used in dermatology glossaries for several skin conditions because he basically had them all. I'm sure if you look up various skin conditions you'll probably still see pictures of a patch of my grandpa's skin :). IDK if the USSR was doing it. Most of the literature I saw was saying it was to combat rickets. [1] https://doaj.org/article/8ad9233cdeb54973aec8b3b0d84ec88e https://doaj.org/article/8ad9233cdeb54973aec8b3b0d84ec88e
sgt101 2mo ago
Worth watching Star City on Apple TV for a perspective on Soviet life. Now, Star City is definitely propaganda but it makes you think!
btbuildem 2mo ago
https://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics2/20070801/ussr_18.jpg https://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics2/20070801/ussr_18.jpg my favourite of the lot. Runner up, the inconsolable background pooper (towards the end), what a weird photo to take btw.
dzonga 2mo ago
imagine if these guys were able to be pragmatic and reform like the Chinese deed & not be so dogmatic about ideology - what they could've been. I guess Deng Xioping said it best - "I don't care if the cat is black, white or purple as long as it catches mice"
- pandaman 2mo ago
  They were pragmatic and tried to reform. The problem that China did not have were ethnic tensions. Every SSR believed that it contributes more than it receives from the union and its people are oppressed. The only force holding them together was the ideology.
  - IAmBroom 2mo ago
    > The problem that China did not have were ethnic tensions. The still on-going genocide of non-Han ethnic groups did produce a slight tension.
    - pandaman 2mo ago
      Yes, only slight. Ethnic tension exists literally everywhere to a certain degree. It's least significant in a nation state with 90%+ dominant people like China. It's crucial in a union without a single people making the majority of population and built-in separation of peoples like the USSR.
joshstrange 2mo ago
I watched "Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone - What It Felt Like to Live Through The Collapse of Communism and Democracy" (7 episode documentary series) last year and can highly recommend it. It's not like any documentary I'd ever seen, there is no narration, very little "story" exactly, it's mostly a collection of footage spliced together (I believe it was all/mostly BBC footage, a lot of it seemed like b-roll-type stuff). I found it absolutely fascinating. After the first episode I didn't think I'd watch anymore of it since it's very odd (how it's presented IMHO) but it kept drawing me back in.
- adwi 2mo ago
  Adam Curtis is great, definitely check out his other work. Hypernormalisation is a good place to start: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM
- cudla100 2mo ago
  I like this. https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/kategorie/4079-historie/4208-komunismus/ https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/kategorie/4079-histor... No subtitles, but it is all on youtube anyway.
- arprocter 2mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U...
tanepiper 2mo ago
Something I noticed in Star City was how well they managed to find the aesthetic from the time of the USSR. A set designer can of course find pieces from the time, but I always find with shows made now it always feels retro rather than authentic, but in this show they managed to find some genuine time capsules.
TomMasz 2mo ago
The photos of stores and the paucity of merchandise available say a lot.
- tocs3 2mo ago
  Yes, I have heard a lot about the austerity of life in the USSR growing up in the 1980s. Comparing life in the world of today to what was available , even in the US, is going to look meager. Growing up in a small town in the 1980s in the US our local grocery store could be measured in the 100s sqft (that also sold clothing and was a feed store) . Now in the same area I shop in a store that can be measured in acres with a super Walmart down the street that is even larger and a few other giant stores in the neighborhood (Home Depot, Academy, etc). It will make anything of the time look sparse. Again, not trying to say the USSR had an abundance of merchandise but that they were different times.
  - hagbard_c 2mo ago
    You're comparing a (probably rural?) 'general store' in the 80's with current megastores and for some reason link that to the austerity experienced under communism with centrally planned economies. That's a silly comparison since those small rural general stores still exist - there's one a few km from where I live in Sweden which sells everything from groceries to clothes to tools, doubles as a feed store and also happens to sell a few dozen types of lubricants for agricultural equipment, all in a collection of small wooden buildings of the type the Swedish countryside is dotted with - and will hopefully continue doing so in the future. Compare the average supermarket in the USA in the 80's with the non-party-member equivalents in the eastern bloc countries in the same time for a better comparison. I never made it to Russia in that time but I did visit Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - both countries no longer exist - as well as the USA in that time and the difference was as clear as daylight. The USA was and still is the land of plenty, even compared to the Netherlands where I'm from and then lived but especially compared to those eastern bloc countries. This was not a matter of 'different times' but 'different political and economical systems'.
    - tocs3 2mo ago
jauntywundrkind 2mo ago
Never gonna miss a good chance to recommend Adam Curtis. Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone has an incredible collection of all sorts of historic video, everyday life intermixed with incredible news of the day across the USSR then Russia. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_TraumaZone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_Trau... It is a bit slow, atmospheric, very long. HyperNormalization or Bitter Lake are probably my go-to starting recommendations for classic Curtis, with a bit more velocity to them. But I'm very thankful for having such a visual history lesson in TraumaZone, for such a found-footage style walk through the years.
NoOn3 2mo ago
These are not just staged photos for propaganda; they are ordinary, everyday life captured in photographs. Life in the USSR was not that bad as it is written here in the comments. Education was free and quite good. Medicine was free. In good times, workers could even get housing (a house or apartment) for free. There were various free additional classes and clubs for children and youth. There were free exhibitions and museums. People in general were less nervous and more happy, even though they weren't very wealthy. But at least in Moscow, the life of an average city dweller was normal. There were bad aspects too, but overall, they are exaggerated in the West.

68 points by decimalenough 2mo ago

Number 58 is an American MB Big Trak programmable toy tank. I would find it fascinating if an author did a deep dive into the toy knock-offs in the USSR and how they came to be.

hnl68yz0go 2mo ago

[dead]

Eriks 2mo ago

no photos of KGB prisons or gulags? Not surprising..

nailer 2mo ago
There’s a few breadlines
f6v 2mo ago
People, on average, were much less unhappy than others believe.
- ekianjo 2mo ago
  survivorship bias
- Eriks 2mo ago
  Under occupation people hide their real emotions
  - lnsru 2mo ago
    This topic is very interesting. People from former Soviet states learned what and when to say. Sometimes in brutal inhumane way. Saying that dad brought some sausage or construction material from work was a thing kids learned not to say in public very early. There were many things no to say. Like Xmas or Easter celebrations were topic for family members only. Burial with a priest was tabu. Grandfather fighting Soviet occupation was a big secret kids never knew about. Knowing that having and reading some books were a way to have big troubles. You needed to get mature quickly to live normal life under Soviet occupation. It was really shocking when I arrived in West Germany that guys in their 30s were behaving like Soviet teens.
    - mnky9800n 2mo ago
      It’s not so bad to keep your mouth shut. Americans blab about everything constantly.
      - Sabinus 2mo ago
        It actually is a bad experience to live under a totalitarian regime in fear of disappearing forever if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And it's kinda weird you're minimising that.
  - f6v 2mo ago
    I mean, opinions are split. I met some older Estonians who couldn't stop blabbering in broken Russian how they liked it in the USSR (was a freaking awkward bus ride listening about NATO provoking Putin). I'm sure there were political prisoners whose life was absolutely miserable. But life isn't a Hollywood movie where everyone was in Gulag. I can only speak for Estonia. And people built their lives and careers, went to sport competitions, completed their PhDs, etc.
  - IAmBroom 2mo ago
    My Ukrainian (US-raised) coworker was shocked to discover his mother spoke Ukrainian. He was too young when they were in Soviet-controlled Ukraine to trust with the mother tongue of his people. The State might discover they were secretly preserving the language. Fun times.
- readthenotes1 2mo ago
  I like the picture showing off the full shelf of bread. Which Russian leader came over here and thought he was seeing a potemken village of grocery stores
  - dugmartin 2mo ago
    I think you are thinking g of Boris Yeltsin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_visit_by_Boris_Yeltsin_to...
  - hagbard_c 2mo ago
    That picture is the USSR equivalent of the pictures of clean streets without homeless encampments made in San Francisco when Gavin Newsom cleaned up the place before the leader of the Chinese Communist Party visited the city [1]. Come to think of it that's quite the telling statement. [1] https://www.scnr.com/article/thats-true-because-its-true-newsom-confirms-san-francisco-was-cleaned-in-preparation-for-xi-jinping_7a2daf28824e11ee92b58693ecc696b7 https://www.scnr.com/article/thats-true-because-its-true-new...
- TiredOfLife 2mo ago
  Well yes. Those that were unhappy were killed or sent to siberia like some of my relatives
well_ackshually 2mo ago
Americans prisons have been historically so much better than USSR prisons, sure <3
- ekianjo 2mo ago
  you dont have massive death rates in american prisons
- victorbjorklund 2mo ago
  I would take an American prison over a slave Labour camp in Stalins Soviet camp with massive death rates. Few American prisoners freeze to death, starve to death or are beaten to death by the guards. Stop comparing American prisions to Stalin gulags or Hitlers concentration camps. They are not the same.
  - Arodex 2mo ago
    You know that American prisons are slave labor camps too, right? I am not exaggerating things: the 13th amendment calls it "slavery". https://daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-plantation/ https://daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-pl... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/inmates-at-louisianas-angola-prison-sue-to-end-working-farm-lines-in-brutal-heat https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/inmates-at-louisianas-an...
    - TiredOfLife 2mo ago
      American prisoners are forced to gather weeds to get some form of food?
      - Arodex 2mo ago
        If that is your baseline, so yeah, mostly everything is fine compared to it. It "just" black guys picking cotton while watched by armed guys on horses. I am sure American slaves were better treated than Soviet goulag prisoners. After all, slave owners didn't want to "break" too much their property.
keiferski 2mo ago
These kinds of articles are only popular in places that had no direct experience of life in the USSR. No one in Latvia, Poland, Czech Republic, etc. looks back on the time with fondness.
- epolanski 2mo ago
  I'm Polish and your statement is absolutely false. Things were simply different. My family had an absolutely happy life for all the generations that followed WW2.
  - keiferski 2mo ago
    I've lived in Poland for the last decade. I'd say 95% of the population looks back on the USSR era with negative views. Poland probably has the best situation it's been in for hundreds of years. The opinions of 20 year olds that weren't alive during the USSR era do not count.
    - epolanski 2mo ago
      Of course, why would I, a Pole from as many generations as I can go back in time, know about it better that an expat? 1. Living in Poland does not mean knowing how Poles think about it 2. > I'd say 95% of the population looks back on the USSR era with negative views This is wrong, opinions about PRL have always been mixed and highly influenced by demographics. [1] And they shifted in time. 2014 was the first time more Poles had a negative opinion on PRL than a positive one, similar polls in 2009 and 2000 had much more people seeing the PRL positively (and better than democratic Poland). [2] 3. The opinions of 20 year olds that weren't alive during the USSR era do not count. True, very true! And ironically this is probably where your wrong ideas come from: talking to your millennial coworkers likely in some tech hub or getting randoms opinions over the internet. Stats show that people that were at least 15 by 1989 have warm or mixed memories about PRL. It's actually younger generations that learn it by history rather than experience to hold negative ones. And this shift is even harsher after 2014 and 2016 as there's less people who lived those times polled and more youth that didn't, let alone the Russo-Ukrainian war pushed more people into harsher stances. Let me tell you how things are: life in Communist Poland was ok, people had jobs, had roofs on their heads, had hobbies, did sports, made friends, love, went on vacations. Lives were normal. Are things better now? They are. But to imagine communist countries as some bleak grey dystopia ala papers please or Orwell's 1984 where people were unhappy is nonsense. Believe it or not people had normal lives, with jobs, roofs on their heads, making friends, love, going on vacations, playing sports, cultivating hobbies, etc. I see this every time the topic of communism in Eastern Europe comes up on socials/internet: people that didn't live the era, nor the country, nor the system, speaking about how the people that lived it feel or think. [1] https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/cbos-44-proc-polakow-pozytywnie-46-proc-negatywnie-o-okresie-prl-u https://dzieje.pl/aktualnosci/cbos-44-proc-polakow-pozytywni... [2] https://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2009/K_093_09.PDF https://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2009/K_093_09.PDF
Tade0 2mo ago
After Stalin's death in 1953 the higher ups became more preoccupied with fighting amongst each other and maintaining the soviet union's status on the global scene than holding a tight grip on society like their former leader. Most of the photos appear to be from the Brezhnev Era, when the soviet union already transitioned away from Stalinism. Also I imagine anyone taking a photo of any of that would find themselves a resident shortly after.

vient 2mo ago

> 53. МИР И ЧЕЛОВЕК Oh wow, a blast from the past. Remember reading and re-reading it a lot when I was very young. Seems it is still printed and updated! You can see the 1988 edition in full here https://samoe-vazhnoe.blogspot.com/2014/03/mir-i-chelovek.html https://samoe-vazhnoe.blogspot.com/2014/03/mir-i-chelovek.ht...

Tade0 2mo ago
I had the toy pictured in 59. You could tell that a toy was made in USSR by the fact that it often didn't have any markings indicating the origin.
- xtiansimon 2mo ago
  #58, I had the US version. How funny to see a Russian version.

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Toutouxc 2mo ago

I grew up in an ex-eastern bloc country, so I’m familiar with some of the aesthetics and even echoes of the Soviet mentality. The images fill me with despair. So much human potential wasted.

epolanski 2mo ago
Me too, Poland, but I don't share the sentiment a bit. I'm not denying things are better now, but they are also much more complex, people socialize way less, neighborhoods that were filled with life are now filled by cars taking any corner and you barely see anybody sitting outside and just talking. People are way more anxious and less happy, have no kids at all. Are we better overall? Sure. If you look at the financial angle we are. Are we safer or happier? I don't see that at all.
- Arodex 2mo ago
  >they are also much more complex, people socialize way less, neighborhoods that were filled with life are now filled by cars taking any corner and you barely see anybody sitting outside and just talking. People are way more anxious and less happy, have no kids at all. This is also the contrast you can see in countries that didn't live under a single-party rule with a secret police that can disappear you at any moment. What you describe is the disease of modernity, and you wouldn't get a safer happier result if the USSR was back or never disappeared.
  - epolanski 2mo ago
    You are right this is a disease of modernity, not much about Polish transition from PRL.
- twolegs 2mo ago
  That’s a false comparison. People socialising less today has nothing to do with the end of communism. Poland becoming freer, safer and vastly more prosperous is a lot more than just a “financial angle.”
- lnsru 2mo ago

epolanski 2mo ago

At times I think about how democracies, especially those plagued by winner-takes-all mechanics like presidential and semi-presidential republics, can pretend to be democratic while de facto being very authoritarian. In the USSR, workers (in Soviets) voted their delegates and the delegates in turn elected the top hierarchy of the communist party. So yes, the USSR was obviously an authoritarian regime controlled by a single party, but you still had to lobby and depend on getting elected by your party, whose delegates had to be first elected by the workers. In modern Russia, Belarus, etc? It's arguably even worse, the elected presidents and prime ministers de facto control the opposition which pretends to be an opposition, and real opposition faces either legal issues or direct threats. And yet, you can pretend to be a democracy and tell your people its better than it was once, but is it really? It's been 60 years now till the last parliamentary republic turned authoritarian, Sri Lanka. Every single other country to do so has always been a presidential or semi presidential republic. From the former Eastern Europe, to Asia, to Africa to South America. We should now know that electing a single person to hold executive power is just non democratic and concentrates too much power in a single individual, but we keep falling in love with winner-takes-all elections and loving the idea of a single individual that doesn't need to win his own parties or PMs support every day can fix things quickly.

victorbjorklund 2mo ago
Soviet only had elections on paper. You serious think it was possible to vote away Stalin? You must be crazy if you claim there was free elections and anyone could run against Stali.
- nec4b 2mo ago
  He is also probably not aware of how many people Stalin's KGB murdered or that even kids were supposed to report their parents.
- NoOn3 2mo ago
  I seriously belive that it was possible to vote away Stalin. But I'm Russian maybe I'm mistaken, but I think the accusations against Stalin are exaggerated. He was not clearly only terrible. There were definitely difficult times, and some of his decisions were bad. But he also did things for the benefit of the people. He didn't accumulate any wealth for himself.

lnsru 2mo ago

Picture 9 with 12 string electric guitar. Extremely rare instrument. Normal 6 string electric guitars were very average quality. Rock music was anyway not desired. Coming from the wrong place. Every piece of popular musicians was reviewed by state organs. Endless censorship everywhere.

iammjm 2mo ago

More like: USSR propaganda in 100 photographs. One “man in space” vs millions of people devoid of plumbing and basic products, all living in a repressive orwellian society. The aftermath is still tangible: former satellite states are even after 30 years behind Western Europe economically, the former USSR republics are either marginalised, autocratic or in active war for their survival against their former colonial masters, and of course there’s Russia itself with its utmost lack of respect for its own citizens’ well being. So sure feel free to enjoy these photographs but don’t let them trick you into imagining USSR as some sort of utopia, because it was definitely way closer to an actual dystopia, and the world is now an actually better place because USSR is no more

cr1895 2mo ago
>don’t let them trick you into imagining USSR as some sort of utopia was there some particular risk of this?
- TiredOfLife 2mo ago
  The whole of US socialists believe it was some sort of paradise on earth
  - IAmBroom 2mo ago
    Absurd polemic take.
- iammjm 2mo ago
  You’d be surprised how many people there are in the West who picture USSR as some kind of a magical world run by elves and fairies. Left-leaning French academics is one such group worth calling out directly. Their (partly justified) hatred for capitalism plus the lack of direct exposure to communism causes some real cognitive distortions
- olexsmir 2mo ago
  I see a lot of westerners praise USSR as some sort of lost paradise. And for me, Eastern European, it's crazy

craftkiller 2mo ago

What's going on with the photo of the children standing around a light wearing sunglasses? My first thought was tanning booth but surely they weren't tanning children?

woodruffw 2mo ago
“Ultraviolet baths” for vitamin D. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo-of-the-day/photo/ultraviolet-bath-mcnally-pod https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photo-of-the-day/photo/ul...
cogman10 2mo ago
Likely it was UV exposure to raise the kids vitamin D. I'm guessing this was something for northern parts of russia. (Yes, they were tanning the kids :D) Skin cancer from sun exposure wasn't something I think they'd have considered in the USSR.
- bloak 2mo ago
  I don't know much about the USSR but I'll just put this here: 1. If the children didn't have enough vitamin D, wouldn't a pill be a much cheaper and easier solution? 2. There seem to be other possible reasons for prescribing treatment with ultraviolet light because I seem to recall a case of someone (in England, half a century ago) having that recommended for some kind of skin condition.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    > If the children didn't have enough vitamin D, wouldn't a pill be a much cheaper and easier solution? Apparently they did that too. [1] If I were to guess, there was probably a belief that you could be getting some unmeasured health benefits from sunlight that you don't get from a vitamin D supplement. In the 30s in the US the government mandated that all milk be fortified with vitamin D. > There seem to be other possible reasons for prescribing treatment with ultraviolet light because I seem to recall a case of someone (in England, half a century ago) having that recommended for some kind of skin condition. My grandpa was treated with radiation for his eczema as a kid. IIRC, he was blasted with xray radiation. While he lived into his 90s, he had some of the worst skin I've ever seen in my life. That treatment ruined his skin for life. He was actually used in dermatology glossaries for several skin conditions because he basically had them all. I'm sure if you look up various skin conditions you'll probably still see pictures of a patch of my grandpa's skin :). IDK if the USSR was doing it. Most of the literature I saw was saying it was to combat rickets. [1] https://doaj.org/article/8ad9233cdeb54973aec8b3b0d84ec88e https://doaj.org/article/8ad9233cdeb54973aec8b3b0d84ec88e

sgt101 2mo ago

Worth watching Star City on Apple TV for a perspective on Soviet life. Now, Star City is definitely propaganda but it makes you think!

btbuildem 2mo ago

https://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics2/20070801/ussr_18.jpg https://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics2/20070801/ussr_18.jpg my favourite of the lot. Runner up, the inconsolable background pooper (towards the end), what a weird photo to take btw.

dzonga 2mo ago

imagine if these guys were able to be pragmatic and reform like the Chinese deed & not be so dogmatic about ideology - what they could've been. I guess Deng Xioping said it best - "I don't care if the cat is black, white or purple as long as it catches mice"

pandaman 2mo ago
They were pragmatic and tried to reform. The problem that China did not have were ethnic tensions. Every SSR believed that it contributes more than it receives from the union and its people are oppressed. The only force holding them together was the ideology.
- IAmBroom 2mo ago
  > The problem that China did not have were ethnic tensions. The still on-going genocide of non-Han ethnic groups did produce a slight tension.
  - pandaman 2mo ago
    Yes, only slight. Ethnic tension exists literally everywhere to a certain degree. It's least significant in a nation state with 90%+ dominant people like China. It's crucial in a union without a single people making the majority of population and built-in separation of peoples like the USSR.

joshstrange 2mo ago

I watched "Russia 1985–1999: TraumaZone - What It Felt Like to Live Through The Collapse of Communism and Democracy" (7 episode documentary series) last year and can highly recommend it. It's not like any documentary I'd ever seen, there is no narration, very little "story" exactly, it's mostly a collection of footage spliced together (I believe it was all/mostly BBC footage, a lot of it seemed like b-roll-type stuff). I found it absolutely fascinating. After the first episode I didn't think I'd watch anymore of it since it's very odd (how it's presented IMHO) but it kept drawing me back in.

adwi 2mo ago
Adam Curtis is great, definitely check out his other work. Hypernormalisation is a good place to start: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr7T07WfIhM
cudla100 2mo ago
I like this. https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/kategorie/4079-historie/4208-komunismus/ https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/kategorie/4079-histor... No subtitles, but it is all on youtube anyway.
arprocter 2mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U...

tanepiper 2mo ago

Something I noticed in Star City was how well they managed to find the aesthetic from the time of the USSR. A set designer can of course find pieces from the time, but I always find with shows made now it always feels retro rather than authentic, but in this show they managed to find some genuine time capsules.

TomMasz 2mo ago

The photos of stores and the paucity of merchandise available say a lot.

tocs3 2mo ago
Yes, I have heard a lot about the austerity of life in the USSR growing up in the 1980s. Comparing life in the world of today to what was available , even in the US, is going to look meager. Growing up in a small town in the 1980s in the US our local grocery store could be measured in the 100s sqft (that also sold clothing and was a feed store) . Now in the same area I shop in a store that can be measured in acres with a super Walmart down the street that is even larger and a few other giant stores in the neighborhood (Home Depot, Academy, etc). It will make anything of the time look sparse. Again, not trying to say the USSR had an abundance of merchandise but that they were different times.
- hagbard_c 2mo ago
  You're comparing a (probably rural?) 'general store' in the 80's with current megastores and for some reason link that to the austerity experienced under communism with centrally planned economies. That's a silly comparison since those small rural general stores still exist - there's one a few km from where I live in Sweden which sells everything from groceries to clothes to tools, doubles as a feed store and also happens to sell a few dozen types of lubricants for agricultural equipment, all in a collection of small wooden buildings of the type the Swedish countryside is dotted with - and will hopefully continue doing so in the future. Compare the average supermarket in the USA in the 80's with the non-party-member equivalents in the eastern bloc countries in the same time for a better comparison. I never made it to Russia in that time but I did visit Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia - both countries no longer exist - as well as the USA in that time and the difference was as clear as daylight. The USA was and still is the land of plenty, even compared to the Netherlands where I'm from and then lived but especially compared to those eastern bloc countries. This was not a matter of 'different times' but 'different political and economical systems'.
  - tocs3 2mo ago

jauntywundrkind 2mo ago

Never gonna miss a good chance to recommend Adam Curtis. Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone has an incredible collection of all sorts of historic video, everyday life intermixed with incredible news of the day across the USSR then Russia. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6RgR4uJNvL https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSjQL8MYniTTLA3wnZ25U-s6R... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_TraumaZone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_1985%E2%80%931999:_Trau... It is a bit slow, atmospheric, very long. HyperNormalization or Bitter Lake are probably my go-to starting recommendations for classic Curtis, with a bit more velocity to them. But I'm very thankful for having such a visual history lesson in TraumaZone, for such a found-footage style walk through the years.

NoOn3 2mo ago

These are not just staged photos for propaganda; they are ordinary, everyday life captured in photographs. Life in the USSR was not that bad as it is written here in the comments. Education was free and quite good. Medicine was free. In good times, workers could even get housing (a house or apartment) for free. There were various free additional classes and clubs for children and youth. There were free exhibitions and museums. People in general were less nervous and more happy, even though they weren't very wealthy. But at least in Moscow, the life of an average city dweller was normal. There were bad aspects too, but overall, they are exaggerated in the West.