Was life for the average Soviet really as bad as they say it is?

>>17890053 (OP)
What period?

>>17890064
Post WW2

>>17890053 (OP)
Although the 80s was certainly an improvement over the Stalin era, it was generally pretty harsh and meager with few entertainment options, few consumer products, and no right to complain about anything. The state had total say in where you lived and worked and you couldn't so much as travel or leave town without a permit.

>>17890053 (OP)
Comfy and kino.

>>17890070
You were guaranteed a job and home, pretty good deal.

>>17890068
The 1950s would have been pretty shit for a lot of people in the USSR.

>>17890074
"Home" in this case meant a commieblock apartment with 4 families crowded in one apartment. As far as work, that could mean reassignment to some desolated shithole in Siberia with no right to refuse.

Maybe towards the end, certainly not for most of it's existence.

>travel to another town
You need a pass and you better have a darn good reason for this trip.
>travel outside USSR
Only if you have a clean political record and there are several tiers of international travel the easiest to get permission for are Soviet allies like GDR, Cuba etc and hardest are US and its allies which if you can get permission at all you will have a KGB minder following you at all times.

>>17890078
If I find apartments with one family is that going to mindbreak you?

>>17890085
>Only if you have a clean political record
Lmao all you have to do is not be a spy, you guys are psychotic

>>17890088
It wasn't exactly hard to get that on your record, all it took was a co-worker who didn't like you or wanted your job to denounce you to the authorities as a CIA spy.

>>17890053 (OP)
It was worse than the West except for the Great Depression and maybe the 1970s, but better than the rest of the world

>>17890091
Do you find it difficult to refrain from stabbing your host country in the back?

>>17890070
You have no idea what you’re talking about

60s and 70s are peak USSR, 80s was collapse

>>17890078
> Home" in this case meant a commieblock apartment with 4 families crowded in one apartment.
Literally not true at all brainlet

By the 60s communal living was a thing of the past, it was already being phased out by the 30s but got disrupted by WW2

>>17890091
That never happened

If you were a genuinely productive, good citizen, some tard ratting on you to the KGB would result in a short investigation followed by them probably being reprimanded for a false report

>>17890053 (OP)
>Was life for the average Soviet really as bad as they say it is?
Depends. It was shit under Stalin and Lenin before the postwar economic boom finally arrived under Khruschchev. The 60s and 70s are universally considered the high tide of the USSR internationally, but domestically it was at its peak too. Even though it had quirks and retardation from the Marxist-Leninist economy and was still totalitarian, quality of life was relatively high throughout the Union and there was opportunity given everybody knew how to game the system by that point. Ethnic oppression had ended for the most part and both the government and the people had finally settled down. Problem is Brezhnev and Andropov/Chernenko (the latter being the Soviet Biden) weren't willing to reform the economy or moderately reform the strict freedom of movement, so the system became rotten, corrupt, and broken by the 80s. And of course Gorbachev took a sledgehammer to this system and broke it all down, so by the late 70s the country was shittier again and in the 80s it was the shittiest it had been since the late 40s; all of course leading up to the wild 90s, economic depression, and instability/war.

>>17890152
>quality of life was relatively high throughout the Union and
only Moscow and Leningrad had somewhat adequate living standards the rest of the country was far more backward

>>17890053 (OP)
>Was life for the average Soviet really as bad as they say it is?

yes. there were really no positives about it at all. 12/26/91 greatest day in human history.

Važiuok namo, rusų kareiviai!

But what exactly made so many people miserable and sad drunks? Was the food quality low? Was the opportunity to get a wife and have kids low? Did they have to live next to subhumans? was crime high?
Did their media subvert their men into cucks and their women in whores and demand "equality"?
Did their media push them towards degeneracy?

>>17890152
>economic boom finally arrived under Khruschchev
lmao

>>17890072
>kino
And this is Kino:
https://youtu.be/fO1op5Q0UyU

>>17890142
>By the 60s communal living was a thing of the past
Pretty sure there were still people living like that. There was a Soviet film from 1979 called Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears where the girl moving to big city lives in one of those.

>>17890240
You need to, nay, must go back.

>>17890053 (OP)
>rent, home ownership, and groceries are so unaffordable in the modern West that zoomies romanticize the USSR because they would've been guaranteed a one bedroom box apartment in a commie block
Grim.

>>17890274
I didn't know New Wave happened in the USSR. Did they have 70s prog? How about arena rock? Hair metal?

>>17890249
>Did their media subvert their men into cucks and their women in whores and demand "equality"?
Funny Soviet moment. In the 1980s there was a series of U.S.-Soviet telecasts set up (hosted by Phil Donahue on the American side and Vladimir Pozner on the Soviet side) where the audiences could ask each other questions. An American woman asked if there was homosexuality in the USSR, and the Soviet audience awkwardly tried to answer it, by saying "that issue is unacceptable and we don't talk about ... it's a criminal offense ... nobody here has ever heard of that ... believe me it's not an issue in the theatre ... I know such people do exist but it's not a problem it simply DOES NOT EXIST."

And then another American woman asked if there is sex on television, and a Soviet woman replied "we have no sex, and we are strictly opposed to it!" Which caused the Soviet audience to burst out laughing.
https://youtu.be/GovK_r-HYdg

>>17890282
Dunno but Kino is one of their most famous rock bands, and they have some real fanatics. There's a landmark "Kino wall" in Moscow. Viktor Tsoi was like their Mick Jagger who blew up in the 80s during Perestroika and then died in a car crash. I think Russians are good at doing that Joy Division stuff because they're an understated, deadpan kind of people. The band still plays concerts with virtual Tsoi.

One of their most famous songs is called "Blood Type" about the Afghanistan war:
https://youtu.be/MTJhfySLSCQ

>>17890053 (OP)
No, people don't need modern industrial goods (iPhones n shieet) to be happy; and modern industrial goods they didn't have.
Still, it was a total failure as a 20th century country is supposed to make them available. Also, insufficient food supply and obsolete healthcare lowered their life expectancy by 10 years which was just objectively bad.
The whole point of Marxism-Leninism was that it promised to improve the *material conditions* of workers (in comparison with a capitalist system) and it failed at that.

>>17890295
they are indeed kino, thanks for showing them to me

>>17890321
They're great.

>>17890311
It's interesting to read accounts of travelers there. People will say, well they're libertarians so of course they don't like it, but you can find plenty of Russians too who share these things and go "yeah that's pretty accurate."
https://www.cato.org/commentary/fear-loathing-soviet-union

>>17890321
https://youtu.be/ldLSPG7FmL8

>>17890091
>you get reported
>you get (maybe) investigated
>they don't find anything
>nothing happens
why would they imprison/kill people for no reason just because some random chud said so? how would that even work?

>>17890311
>The whole point of Marxism-Leninism was that it promised to improve the *material conditions* of workers (in comparison with a capitalist system) and it failed at that.
Why do you lie? Most Russians before the USSR were Stone Age tier savages living in mud huts. The Soviet Union caused them to reach near American levels of things like life expectancy, and going capitalist hurt it so bad they're only now reaching Soviet levels again after 35 years. Was it perfect? No country is or ever will be, it made tons of mistakes (it wouldn't have fallen if it hadn't). Did it objectively improve its peoples lives? Undoubtably.

>>17890400
Forgot pic

>>17890400
>>17890401
>lies about a graph he himself posted
what makes tankies do this? the same thing that makes them cut their cocks off?

>>17890074
How fucking lazy do you have to be if this is your goal in life?

https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/myths-about-the-soviet-union-inequality-poverty-and-quality-of-life/

In 1990, The Washington Post reported that:

“Soviet poverty more broadly defined reaches well beyond the broke and the lost. It is a state of being for tens of millions of people and is reflected less in salary levels than in daily, unending shortages of meat and apartments, medicines and vegetables, soap and shoes. […]

On Nikolai Ostrovsky Lane, the airy pre-revolutionary apartments of merchants and artists long ago were divided into communal flats. Five or six families, most of them with regular salaries or pensions, share a toilet and a kitchen and take turns complaining to blank-eyed local officials about the rusted pipes, the cascade of plaster. Evenings after work, they stand endlessly in lines, hunting for milk, oatmeal, toilet paper, whatever can be found.

Poverty in the Soviet Union is not bloated bellies and famine, but rather a common condition of need that seems only to widen and grow worse with every month. Just as dangerous, it haunts the heart as well as the stomach.”

Seems great

>>17890311
Why are you using your computer now to post then?

>>17890140
"he Soviet Union today is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the grand bourgeoisie, a fascist German dictatorship, and a Hitlerite dictatorship"-Mao, 1964

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_18.htm

>>17890070
>Soviets didn't have PS5 and Netflix. Life must have been shit.
Your zoomer/consoomer brain just doesn't understand that people can have fun and meaningful lives by socializing and having hobbies. Sports, chess, hiking theater was huge and subsidized in the USSR. Sure you might get eaten by a Siberian Yeti but that's the part of thrill of life lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

>>17890435
>1990
lol

>>17890565
>DATS NOT REEL GOMMUNIZM
dial8

>>17890584
>The user is underage

>>17890584
Have you... ever opened a history book?
Look up Gorbachev, Perestroika, 1987 joint venture law, 1988 law on cooperatives...
Capitalism was being actively restored in the Soviet Union and someone had to cough up the value for all of the profits (the average prole)

>>17890793
you are psychotic
the article is about russian life in the past few decades, not exclusively in 1990

>>17890819
enjoy hell!
tick-tock
you know what's the best part? after a billion, trillion years of boiling in fire, it will only hurt WORSE than the first day

>>17890053 (OP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke600MgW1F0

This series is all you need.

>>17890521
even basic necessities were in short supply. the top party brass had a better lifestyle but only comparable to a middle class American

>>17890053 (OP)
Yes

i don't think you can process just how inhuman Soviet system was

>stand in line for hours to buy only shoe in store
>wait six months to buy bicycle, radio etc
>wait 3 years to buy car with 25 hp engine and mechanical brakes
>you can't even leave town without permission
>history book are rewritten with bullshit that Baltic cunts were Russian province since 4000 BC even though none of us ever wanted anything to do with them in any way
>live in gray commieblock apartment built after historical town and village razed
>walk past tacky poster in town square showing Lenin or muscled guy in factory with boast about overtaking capitalist productivity by 1980 (wait it's now the late 70s and somehow we can't even have basic necessity on store shelf)
>last patriots shot after war by NKVD or sent to freeze in Siberian labor camp or die of thirst on Kazakh steppe
as other anon said in thread, go home Russian soldiers!

>>17890435
>my political left
>liberals
>my political right
>also liberals but in slow motion

Liberalism is so gay it's unbelievable.

>Westerners can't live without consooooming goods, the thread.

>>17891247
surprisingly some people aspire to more than living in gray ugly apartment with rationed food and nothing to look forward to but war with NATO

>>17890295
wtf happened to kino???

Shortages of everything were commonplace as a result of the planned economy being very unresponsive to sudden change, and bad at adapting, so they were forever lurching from having too little to having too many of specific things. This resulted in a a lot of corruption and a thriving black market economy, naturally, since if the official planned economy isn't meeting demand enterprising smugglers can make a killing, and they did. If you could steal and cheat, you had to do so because being honest would only get you cheated and stolen from. This was normal in Russia, and in most of the soviet states as well.

The shortages and constant corruption meant that you were happy with whatever you got. Things were just good enough nobody felt like rebelling, or even protesting most of the time, but that's because the misery was pretty evenly spread over the large majority of society and they had very little access to information from the outside world. What they did get was filtered through party propaganda, so even as the average soviet citizen lived with constant corruption and shortages of staple goods, he was convinced he lived better than he would under capitalism. During the time when America was experiencing its second gilded age, a period of unparalleled economic growth and prosperity, the Soviet Union's citizenry only ever heard about how the US was reeling from racial protests and other civil unrest, and how people slept in the streets and overdosed on drugs, etc.

So not a lot has changed, really, that same propaganda is very commonly circulated in China and Russia to this day, so I would argue that the modern Russian and Chinese also has very little idea of what life is like in the US or in Europe for that matter.

>>17891247
Unless you live alone in the wilderness in a shack you build yourself, you are a consumer of goods produced by somebody else. As a consumer, it is in your own interest for your society to have a variety of high quality goods to spend your money on. That's a huge benefit of living in a first world market economy. You are (relatively) very rich so the world brings its goods to you on a silver platter.

If you don't have this selection of high quality goods it's because you are poor and/or live in a second/third world economy that nobody imports goods to.

Foreign aid and the drain of money to the republics out of RSFSR also affected living standards. By the 80s Georgia and Ukraine had higher living standards than RSFSR. Food shortages caused by the inefficient Soviet agricultural sector were further aggravated by grain being sent off to places like North Korea.

>>17890053 (OP)
Depends what you mean by "as bad". Throughout the 70s to the early 2000s there was a wave of consumerism which was very representative of the disparities between the west and the reds. When boomers think of the USSR, they're reminded of the stark contrast there was between their lives full of color and material goods and their dull & grim USSR counterpart. So no, it wasn't objectively "as bad" because boomers retroactively see the USSR as the epitome of a totalitarian hell hole.
Objectively speaking however, the USSR was a middle income country with poor material goods and corruption. You were guaranteed a job and housing, but you had no freedom and relatively poor consumer service. Most people who used to live in those countries see it as that : a state which ensured its citizen a certain quality of life and stability at the expense of their freedom.

>Post WW2
Shithole but relatively good compared to their former feudal status

>>17890274
>>17890078
There is an anon in every historical thread about the USSR that thinks that Stalin-era communal housing in the ancient nobility's manor applied to commie blocks. Are you him by any chance ?

>>17890152
>Problem is Brezhnev and Andropov/Chernenko (the latter being the Soviet Biden)
Andropov was the reformer that's largely seen as the last chance for the soviet union (barring Romanov being nominated rather than Gorbachev). But he died within a year of being nominated iirc.

>>17890249
>what exactly made so many people miserable and sad drunks?
State-guaranteed monotonous jobs killed the spirit by the 80s. The problem of drunks is more associated with post-soviet Russia though (when it peaked).

>Was the food quality low?
Yes the Kolkhoz sucked at production

>was crime high?
No on the contrary

>Did their media subvert their men into cucks and their women in whores and demand "equality"?
Feminism was state-imposed and much more "rational"

>Did their media push them towards degeneracy?
Quite the opposite irl.

>>17891175
>stand in line for hours to buy only shoe in store
Vladimir Pozner talked about this. Right after 44:30:
https://youtu.be/pzUrJ5e3sZM

He has his views, but I got into a hole watching interviews of him, and he also remarked about going to China and not wanting to ever go back, because he had lived in a totalitarian country before and that was enough. There's something about that kind of government which is hard to imagine if you've never lived in one. He'd say, there's stuff I'm saying in this interview, if I said it on Soviet television, there would be people in the lobby waiting for me. This was a country where parents whose kid died in a plane crash would have to find some way to work around the system to learn what happened because the crash was covered up by the government like it didn't even happen and they were never told. Russians have been trying to come to terms with this part of their history. You see it in some movies:
https://youtu.be/w-2E1ZXMYgw

>>17891579
>Most people who used to live in those countries see it as that : a state which ensured its citizen a certain quality of life and stability at the expense of their freedom.
I think sometimes people not from there have a hard time accepting the reality while also the fact that most Russians accepted it (at least most of the time). They have a different history and outlook. There's a strong culture of fatalism. "War and Peace" is all about characters feeling powerless to change events during the Napoleonic wars. It's no wonder a particularly deterministic version of Marxism caught on there. But they will tend to choose security over freedom, and accept hardships with stoicism and dark humor.

>There is an anon in every historical thread about the USSR that thinks that Stalin-era communal housing in the ancient nobility's manor applied to commie blocks. Are you him by any chance ?
No. It's an interesting theory though.

>>17891579
>Andropov was the reformer that's largely seen as the last chance for the soviet union
He committed too much to Afghanistan and was too committed to the command economy to be that guy.

>>17891729
imagine for example literally needing a travel pass just to visit the next town over and you need to give the authorities some acceptable excuse like "my mother's dying and I must see her"

>>17891579
>Did their media push them towards degeneracy?
>Quite the opposite irl

there very much was degeneracy. yes pornography was illegal but it's not as if people didn't have sex. it would usually be like teenagers at Komsomol going "Hey Natalia, wanna get hammered on solvents and go screw in woods?" abortion was legal to anyone who wanted it (after Stalin's time at least) and there was no exact age of consent in USSR, it was just "puberty" which could be confirmed by doctor.

>>17890053 (OP)
It depends. Party members lived like kings... Average worker... Pretty miserable.

>>17891729
They are still finding mass graves in Siberia of people killed in Stalin era purges.

>>17892005
>Party members lived like kings
not exactly. party elites lived pretty good compared to common workers but by American standards they would just be considered modestly middle class. they also realize Soviet system was failure and blew it up in 90s so they could live like Hollywood actor with actual mansion and Lamborghini.

Aeroflot had major plane crashes every year of its existence during the Soviet era and it was all completely covered up.

the Soviet system wasn't that bad. at least if you were a loser with no particular skills in life or opportunities they'd assign you a job and apartment so your life wasn't a complete failure.

>>17892013
>party elites lived pretty good compared to common workers but by American standards they would just be considered modestly middle class.
Yeah. They might have a chauffeur. Perhaps an air conditioning unit in their apartment. But a big thing was access to special stores where they could get stuff that was usually unavailable to most of the population. That would be things like fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter. Or some salmon. Like certain meats or caviar or wine from Georgia.

One thing that Russians didn't seem to lack was vodka.

>>17890282
I hope you see this response, sorry it's so late, but Romania (of all nations!) had a pretty impressive prog band called Phoenix, which is even crazier because Romania was North Korea-tier in the 70's, Ceausescu was infamous for being the only Warsaw Pact head of state who was actually impressed by their tour of Kim Il Sung's Korea

They started as a skiffle band as early as 1962, and they were a modest success under totalitarian Romania's one and only unified state-controlled record label, Electrecord. About 1970, the secret police began harassing them because their skiffle was "too western", after years of letting them fly under the radar as a domestically-produced version of a subversive capitalist trend in music. However, they discovered prog from the west and decided to play into Ceausescu's nationalism, and they eventually teamed up with the Romanian ministry of culture by making a prog double album about animal creation myths from a Romanian perspective! However, shortly thereafter, the secret police caught wind from dissenters that several of the songs on that album were coded messages against the government, and Phoenix's persecution became so severe they they all fled the nation in 1977 by hiding inside Marshall amps after a couple of final farewell concerts. In 1989, the Romanian people came to hate Ceausescu so much that they executed him LIVE BROADCAST ON TELEVISION. The USSR decided not to intervene, and allowed a transfer of power to a non-communist government. After spending a decade and a half in West Germany, they returned to a liberated Romania in 1994, where they still record music and play to this day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kkUJexboLk

>>17890053 (OP)
It depended on the era.

Stalin's purges and famines were horrific, but later decades saw stability, free housing/healthcare, and even some consumer comforts (though with chronic shortages). Still, censorship, political repression, and a stagnant economy wore people down. Not a dystopian hellscape 24/7, but far from muh workers' paradise.

>>17892038
Evidence?

>>17890088
children who had pen pals with other children in western countries were flagged as spies and forbidden from going to good schools

>>17890282
Prog was reasonably big across the USSR and so was various folk rock, only types that were deemed "antisocial" like punk and metal were officially prohibited (but still existed towards the end and distributed on hometaped recordings). There's plenty of Youtube channels of Soviet and east bloc music, lots of jazz, fusion, funk, disco especially

>>17892302
>but later decades saw stability, free housing/healthcare
>stability
XD
Also, there's no such thing as 'free' healthcare or housing you fucking moron

https://united24media.com/anti-fake/seven-myths-about-the-soviet-union-separating-fact-from-fiction-3707

>Using the health of its citizens as a measure, the USSR was not a developed state. The infant mortality rate was 3x higher than in Western Europe. Widespread infant illness was linked to contaminated formula; even though the problem was recognized for several years, it went unresolved.

>“If a woman has made up her mind to have an abortion, she is in for a round of tortures. The abortion clinic on Lermontov Prospekt is a monstrous institution—a slaughterhouse, as women themselves call it. The treatment capacity of the clinic is two hundred to three hundred patients a day. The women are put in lines in front of the operating room. Two and sometimes six women are operated on at the same time.”

>>17892313
I discovered this album a few weeks back and I'm really enjoying it personally, Кpышa дoмa твoeгo by Yuri Antonov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08UVupRcWSA

>>17892325
For me, it's Uzbek disco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbOeopWF6Fc

>>17892311
I heard they were shot on the spot, a few lucky ones were just sent to GULAG.

No. It was worse. People have no idea what live in USSR was and if they knew they would think it's so exaggerated it's not believable.

>>17890088
And the only way to prove that was with a clean political record, retard.
Spies, by definition, are hiding and trying to trick their pursuers. Did you think before typing this?

Frankly, I'd probably take the basic security of life in the USSR of the 1970s and 80s, when things chilled out, even despite the shabbiness of Soviet life, over the system we have the in West today.
I'd bet people were more pleasant in the late USSR than they are in the West today too, since people struggling to get by are often surly and dejected. Their spirits are damaged.

>>17890074
It's so fucking obvious that all commies are pathetic fuckin losers who can't get out of their parents basement

>>17892386
That doesn't make any sense, seeing as the 70s and 80s in the West BTFO of the USSR which is what has lead us to this point

>>17892386
The golden age in the Brezhnev era was carried high priced gas exports and Daddy Brezhnev paying for everything on a credit card.

The crisis of 1987 was caused by the high spending of the 70s and 80s.

guaranteed job, home, wife, and a social life

>>17892463
Your social life would be miserably drinking with two other miserable tards. And your wife... Well, the lesser said about it the better.

>>17890282
The thing that I DON'T like about Soviet Bloc music from that period is that they pretty much followed all contemporary Western music trends. When progressive rock was selling in the West you had Hungarian Omega:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGt-rTDkMcM
It was even often quite good, because writing popular music isn't rocket science - once you follow the genre rulers it comes out all right.
At most they tried to include some local motives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW64piiktAY
but this thing still comes out as punk, because punk was big at that time, etc.

>>17892530
>Your social life would be miserably drinking with two other miserable tards.
>your wife
But at least I have these, right? That's still a net improvement.

>>17890401

You can literally see how wars affect life expectancy on that chart

>Crimean war and US civil war
>Ww1, russian civil war and Spanish flu
>(((holdomor)))
>ww2

>Approximately 32% of Russian males born in 1923 survived to the end of World War II, meaning that roughly 68% of them did not survive. This high mortality rate was due to a combination of factors, including high infant and childhood mortality rates, the effects of famine and Stalin's Great Terror, and the devastating impact of World War II

>>17890401
Life expectancy in USSR in 1950s reaching the levels of the developed countries is just kek; it was stagnating - instead of rising - throughout the whole post-ww2 period (after the initial surge when people stopped dying from bombs)

>>17892870
pic rel.
These women are actually much younger than they look.

>>17892872

>>17892870
A reminder that dentists in the Soviet Bloc didn't use pain killers. Yep, they were operating on your raw, open nerves.

>>17892880
Are you not man enough to endure that? God, westerners are so pussified.

>>17892892
My father had three wives and countless mistresses. He was a boxer and a bar brawler too, he used to take a couple of guys at a tome no probs (all family legends confirm). The one thing that scared the living hell of him was dentists. He could have lied that he has visited one while he didn't kek.

>>17892530
>t. undeployed incel

>>17892880
>A reminder that dentists in the Soviet Bloc didn't use pain killers. Yep, they were operating on your raw, open nerves.
Source for this rather shocking claim?

>>17892880
One doesn't require anaesthesia for routine cavity fillings. It is only required for RCTs.

>>17892991
> rather shocking
I was operated without painkillers by soviet dentists as a child, lol.

>>17892038
The list of Aeroflot accidents is so long that wikipedia had to separate it to different pages, one for each decade. 60s and 70s were so fucking bad..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_accidents_and_incidents

>>17892870
>>17893030
>>17893031
Capitalism produce BLACKED and you watch it

they did reasonably ok despite decades of Western embargo and CIA/MI6 sabotage

>>17892880
somewhat related
I saw on youtube that the USSR didnt have toilet paper a lot of the time and I asked my mom about it and she confirmed it was true
she used old books and newspapers

>>17893179
>despite decades of Western embargo
they had half of Europe, most of Asia and also some of Africa
>CIA/MI6 sabotage
The allies gave them half of Europe lmao

>>17890053 (OP)
It was worse, a lot of the shit you don't even know and will never find out unless you dig, there is a reason it collapsed

>>17890053 (OP)
>as bad
Relative to what? Westoids? Always was, always will be. Pre communist or post communist? You can easily look up opinion polls for post-communist, but imperial is overrated thanks to state propaganda.

>they say it is?
Who? Amerimutts? Amerimutts are stupid. Baltoids? Probably yea, as long as we are talking people who actually were alive and adult back then.

>>17893317
I have two sources I go off of. First is that I grew up in Michigan during the late 80s and early 90s where The Detroit Red Wings paid 5 of USSR's top Red Army players to defect to the USA, and each of them personally have their stories on how dogshit it was growing up and playing for them.

#2 is that my cousin's wife is directly from the Czech Republic, and I've met her parents who grew up under communism and LITERALLY would probably kill these little kid commies ITT if they had the chance. Their hatred for it is unmatched.

imagine having completely nonexistent rights, African living standards and nothing to look forward to except war with NATO

>>17893342
To some extent it's absolutely worth it if LGBT whack jobs get their heads kicked in still

>>17893031
how many of these were caused by CIA/MI6 sabotage of aircraft?

>>17893398
Probably not a lot, since I remember an entire Russian pro hockey team dying in a plane crash not long ago

>>17893398
>it was all the CIA, Boris. not our shitty aircraft and nonexistent safety standards.

>>17893333
>The Detroit Red Wings paid
There was little to no differtiation between the poor and the rich. Hence yea, if you got some highly marketable skill going on, like elite sport skills, you can be wealthy as fuck in the US.

>#2 is that my cousin's wife is directly from
Interesting, but not exactly a sample of representative size. Lets see statistics on CZ.
>https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/za-socialismu-bylo-lepe-tvrdi-podle-pruzkumu-kazdy-treti-cec/r~7abead78f49d11e9858fac1f6b220ee8/
>Další průzkum veřejného mínění ukázal, že řadě lidí se stýská po době, kdy vládla komunistická strana. Podle nejnovějšího průzkumu společnosti NMS Market Research pro Paměť národa hodnotí jednoznačně kladně sametovou revoluci jen 36 procent lidí nad 40 let.

>>17890053 (OP)
>>17890053 (OP)
Depends on specifically who and where are you talking about.

The residents of St Petersburg and Moscow had it pretty good for the most part, particularly if they were directly involved in the CCCP. The outskirts of the Soviet Empire had it distinctly *less good*, with a few notable exceptions. A lot of cities of Siberia became shitty factory or mining towns with low quality of life, dirty and dangerous.

Areas, very close to the west like East Germany were extremely well funded and had a good quality of life relative to the rest of the Union. They intended these satellites to be a bit of a propaganda victory, so they spent lavishly on them. The high quality of life intended to advertise for Soviet values (though still life was much worse than in capitalist nations).

But conversely, some Soviet satellites were deliberately treated very poorly. Like Ukraine who was routinely starved, despite being the heartland of Soviet grain production.

But if I had to hugely generalize the Soviet experience, I'd say that no, things were not as bad for the citizens of the CCCP as the history books say. There's a strong legitimate argument that things are worse for the Russian people now under capitalism, than they were under the Soviets.

There's a reason so many old folks in Russia today miss the days of the Soviet Union.

>>17893429
Completely and utterly untrue as the coaching staff (officers) were apart of the "upper party" so they all got to be wined and dined while the players were treated like literal live-stock. Meanwhile when they would play international games they would see Fins, Swedes, Austrians, etc. all not having to live like a low class piece of shit.. It wasn't just about the USA. Obviously being able to live in a mansion and drive a Corvette made the decisions for them.

>same desperate "polling" repeated over and over
Its ironic because this is exactly how communist worked back when it was in place and everyone was miserable.
>no actually you're the odd one out!
Nah the was their elections work now ontop of the fact that they actually have private ownership of homes is a clearer picture on how communism is remembered.

>>17893435
There really isn't, any interaction with actual Russians makes this obvious. It's pretty clear most of you are little kids, you have no idea how "communism" was remembered in the early days of the internet back in the late 90s and early 00s.

>>17893441
>Completely and utterly untrue as the coaching staff (officers) were apart of the "upper party" so they all got to be wined and dined while the players
Its not nice to pull things from your ass, but such manners are expected from americans.

>same desperate "polling" repeated over and over
Opinions dont matter, understood.

>>17893445
>you have no idea how "communism" was remembered in the early days of the internet back in the late 90s and early 00s.

"We used to have food"?

Why are you so desperate for a black/white picture of history, when history will inevitably be complex as fuck?

>>17893445
>>17893445
I'm not a kid and I'm not supporting Communism, just giving a nuanced take.

Things were better in some parts of the Soviet Union than people realize, while completely sucking in other spots.

And there's many old folks who had fond memories of the Soviet days, likely because they were in a good part of the Soviet Union, and their parents had high Soviet status.

I've met several Russian, a few being old folks who missed the Soviet Days. A few being young guys whose parents missed those days.

In short, everything you said is wrong.

>>17893435
>Like Ukraine who was routinely starved, despite being the heartland of Soviet grain production
Ukraine from the 50s onward had better living standards than RSFSR because it was a major industrial center and produced a large amount of Soviet military hardware.

>>17893435
>A lot of cities of Siberia became shitty factory or mining towns with low quality of life, dirty and dangerous
Even worse the state could post you in one of these shitholes and you just had to roll with it.

>>17893454
Slava Fetisov (one of the Red Army's greatest players and Captain) literally has said 'The Miracle On Ice' happened because of the coaching staff giving preferred treatment to players involved in the KGB, which lead to a schism within the team. Actually the main reason behind the infamous goaltending change that happened mid game as well.

Its obvious you're a little kid and you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about

>>17893465
Here in reality literally 100% of people I've met that were Russian, Czech, and Polish all have nothing but bad things to say. I mean practically everything that was from the West became a lucrative smuggled item during these times, where there was nothing to the latter.

>>17893471
>Here in reality literally 100% of people I've met that were Russian, Czech, and Polish all have nothing but bad things to say
Ditto Lithuanians, Estonians, etc.

>>17893469
>coaching staff giving preferred treatment to players involved in KGB
Good job, Ami, you are moving the goalpost into a more sensible territory. The pressure on political allegiance was and still is something driving skilled people away. Add to that the possibility to get rich as fuck in the West and you have a reason why skilled people did and do emigrate West. A shitty thing about current and the previous regime. Imperial Russia was the only one which managed to attract large amount of skilled people (e.g. Euler).

> you're a little kid
Didnt you admit being an amerimutt? Even if I was a zoomer, being from easter yurop gives me many levels of insight above you.

>>17893471
>>17893480
>ummm no actually all those Eastern Euros that you've talked to playing CS 1.6 would actually rather work in a mine for 14 hours a day for the mother land instead of playing video games online on their personal computer, here look at this random poll!

>>17893471
>Here in reality literally 100% of people I've met
Here...in America?

Its well known you people are bit slow in the head...but its not that hard to understand why emigrants are not a representative sample of population.

As anon said international travel in USSR required a clean political record and...

>Soviet allies such as Cuba, GDR, and Vietnam were the easiest countries to obtain permission to visit
>after that there were neutral countries like Finland, Sweden, Yugoslavia etc
>hardest to visit were US and its allies
>if you could get permission to go there you would have a KGB minder following you at all times to ensure you didn't defect
>in practice of course Soviet citizens who got permission to visit US allies were usually connected people high up on the food chain and were less likely to defect
>they would take advantage of these trips to also stock up on Western goods that were normally not obtainable at home

>>17893485
If that "pressure" is being used to fuck over important and "skilled" people within the regime then how do you expect anyone to believe the average older peasant had fonder memories?
>Even if I was a zoomer I'd still have more insight
Not really seeing as I was fucking alive when it was still a thing and I've physically talked to people who defected and fled. My neighbors down the street were Polish emigrants and their "bobcha" lived next door

>>17893490
Very interesting, how many average Soviet citizens had the opportunity to talk to ex-USA citizens that defected into the USSR?

Oh wait

>>17893487
>a poll made by post-communist regime with no intent on making communist regime seem appealing
>Random amerimutt on internet retelling opinions of a mail order bride

Who should I trust, such a dillema.

>>17890053 (OP)
It was awful in some ways in better in others, just like most societies.

You will work long hours at a shitty, often pointless, often dangerous, job. You will share a tiny run down 2 room apartment with 6 people. You will need to either illegally acquire food by bartering shit you stole from your job, or find a way to grow and store it long term. Information is tightly controlled propaganda, and entertainment is the essentially the same thing. You will have basically zero legal rights or protections should the state decide you are an enemy. Anyone, anywhere, at any time, can inform on you for tiny infractions and you will be sent to live in exile or even killed. Moving is basically impossible unless you know someone who wants to trade places with you, and you have jobs lined up. You will probably never get to travel outside the country.

BUT, you never have to pay rent. You never have medical bills (and one of the best medical systems in the world to boot). You never really have to look too hard for work, as the State will go out of it's way to find something for you to do. Schooling of all levels is free, very high quality, and actually allows intelligent people to advance regardless of their background. You are literally legally entitled to some form of shelter and homelessness basically doesn't exist. There are extensive public resources that you can use, free of charge, like libraries, gyms, health facilities, etc, of high quality, all over the place. The State will almost literally arrange a marriage for you (she might be a total babushka though) and give you a family apartment or even a house, as well as basically pay you for every kid you have.

So in other words, if you are okay with living just above total poverty in a shitty run down slum, occasionally having to hustle to get enough food and toeing the party line, then you can live a pretty comfy (if boring) life.

Also though it's still infinitely better than being a tsarist peasant.

>>17893492
I feel like the higher ups would if anything be more likely to defect, it was mostly professionals crossing to West Germany before they built the wall

>>17893502
>and one of the best medical systems in the world to boot)
this is troll, right?

>>17893501
>no interest
>and yet the entire website is a mirror copy of Western media that dances up communism
What a shocker!

>>17893502
Yeah no wonder hockey players thought Detroit of all places would be a better home than their homeland

>>17893510
North America was and is a great place to be a pro athlete, Detroit sucks for normies not for millionaires

>>17893502
>BUT, you never have to pay rent.
All right, you have repeated this lie a few times already itt. People actually had to pay rent for their apartments. Not to a private landlord (obviously) but to a glorious communist state, which made all the difference (kek).

>>17893495
>how do you expect anyone to believe the average older peasant had fonder memories?
Because average pleb does not have those marketable skills? When the economy disproportionated so that we have oligarchs with unimaginable wealth and plebs with even deeper levels of poverty, its only logical that there are winners and losers of the transition. With old plebs being the losers.

>Not really seeing as I was fucking alive when it was still a thing and I've physically talked to people who defected
Cool thing, timmy, except I have parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles etc. I actually talked with a representative sample of random people, you as you said only talked with traitors. Its like if I quoted those ultraconservative Christian Americans who move here and came to the conclusion, that US is an LGBT totalitarian hellhole where peoples kids are randomly kidnapped and trans'd.

>>17893506
Specifically in the 60s and 70s, the Soviet medical system was actually really, really good. They had some excellent medical schools. Before and after that period it was shit though. But so was basically everything else.

>>17893518
I'm aware of this, but from my understanding it was handled in the exact same way as income taxes in the Western world. IE, it was just automatically taken from your paycheck before you even got a say. So it would be more accurate to say that rent and taxes in the Union were basically the same thing.

I mean, in reality I fucking pay rent to the State through income taxes AND I have to pay a landlord.

>>17893507
Buddy...are you seriously retarded? Like even for American standards.

>https://www.pametnaroda.cz/cs
Is the organization which commisioned the poll. Can you explain how is this explicitly anti-communist organization interested in manipulating data so that it would seem that more people favour the old regime than they really are?

>>17893519
>you as you said only talked with traitors.
Again, how convenient eh? Top athletes and Olympians had a shitty deal, as did these so called, "traitors.".. But I don't get to use that deflection seeing as you have no defectors from my side in your shit hole

>>17893526
Yeah it's literally the same exact way the ADL makes it seem like USA is chalk full of white supremacist Nazis when in reality nobody gives a fuck

>>17893445
>early days of the internet back in the late 90s and early 00s
Normal Russians didn't use the internet back then, it was a luxury afforded by a few in big cities

>>17893531
At this time and age its very easy to find channels of American bloggers who moved here. And yes, they are traitors to the America, because they rarely support the "american position" on a certain current geopolitical issue.

>>17893544
There were Russian students absolutely playing Counter Strike in the late 80s and early 90s.

>>17893545
>At this time and age its very easy to find channels of American bloggers who moved here
Hahahahaha hahahahaha what the fuck are you even on about? What does this have to do with people defecting shit hole communist countries and nobody defecting IN to communist countries?

>>17893552
Whoops meant 90s and 00s whatever

>>17893537
>Actually post-communist regime are artificially propping up number of boomers disappointing in the transition...because they want funding to apply propaganda on people...who are too old to be influenced by propaganda anyway and arent going to change anything in society
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyYXvG038dE

Now thats a mental gymnastics move I have not seen yet. You people are so hilarious, when you get into a hole. Please tell me more about the history of my country, my people and my continent, mr. American.

>>17893560
Are you fucking retarded. You have a country full of anti commies that grew up with it, so orgs like that will throw out "problematic stats" like that to get people to worry and latch on. The EXACT SAME WAY orgs like the ADL do it to boomers here

>>17893554
Because we are talking about you putting opinion of defectors before the actual nation.

Why do you think that opinions of mail order brides should be valued more than the actual people who line in a country?

>>17893502
>homelessness basically doesn't exist
On paper but homelessness was an increasing problem during the 70s; prior to the 1980 Olympics police were busy cleaning up Moscow's streets of bums and slackers who were supposed to be working and weren't.

>>17893567
Because these people aren't millionaire upper class, they're regular ass working class people. And YOU have absolutely no one from the latter. Why would I believe in some random fag ass poll from the internet rather than a fuckin Polish immigrants testimony? Or literal Czech citizens?

>>17893566
Interesting. Except you made up a wrong cope. And a quite silly one on top.

The correct cope used by anti-communists in Eastern Europe is that the old folks are "nostalgic, senile old farts", you will not find a single shred of evidence supporting this insane conspiracy theory you just made up.

>>17893584
>Wrong cope
Explain to me (using your own retarded logic) why an org like the ADL would claim anti-Semitic Nazism is massively in the rise when it isn't?

>>17893584
>The correct cope used by anti-communists in Eastern Europe is that the old folks are "nostalgic, senile old farts"
that's partially correct. old alcoholic factory worker had most to lose from post-Soviet era since he has no useful skills or ability to adapt to modern world.

>>17893574
>Why would I believe in a government paid poll instead of a random story someone from another continent just made up
I dont know man, like its the fucking basis of a rational debate?

communism was absolute shit garbage and fuck anyone who defends it

Wracajcie do domu, rosyjscy żołnierze!

>>17893591
Explain first why are these two in any way comparable? Apologia for communist regime is steadily declining, because old people are dying.

>>17893592
Good boy, Timmy, now your arguments are more in line with people from Eastern Europe.

>>17893600
Poles had a feud with Russians for much longer than communism existed.

>>17893597
>I would rather believe in a poll rather than something from an actual citizen that risked their life to escape

Hahahahahahahahaha holy fucking SHIT hahahhahahahahaha

>>17893502
>You will have basically zero legal rights or protections should the state decide you are an enemy.

By the Brezhnev era instead of being shot or worked to death in a labor camp you were more likely to be put in a mental hospital.

>>17893602
>Explain first why are these two in any way comparable?
I literally just explained it to you, you fucking low IQ nigger monkey

>>17893604
Sure but communism was so bad they actually fled their homeland

>>17893605
So...this is what it boils down to? Rambling and Anecdotes from your mail order bride auntie vs. actual evidence?

>>17893615
My cousin's wife is the one who moved over here, her parents that lived under communism are the ones that were brought to literal tears when they first saw their home on 40 acres of land.

>>17893615
Then there's also my neighbors who parents and Grandparents escaped Poland. But no your faggy poll and total lack of anything to the latter totally changes my mind!

>>17893610
>I literally just explained it to you
No, you did not. ADL can claim that the antisemitism is posing a threat to the regime to extract more money. Czech government can not say that communist apologia is posing a threat to the regime, because its coming from old farts. Propaganda does not work on old farts, they made up their minds already and lost the plasticity to radically change opinions.

Besides, if what you are saying was even remotely true and you did not just pull it here right from your asshole, there would be at least one opinion piece saying so. Go on, find it, Timmy.

>>17893616
>>17893620
And my dog can talk.

Get something objective and not "trust me bro".

>>17893630
It has nothing to do with cash you retard, it has everything to do with drumming up sentiments and support. If the government wants to reinforce anti commies views they will say it's on the rise. Just like they do here with hippies, or "racists, or "school shooters," etc.

>>17893637
Besides, if what you are saying was even remotely true and you did not just pull it here right from your asshole, there would be at least one opinion piece saying so. Go on, find it, Timmy.

>>17893634
Your stupid ass poll isn't objective. You simultaneously claim that they are traitors while also claiming what they say is completely made up by me .. And you have the audacity to say that I'm coping? Just because you have absolutely 0 Western defectors is your problem, not mine bitch boy.

>>17893606
Soviet abuse of psychiatry to suppress dissent was notorious.

>>17893640
Lmfao there are literally no shortages of ex-colmiea giving the POV and they're all practically the same stories
https://youtu.be/KFjr0lveU1M?si=LdNDjXLRS7wo46_q

And as it remains, you have NOTHING to the latter

>>17893641
>Your stupid ass poll isn't objective
Can I see any evidence? No? OK. I bet you couldn't even understand a Slavic language with automatic translator, so no chance you will be able to critique their methodology.

> Just because you have absolutely 0 Western defectors
Have
>https://www.youtube.com/@Wild-Siberia/videos
or had?

If you were not intellectually stunted you would avoid phrases such as "absolutely 0", as those are trivial to disprove.

>>17893656
Thats in Shartmerica, Timmy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjI8jwn0Upo
Here you go, have a Ukrainian propaganda channel.

>>17893660
What does the video of a modern person living in modern Serbia have anything to do with direct testimony from ex-USSR citizens that lived within the USSR telling the same or very similar horror stories?

>>17893665
>Russia has 0 Western defectors
>Here is a western defectors in Russia
>*angry sharting*

>>17893664
How does this trump actual citizens giving their personal testimony themselves?
https://youtu.be/tuseHbKRFC4?si=K6rrI1K0ew7vVuj9

>>17893670
Simply living in a country doesnt make you a defector and Serbia isn't a communist country. What the fuck are you on about you dumbass?

>>17893674
How is opinion of American citizens more valuable than opinion of Russian citizens...when the topic is Russian history?

>>17893683
Because that American citizen was a Russian citizen that renounced his citizenship and risked his life to defect, which there are no latter examples to the contrary. You stupid fuck.

>>17892846

How do I get plump red army girlfirend?

>>17893670
yes we well know that US State Department paid dissidents to defect and utter anti-Soviet propaganda

>>17893679
>Russia has 0 Western defectors
>Here is a western defector in Russia
>*angry sharting*

>>17890053 (OP)

Yet their population was somehow able to grow every year even under "genocidal Stalin". It was only after becoming capitalist in 1990 their population started to stagnate or decline. Weird how that works.

>>17893692
Hahahahaha hahahhahahahahaha
>>17893693
>Look at all these ex-USSR defectors that escaped their homeland and risked their lives giving their testimony
>Oh yeah? Heres a young man that says he's an American living in Serbia (not even a defector)
Are you literally retarded?

>>17893689
>You must trust traitors, Jews and mail order brides!
>Normal people? Who actually have experience with how the country looked like after the communist regime fell? Ignore them!!!

Oh man, Americans lecturing Europeans on history of their continent is so hilarious.

>>17893696
Yeah by annexing neighboring countries you fuckin dumbass. Still to this day there's a major gender difference between men and women in Russia due to the amount of young men killed

>the actual funn cretard spam is drowned out by underage tankoid spam
summer will soon be over, thankfully

>>17893699
Hey why weren't there any mail order brides from USA going over to the USSR?

Oh wait, that's because the USSR was a complete and utter shit hole, hence the defectors or "traitors" as you call them since you're on the pathetic side that lost. Lol

>>17893713
Due to limited class differentiation there was not a class of people being able to order them and given the generous social support, a mail order bride would have 0 incentives to say with her husband making such ordeal a waste of money. Not to mention the Soviet obsession with counter-intel making immigration a complete pain in the ass.

Now. You made it clear that you value more opinions of people living in America, because you are an American.
I, as a Slav, value more opinions of people living in Eastern Europe be they Czech, Russian or Baltoids.
Hence we arrived at an impasse.

why did Americans kill 1 million+ Vietnamese people in war to enrich military contractor?

>>17893744

>>17893734
Yes, I trust people that left their home countries due to communism more than a child that wasnt alive when it was in place

>>17893734
>>17893791
Also, even if you have pro communist family members, if their only retort towards the valid criticism from defectors is "wahhhh that doesn't count they're traitors" then I will also count that as more evidence I'm correct

>>17890053 (OP)
That and then some.

>>17890053 (OP)
>CP
MOOOOODS!

>>17890521
That's what my mom's family says. Material life was poor (maybe a little better than Cuba today) but they had good art museums and music.

>>17890070
>few entertainment options, few consumer products, and no right to complain about anything
Sounds like a dream land

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."

-- Frank Zappa

>>17894346
I know I personally would've liked it because I'm lazy and unmotivated so being given a pointless bullshit job and small apartment or room would be perfectly adequate. I don't give a shit about politics or traveling so none of that would bother me either

>>17894390
you won't like it when the state arbitrarily assigns you to some frozen hellhole in Siberia and you have no right to refuse

>>17890080
Beginning was also quite awful

Even Lee Harvey Oswald moved back to America because it was so miserably boring

Kim Philby after defecting to USSR became terribly disillusioned when he saw the reality of life there.

>>17890868
>no argument

Btfo

>>17891247
Neither could the soviets kek

They once asked Gary Kasparov why Russians loved chess so much and he said "There's nothing else to do in Russia."

>>17894500
Did he say that?

>>17894340
What made you gnostic?

>>17894375
Why?
>>17894346
This is very correct post.

>>17894390
What would you do in the 1980s without a computer and internet?

>>17893696
Russian fertility declined heavily under genocidal Stalin, he literally destroyed their demographics.

>>17895302
>What would you do in the 1980s without a computer and internet?
Probably just drink, fuck, do art/sports, and occasionally fight like most Soviets back then. If you're in Central Asia you'd play Buzkashi as well.

>>17895319
Oh. It wasn't like there was an economic civil war and a literal world war but okay.

>>17892313
>There's plenty of Youtube channels of Soviet and east bloc music, lots of jazz, fusion, funk, disco especially
>>17892676
>The thing that I DON'T like about Soviet Bloc music from that period is that they pretty much followed all contemporary Western music trends.
There's a YouTube channel that's archived Soviet television programs including musical programs and old Pesnya goda ("Song of the Year") episodes (that show still runs in Russia). Here's the 1980 broadcast, fun fact the first song is disco:
https://youtu.be/BfgZcFdl2yw

I don't care for a lot of Soviet popular music. It's pretty boring, chintzy stuff with sugary people singing songs about the sun, springtime, friendship, whatever -- meh! Just shoot me already. The state did like to promote classical music though, which I like and isn't something people unfamiliar with communist regimes might realize.

>>17893333
>I've met her parents who grew up under communism ... Their hatred for it is unmatched.
This is a thing. People who are like "I'm demoralized living in capitalism, communism doesn't seem so bad" don't really understand the hatred that built up inside the system. I've only read about it but it was like a total demoralization that went beyond merely being bummed out, and opposition to it ceased to have a political character as we might understand it, it was just really deep and widespread existential hatred that the Communist Party was aware of (and acted as such, these were police states), but they would of course lie and never come out and say that's why they were acting the way they did. I think this was probably worse in Soviet satellite states though because communism was forced on them.

>>17893502
>Also though it's still infinitely better than being a tsarist peasant.
That was also true. From their perspective, they had to wait in line for hours to get sausages but that was an improvement.

>>17890078
Not that bad compared to actual 3rd world countries

>>17890400
Lets not pretend anyone in Russia has ever moved beyond stone age tier savages living in mud huts. They have concrete huts now, but that's basically the only thing that's changed.

>>17890070
Soviets produced some masterpieces of film during the 1970s and 1980s. Hollywood hasn't produced a single masterpiece in the last decade.
https://youtu.be/NrMINC5xjMs?t=353

>>17895346
>Won't go to libraires and read
ngmi

>>17895476
>he thinks the average Soviet prole could read

>>17895472
>Soviets produced some masterpieces of film during the 1970s and 1980s.
Every country did back then given film matured as a medium.
But yeah, I don't think Americans really take Soviet art and/or literature seriously because they write it off as products of a totalitarian regime.

>>17895490
>medium of the novel or theatre are ancient
>still produced masterpieces in theatre and writing into the 20th century
le medium matured.

>>17895499
>le medium matured.
Every country on the planet in the 70s and 80s apart from the third world were sharting out masterful films and hugely influential directors, composers, producers, etc., in one way or another left and right.

>>17895482
meds

>>17895512
>meds
In the USSR they'd be free

>>17895510
That's incidental. It has nothing to do with the "medium maturing."

When did painting mature? In the renaissance? the Baroque era? the Romantic era? Medium maturing is just a cope to explain Hollywood's decline over the last few decades.

>>17895563
>Hollywood's decline over the last few decades.
That has more to do with the cultural and demographic decline of the U.S itself more than anything.
>In the renaissance?
In the West, yes? What a dumb fucking question lol.

>>17895596
>In the West, yes? What a dumb fucking question lol.
Then your medium matured argument is retarded. There were still great works of art in the painting medium for centuries after the renaissance.

>That has more to do with the cultural and demographic decline of the U.S itself more than anything.
This is correct. It has nothing to do with "medium maturing". The inability to produce new art is cultural/demographic decline.

>>17895617
>Then your medium matured argument is retarded.
A medium matures when it ascends to a level that is never again succeeded en masse. While there's no shortage of fantastic paintings especially in the Romantic era, nothing can quite touch the masters of the Renaissance.
>The inability to produce new art is cultural/demographic decline.
Agreed, which is why South Korea for example produced its most great films in the 90s and 00s when democracy was new and the country was still booming. Same with Japan from the 50s-80s, Europe, USSR, etc.

>>17891354
>So not a lot has changed...
>...he modern Russian and Chinese also has very little idea of what life is like in the US or in Europe for that matter.

Anon, I, a resident of a former Soviet Union country, can now communicate with you, a resident of the West, and I can easily come to you for at least a week, what the hell are you even talking about?

>>17892311
Any Russian child speaking a western language and having a pen pal was already going to a good school.

>>17891999
No, anon, you could easily go to another city and spend the night there, or even live with relatives, you didn’t need permission for that, but if you wanted to get a job and receive certain services, like medical ones, then you would have to be registered in that city.

We are looking for a certain Mr. Zoom Zoom.

>>17895302
East bloc had personal computers in the eighties, ever heard of Tetris? The Polish tv series Dekalog also prominently features a PC in the first episode

Late Gen X Boomer here.
Wife grew up in Soviet Lithuania, said it was very comfy and the quality of the food was vastly superior to now. Caviar was also dirt cheap and basically the stable breakfast food.
Have tonnes of fellow boomer Polish coworkers, who said it was pretty comfy except for the period in the 80s when martial law came into effect. They said though as well, Poland was the best of the Socialist countries and for the most part, you had largely pretty normal social and political freedoms, like you could openly debate politics.
Polish friend also said that he liked going to East Germany because all the girls were huge sluts who would walk around parks and beaches naked.

>>17896044
t. some fag whose parents were party elite or member of state security

for the rest of masses life was grim and unbelievably shitty existence with shortage of everything and nonexistent rights and free individual thought

>>17891259
it sure is way better to live in painted ugly apartments with poisoned synthetic food designed to make you a pharma customer with nothing to look forward to but being sent to prison for criticising a foreign government's crimes

>>17890070
Russians were (and still are) so ass-backwards that it unfortunately took an authoritarian nanny state to help modernize. If the CCCP had never developed, the average russoid would still be living like a serf under a monarchy with a huge disconnect between the upper class and the commoner. In other words, life would have sucked for the russian either way–communism or not.
This isn’t to defend communism, rather just to point out how bleak life in mother russia has always been.

>>17890074
If you're homeless and jobless I guess. Since I have a job and a home already it doesn't seem very appealing to me.

>>17896044
Very good review, Comrade!

>>17895490
>But yeah, I don't think Americans really take Soviet art and/or literature seriously because they write it off as products of a totalitarian regime.
They had some kino movies, but... literature? There was a lot of stuff in the 1920s when there was more artistic freedom and then a bunch of those guys were suppressed or executed. The stuff that people talk about (that I've read) about it after Stalin was dissident literature that would worry about the government taking their manuscripts from them. Though I suppose on the other hand the government actually took literature seriously enough to censor it. Here in America, people don't care about literature so you're not going to rock the boat that way.

>>17896044
Kek I'm the anon that grew up with Polish emigrants next door. It's very obvious you're completely full of shit.

>>17895553
>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""free""""""""""""""""""""""""""

>>17890053 (OP)
Ukrainians fight to the death to never be part of something like that ever again.

What do you think?

>>17897077
Ukraine elected a faggot ass kike as their leader they should all die regardless

>>17897077
>Ukrainians fight to the death to never be part of something like that ever again.
And yet Belarus still has the same guy in charge while Georgia has completely reverted to being a Russian satellite again despite not even a decade ago being the most pro-West country in the region. Nothing is 100% or clean with regards to the former USSR.

>>17890249
the main issue with the soviets was the communism, it's just because they were Russian

east germany was a very orderly and solidaristic society with a relatively high standard of living

Adam Curtis has an eight part documentary about the decline of the Soviet Union called TraumaZone. you should seriously check it out

>>17893744
ultimately, because of French chauvinism

>>17890074
Didn't you needed to wait years for a house

>>17897112
this, if western europe was communist it would be comfy meanwhile russia is bad no matter what system it has

>>17897112
Really is that why East Germans constantly and desperately tried to escape West?

>>17897140
>t. teenaged complete and utter loser

>>17897141
propaganda. the wall was erected to keep out NATO backed fascist militias from operation GLADIO

>>17896044
>They said though as well, Poland was the best of the Socialist countries
LMAOO, polish commie leadership was probably dumbest one in eastern european bloc rivaled only by romanians
they had genius ideas like borrowing money from west to buy western technology study and copy it which only resulted in bankruptcy and complete downwards economic spiral

>>17897145
it was not all bad for one thing they abolished straight-up Stalinist policy in 1956 and also removed socialist realism as required line in arts (which it remained in USSR until 1988).

>>17897145
>dumbest one in eastern european bloc
Albania exists

>>17897144
>t. was not even alive when the wall was up

>>17890053 (OP)
>>17890064
>>17890068
>>17890070
>>17890072
When the berlin wall fell, who ran over to whose side?

/thread

>>17897208
>When the berlin wall fell, who ran over to whose side?
Better question: why does the Iron Curtain still exist in Germany if neoliberalism was so great and magical?

>>17897208
west colonized east

In the Stalin era, it was hell. In the later days, it wasn't that great. Restrictions on art started to loosen, such as socrealism, and the nation started to become obsessed with Western culture.

>>17897163
Technically albania was just some weird autistic isolationist country that liked to build bunkers

>>17897161
Socrealism was also over in the USSR right after Stalin died (see films like The Cranes are Flying or Fate of a Man), though Brezhnev tried to bring it back half assedly along with public rehabilitation of Stalin

>>17890144
Lmao, name 1 case where this happened or stfu you babby

>>17890370
Because "prove you're not a spy right now" doesn't work when your dictator is a paranoid fuck

>>17898424
Yeah... Brezhnev or whatever was quaking in his boots and demanding that Ivan Kartoflovich must be executed now because Stefan Tvarog said so

>>17897208
No one ran to any side. There was no mass migration from east to west or vice-versa.