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In Soviet Russia, life lived you. Reality of live in SU
This topic is meant for information only, for those who are interested, please let's not troll here :/
I know Mary has once said that life in Soviet Union was "better than life in USA now", I also know that this troll (Mary) is going to probably flame in this topic but I'm begging you, please don't believe whatever garbage she is going to post here.
THIS IS THE REALITY.
I was born in Soviet Union in major town inside of Russia, in 1977, who both have a university degree (father in electronics, and mother in chemistry). In 1992 I left that country forever so I was 15 at that time and I remember it very very well, especially the 80's from lets sat 1985.
In this topic I will present things such as income, distribution of basic products of mass consumption, housing and more.
I posted this topic in the "communist ideology" while I perfectly understand that there was no communism in Soviet Union, I just did not know where to post this topic.
Combined income of my parents during the late 80's was 450 rubles a month. For a family of four (I have a younger brother).
Below you will find prices of the most common goods, don't be fooled, the issue of availability will also be discussed. When you see the prices don't be naive enough to think that you could just go buy whatever you wanted to.
450 rubles for 2 adults was slightly above average, while nearly nobody was earning more than lets say 550-600 rubles for a family. So basically my parents were slightly above the mid class.
Prices: (every price was fixed by the state, and every shop was owned by the state).
food:
10 eggs: 0.9 or 1.30 (for ten), depending on the quality
1 loaf of bread: from 0.15 to 0.30 ruble (Soviet propaganda was always telling us that bread in Soviet Union was the cheapest in the world.
1 liter (0.25gallon) of milk: 0.28 r
butter: 3.5r a kilo
meat: 3-4r a kilo
chicken 2-3 a kilo
1 kg of cheapest sasauge 2.20r, better one went for 4.7r /kg
1 bar of crappy soviet chocolate of 200 gr 1.5 r
1 kg of sugar 0.90 r (sugar was very expensive since it was largely used to make moonshine)
1 bottle of vodka 0.7l 10 r (yes 10 rubles, or a daily income for a bottle of that poison, that also explaines the high price of sugar which was used to make moonshine).
Soviet shops typically had severe shortages of everything (except for bread and some other goods) and very long lines. Sometimes you to wait for an hour in a line to buy something, not kidding here. There was only one brand of everything and it was either available or not. If it was not available then you had to go to another shop, usually located quite far, to see if this item was available there. Things like cheese, meat etc were very often not available at all.
When you think about lets say milk, you think of a shop with dozens of milk products available, not so in Russia, frequently milk was not sold in bottles but from large barrels like this one, you had to bring your own container and to wait in a line, as this pictures shows.
A typical view in a soviet shop would be something like this :
watch this, from 5.25 to 6.38 (its not translated but you dont need to understand) they will show two fruit shops, the second one will be presented as a model shop, I must say, its filled very very well accoring to Soviet standards, but its likely been filled before the tv came there to film, the second shop even has an electronic weight scale ^^
Also, pay attention to the people, to their faces, to their clothes and to their attetude, remember my words about commies reducing population to a grey mass of sheep ? here is proof.
Cars:
There were 4 brands of cars for soviet citizens, all very trashy and very expensive:
Moskvitch was making copies of Opels (factory stolen from Germany after the war)
Lada: copies of Fiat (fiat being the trashiest euro cars)
Volga: luxury car, copied from American cars
And finally Zaporozhets, the trashiest piece of shit ever, not copied, obviously, it looked like this:
A price of a car was roughly 10 000 rubles, or 50 salaries of an average man. (4 years of income!). An average Belgian makes €2000 after taxes or €24 000 a year, x4 = almost €100 000 for a copy of Fiat )).
Imagine you somehow saved all that money, well forget about going somewhere and coming back in a car, first you had to wait in a line, for years and years and years.
And finally, prices and distribution of other goods lets say clothing.
a pair of quality shoes easily sold for half of a monthly salary and was very hard to get. You needed great luck to buy a pair of "any" shoes, which you could later change for your size through a newspaper where you would publish an ad "winter shoes for man size 42, will trade for size 45". A very common practice in Soviet Union.
When a shop had a new delivery, you had to stand in a line as shown here, buy WHATEVER was brought to the shop (quantity was always insufficient, so u had to buy it anyway, and when you took a place in the line, you never knew what you were going to get, if anything since supply could end right before you.
I have shown only a small part of life in Soviet Union, in my next post I will explain more.
Soviet leaders reduced their population to brainless zomie like sheep, a grey mass of humanoid life forms, facing very hard life, yet believing things were not that bad.
A classic example of a typical russian is our Mary, whos brain is unable to expand, who is still a part of that brainless collective of zombie like descendants of Soviet Union. She is stuck there forever with her narrow mind. She is a result of almost genetic changes the russian nation has undergone during 75 years of dictatorship of proletariat and its "forever". Some young russians are different though, those who either never lived in Soviet Union or were not influenced by the way of russian life. Lucky them
Part 2. Housing issue in Soviet Union.
Imagine you are student in Europe or in United States. After graduation you find work (immidiately or soon after graduation) and normally you leave your parents place shortly after. Either you rent a house/apartement or even buy one by borrowing or using savings, sometimes your parents could help financially to give you a start. There is always sufficient supply of housing in the West. Not so in Soviet Union. the commies could never satisfy demand for apartments. Forget about houses, most people who lived in towns lived in apartments, with minor exceptions.
Usually when a citizen of Soviet Union began to work he simply stayed with his parents, while being put in a line to get a new apartment, but even getting in that line (which could take ten, twenty or even more years) was not evident, sometimes you had to wait until death of your grandparents or parents to inherit their apartments.
Even if you got married, the young couple usually lived with the parents of the husband or the wife (the choice where to live was a sensitive issue of course).
Sometimes when parents of the husband or the wife had a relatively big apartment with lets say 3 bedrooms, they could change their apartment for lets say two apartments with 1 bedroom each and donate one of the apartments to the young family, therefore devaluing their own prosperity for the sake of that young family.
When my mother married my father, my mothers parents change their apartment for two smaller one's and donated one of them to my parents. My fathers parents were very happy about that of course since they did not suffer decrease of their wealth. As a result, relationship between parents of my parents suffered greatly, since the SYSTEM forced one of the parties to decrease their wealth.
Soviet style apartments.
A typical Soviet style apartment was located in a building looking like this one:
the flat it self was almost in every cases very small, much smaller than you can imagine.
Many families did not even have their own apartments and were living in "common" apartments, where each family occupies one bedroom while having a common bathroom and a common kitchen. That could be fun when you are a young student, when you live with other students next door, but when you have your own family it quite far from fun.
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Originally Posted by RussiaPrussia
Россия
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