In Soviet Russia....

Off Topic
21

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:
This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing, and I’m glad to hear that your family has prospered despite the shit ya’ll went through.[/quote]

Thanks, I am glad that people have enjoyed hearing about life in the Soviet Union. I know many textbooks don’t go far beyond “It sucked.” I would also like to point out that the experiences I have described about me and my family were not out of the ordinary. Hundreds of millions of people in all of the Soviet Republics lived like this. [/quote]

Reading first hand accounts of experiences like this just reinforces why the rest of the world LOVES America but HATES Americans: we’re inherently lazy, spoiled and ungrateful. Some of the roughest experiences here would be a welcome change to other parts of the world. Blows my mind.

22

Wow. This thread is eye-opening. They never covered this in my history class at school (I’m still in high school). I find all the '80s-'90s Soviet affairs interesting. I hope to visit Russia one day and some of it’s [former] satellite nations just for shits and giggles and see what it was like. Thanks for all the information.

CS

23

Good Stuff. I enjoy reading items like this. Gives me flashbacks to old Social Studies text books.

Keep posting.

24

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
After the fall of the Soviet Union, things got very bad for a lot of people. Yeltsin and Gaidar came up with a plan, with the help of the IMF and the US to radically change the Russian economy into a market based economy almost immediately. It led to massive unemployment (unemployment didn’t exist in the Soviet Union since it was illegal to be unemployed) and inflation and a depression. Many military factories were shut down and, even though the stores were fairly well stocked, not very many people could afford to buy much. Luckily for my family, though, my parents were among those who became better off. When the military factories began shutting down and the new Russian companies could not afford to retool the factories to other uses, foreign companies began trying to buy the factories and start manufacturing goods very cheap. The problem here was that there was not too many people in Russia with the education and knowledge of how to do this and the foreigners did not have the experience with Russian technology to do a good job of it. Plus, the language barrier was a problem. My father did have the education and experience with the technology to do the job, plus he made a point when the Soviet Union fell and this started happening to begin learning foreign languages (english and german), which made him perfect for the job. After a lifetime of earning about as much as a burger flipper for doing a job that usually pays 6 figures in America, he was making halfway decent money. It was not great at first, but definitely more then we had in the Soviet Union. We could afford things like milk, eggs, cheese, and decent clothes. Meat was still pretty rare, but when it was available, we could afford it. He eventually saved enough to start his own engineering firm with my mom, which my brother now runs, that has been very successful. This was after I moved to America. [/quote]

The difficulties that Soviet and Eastern bloc countries had in attempting to establish capitalist market systems to replace their failed systems is testimony to the complexity and value of market systems. These economies provide vivid evidence of the inefficiency and poverty that result from the waste of specific knowledge and the lack of control in the absence of alienable decision rights. We take for granted the inherent complexity that underlines the relatively simple concept of the ‘invisible hand’ construed by Adam Smith.

If anyone is interested in the economic and financial perspective of the Soviet situation as a microcosm of the popular debate of state vs market they should check out the work of Shleifer (a Russian himself) and Jensen and Meckling.

26

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

[quote]Edevus wrote:
Good thread. Living in a former Soviet republic I get to hear all kind of nasty things although the worst is “Life was better during those times” from some people.

“There was no crime or drunken people around”. Yeah, sure, because Soviet troops would put them in a van and send them to the south of the country…to never be seen again.

EDIT : Dr.Matt581, where are you from exactly? I’ve got the feeling that you are not Russian, but, from an occupied republic. Am I correct? [/quote]

The soviet propaganda machine was very good at it’s job. More then a few people actually believe that life was better then. It didn’t help that for more than a couple of years after the fall of the Soviet Union, life actually was worse for a lot of people. The Russian Mob grew and became extremely powerful, corruption was actually worse for a while, we had unemployed for the first time in the better part of a century, inflation was in the double digits for months on end, and our military, which was a major source of work in factories and such, crumbled. And there were not too many drunks in the Soviet Union because vodka was 10 rubles per liter, more than a day’s wages for most people. I consider myself lucky that no one in my family “disappeared.” It was not all that uncommon occurrence. What former republic are you in? I actually am Russian, from Volgograd originally.[/quote]

Volgograd is one of the few places in Russia that I want to visit, since that giant statue of Rodina Mat’ Zobyot is something I must see.

About propaganda, let me tell you how it is here. I live in Estonia (three years already) and 30% of the population is Russian. Many don’t speak Estonian at all, especially in Ida-Viru, the county that is at the East. 95% of the population there is ethnic Russian. Even in Tallinn many Russians refuse to speak Estonian for pride issues and expect Estonians to speak in Russian.

I’m a bit tired of the “Mother Russia” wonders, of people who complain about Estonia constantly but when given the option to move to Russia, they rather stay here.

The official story is that the Soviet Union coerced Estonia to use their bases, roads, etc. to move their army. They eventually stayed (Nazi ‘liberation’ in between) and when the USSR collapsed, the occupation ended.

Before the occupation, Estonia had been independent, for first time, for around 20 years and it was growing up very fast. It was more advanced than Finland back then and a BBC (could be something else) reporter visited it in the early 30s and was impressed. He also found lots of people who could speak English and German (business language back then).

So what is the fairy tale being told to Russian children STILL at this point? Estonia was very poor after splitting from the glorious Mother Russia, so they needed help. The Soviet Union went there to liberate them from the nazis and stayed to help the country, and now those evil Estonians want to kick Russians out!

Sometimes I see in forums, youtube, etc. children who praise the USSR, for whatever reason, and I can’t help feeling a bit annoyed. It’s not about ideology, but methods and history, and the Soviet Union totally sank this country.

I’ve read books, watched documentaries, etc. and the KGB and company were scary, very scary. If they decided that you were an enemy of the people, there was little you could do. You couldn’t run forever so if you stayed, you were at the mercy of these people. It could happen at any moment and for any reason. You could be rated out by someone who was being just greedy.

It’s hard to find someone who didn’t have his/her grandparents deported to the Gulag at some point. The male/female ratio past 65 years old is totally messed up. I think there’s around four women for every man. It must have been terrible for all these people.

27

[quote]CSEagles1694 wrote:
Wow. This thread is eye-opening. They never covered this in my history class at school (I’m still in high school). I find all the '80s-'90s Soviet affairs interesting. I hope to visit Russia one day and some of it’s [former] satellite nations just for shits and giggles and see what it was like. Thanks for all the information.

CS [/quote]

There’s really a huge difference between reading about deportations, gulag, The Great Purge, the Soviet Union life, etc. and getting to see the consequences of it and hear live testimony.

For me, many things still shock me time to time. Very soon I’m planning to travel to many small towns and talk with people about if (if they want) and do my own study/documentary. I’ll also be traveling to some of the concentration camps that the Germans built here…since they exterminated the jew population of Estonia (many fled to Russia).

28

[quote]HoustonGuy wrote:
So what career examples were top tier?[/quote]

Op can answer this better, but I met an exchange student from Ukraine and his parents were both Olympic athletes for the USSR. His family was one of the ones who was pissed about the fall, since they went from getting special treatment to being basically nothing.

His parents had no real education or job skills - they were trained from a young age to be athletes in their respective sports. If I remember correctly his dad was a wrestler and his mom was a weight lifter.

29

[quote]CSEagles1694 wrote:
Wow. This thread is eye-opening. They never covered this in my history class at school (I’m still in high school). I find all the '80s-'90s Soviet affairs interesting. I hope to visit Russia one day and some of it’s [former] satellite nations just for shits and giggles and see what it was like. Thanks for all the information.

CS [/quote]

Sounds like our public school systems are ensuring that we end up just like the Soviet Union!

“In Soviet Union, road fork you!”

Matt- Where I grew up in there is a large farming population of folks from Ukraine, Poland, and other former Soviet states. Your stories are similar to many I’ve heard from folks back home.

Please, keep sharing!

30

[quote]DarkNinjaa wrote:
OMG!!! EDEVUS???!! Welcome back!

Lol[/quote]

Now that’s funny. Your comment was not showing at work, but now at home it appeared. Too sexy avatar for my job?

31

[quote]CSEagles1694 wrote:
Wow. This thread is eye-opening. They never covered this in my history class at school (I’m still in high school). I find all the '80s-'90s Soviet affairs interesting. I hope to visit Russia one day and some of it’s [former] satellite nations just for shits and giggles and see what it was like. Thanks for all the information.

CS [/quote]

History classes only cover the “important” things like the interactions of our top officials with your top officials and international incidents. Little things like hundreds of millions of people starving and without basic things like clothing and hot water or soap only get barely touched on. If you make it to Russia, make sure you visit St. Petersburg and Volgograd. Beautiful cities with some amazing monuments and museums to see. If you go to the Pacific side, check out Vladivostok, great theaters plus many historical museums.

32

[quote]Chushin wrote:
Matt, you still in “The Burgh,” or have you moved away?[/quote]

Still in the Burgh, and don’t plan on moving anytime soon. It probably has more to do with the fact that this was the first place I saw outside of Russia then anything else, but I love it here.

33

[quote]Edevus wrote:

Volgograd is one of the few places in Russia that I want to visit, since that giant statue of Rodina Mat’ Zobyot is something I must see.

About propaganda, let me tell you how it is here. I live in Estonia (three years already) and 30% of the population is Russian. Many don’t speak Estonian at all, especially in Ida-Viru, the county that is at the East. 95% of the population there is ethnic Russian. Even in Tallinn many Russians refuse to speak Estonian for pride issues and expect Estonians to speak in Russian.

I’m a bit tired of the “Mother Russia” wonders, of people who complain about Estonia constantly but when given the option to move to Russia, they rather stay here.

The official story is that the Soviet Union coerced Estonia to use their bases, roads, etc. to move their army. They eventually stayed (Nazi ‘liberation’ in between) and when the USSR collapsed, the occupation ended.

Before the occupation, Estonia had been independent, for first time, for around 20 years and it was growing up very fast. It was more advanced than Finland back then and a BBC (could be something else) reporter visited it in the early 30s and was impressed. He also found lots of people who could speak English and German (business language back then).

So what is the fairy tale being told to Russian children STILL at this point? Estonia was very poor after splitting from the glorious Mother Russia, so they needed help. The Soviet Union went there to liberate them from the nazis and stayed to help the country, and now those evil Estonians want to kick Russians out!

Sometimes I see in forums, youtube, etc. children who praise the USSR, for whatever reason, and I can’t help feeling a bit annoyed. It’s not about ideology, but methods and history, and the Soviet Union totally sank this country.

I’ve read books, watched documentaries, etc. and the KGB and company were scary, very scary. If they decided that you were an enemy of the people, there was little you could do. You couldn’t run forever so if you stayed, you were at the mercy of these people. It could happen at any moment and for any reason. You could be rated out by someone who was being just greedy.

It’s hard to find someone who didn’t have his/her grandparents deported to the Gulag at some point. The male/female ratio past 65 years old is totally messed up. I think there’s around four women for every man. It must have been terrible for all these people.

[/quote]

Yeah, that is a beautiful monument. Here is a pic for those who don’t know what it is. The Soviet propaganda machine sure was a piece of work. Estonia was not even the worst off of the former Soviet Republics. Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Armenia were hit extremely hard during those first few years after the fall of the Soviet Union, and virtually all of the former republics are just barely making progress. I was one of the lucky people who never had a family member or loved on sent to the Gulag. My family was good about teaching us about the bullshit of the propaganda machine and the KGB, but they also taught us the wisdom of keeping our mouth shut. We still lived in fear that we would be taken away, but we were a lot more careful than some. Of course, a lot of the people sent to the Gulags were completely innocent of any crime whatsoever, so it really was like a lottery where everyone had to buy a ticket and the losers disappeared.

34

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:

The difficulties that Soviet and Eastern bloc countries had in attempting to establish capitalist market systems to replace their failed systems is testimony to the complexity and value of market systems. These economies provide vivid evidence of the inefficiency and poverty that result from the waste of specific knowledge and the lack of control in the absence of alienable decision rights. We take for granted the inherent complexity that underlines the relatively simple concept of the ‘invisible hand’ construed by Adam Smith.

If anyone is interested in the economic and financial perspective of the Soviet situation as a microcosm of the popular debate of state vs market they should check out the work of Shleifer (a Russian himself) and Jensen and Meckling.

[/quote]

Yeah, it was horrible for most people for that first decade or so after the fall of the Soviet Union. Unemployment was as high as 50% in some places, poverty skyrocketed, and there was no money for education or pensions for the elderly. The collapse of our military and the fact that a lot of military bases and factories in former republics were shut down and their assets taken back to Russia made things very bad in most of the former republics. Things are still very bad all over, but things are getting better slowly. Food is much more available now, which is definitely an improvement over the Soviet Union.

35

[quote]SteelyD wrote:

Sounds like our public school systems are ensuring that we end up just like the Soviet Union!

“In Soviet Union, road fork you!”

Matt- Where I grew up in there is a large farming population of folks from Ukraine, Poland, and other former Soviet states. Your stories are similar to many I’ve heard from folks back home.

Please, keep sharing![/quote]

I wish more schools would cover this stuff even just a little bit more. If nothing else, it may give some people a little perspective on bad things can get if you let it. I feel really bad for the folks living in Ukraine right after the fall of the Soviet Union. We heard stories of what things were like and it was just horrible, even compared to how bad things were at home. I hope things are going well in Toronto for you.

36

[quote]waldo21212 wrote:

[quote]HoustonGuy wrote:
So what career examples were top tier?[/quote]

Op can answer this better, but I met an exchange student from Ukraine and his parents were both Olympic athletes for the USSR. His family was one of the ones who was pissed about the fall, since they went from getting special treatment to being basically nothing.

His parents had no real education or job skills - they were trained from a young age to be athletes in their respective sports. If I remember correctly his dad was a wrestler and his mom was a weight lifter.[/quote]

People who brought prominence to the Soviet Union had everything they could ever want. Olympic athletes, male chess players and such. Education in the Soviet Union was very different from education in America. It was very specialized. There was a core indoctrination program that was used to brainwash the general population, but beyond that you received training for whatever career you were going to have and that was it. Everybody was literate, but in almost every other way we were very behind the rest of the world in terms of general education in the population. The thinking was that factory workers didn’t need to know much about math or science or the humanities so why bother teaching them that.

37

Dr.Matt

You should write a detailed account of your life as much as you can recall, and publish a book. You might have a bestseller on your hands.

38

I met an engineer from Russia in San Francisco, he was my taxi driver. He said he made more money than in Russia.

Does Texas count as another country? It’s what they say on the tourism ads.

39

[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
Dr.Matt

You should write a detailed account of your life as much as you can recall, and publish a book. You might have a bestseller on your hands.[/quote]

That may not be a bad idea for something to do in my spare time over the next year or two. If I do, I will send you a signed copy. I would have to donate any money made off the sale of the book to help people in the former Soviet Republics. I could’t live with myself if I made any money by telling what is essentially the story of hundreds of millions of people living in the Soviet Union.

The only difference between me and most of them is that I moved to America, became well educated and am in a position to do such a thing. We weren’t even the worst off. There were many people in the Soviet Union that had it worse than me and my family.

40

[quote]Tex Ag wrote:
I met an engineer from Russia in San Francisco, he was my taxi driver. He said he made more money than in Russia.

Does Texas count as another country? It’s what they say on the tourism ads.[/quote]

The average monthly income these days in Russia is about 22,000 rubles (600 US dollars). That is way better than when I was growing up, but there is still a long way to go. Places like Ukraine and Armenia are worse. And given what little bit I know about you Texans, I would consider you your own country.