I’m interested in hearing about the personal experiences of living in the USSR without making it a political conversation. Rather, just what life was like, the good and the bad, from a nonjudgmental human perspective.
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I was born in USSR and it collapsed when I was seven so my memories of it were at the very end when things were tough and scarce. I remember school books that were still about Lenin and Stalin, and we would write essays about Labor day parades and red hammer-and-sickle flags during our English classes, it sounded funny even for us first graders.
Yet, whatever little was available was cheap, we would have deficit problems but not financial ones unless you were trying to buy something that was smuggled into the country, like jeans.
We would take flights to Kazakhstan where my grandma lived, no borders no visas obviously. They lived on their own land there and were much better off in terms of food availability (Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).
Then we reached the point when food stamps had to be distributed and it was outright scary. I remember standing by our front door crying, because my mom gave me a bread stamp and sent me to get some bread, and I lost the stamp on the way and couldn’t bring myself to go back home. Eventually I was absent long enough for her to start worrying and she opened the door to go out and found me there sobbing.
… Not sure what to say, but kids shouldn’t cry about bread.
Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).
jesus, that reletively makes the Cuban food scarcity look like a charity.
Interesting, thanks for sharing! Those pictures of the barren grocery stores look terrible. I went to Russia in the mid 90s, and while consumer goods were not as abundant as in the US, the stores did not look as bad as in those pictures. However, I remember that meat was a bit scarce. We mostly had soup, eggs, bread, and potatoes. In fact, one time we went for an extravagant night out to a restaurant, and I was told that I was really lucky to have some sort of meat entree (like a steak or similar, can’t remember exactly).
Never lived in the USSR but travelled through the country on the Trans-Siberian Railway with my dad years ago when just a kid. He spoke fluent Russian and struck up conversations with locals wherever we stopped. At one point, they broke out into gales of laughter before we reboarded the train. I asked him what that was all about.
He said he had asked if anyone practiced religion in the USSR? At first, they were reluctant to answer. Who wants to know? Why do you ask? And he said well, I notice there are signs all over the train station that it is forbidden to walk over the tracks. Yet I see people going so far as to crawl under one train to reach another. After a moment of awkward silence, that’s when the laughter broke out. “Ah shit man, you got us. Religion is alive and well here!”
Is the joke that they’d pray to some god that the train doesn’t start moving? Lol
I think the punchline is that the people only followed the Soviet rules at a surface level.
doesnt even have to be soviet, basically worldwide. doesnt stop north koreans from watching South korean made content, doesnt stop americans from making or drinking alcohol during prohibition. Banning something that a lot of people do wont stop people from doing it, only from doing it publicly.
Yeah that was my read of it. I remember actually seeing people hopping onto the train even as it was starting to move out. It took those locomotives a long time to build up any significant speed, so I don’t think anyone was freaking out about getting cut in half or anything.
I’ve met a guy on a long-distance train once. He just jumped off at his village, with a bag on his shoulder, in the dark.
The train could only go slow because of a sharp turn. I was terrified. He was okay.
Sounds like it lol
I don’t get it :/
You have to understand that religion was banned by the communist regime of the day. Admitting to it could get you locked up.
But my dad, as a tourist making this casual observation about flagrant rule-breaking going on in plain sight even as he spoke, broke the tension completely and made the locals admit there is a lot of rule-breaking going on everywhere.
Ahh, okay. That makes sense. Thanks for sharing and explaining it :)
I was just a kid when I came to the USA so most of my memories are in the context of how different things were after we came to America.
One particularly vivid memory for me is of bananas. My grandma would go on business trips to Moscow sometimes and she would bring bananas back for us. Otherwise the fruits we had were the ones that grew locally, and you had to preserve them if you wanted them out of season. It blew my mind when I came to the USA and I could just go to a grocery store and buy bananas at any time.
There were a few foods there that are harder to find here.
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Buckwheat, which is my favorite grain.
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Fresh peas, not the kind that people eat along with the pod but rather the kind with an inedible pod and big seeds, like canned peas but raw.
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Russian-style rye bread. My family was so surprised that Americans had such an abundance of food but still ate Wonder Bread.
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Kvas, a sweet beverage made out of fermented bread. I think it tastes way better than soft drinks so I’m not sure why everyone isn’t drinking it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste?
Also American cakes are usually terrible and American deep-fried french fries are inferior to Russian pan-fried potatoes.
Edit: one more thing, crepes. They’re not exclusively Russian, of course, but they’ve very common in Russian cooking with a variety of sweet or savory fillings - applesauce, jam, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, ground meat, etc. Sometimes they’re fried after being filled.
Kvas, a sweet beverage made out of fermented bread. I think it tastes way better than soft drinks so I’m not sure why everyone isn’t drinking it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste?
Interesting! There’s a Russian store/deli near my place where I get my loose leaf green tea. I’ll swing by and pick some up to give it a try. Thanks for sharing!
I have found kvas in Russian delis to vary in quality quite a bit, but unfortunately I don’t remember which brands I liked and which I didn’t. Good luck!
I got some kvas and bread. When I asked the Russian food store worker if they had kvas, the guy looked away, slightly smiled as if it was a dumb question, and said, “Of course!” Then he took me to the kvas aisle and showed all of the options lol. I probably seemed pretty silly to him. While I was there, I also got some fresh bread that they made.
I tried the bread fresh, and it was okay. I tried the kvas and thought it was okay too. However, I sliced the bread, toasted it, and put butter on it. I had that with kvas on the side, and it was pretty good! They compliment each other very well. The bread is heavier than I’m used to and has a lot more flavor. I can see how someone that is used to that would think American white bread would seem like crap. By comparison, white bread is lacking consistency and flavor while also being too sweet. To me, the kvas tastes like a soda but less sweet and slightly bitter like molasses. I can see how this would be something someone would like if they drink it often. It has a unique taste that isn’t overwhelming. I noticed that I kept wanting more, where as coke is repugnant after a bit. Overall, I like it and am gonna be eating/drinking this for the next week. Thanks/Спасибо for the recommendation!
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Check out the Ushanka Show YouTube channel. He’s got tons of stories. I’ve really enjoyed the stories of the hassles of trying to have a car and how grocery stores worked, plus all the ways people figured out to “beat the system” of equal distribution. It really gives you the necessary background to start to understand “Soviet engineering” of unique solutions.
Ushanka Show
Thanks! Link for those that are interested 👍
I thought that would be exactly what you were looking for. I had always been curious about how things worked as well, and Sergei covers so many topics. I don’t recall any time he seemed to ever think the Soviet way of anything was better than in America, but I feel he presents why the Soviet government thought something would be a good idea, but then how it either didn’t have the intended effect, or how people would manipulate the system and cause issues that way. The way he gives context of the cost of goods to USD is also greatly helpful and he explains what % of your budget different items would be. It’s easy to see how some mundane things could be extremely expensive while a house could be dirt cheap.
All his stories of his childhood adventures are fun too, like trying to get hold of American fashion to try to impress girls, to some of the chores and responsibilities he would have and how things were different when he was with family in the city vs in the countryside. He’s a little older than I am, and it makes it fun to compare and contrast our childhoods.
Yes, I love that channel! I added so many videos to my watch later list, that I had to stop and just accept hat I will be going through a ton of them. It’s so interesting to me because I almost grew up in the USSR, but a last minute intervention by the US government made it so I grew up in the US instead. I always wondered what it would have been like if that didn’t happen and I lived in the Soviet Union.
I spent my some of my childhood in communal housing where we had 1 toilet, 1 bathtub and 1 fridge for 6 families and half of the walls were curtains. My parents and grandparents never told me anything positive about USSR, it was all nepotism and scarcity and “know your place peasant” type of deal, they all thought the 90s was godsend despite banditry, but even they think what is currently happening in Russia (and has been happening for the last decade and a half) is on another level of awful than the worst that USSR had. The most terrifying thing is that soviet cheeses and sausages were absolutely ghastly.
I was born a bit after it collapsed, but I grew up in it’s ruins. The people who talk about it will give you this picture:
Everybody stole, but friends shared. You can go to a store and find empty shelves, but go through people’s houses and most people have most things.
Money was largely meaningless. Don’t try to have a 100 roubles, try having a 100 friends instead. The friend from a dairy factory will give you sour cream, the friend from a store will give you best meat and canned goods from underneath the table, stuff not really available to the regular customers. The friend from the shoe supplies will give you a pair of shoes that last years.
Corruption was a way of life. To the older people, it still is.
I really wanted to write something (I was also born in about-to-fall-apart USSR), but it’s hard to choose what to start from. We’re looking a øt a book-sized amount of content here.
I’m up for AMA format thoughInteresting topic…I could speak the full name of the USSR and the motto in Russian in school.
