Soviet Union through The Eyes of Common People

To common folk living in the Soviet Union times, the country is not remembered in terms of “$1=76 kopecks,” “the strongest military,” or “the all-mighty KGB.” I mean, we all knew we were well protected and could always count on our country’s military and its KGB, by we didn’t really see its might. A common person didn’t have a slightest idea of what a dollar looked like. We weren’t thinking about Soviet Union’s GDP, its grand industry, or its economic growth. We were thinking in different terms and looked at other things:

Soviet Union: when you walk the streets of your city any time of day or night and you don’t hear a bad word, much less encounter any form of violence. Metal bars on the windows of the first floor? You must be crazy! An apartment is not a jail cell! Secure metal doors guarding entrances of the apartment buildings? That’s just wild! Cellars and attics, to say nothing of entrances to the apartment buildings, were always wide open, and no homeless or drug addicts were ever there. There were no homeless or drug addicts. At all.

Soviet Union: when you hang your laundry in the inner yard of your apartment complex and don’t even think that it may be stolen or damaged. Because for as long as you live, you have not encountered such accidents.

Soviet Union: when you know personally all fellow-apartment dwellers, even if there are 300+ units; you may stop by any of them if you happen to run out of matches or salt unexpectedly and ask for it.

Soviet Union: a WWII participant comes onto a city bus and half of the passengers get off their seats offering it to him or her. Or when such people walk into a store – people make way for them in lines.

Big stores worked just like the supermarkets today: you fill up your cart and go to checkout station. Except there were no security guards, and security cameras were not stuck in every corner, making the store look like a prison; there were lots of exits one could use to bypass checkout, but people didn’t shoplift.

Soviet Union: there are soda vending machines with mineral water around every corner, and the glasses are always where they are supposed to be.

All telephone booths have phone books in them. How long would the books stay there now?

Soviet Union: free high quality education for all. One could not get that kind of education in any other country of the world, even for millions of dollars; in my country we got it for free. Coupled with a guaranteed job placement.

Soviet Union: free sports clubs and gyms with all kinds of sports sections, free summer camps for children, and free health spa resorts. It’s when you visit your area clinic and are prescribed a ticket to a health spa resort, say, in Crimea. For free. Just because your doctor found some minor problems with your health and thought it would be best for you to take care of them now.

Soviet Union: when there are no terrorists and drugs in Northern Caucasus, but health spa resorts and best mineral water in the world. There are no Nazis with their swastikas in Ukraine, but aviation and tank-building industry, clean cities, and kind, happy people instead. As to Baltic States, they were producing high precision electronics and radio technology, vehicles and world-famous balsams, had the highest-paying jobs, and spotless even to the USSR standards, squeaky clean streets. Now these countries harbor Marches of former SS militias, and half of their adult population cleans toilets in Europe.

Soviet Union: when a police officer comes up to a lost child, helps her find home, walks her there and turns her to the parents, salutes, and leaves. He dives from the bridge after the fallen child, saves him from drowning, turns him to the parents, salutes, and leaves. He does it because he is an honored soviet officer, not because he is concerned about moving up in ranks.

Soviet Union: when an adult could walk up to a lonely child on the street and ask if he needed help. Today this adult will be all but eaten alive and accused of pedophilia for sure.

Soviet Union: when every third family leaves the key under a rug by the door, but there are no robberies. But if once in a blue moon someone’s TV is stolen, the very next day the offender would be in prison  and all of the 100,000 town will be talking about it for several months.

Soviet Union: when you get married and receive a one-bedroom apartment. Free and clear. When you have a child (first or second, depends on circumstances) that apartment is now traded in for a two-bedroom. As your family grows (usually with the third-fourth child) so does your apartment, and you trade in your two-bedroom for a three-bedroom. Free and clear. Mortgage? What does that mean? Must be some foreign word we are not familiar with. Nope, never heard of it, don’t know what it means.

Soviet Union: when there are kind movies and educational programs on TV. There are no mountains of corpses and oozing blood, pyramid schemes, silicone-filled prostitutes, or humor below the waist.

Soviet Union: when one can stay out of stores for half a year, but still know what the prices are. If bread was 24 kopecks six months ago, it is 24 kopecks today. But wait, I am wrong! It could be 22 kopecks. Your paycheck every spring grew bigger. When you find a ruble in your book ten years after you put it there, it is still a valid ruble, not some worthless paper. It would even be worth more ten years later. Some of the most persistent ads from the soviet days read, “Keep your money in the Bank!” Because one could as well keep them under the pillow: no inflation or robbery threatened a soviet person.

Soviet Union: when it is prestigious to be a steel founder or a polar pilot, like it is cool to be a banker now. When a word “gangster” is pronounced with contemptuous disgust, not with excitement and admiration, like it was in the nineties in Russia. The word “terrorist” sounded exotic and somewhat like “evil three-eyed octopus from another galaxy” to a soviet ear.

Soviet Union: when no one could have imagined school security guards; not even in our worst nightmare could this sort of life distortion be a reality. The strictest person in the whole school used to be the janitor. A “visit to the principal’s office” sounded to a student like a “visit to the court martial.”

How else can I explain it to those who didn’t live there?

Imagine a place that feels most trustworthy, safe, and cozy to you. Your nursery; perhaps, your grandma’s house in the village; it’s different for everyone. Did you imagine it? That’s how we all felt in any place of our huge country.

Russian source:

http://back-in-ussr.com/2016/05/sssr-glazami-prostogo-cheloveka.html

Link active as of January 27, 2017. RV