The USSR was a multinational country with the proclaimed principle of friendship among peoples. And this friendship was not always just a declaration. Otherwise, in a country inhabited by more than 100 different nations and nationalities, it was impossible. The equality of all peoples in the formal absence of a titular nation - this is the basis for the propaganda myth about "a single historical community - the Soviet people."
However, all representatives of a single historical community in without fail had passports in which there was the notorious “fifth column” to indicate the nationality of a citizen in the document. How was nationality determined in the USSR?
According to the passport
Passportization of the country's population began in the early 1930s and ended shortly before the war. Each passport must have social status, place of residence (registration) and nationality. Moreover, then, before the war, according to the secret order of the NKVD, nationality was to be determined not by self-determination of a citizen, but based on the origin of the parents. The police had instructions to check all cases of discrepancy between the surname and the nationality declared by the citizen. Statisticians and ethnographers compiled a list of 200 nationalities, and when receiving a passport, a person received one of the nationalities from this list. It was on the basis of these same passport data that they were carried out in the 30s and later mass deportations peoples. According to the estimates of historians, representatives of 10 nationalities were subjected to total deportation in the USSR: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks. In addition, there was an implicit, but quite obvious anti-Semitism, and the practice of repression against representatives of other peoples, such as Poles, Kurds, Turks, etc. Since 1974, the nationality in the passport was indicated on the basis of the application of the person himself. Then there were jokes like this: “Papa is Armenian, mother is Jewish, who will be their son? Of course, Russian! However, in most cases, nationality was still indicated by one of the parents.
By mom and dad
In the vast majority of cases, a citizen determined his nationality by the nationality of his father. In the USSR, patriarchal traditions were quite strong, according to which the father determined both the surname and the nationality of the child. However, there were other options as well. For example, many, if they had to choose between "Jew" and "Russian", chose "Russian", even if their mother was Russian. This was done because the “fifth column” made it possible for officials to discriminate against representatives of some national minorities, including Jews. However, after the Jews were allowed to leave for Israel in 1968, the opposite situation was sometimes observed. Some Russians looked for a Jew among their relatives, and made incredible efforts to change the inscription in the "fifth column". Nationalities and during this period of free national self-identification were determined according to lists officially recognized peoples who lived in the USSR. In 1959, there were 126 names on the list, in 1979 - 123, and in 1989 - 128. At the same time, some peoples, for example, the Assyrians, were not on these lists, while in the USSR there were people who defined their nationality in this way .
By face
There is a sad anecdote about Jewish pogrom. They beat a Jew, and the neighbors told him: “How is it, you bought yourself a passport, with the “fifth column” where Russian is written!”. To which he replies sadly: “Yes, but they beat me not by my passport, but by my face!” Actually, this anecdote quite accurately illustrates the situation in law enforcement agencies, where they taught to determine nationality in this way: not by a passport, but by a face . And if, in general, it is easy to distinguish a gypsy from a Yakut, then it will be somewhat more difficult to understand where the Yakuts and where the Buryats are. But how to understand where is Russian, and where is Latvian or Belarusian? There were whole tables with ethnic types of faces that allowed policemen, KGB officers and other structures to accurately distinguish people "not by passport." Of course, this required a good memory for faces and observation, but who said that it would be easy to understand the nationality of people in a country where more than 100 peoples live?
At the behest of the heart
The Fifth Column was abolished in 1991. Now, in the passport and in other documents, nationality is not indicated or indicated in special inserts, only at will. And now there are no lists of nationalities from which a citizen must choose either. The removal of restrictions on national self-identification led to an interesting result. During the 2010 census, some citizens indicated their belonging to such peoples as "Cossack", "Pomor", "Scythian" and even "elf".
5 (100%) 1 vote
“We were lucky that our childhood and youth ended before the government bought FREEDOM from the youth in exchange for roller skates, mobile phones, star factories and cool crackers (by the way, soft for some reason) ... With her common consent ... For her own (seemingly) good…” is a fragment from a text called “Generation 76-82”. Those who are now somewhere in their thirties reprint it with great pleasure on the pages of their Internet diaries. He became a kind of manifesto of the generation.
The attitude towards life in the USSR changed from a sharply negative to a sharply positive one. Behind recent times There are a lot of resources on the Internet about Everyday life in Soviet Union.
Unbelievable but true: the sidewalk has an asphalt ramp for wheelchairs. Even now you rarely see this in Moscow
At that time (as far as photographs and films can tell) all the girls wore knee-length skirts. And there were practically no perverts. An amazing thing.
Beautiful pointer bus stop. And the pictogram of the trolleybus is the same in St. Petersburg today. There was also a tram sign - the letter "T" in a circle.
All over the world, the consumption of various branded drinks was growing, and we had everything from the boiler. This, by the way, is not so bad. And, most likely, humanity will come to this again. All foreign ultra-left and green movements would be delighted to know that in the USSR you had to go for sour cream with your own can. Any jar could be handed over, the sausage was wrapped in paper, and they went to the store with their string bag. The most progressive supermarkets in the world today at the checkout offer to choose between a paper or plastic bag. The most responsible environment classes are returning the yogurt crock to the store.
And before, there was no habit at all to sell containers with the product.
Kharkov, 1924. Tea room. He drank and left. No Lipton bottled.
Moscow, 1959. Khrushchev and Nixon (then Vice President) at the Pepsi booth at the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki. On the same day there was a famous dispute in the kitchen. In America, this dispute has received wide coverage, we have not. Nixon talked about how cool it was to have a dishwasher, how much stuff there was in supermarkets.
All this was filmed on color videotape (supertechnology at the time). It is believed that Nixon performed so well at this meeting that it helped him to become one of the presidential candidates for next year(and after 10 years and the president).
In the 60s, a terrible fashion for any machine guns went. The whole world then dreamed of robots, we dreamed of automatic trading. The idea, in a sense, failed due to the fact that it did not take into account Soviet reality. Say, when a potato vending machine pours you rotten potatoes, no one wants to use it. Still, when there is an opportunity to rummage through an earthy container, finding some relatively strong vegetables, there is not only hope for a delicious dinner, but a training in fighting qualities. The only machines that survived were those that dispensed a product of the same quality - for the sale of soda. Still sometimes there were vending machines for the sale of sunflower oil. Only soda survived.
1961st. VDNH. Still, before the start of the fight against excesses, we did not lag behind at all in graphic and aesthetic development from the West.
In 1972, Pepsi made an agreement with Soviet government that Pepsi will be bottled “from concentrate and using PepsiCo technology”, and in return the USSR will be able to export Stolichnaya vodka.
1974th. Some boarding house for foreigners. Polka dots "Globe" top right. I still have such a jar unopened - I keep thinking: will it explode or not? Just in case, I keep it wrapped in a bag away from books. It’s also scary to open it - what if I suffocate?
From the very right edge, next to the scales, you can see a cone for selling juice. Empty, really. There was no habit in the USSR to drink juice from the refrigerator, no one was chic. The saleswoman opened a three-liter jar, poured it into a cone. And from there - in glasses. As a child, I still found such cones in our vegetable shop on Shokalsky Drive. When I was drinking my favorite apple juice from such a cone, some thief stole my Kama bike from the store's dressing room, I will never forget.
1982 Selection of alcohol in the dining car of the Trans-Siberian train. For some reason, many foreigners have a fixed idea - to travel along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Apparently, the idea that you can not get out of a moving train for a week seems magical to them.
Please note that abundance is apparent. No exquisite dry red wines, which today, even in an ordinary tent, at least 50 types are sold. No XO and VSOP. However, even ten years after this picture was taken, the author was quite satisfied with Agdam port wine.
1983 The worm of consumerism has settled in the naive and pure souls of the Russians. True, the bottle, young man, must be returned to whom she said. I drank, enjoyed the warm, return the container. They will take her back to the factory.
In stores, Pinocchio or Bell was usually on sale. "Baikal" or "Tarhun" was also not always sold. And when Pepsi was exhibited in some supermarket, it was taken as a reserve - for a birthday, for example, to be displayed later.
1987th. An aunt sells greens in a dairy store window. Cashiers are visible behind the glass. The very ones that had to come well prepared - to know all the prices, the quantity of goods and the department numbers.
1987th. Volgograd. In the American archive, this photo is accompanied by a comment of the century: “A woman on a street in Volgograd sells some sort of liquid for the invalids of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet name for World War II)." Apparently, at the same time in 87, they translated the inscription from the barrel, when there was no one else to ask that WWII invalids were served out of turn. By the way, these inscriptions are the only documentary recognition that there are queues in the USSR.
By the way, in those days there was no struggle between merchandisers, there were no POS materials, no one hung wobblers on the shelves. No one would have thought of giving away free samples. If the store was given a beach ball with the Pepsi logo, he considered it an honor. And exhibited in the window sincerely and for nothing.
1990th. Pepsi vending machine in the subway. Rare copy. Here are the machines that are on the right, they met everywhere in the center - they sold the newspapers Pravda, Izvestia, Moskovskiye Novosti. By the way, all soda machines (and slot machines too) always had the inscription “Please! Do not omit commemorative and bent coins. It is understandable with bent ones, but commemorative coins cannot be omitted, because they differed from other coins of the same denomination in weight and sometimes in size.
1991st. Veteran drinks soda with syrup. Someone had already scratched the Depeche Moda logo on the middle machine. Glasses were always shared. You come up, wash it in the machine itself, then put it under the nozzle. Fastidious aesthetes carried folding glasses with them, which had the peculiarity of folding in the process. The photo is good because all the details are characteristic and recognizable. And a payphone half-box, and a Zaporozhets headlight.
Until 1991, American photographers followed the same routes. Almost every photo can be identified - this is on Tverskaya, this is on Herzen, this is near the Bolshoi Theater, this is from the Moscow Hotel. And then everything became possible.
Recent history.
1992 near Kyiv. This is no longer the USSR, just by the way I had to. A dude poses for an American photographer, voting with a bottle of vodka to trade it for gasoline. It seems to me that the photographer himself issued the bottles. However, a bottle of vodka long time was a kind of currency. But in the mid-nineties, all plumbers suddenly stopped taking bottles as payment, because there were no fools left - vodka is sold everywhere, and you know how much it costs. So everything has gone to the money. Today, a bottle is given only to a doctor and a teacher, and even then with cognac.
With food in the late USSR, everything was pretty bad. The chance to buy something tasty in a regular store was close to zero. Queues lined up for tasty treats. Delicious food could be given "in order" - there was whole system"order tables", which were actually distribution centers for goods for their own. In the order table, he could count on tasty things: a veteran (moderately), a writer (not bad), a party worker (also not bad).
Inhabitants closed cities in general, by Soviet standards, they rolled like cheese in butter in Christ's bosom. But they were very bored in the cities and they were restricted to travel abroad. However, almost all of them were restricted to travel abroad.
Life was good for those who could be of some help. Let's say the manager of the Wanda store was very respected person. Super VIP by recent standards. And the butcher was respected. And the head of the department in " Children's world»respected. And even a cashier at the Leningradsky railway station. All of them could "get" something. Acquaintance with them was called "connections" and "ties". The director of the grocery was reasonably confident that his children would go to a good university.
1975 year. Bakery. I felt that the cuts on the loaves were made by hand (now the robot is already sawing).
1975 year. Sheremetyevo-1. Here, by the way, not much has changed. In the cafe you could find chocolate, beer, sausages with peas. Sandwiches did not exist, there could be a sandwich, which was a piece of white bread, at one end of which there was a spoonful of red caviar, and at the other - one round of butter, which everyone pushed and trampled under the caviar with a fork as best they could.
Bread shops were of two types. The first one is with a counter. Behind the saleswoman, there were loaves and loaves in containers. The freshness of bread was determined in the process of questioning those who had already bought bread or in a dialogue with the saleswoman:
- For 25 a fresh loaf?
— Normal.
Or, if the buyer did not cause rejection:
- Delivered at night.
The second type of bakery is self-service. Here, loaders rolled up containers to special openings, on the other side of which there was a trading floor. There were no saleswomen, only cashiers. It was cool because you could poke the bread with your finger. Of course, it was not allowed to touch the bread; for this, special forks or spoons were hung on uneven ropes. The spoons were still back and forth, and it was unrealistic to determine the freshness with a fork. Therefore, each took a hypocritical device in his hands and gently turned his finger to check in the usual way how well it was pressed. It's not clear through the spoon.
Fortunately, there was no individual packaging of bread.
Better a loaf that someone gently touched with a finger than tasteless gutta-percha. Yes, and it was always possible, after checking the softness with your hands, to take a loaf from the back row, which no one had yet reached.
1991st. Soon there will be consumer protection, which, together with care, will kill the taste. Halves and quarters were prepared from the technical side. Sometimes it was even possible to persuade to cut off half of the white:
Who will buy the second one? - asked the buyer from the back room.
No one gave packages at the checkout either - everyone came with his own. Or with a string bag. Or so, carried in the hands.
The grandmother is holding bags of kefir and milk (1990). Then there was no Tetrapac yet, there was some kind of Elopak. On the package was written “Elopak. Patented." The blue triangle indicates the side from which the bag must be opened. When we first purchased the packaging line, it came with a barrel of the right glue. I found those times when the package opened in the right place without torment. Then the glue ran out, it was necessary to open it from two sides, and then fold one side back. The blue triangles remained, but since then no one has bought glue, there are few idiots.
By the way, at that time there was no food packaging additional information- no address, no phone number of the manufacturer. Only GOST. And there were no brands. Milk was called milk, but differed in fat content. My favorite is in the red bag, five percent.
Dairy products were also sold in bottles. The contents differed in the color of the foil: milk - silver, acidophilus - blue, kefir - green, fermented baked milk - raspberry, etc.
Joyful queue for eggs. Krestyanskoye oil could still be on the refrigerated display case - it was cut with wire, then with a knife into smaller pieces, wrapped immediately in oil paper. In the queue, everyone stands with checks - before that, they stood in line at the cashier. The saleswoman had to be told what to give, she looked at the figure, counted everything in her head or on the accounts, and if it converged, she gave out the purchase (“let go”). The check was strung on a needle (it stands on the left side of the counter).
In theory, they were obliged to sell even one egg. But buying one egg was considered a terrible insult to the saleswoman - she could yell at the buyer in response.
Those who took three dozen were given a cardboard pallet without question. Whoever took a dozen was not supposed to have a pallet, he put everything in a bag (there were also special wire cages for aesthetes).
This is a cool photo (1991), here you can see video rental cassettes in the background.
Good meat could be obtained through an acquaintance or bought in the market. But everything in the market was twice as expensive as in the store, so not everyone went there. "Market meat" or "market potatoes" is the highest praise for products.
Soviet chicken was considered to be of poor quality. Here is the Hungarian chicken - it's cool, but it has always been in short supply. The word "cool" was not yet in wide use (that is, it was, but in relation to the rocks)
Until 1990, it was impossible to imagine that a foreign photojournalist would be allowed to shoot in a Soviet store (especially on the other side of the counter). Everything became possible in 1990.
Outdoors at the same time, the color of the meat was more natural.
There are two chickens on the counter - imported and Soviet. Import says:
- Look at you, all blue, not plucked, skinny!
“But I died a natural death.
Since the beginning of the 90s, the Soviet past has been subjected to harsh criticism, or rather, criticism, from all sides. He was branded with shame by economists, politicians, historians, scientists, public and religious figures. Not all, of course, but most means mass media the word was given precisely to those who in every possible way denounced the Soviet system. This campaign of persecution of everything Soviet continues to this day, although now it has calmed down a bit, has acquired more streamlined forms, nevertheless, for any attentive TV viewer it is obvious that spitting, as it were, in between times in Soviet history is for the majority of those who are present on the TV screen, a sign of good taste.
The anti-Soviet campaign had and has great value in shaping the consciousness of the younger generation. Obviously people are more middle age Those who have stable views on life, their own value system, are less exposed to propaganda. Nevertheless, the breaking of the stereotypes of consciousness, the restructuring of the entire worldview has overwhelmed this part of society, what can we say about the youth, whose consciousness was formed just during the years of the fierce anti-Soviet information campaign. The main anti-Soviet postulates deeply entered her consciousness. The new generation began to be brought up on other values, ideals, images than the previous one. As a result, the traditional conflict between fathers and children in Russian society has crossed all normal boundaries. There was a huge gap in understanding between generations.
It still remains a mystery to me whether those who spread anti-Soviet sentiments understood and understand what kind of wedge they are driving into the foundation of our society with their actions? From the first years of my life, I fell under the influence of the anti-Soviet movement. Being born in the USSR, I did not understand that this was my Motherland. Soviet Union was perceived by me as something bad, outdated, long dead. Everything that reminded me of his recent existence made me negative emotions. I remember very well how I disliked, almost hated, the image of Lenin. Moreover, already at the age of seven I told my “stragglers” friends that V.I. Lenin is not kind grandfather Lenin”, but an evil, bad person, because of whom we still live poorly. I remember how contempt I felt for Soviet money, which had already gone out of circulation at that moment. The coat of arms on Soviet kopecks was strongly associated with some kind of dreary old age, decrepitude.
The image of Stalin and his era was strongly demonized in my mind. I imagined the 1930s as some kind of solid, impenetrable darkness, in which people lived very badly and very scared. This was facilitated by the reading of Solzhenitsyn's books by my older relatives and their statements about what they read. Strong influence political jokes about the Soviet past, which were published in thick volumes in the first half of the 90s, had on me. The filth and poverty of "communal apartments", a total shortage, idiot leaders, each with his own bells and whistles (Khrushchev with corn, Brezhnev with awards), dullness and rudeness everywhere, the omnipotence of the KGB and the corruption of the bureaucracy - these are the ideas about the Soviet Union that were invested in my head through the efforts of joke publishers, TV presenters, directors and other figures in education, science, and culture.
Absolute incomprehension was caused in me then by people, mostly of advanced age, who remained faithful to communist ideals, who wanted the return of everything Soviet into our lives. Television and newspapers then "helped" to understand their motives: almost all communists are "old senile", scoops who do not understand obvious things. Even greater rejection was caused by those who love Stalin and, at an opportunity, exclaim: “Under Stalin, this would not have happened! Stalin would put things in order!
These views remained with me until the early 2000s. The rethinking of everything connected with the USSR did not come immediately, gradually, and I am immensely grateful to those of my acquaintances and those books that allowed me to get to know the Soviet past from a completely different perspective. Today I feel sorry for those young people who still don’t know, don’t understand what the Soviet Union really was, who are still trusting about Solzhenitsyn’s “43 million repressed” and bitter memories of the shortage. But I try to help such peers of mine and I consider this work useful, worthy of the efforts of our entire society.
Today, when the attacks of anti-Soviet ideologists have subsided, it is time to more soberly assess our recent past. Many people who already lived under Brezhnev, who knew only from the stories of their elders the horrors of war and famine, underestimated, sometimes simply did not see the well-being in which they lived. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union by the 70s. an amazing, unique for the whole human history society. This is a society in which hunger, poverty, unemployment, the homeless, the homeless were practically absent. Crime was reduced to a minimum (we can appreciate this achievement today more than ever), sexual promiscuity, prostitution.
In Soviet society, there was no concern for children empty sound: on the table, each child had a normal diet, saturated with proteins and vitamins. Let those who say that today life in Russia is better than in the USSR tell this tale to hundreds of thousands of homeless children and hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) of those children who do not eat enough!
Some modern social scientists are coming to the conclusion that part of Soviet citizens perceived the main wealth like natural. These included: housing, heating, hot water in tap, kindergartens and much more. A living example of such an attitude to reality is shown in E. Ryazanov's comedy "The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath".
Everyone probably remembers the episode when the heroes of Yevgeny Myagkov and Barbara Brylsky complain about their low salary for their public useful work. They are talking about this at a time when they recently received an apartment in a new building! They did not receive a loan, as in the West, and no one will expel them from this apartment for non-payment utilities, how in modern Russia. The right to housing in the Soviet Union was not an empty phrase, but was constantly implemented. Today in Russia the right to housing is basically the right to buy a home for its full price, or even with interest on a loan. Let those who praise modern Russian system in comparison with the Soviet one, he will tell our homeless people about this, for whom no one cares anymore - they are not even counted (although in 2002 they tried to include them in the census - the state has money for this)!
When today anti-Soviet activists call for an end to the remnants of the Soviet past, which allegedly prevent Russia from developing normally, it is tempting to ask them what they consider to be remnants. Do they refer to the Soviet remnants of factories and plants built in Soviet time, which still partly work and provide us necessary things, whether gigantic hydroelectric power stations, thermal power plants, nuclear power plants that give light and warmth to our homes? Is it necessary to put an end to such a "cursed" Soviet relic as a weapon strategic purpose providing Russia with security and sovereignty in such a troubled world? Do critics like such a Soviet relic as comprehensive school into which they take their children, the system higher education, where by "creepy" Soviet tradition can you still get in for free? What a sin to hide: around us are only Soviet remnants. We still live on them, today we are actively eating them up, wearing them out. Will we build something to replace these "Soviet vestiges"?
Much of the Soviet heritage has already been lost, something is irretrievable. But thanks to these losses, people are now more quickly beginning to understand what they have lost in the face of the USSR. Much earlier than the Russians, residents of some former Soviet republics, especially those where at one time blood flowed like a river as a result of ethnic conflicts. Let anti-Soviet-minded citizens tell poor illegal immigrants - Tajiks or Uzbeks, who go to work in Russia at their own peril and risk, that the USSR was a terrible "evil empire", that Russia oppressed and exploited the national outskirts! But now she (or rather, part of her) really exploits them.
No, I am by no means trying to idealize or embellish Soviet reality. It was in the USSR both good and bad. But today, for some reason, they prefer to inflate everything bad, without saying a word about the good. The bad is inflated, often far-fetched problems are popularized. Let us turn, for example, to the problem of scarcity, about which so much has been said and written. Amazing things are happening in the minds of society: in the Soviet Union, for example, milk production was twice as high as today in Russia, but for some reason no one talks about the current shortage. In the USSR, there was enough food for everyone, even if some foodstuffs were not enough: everyone still had the most necessary on the table. Today, not only the consumption of Russians as a whole has fallen, but the amount of protein, vitamins, and other nutrients in the average daily diet. Yes, today there is no shortage on the shelves: often because the population simply does not have money, and the goods are not bought, but flaunted in the window. On the other hand, today a lack of weight and a lack of health among a part of the population, especially the young, is absolutely real. Our military registration and enlistment offices have already faced this problem: there is no one to call.
Yet real problems in the USSR were - it's hard to argue with that. Much has already been said about them, much has been written. Of course, if these problems did not exist, the USSR would have survived to this day. There was both bureaucracy and the careerism of some communists (later they turned out to be “democrats”), there was a lack of freedom, there was a certain poverty (still after such a war!), There was also the development of a petty-bourgeois worldview, fixed talented writers: B. Vasiliev, Yu. Trifonov, A. Likhanov. There were problems, but there was also an opportunity to solve them peacefully, gradually, without breaking the fundamental foundations of society. Today, some scientists are beginning to understand what exactly caused the problems in Soviet society. Then, truly, "we did not know the society in which we live."
Soviet society was born in the hardest time for our country. Russian empire struck by the deep systemic crisis, weakened by the war, fell apart in 1917 before our eyes. The coming to power of the Bolsheviks, who replaced the incapacitated Provisional Government, exacerbated internal conflict in Russian society. The matter was aggravated foreign intervention. The civil war clearly showed what at that moment the majority of the country's population, mainly the peasantry, wanted. The peasants did not want the bourgeois order on their land, they did not want to leave the community and become private owners, they did not want the domination of foreigners, even if economic, on their land. Our peasant country, the keeper of the ancient Christian Orthodox tradition, the eternal commandments, has chosen for itself special way. We have turned off the beaten path of capitalist modernization and begun to pave the way for such modernization, which would preserve the basic foundations of traditional society. Russia, consciously renouncing the omnipotence of the market, free competition, has chosen the path of fraternal relations between people and between entire nations.
The result was a society special type which showed the peoples of the world a real alternative to capitalist development. Phenomenon today Soviet society underestimated and poorly studied, and we are increasingly being called upon to build a civil society in Russia on the Western model. These claims are highly questionable. Firstly, because they sound from those who until recently called to build communism. The ideal of communism has gone, but the "builders" have remained and now they are calling us to build democracy, constitutional state and the notorious civil society. Secondly, I strongly doubt whether such a society can be purposefully built at all: in the West, the process proceeded spontaneously, by itself, was determined objective reasons and lasted several centuries. Western civil society would not have appeared without the Reformation, without revolutions like the Great French, without the extreme individualization of consciousness - is it really that our "builders" are calling us to this? And thirdly, none of the callers say what kind of society we lived in before - after all, there was some kind of society.
Now we can answer this question: we lived and partly continue to live in a modernized (modernized) traditional society. The basis of civil society is the principle of the market: everyone trades with everyone, everyone tries to bargain for his own material benefit. Merchants sell goods, workers sell their labor, some sell their bodies, politicians sell programs and promises, make deals with business and the electorate. At the heart of our Soviet society was the principle of the family: all brothers to each other, take care of each other, help in trouble. The state itself was the spokesman for this idea of the family. It took care of children, the elderly and the disabled, it distributed material wealth "according to the eaters" - as in peasant community. the Soviet Union became common home for fraternal peoples- no one found out then whose land was here - Armenian or Azerbaijani, Russian or Tatar, Chechen or Ingush - the land was common to everyone, everyone had the right to live on it.
Soviet society immediately after its emergence began to interfere with many external forces. Therefore, in order to preserve it, our people had to endure the most difficult trials on their shoulders. First, fratricidal civil war, then - forced industrialization as preparation for a new war. The greatest feat made by our fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, having won in the Great Patriotic War. In fact, they repelled the onslaught of all of Europe, all of its military and economic power. They delivered the world from the fascist threat and rescued many peoples from fascist captivity. With their blood they proved to the whole world the viability and steadfastness of the Soviet system. Just as the united Russian people returned from the Kulikovo field instead of Muscovites, Ryazans, Tverites with victory, the great Patriotic War came out with victory Soviet people containing over a hundred different peoples and nationalities.
The Brotherhood of Nations had common goals and values. Together we built a new society, where there will be a place for everyone's happiness. I have already spoken above about the achievements of Soviet society. You need to understand how big they are, how great, for example, was the deliverance of people from the threat of hunger, from the fear of being left without a home, without work, without the meaning of life. The Soviet Union has often been compared and is still being compared with the West, which is allegedly prosperous, in which everything is there and everyone lives happily. How justified is this comparison? No matter how much! First, because the starting capabilities of Western and Russian civilizations are immeasurably different: the climate is different, the yield is different, the threat from external enemies was different - for example, steppe nomads. With all these differences not in our favor, we were able to build great power, which repulsed the onslaught from the West several times. Secondly, because it is necessary to compare not the West with the Soviet Union, but the West and the countries of the "third world" with the Soviet Union, because it is no secret to anyone where western civilization scooped and draws a considerable share of their wealth.
Many former colonies Europeans today are still exploited - only now more hidden: for example, the salary of a European worker can be several times, or even tens of times, higher than the salary of the same worker somewhere in Brazil, despite the fact that they work at the factories of the same company. "Third World" is like back side West. As a result of such a more correct comparison, we will see that the average Soviet standard of living was immeasurably higher than what it was and is abroad, in the capitalist world. But even if we only compare the developed countries with the USSR, anyway, the comparison will be in favor of the Soviet system: in the West there are still homeless, street children, and starving people, and such “benefits” of civilization as drug addiction, the sex industry flourish there.
Everything that I said above was realized by me quite recently. Now I am ashamed of my former self, of my former views, that I did not understand obvious things. But now there is great pride in my soul: I was born in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in great country. This is my homeland. There is no other Motherland and I will not have it - the so-called the Russian Federation, a country with a terrible present and a vague future. A country going nowhere. The country that is tearing its ties with the parent is the USSR. A country spitting on its own past, having betrayed its former sacred ideals. The country that screams that she is " new Russia”, but at the same time living off everything that was created in the Soviet era, and has not yet created anything comparable in size to what was created in our great past.
Today we can talk as much as we want about the great Russian culture, admire Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, Pushkin or Lomonosov, Chaliapin or Repin - all this will be in high degree cynicism. We admire them, but we betray them at every turn. The eerie images of Dostoevsky's Petersburg have already become a common reality for us. AT worst case these images are embodied in our reality. Sonechka Marmeladova is now not bashfully, but almost defiantly engaged in her “business”, Rodion Raskolnikov now kills the old woman not for some intricate reasons, but simply because of money, the businessman Luzhin sells everything and everything, generally disregarding conscience and law, Svidrigailov sins even more, and even talks about it with gusto in popular talk shows. Thirty-year-old women returned to our reality with drunken faces, hoarse voices, a confused life, beauty, health, dirty children in rags returned. Our ancestors wanted to save us from all this when they created the Soviet Union. At one time we joyfully returned to all this, having collapsed the USSR.
Today the USSR for me is not just a Motherland. It's a lost civilization, with which you need to urgently restore contact, otherwise - a disaster. The Soviet Union is an important link in the chain of reincarnations of our great Russian culture. Only by rethinking the Soviet experience, we can move on, rediscover the path we have walked for centuries. Restore the lost, restore the connection between generations, tell the youth the truth about our past- this is what we need to do today together, jointly, so that Russia becomes Great again and leads the peoples to a prosperous, happy future for every person!
