Childhood memories of the USSR
kotichok :
my grandmother told me a lot about the 30s, 40s and 50s
the story especially stuck in my memory, how in 1939, when Soviet power came, half the village ran to see how the Soviets drank vodka with granchaks
Grandmother said that earlier they could play a wedding with a bottle of vodka - and everyone had fun
* * *
my father built the Moscow, Kharkov and Kyiv subways
he worked a lot, he seemed to earn money, but he didn’t have cronyism
everything had to be delivered
I remember when tangerines, bananas and "Evening Kyiv" sweets were "gotten", my parents watched so that I didn't eat everything at once and didn't get covered with diathesis)))

topof , "Eaglet 1988 stew Chinese wall":
Among the lucky ones was in the All-Russian camp Eaglet in the summer of 1988 ... there were many children from all over the country ...
there were only 2 people from my city, after we were given dry Chinese stew Great Wall on a camping trip in the All-Russian camp ... I realized that the USSR would soon not be 00)) ... at that time ours still knew how to make normal stew .. .
I experienced the second shock a couple of years later, when, having arrived in the village to visit relatives, instead of cream from my cow in a 3-liter jar, as usual, they began to spread Rama butter from a plastic jar ... agriculture was gone))))

tres_a :
Kyiv, late 80s.
White bread could be bought only in one store and only within an hour after delivery - in the morning and at lunchtime. Where the stale one came from among the loaves - I still don’t understand.
Ice cream ice cream in chocolate was rarely brought in and only in milk (a special store with dairy products, in other grocery stores milk was rarely imported and stale).
In all stores there was a smell of bleach and rot (even in the central ones).
Children stood in public transport if there was someone adult (from 4-5 years old).
There are few overweight people, only one or two children for the whole school (the schools I know had up to 1,000 students at that time).
For a cigarette, they could be pulled by the ears and taken to their parents. The police 150% did this.
Subbotniks and other voluntary-compulsory events (I still don’t understand why I have to clean if someone gets paid for it).
Politics and adult topics were not discussed in front of the children.

tol39 (born 1975):
You could buy bread from us before lunch, after lunch you could fly over, because bread was usually sorted out during the lunch break, which was from one to two at enterprises, and from two to three in stores. We had four varieties of ice cream - in waffle cups, we didn’t have it on sale, my father brought it from the city. Eskimo, expensive and not very common, still weighed, very tasty, in such shells. And the products of our local dairy - in paper cups and with ice crystals. There was a specific smell in the shops, only it was not rotten, the barrels that were always in the back rooms smelled like that.
***
Well, firstly, it was childhood, and it was good, I was born in 1975. Until 87-88, everything was generally wonderful, and then the word "deficit" appeared. In fact, it was before, but it belonged to the category of things not very significant in everyday life. There was a sense of imminent change, exhilarating, like when you roll down on a trampoline to take off, but the takeoff did not happen. All the way crashed into the dirty mess of the nineties. Black t-shirts, chains, nunchucks, Royal alcohol and all that. How I survived, who the hell knows.

true_frog (born 1952):
My year of birth is 1952. So, all my conscious life fell on the USSR.
Childhood. All the most interesting was on the street and in the yard. It was impossible to drive children into the apartment. In the evening, windows and vents were opened: mothers called the children from the yard. We played calm and active games, tennis, volleyball. On rainy days they played outside. Even in winter, in the dark, we girls were not forbidden to walk. We moved a lot. We only went to school on foot, no matter how far it was. For some reason, it was not accepted to ride the bus. Fat children - "zhirtresty" - were a rarity and despised by all.
Starting from the first grade, schoolchildren first did a little cleaning in the classroom, and then they themselves washed the floors in the classrooms.
They collected either scrap metal, or empty bottles, or waste paper. It was not scary to send children to unfamiliar apartments.
There were a lot of different circles. Only at the music school education was paid, all the rest (sports and art) were completely free. A huge House of Pioneers, where you could do anything for free - even ballet, even boxing. Each child could try himself in any occupation.
Even preschool children were sent to pioneer camps. They lived there in one-story dachas, half for boys, half for girls. Toilet with a hole in the floor on the street, only cold water in the washstands, also on the street. In the morning, a mandatory general exercise. The children themselves were on duty at the gates to the pioneer camp and in the dining room. The dishes were not washed, but the bread was cut and the dishes were arranged.
***
Yes, "the key under the rug" - it was everywhere in childhood, even in the city, and in the late 70s, in our youth, in a small village in the Far North, we inserted a wand into the latch when we left home. In the early 80s, again in the city, the entrance doors were locked only at night, sometimes I forgot, and they slept unclosed all night. When we moved to a new apartment, at night the door was closed with a washing machine until the lock was inserted.
***
From youth. In the first two years of university - cleaning. We are a little surprised why the collective farmers bend their backs in their gardens while we throw grain on the current, but in general we have a great time: we learn to heat the stove, cook our own food on it, ride horses, drive a motorcycle, arrange concerts.
In the 70s, a brass band was still found at dances, which had not yet been replaced by electric music.
Girls and girls are supposed to walk with their hair tied up. "Ponytail" is cool. And loose hair - well, this is only in foreign films.
Dressed, of course, gray. I went to the first harvest in a quilted jacket, because jackets were rare, I sewed my first jacket in the atelier. It was strange to watch in the cinema at the bright clothes of Soviet film heroes: they never dressed like that in life. I remember being amazed by the bright red jacket of the professor's daughter from The Gentlemen of Fortune.
It was possible to dress not like everyone else only in the atelier, but it was not easy to get there: there was also a queue. Good, but worn things could be bought in thrift stores.
Well, I will contribute to the discussion of the food program. In the 60s we lived first in the Far East. There were no problems with the products. In 1963 they lived in Tuva for a year. That's where the line for milk occupied from the night. In 1964 we moved to Tyumen and saw a food paradise. Banks of condensed milk decorated the counters, they bought 200 grams of sausage, fresh, all kinds of compotes in jars in bulk. I don't remember when it all disappeared.

razumovsky4 , "The key is under the mat....":
All right. 1951. Hide and seek, catch-up, rounders, table tennis, badminton, wars with swords, swords, toy pistols, bicycles, a river in the weather, and, of course, the king of all games is football. From morning to evening. At the little gate.
And more girls in "classic" and "shtander." And so on until dark. And it got dark - so some other thread of the game with running around with flashlights with Chinese or German daimons. On the feet are either Chinese, Vietnamese or Czech sneakers. Sports panties such as harem pants and a shirt. Forever in abrasions, bruises and scratches. In winter, skates - from snowmen - to knives, skis, sledges, hockey.
There was no time for lessons. A maximum of an hour - and then somehow, quickly, you need to run into the yard, drive the ball.
Circles - full in the House of Pioneers. In the summer - yes, a pioneer camp, with hikes and a river and a forest and amateur performances - the same games and competitions. Not boring.
That's right, there were practically no fat people. Skinny and mobile. And they almost didn’t swear (up to a certain age) And there’s nothing to say about the girls. Don't smoke that much. And about pedophiles and drugs - they have not heard at all. You fly home, there is a note in the door - "The key is under the rug"))))

lexyara :
But I'll draw. A little. (63-76 years of the last century)
I was born and lived in the city of Krasnoyarsk. My father was a pilot and often flew to our capital. From there he brought all sorts of goodies. There were no goodies in Krasnoyarsk (more precisely, they were, but some "clumsy".)
By "clumsiness" it is meant that ... Everyone wanted butter that was not salty, and the shops were packed with salty. There were no bananas or oranges. There were no batteries for the flashlight either (junk workers came and changed the junk for batteries, caps and other nonsense).
Bread and buns in the "Bread" store were always fresh. Vegetables, pasta (long ones like a modern ballpoint pen), sugar, salt, matches, soap, etc. have always been in stores. Even if the rumors were crawling - "Tomorrow - the war, there will be no salt." She was.
Deficit of course was not to buy. These are toilet paper (important), glazed curds, a cake like "Bird's Milk", sweets "Bear in the North" or "Squirrel". This dad brought from Moscow. Ice cream has always been there. "Leningradskoye" appeared quite rarely (once or twice a week, everyone knew in advance when they would bring it). Cereals - this was a blockage. That's the trouble with sausages and sausages. But sometimes it was not lying on the floor. I was not familiar with alcohol in those days, so I will not say anything. Cigarettes were always on sale (although I did not smoke, but I remember).
Shmotye somehow did not interest me. I did not iron a pioneer tie every day. There was no uniform at school.
Here's what was interesting. The streets could be walked at any time. Without fear that they will stop you and shake out all the little things from your pockets. If there was some kind of incident in the area, then they would gossip about this case for months. Children could go to all sorts of "circles", "studios", etc. For free. I went to the "circle of aircraft modeling". Ely-paly, Gazprom has not dreamed of financing such a circle to this day (the toad will suffocate).
And the machines were there, and they provided the material (pleasure is expensive), and they took us to different competitions.
In the summer it was possible (again free of charge) to go to a pioneer camp. Fed "for slaughter". I did not observe any "hazing" there.
About life. In the evenings, the neighbors would gather in the yard and play dominoes, bingo... well, and just chat in a friendly way. Neighbors (who had children) staged theater performances for us (with our participation). A puppet theater was organized, slide shows on a sheet, etc.
Yes. There were no cars for everyone (someone had, of course).
From a material point of view (sausage, delicacies, clothes, cars, roads) everything was rather unfortunate. I don't deny it. But there were also many positives.

General impressions and reasoning

alexandr_sam :
1965 USSR. Mom is a railway worker, dad is an electrician in a mine, then, for health reasons, left as a refrigeration engineer. Salary for the whole family 200 r. I am 7 years old, my sister is 5. No one has ever given us any apartments. all their lives they lived in their hut and also built something like a house, if it could be called that - conveniences in the yard.
I bought a refrigerator when I was already married in the mid-80s. We only dreamed about smoked sausage in childhood. There was never enough money. Ice cream was bought to us once or twice a year. They kept their chickens - eggs, meat. Planted in the garden (outside the city) potatoes, corn, seeds. Oil (unrefined) was obtained from the seeds.
TV appeared in the late 60s. "Dawn" was called. Black and white. The screen size is the same as the current iPad. ;-)
I don't even want to remember. Dreamed of the great "Penza". True, the used "Eaglet" was still bought. I went on it in the summer to plow at the State Farm. Carried water and watered cucumbers. They paid about 40 rubles a month. I bought myself a watch. And the stupid teacher forbade them to be worn to school. Unaffordable luxury.
Lived and fattened in our city only employees of the city committee, city executive committee, and all the trade and audit vermin. Until 1974, beggars constantly walked along the streets. Mother usually gave them a piece of bread and a couple of eggs. And there was nothing more to give. Until 1977, there was grub in stores, but there was not enough money. And by the end of the 70s, everything began to disappear in our country. They dragged sausage and butter from Ukraine, since it was nearby.
They stole everything. It was possible to steal from the state - no one condemned. The country of nesuns.
Then the army. Hazing, lies about Afghanistan, the CPSU, political studies, drill and stupidity.
Finally Perestroika and Glasnost. Glory to Gorbachev! He delivered us from that shameful and gray life.
I felt free only in the late 80s - early 90s. It was difficult, I don’t argue, but it’s better that way than with advice.
Now Russia lives in a way that it has never lived before. Putin is a chance for Russia. At the same time, I ask my future critics to note that I have never held public office and have nothing to do with oil and gas. He didn’t steal a single ruble from the budget and never had anything to do with budget money either.
That's it in a nutshell. I've lived 55 years and I know what I'm talking about. I have seen a lot in my life. And I laugh at thirty-year-old idiots who praise the Soviet government and the Soviet Union. You wouldn't even live a week there. They would burst from there like elk!
I do not need this USSR. God forbid my children from such an artificial and deceitful country.
***
It was all about lies and hypocrisy. It still hiccups. Do you think today's corruption is an invention of Yeltsin and Putin? Horseradish! Its foundation was laid by Lenin and Stalin. Just dig deeper, gentlemen, and do not nod at the kings. There was little left of them after October 1917...

mariyavs :
I won't be original. Those of my grandmothers who did not have problems with food and clothes due to the positions they and their grandfathers held, have only joyful memories. Sanatoriums on trade union vouchers, free travel to and from the place of vacation, children's vouchers to camps, order desks, officer department stores ... And who was "easier" - shortages, queues, give - take it (whether you need it or not, you'll figure it out later) , "sausage tours" in Msk. But, of course, there were some good things too. Children's leisure was organized and accessible to most, an atmosphere of friendship and trust in a neighbor. All sorts of reptiles were enough, of course, even then. But the children were allowed into the yards alone and were not afraid.

psy_park :
There was a lot of bad and a lot of good - as, however, always and everywhere in the world. But about the bread - it was much better than the current one. Then there were no leavening agents, flavorings, taste improvers, etc. I especially miss rye from coarse flour for 16 kopecks - now there is no such thing in Moscow. And, of course, hearth white - 28 kopecks each. and gray - 20 kopecks each. They don't exist anymore, unfortunately.
Yes, special large two-pronged forks or spoons were tied or simply lay in bakeries - to check the "softness" of bread, and many poked and crushed bread with them. Although almost always the bread was from the same machine and all the same, but since the fork was lying, many used it. True, they were mostly old women. In our bakery in the neighboring department - in the "grocery", you could not only buy sweets, gingerbread, bagels, but also drink a glass of tea or coffee (black or with milk) near the standing table. Tea with sugar - 3 kop. Coffee - 10-15 kopecks. The taste is not great, of course, but quite tolerable. And if you also buy a bun - from 10 to 15 kopecks, then it was quite possible to have a snack. Banality, but now there is no such thing, which is a pity. All this is Moscow. In Leningrad - about the same. And in other places with products it was not so good, unfortunately. However, no one has ever gone hungry. Naturally, in the period from the late 50's - early 60's. until 89-91. Yes, I can’t resist - and the ice cream was not on palm oil.

raseyskiy :
In Soviet times, there were no chocolates in stores; for dairy products, the line was occupied at 6 in the morning (Moscow does not count). There was no meat in the stores, and sausages too. There was such a term "thrown away" a deficit for sale, well, for example, instant coffee - a queue of hundreds of people, although there was a queue for coffee in Moscow.
***
... a number of cities were supplied relatively well, while in others even sprats in tomato were a rarity. ... 70s and 80s. In those years, for the most part, everyone and everything was bought in Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk ... i.e. on vacation, business trip, etc.

tintarula :
I spent my childhood in a private house on the working outskirts of Vladivostok, and, like any childhood, it was full of sledding, fussing in the garden, vegetables and berries "from the bush", games, friendship and betrayal - in general, everything is fine. There were few books in the house, but I was subscribed to children's magazines, a school library, a TV set from my neighbors. Then there was almost no shortage, there was a small amount of money.
More or less conscious age is the end of the 60s, and then the 70s. I studied this and that, worked. In general, "what they don't know, they don't feel." I was generally satisfied with everything. Well, yes, sausage began to disappear (dry - almost completely, but Vlad is a sea city, there were fish in bulk (it never ended, so even during the "Gaidar famine" we did not starve, and the stories of acquaintances from Russian centers are strange to me, how it was difficult to get food.) In 1974 or 1975, it seems, Gioconda was brought to Moscow, and we (three friends) went to watch it - in a common carriage back and forth. We shied around Moscow for about a month, went to theaters, stopped by to Leningrad and Luga (where they knew each other, including acquaintances of acquaintances - you have to live somewhere).
The shortage of books was very disturbing, but my friend's sister worked at the Research Institute of Marine Biology, and there the people were advanced, the Strugatskys got manuscripts, and my friend and sister copied them by hand. And I rewrote The Master and Margarita. That is, we were "in the know."
And yet it was youth, and therefore good. And in general, in my opinion, "good" and "bad" are personal private feelings, not too dependent on the circumstances of life. The "dashing 90s" were not dashing for me either, role-playing games arose in the 90s - and in the same way we went to Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk (to Khabar - in a common carriage), and it was good.
Yes, it's good now.

ular76 :
I come from two specifically counter-revolutionary families.
therefore, I have no claims against the Soviet government.
childhood was happy and carefree.
I did not experience restrictions in education, sports, food, recreation and happy pastime.
for which I have deep gratitude to all the Soviet people.
I don’t suffer from any illusions about the liberoid-thieves’ internal politics of modern Russia, but I calmly observe the natural course of changes and transformations.

Discussions

belara83 :
50% of some kind of nonsense is written, queues have been a phenomenon since 1989, until then, well, there were 5-10 people there, they sat down something like that. No one was starving, Everyone had a job, but there was no chic, there was a shortage of imported things, but now with a lot of choice people have problems through the roof .. I lived in the village, my mother bought ice cream home for our children in boxes .. Bread was always and cost 16 kopecks , and white 20 kopecks!!! Sausage 2.2 r kg, 2.8 kg, is a boiled sausage.
But people lived more calmly, they understood that tomorrow today everyone is in nervous tension, they don’t know what will happen to them tomorrow. Nothing happened to us without imported clothes and everything else, it was not necessary to destroy the whole country, it was possible to change something and leave a lot, no, "to the ground and then" ordinary people suffered as a result ....

Probably, they will argue for more than one decade, and maybe more than one century. If in the first years after the collapse of everything Soviet, many tried to get rid of everything as quickly as possible, then recently there has been almost an opposite trend. Those who cared about the Soviet Union are trying to preserve what is left of it. For example, courtyard dominoes or dovecotes. Rodion Marinichev, correspondent of the MIR 24 TV channel, recalled how they lived in a country that no longer exists.

Collectors today are ready to give more than one thousand rubles for a penny. Although a quarter of a century ago it was an ordinary means of payment. The Soviet ruble is one of the main monuments to a country that no longer exists. Many still remember the prices by heart, because they have not changed for decades. “The fare was 20 kopecks, Prima cigarettes were 14 kopecks. A fifty-kopeck piece was worth lunch, and you still had 20-30 kopecks left for the cinema, ”recalls Vladimir Kazakov, an expert on numismatics of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

The average salary in the USSR during the times of "developed socialism" is 130 rubles. Those who tried to save kept money in egg-pods, books, underwear, and only then, closer to the 1970s, people began to use passbooks more and more often.

In the film "Love and Pigeons" the Soviet way of life and way of life is shown so truthfully that people often say about this picture: that's how it was in the USSR. The main character Vasily Kuzyakin, by the way, based on a real person, has the most popular hobby: pigeons.

The country began to get involved in breeding pigeons soon after the Great Patriotic War. The dove is known to be a symbol of peace. The hobby turned out to be so serious that dovecotes began to appear in almost every yard. Small dovecotes were even built according to standard designs. The most avid lovers of pigeons built real mansions for them.

In the sleeping Moscow district of Nagatino, Uncle Kolya's exemplary dovecote today is almost exotic. He started the construction back in the 1970s, when he returned from the army. He says that in his youth it was not a pity to save money for these birds. You don't have lunch a couple of times - and you buy a dove. And then you will also compete with the neighboring yard: whose pigeons are more dexterous. “Earlier, if you saw that the parties were flying, then that’s it, you need to raise your own, otherwise someone else is flying! And all Nagatino in pigeons, ”recalls Nikolai.

There were enough yard hobbies in the USSR. There were also chess, backgammon and dominoes. Today's knuckle lovers treat their hobby as a professional sport. Even a special table, for such championships are held. In the USSR, Alexander recalls, everything was much simpler. The playing field could be someone's briefcase, a box, or just a piece of plywood. “We played on benches in parks,” says Alexander Terentyev, Executive Director of the Russian Domino Federation.

Patriarch's Ponds were once a favorite place for domino players, as, indeed, most city parks. Domino entered life so firmly that they sat down for it at any free moment. For example, at lunchtime. “During working hours, we met, people from other workshops came,” says the 2015 Russian domino champion Alexander Vinogradov.

I had to spend a lot of time in someone's company and involuntarily. Indeed, in the middle of the last century, more than half of the country's population lived in communal apartments. Establishing a common life was sometimes difficult. Writer Vladimir Berezin recalls: as a child, he almost never washed in the apartment.

“Two families lived in a small two-room apartment. In the bathroom, the housekeeper of the second family was sleeping on boards. I found a bathhouse culture that united people of completely different social origins,” says Berezin.

For most Soviet citizens - almost a second home. At least until the end of the 1960s - the era of Khrushchev and, albeit small, but separate apartments with all amenities. Many went to the baths with their own bowls and soap. Under steam in the same company, a worker and a doctor of science often met.

Bath attendant with 30 years of experience Takhir Yanov remembers well the long queues at the famous Sanduny. Everything has been preserved there since that time. Lovers of the first couple still come at dawn, just like in the Soviet era.

Queues are a special Soviet phenomenon. They originated in the 1920s, then became longer, then shorter, then longer again.

According to the data of the USSR State Statistics Committee for 1985, men spent about 16 minutes on working days, women - 46 minutes on the purchase of goods or services. On weekends, even more: men - almost an hour (58 minutes), women - one and a half (85 minutes). In the queues, they got acquainted, solved cases, and sometimes even fell in love and dispersed.

“There was a couple in front of me: a guy and a girl. They declared their love so much that I was even tired of listening. Finally it was their turn. They gave something just a kilogram or a piece. The girl took over, and the young man took over. And she says: "Bunny, give me money." He once-times in his pockets, and it turned out that he forgot the money in the hostel! And this Bunny immediately turned into “a sort of bastard,” recalls singer Lyubov Uspenskaya.

Singer Lyubov Uspenskaya remembers both childhood hungry years and the Soviet word "blat". She managed to plunge into abundance only in the 1970s, when she left for the West. But, in the end, I realized: I did not experience such joy anywhere else as in the Soviet Union.

“For the New Year you will get a Christmas tree, some kind, the simplest and ugliest, and what a joy it was to dress it up. And now we do it like an automatic machine, ”says the singer.

A swift farewell to the Soviet life began in the 1990s, but many have not broken with it until now. Today it is something like an exotic that not everyone wants to lose.

Instruction

The “period of developed socialism”, as the era of stagnation in the USSR was officially called, was not so carefree as it seems to many now. Very low wages for the majority of the population and a shortage of high-quality consumer goods and foodstuffs added a very large fly in the ointment to the socialist barrel of honey.

And yet there were many positive aspects of life in those years. First of all, life in the stagnant years was very calm. There was no crime. That is, it was not that she was completely absent, but the press preferred to keep silent about her. Crime in the USSR, according to party ideologists, was considered a relic of the capitalist vulgarity. And many Soviet people willingly believed in it. Indeed, it was almost safe along the city streets, and cases of bloody maniacs and other murderers were carefully hidden from society. For the same reason, there were no man-made disasters in the USSR.

Medical care in the Soviet Union was absolutely free and medicines were very expensive. But it was very problematic to buy good, especially imported drugs.

The Soviet education system was considered one of the best in the world. It was also free. But in order to enroll in a prestigious university, Soviet applicants had to either have high-ranking parents or pay considerable bribes. And in the Central Asian republics, the system of bribes existed in almost all universities and was almost legalized.

Public free housing in the USSR prevailed. However, there was still cooperative and private housing. Every Soviet citizen in need of better living conditions had the right to receive an apartment on gratuitous terms. Another thing is that for this it was necessary to defend a long-term queue. Sometimes its term reached two decades. People who wanted to speed up this process joined housing cooperatives. But in order to build a cooperative apartment, it was necessary to lay out several annual earnings of a simple engineer or teacher for it.

Providing the population with food in the Soviet Union was carried out extremely unevenly. The most well-off in terms of food were the cities of Moscow and Leningrad. In the stagnant years, a Moscow grocery store was considered good if fresh meat and poultry, 2-3 varieties of boiled sausage, a couple of varieties of fresh-frozen fish, butter, sour cream, eggs, chocolates, beer and oranges were present on its shelves. But in many, even Moscow stores, products in such an assortment were available only at certain times of the day and not every day. In the Russian hinterland, the situation with food was much worse: meat on coupons, sausage on holidays. But almost all products were of high quality and very cheap.

Industrial goods of domestic production were distinguished by extremely poor quality. Therefore, imports were held in high esteem. Imported things cost, often insanely expensive, but they were still in crazy demand.

Soviet ideologists, proving the superiority of the socialist system over the capitalist, constantly emphasized that in the West money decides everything, while in the USSR there are other, much greater human values. And indeed, money for the Soviet people was nothing compared to blat. The presence of useful connections, for example, in the areas of trade and catering, opened up real access to socialist benefits.

30s
katrinkuv:
Yes, living people who remember the 30s are unlikely to be written here. But I remember what my grandmother told me, then my aunt confirmed it.
They lived then on Krasnoselskaya, in the house where Utyosov lived. The house was from the railroad. My grandfather worked there. Well, I don’t think it’s necessary to talk about what 37 is. They took everyone around! I don’t know why, maybe that’s why, but my grandfather didn’t work. And every day I went skating in Sokolniki. Grandmother said that the "funnel" was expected every night. The bag of belongings stood by the door, waiting to be arrested. Kaganovich warned. (honestly, I don’t know these relationships, my grandfather wasn’t even 30 at that time, why Kaganovich was close to this “boy” - my grandfather - I don’t know, but my aunt prays for him, says that he saved his grandfather’s life, which means and me, my father was already born at 44) and "sent" the family of my father's parents to Kaluga. Something like that…
I have many more memories of life in Moscow from my ancestors.

50s
laisr:
Life was not raspberry. Father returned from 4 years of German captivity at the end of the war. He was met in the village by a hungry wife and two children. And I was born in 46. To feed the family, the father with the same hungry five fellow villagers stole a bag of wheat during sowing. Someone pawned, a search at the father. Accomplices, more cunning, advised the father to take over everything, otherwise, they say, they would put everyone in a group for 25 years. Father served 5 years. With my current mind, I'm joking, Hitler held him for four years, well, but Stalin could not give less, so he put me in prison for five years. In the 1950s, I didn’t eat enough bread, which is probably why today I eat everything with bread, even pasta, sometimes I joke to my friends about this, that I even eat bread with bread!

***
In my second year (1962) in Ufa in a department store, absolutely by chance, by luck, I bought Japanese nylon swimming trunks! Then ours were rag with two laces on the side for tying on the thigh. The Japanese ones were shaped like shorts, beautiful, vertically striped, tight. I wore them for a very long time, they are still lying around somewhere with me. Here is the memory of my student life!

60s
yuryper, "about the shortage of bread":
somewhere in 63 or 64 in Moscow, flour was distributed through house administrations, according to the number of registered ones. It wasn't in the stores. In the summer we went to Sukhumi, it turned out that white bread is only for locals, on cards.
In Moscow, bread did not disappear, but the variety characteristic of the early 60s gradually decreased, and by the early 70s this difference became very noticeable.

70s
sitki:
Early 70s, my mother-in-law is a single mother, Krasnoe Selo, pay 90 rubles.
Every (!) year I took my son to the sea. Yes, a savage; yes, sometimes they brought canned food with them and ate them for the whole month. But now my husband tells me about those trips with rapture. This is his childhood.
What cleaning lady can now take a child to the seaside for a month?

pumbalicho (8-10 years):
For some reason, the 70s stuck in my memory ... Those were good years. And not only economically (I suspect that abundance was not everywhere. But I still can’t forget the shop windows of that time), but also some kind of special cohesion or something ... I remember that they reported the death of three Soviet cosmonauts at once - no one I didn’t order, but people really sobbed in the streets ...

matsea:
We walked in the yards for 4-5 years alone. I was 8 years old (early 70s) when a schoolgirl was killed in the Udelny park next door. The children continued to walk alone as well. Well, such was life.

80s
matsea (born 1964):
I remember well the expectation of the first spring salad (I am 64 years old). There were no fruits in winter. In autumn, apples are plentiful and inexpensive. By November, they are sold in brown spots and expensive. By January they are gone. If you're lucky, you can catch Moroccan oranges on occasion. Infrequently. Peter, winter darkness, beriberi. And shoot at night tomatoes with sour cream, so red. And here is March and happiness - they threw out hydroponic cucumbers. Long ones, dark green, like crocodiles. Three pieces in a kilogram, a kilo in one hand. Enough - not enough? Enough! We stood for about forty minutes, brought. Salad with onions, eggs, and hydroponic cucumbers - hooray, spring has come! Well, everything, now you can safely wait for the tomatoes. It's not until June.

mans626262:
the leading engineer in the late 70s and early 80s had a salary of 180 rubles - this is me personally at the research institute.

michel62 (born 1962):
In 1982 I went to Donetsk by bus for sausage and butter from Rostov-on-Don. Mom at the watch factory organized these trips. To Donetsk, to Voroshilovograd.
***
Struck!
When I arrived as a young specialist in the Penza region and, working as a road foreman, wandered around the villages, maintaining local roads, I saw so many different imported clothes in the village shops that it took my breath away. I bought shoes and a coat for my wife there ... The villagers looked at me like I was crazy. You know, it's impressive when there are galoshes and Italian shoes on the same counter, and a sweatshirt and a Finnish coat hang on a clothes hanger next to each other ... It was simply impossible to buy something from clothes in Rostov. The queues have been busy since the evening. Everything is just from under the floor or by pull. I have a feeling that if jeans or something like that were freely sold during the USSR, then there would be no perestroika and subsequent collapse.
***
Born in 1962 in Rostov-on-Don
Of course, the USSR for me is childhood, youth, growing up, the first child ...
I look now at how my son (16 years old) lives and it seems to me that we were happier in childhood. Even if I didn’t travel abroad with my parents and the first jeans were bought for me when I was in my first year at the institute. But everything was somehow richer. This is my personal opinion and I'm not going to argue with anyone. I remember how, already working, the party organizer asked me at a reporting meeting (he worked as the chief engineer of one communal sharaga): "How did you M.M. reorganize? ..." lunch "demagogue")? What did I need to rebuild in myself if I, a young guy, worked conscientiously and wear and tear? ... In the family, when I was a boy, there was a sack of food. Food was in the first place. But my father altered my clothes from his own. By the way, my father was the head of the enterprise, but there was no chic in our house. But my father’s attitude towards the USSR was this: "If they told me - an officer of the Soviet army - shoot yourself for Stalin - I silently pulled I would have shot myself with a gun ... ". I remember in the year 72-74 there was a rumor along the street that they were selling pepsicol .... I stood in line for two hours and scored two shopping bags ... I still swear when I remember how her home. Memories of the pioneer camps are very warm. Every summer, three shifts to different camps. Vacation at home was only five days st-ten before September 1st....
And while working, he adapted, like everyone else, to be able to take his wife to a barbecue on the left bank of the Don on weekends and go on vacation in the summer. Now I have a vacation for a maximum of a week, if I'm lucky ... I remember how my mother came from a business trip to Moscow. We met her with the whole family. Poor - how she pearled all these bags of sausage and oranges ....
I also remember the Diet store, where my mother and I went when she was picking me up from the kindergarten. She bought three hundred grams of sausage (certainly not Moscow and not serverat) doctoral or amateur and asked to cut a little for me. And there was a bread shop nearby, where we bought FRESH bread. Here I was, chewing a sausage sandwich. I have never seen such a taste of sausage and bread. Of course, delicacies were always in short supply, but parents got them for the holidays. I remember the queues for carpets, dishes and clothes ... I lived right next to the department store "Solnyshko" and I remember it all well. The queue was occupied since the evening and the crowd was hustling all night (I lived on the second floor and it all happened under our balcony). I remember the store "Ocean" on Semashko, where carp and sturgeon swam in the aquarium. And then the same "Ocean", where there was nothing except for briquettes of shrimp and some kind of crap like seaweed. I remember coupons for vodka and oil. But this is already at the end of the USSR. But I worked in the road organization and "spun". (just don't say that because of people like me we have bad roads). Who wanted to live, then spinning. Everything was both good and bad. Now, of course, remember the good. The bad is forgotten. I forgot that I did not have a tape recorder as a child. But I remember New Year's gifts from the Christmas tree in DC. The queues for beer are forgotten, but its taste and the fact that it turned sour in a day and not in a month are remembered. With a smile, I remember how I was driving home from work in a crowded bus, holding a plastic bag with beer in my hand over my head, and there were many like me ... Everything was - both bad and good. You can argue about this time until the carrot spell, but it was and is remembered with a smile.

nord100:
I remember my first business trip to Vilnius. It was around 1982. He was shocked by what he saw abroad. Then I got coffee in beans, for a whole year in advance.
In those same years, I visited Moldova for the first time, where I was struck by the abundance of imports in stores. And the books! I have not seen so many scarce books since childhood!
I still remember my trip to Kuibyshev in the late 80s. In the evening I checked into a hotel and decided to buy food for dinner at the grocery store. Nothing came of it - I didn’t have local coupons ...
I remember many things about those years, but mostly with warmth. After all, it was youth :)

Second half of the 80s
Frauenheld2:
I remember that I was engaged in fartsovka, just somewhere in the 89-90s)
You go there - "Kaugumi, chungam", but because you're ashamed - sometimes it's just, you ask the time, in Russian, of course. But foreigners do not understand, and give something - sweets, chewing gum, pens. Now it seems - trifles, but at school I went godfather to the king with these colored pens, and for chewing gum (!), Classmates just didn’t kiss their feet.

alyk99:
Secondary school No. 1 in Zvenigorod near Moscow. I am 10 years old (1986), there is some kind of meeting in the assembly hall. The director broadcasts: "We vote. Who is for?"
We all raise our hands as one. "Who against?" Two lonely hands of some high school students are raised. The director starts shouting: "How can you? Hooligans! Get out of the hall! Shame on the school!"
In the evening, I tell the story to my mother and add from myself that the high school students behaved shamefully. "Why?" she asks. "Maybe they had a different opinion. What's so shameful?" I remember very well that it was at that moment that I first understood what it was like to be one of the dumb sheep in the herd.

Childhood memories of the USSR
roosich (was 10 years old in 1988):
Something the stories of this lady, who rode abroad, about the absence of bread in the USSR (apparently, we are not talking about the 20-30s, but about the 70-80s) do not inspire confidence.
My childhood was in the 80s. I was born and still live all my life in a small town near Moscow. With my parents (with my father, to be more precise), we often went to Moscow on weekends. But not for food, like supposedly the rest of the USSR, but just for a walk - VDNKh, Gorky Park, museums, exhibitions, etc. And there was enough food in our local stores. Of course, there was no such abundance on the shelves as it is now, but no one went hungry. Of course, they can object to me here that a small, but a town near Moscow is far from the same thing as an equally small town, but somewhere in a remote province .... But the majority still did not live as hermits in distant villages. The deficit became quite active only in 1988.
Continuing the store theme now about manufactured goods. I remember somewhere in the middle of the 80s - in our local department store I saw on the shelves and TVs, and refrigerators, and washing machines, and players (cassette recorders only began to appear in the late 80s), and radios, and clothes with shoes, and stationery .... Another thing is that by the standards of the average salaries of that time (this is about 200-odd rubles for the mid-80s), these household appliances were quite expensive. I remember our first color TV - a hefty and heavy Rubin, bought only in 1987, cost well for 300 rubles.
***
But if we compare it with today, then the most radical difference from that time is people. Then, too, of course, different people could meet in life, but now - man is a wolf to man. Today's parents are afraid to let their children go alone to walk even in the neighboring yard, but then they were not afraid to let us go. And not only in the next yard. And until late at night.
***
The USSR of the 88th model is no longer the same country as it was back in 83-85. Although it would seem that only a few years have passed, the differences were already quite striking.
***
So I'm saying that the general shortage of everything and everyone with absolutely empty counters and kilometer-long queues for them with coupons and cards came only at the very end of the 80s! And the author (meaning the author of the vg_saveliev project) apparently thinks that under the USSR people lived like in the Stone Age, and when the Democrats came, happiness immediately came. But the Russian people did not believe this happiness and began to die out at 1 million a year.
***
Yes, I still remember in the summer of 1988 we went on vacation with my aunt and her son (that is, my cousin) to the village to her relatives somewhere on the border of the Moscow and Tula regions. The village was alive. There was work in the village. And a lot of hard-working middle-aged people, and a lot of children .... I think now in most of these rural places only a few old people are left, but summer residents have appeared.

General impressions and reasoning
lamois (born 1956):
Tell me, do memories have to be negative? Judging by the posted - yes, you started just such a selection.
And if I write that I am happy that I was born in 1956 and saw many difficulties, but also a lot of happiness, as at any time. My parents are teachers, they opened a secondary school in a virgin village. People were sincere in their enthusiasm and unfeigned love for each other. I do not regret that those times have passed, everything ends sooner or later. But I will never throw a stone at the history of my country. And you don't hesitate.
They write how they hated school rulers, but I remember the fun and exciting game Zarnitsa, hiking, songs with a guitar. Each person has his childhood and youth and they are good at any time. And now it is infinitely difficult for many, the current difficulties are not much easier, but for many more difficult than then. For the majority, the loss of cultural identity is a greater tragedy than the then shortage of sausages for some especially hungry, although it was precisely that there were no hungry then, but now they are. But I don't trust people who remember their childhood with hatred or regret. These are unfortunate people, and they are always biased, just like you, in fact.
I am sure that you will never publish my opinion on your own.

vit_r
Well, queues, well, shortage.
A person with a backpack, coming to any village, to any village, and even to any town, could find shelter and lodging for the night. They gave keys to an acquaintance of acquaintances and left them in an apartment where money and crystal lie on a shelf.
And to compare. I know those who now do not have enough money for bread. The ceiling has gone up. But not for everyone. The population has shrunk and oil prices have skyrocketed. The Union fell apart when there was no longer enough oil to import goods and export communism. And the party and economic bosses then lived abruptly than the current oligarchs.
The only problem with the union was that there was no way out. It's true.

chimkentec:
No, the party and economic bosses then did not live abruptly than the current oligarchs. Party and economic bosses were just as inaccessible to what was consumer goods for most people in developed countries.
***
...my grandfather was the "economic boss", the head of YuzhKazGlavSnab, an organization that was engaged in the supply of three Kazakhstani regions.
But he, just like all the other townspeople, could not buy normal coffee, he could not repair the TV for half a year (there were no necessary spare parts). He had to convert his own built bathhouse into a barn.
He had a dream - he wanted to grow a lawn in the country. And even the seeds of lawn grass, he managed to get. But he could not get the simplest electric lawn mower - someone decided that Soviet citizens did not need lawn mowers.

There will also be a rubric "Without an exact designation of time" and "Discussions". Until these materials fit.
There are a lot of stories without a clear indication of time and age. Try to be specific about the timing.

From the author: “Remember kindergarten? Hamsters, nap time, pea soup with croutons? Christmas trees, obligatory bunnies.


Who was accepted as a pioneer at the Museum of the Revolution? In the first wave or in the second? Blacks in the USSR were considered people before it became mainstream.
Circles of the USSR, sports schools, sections, music and art schools. How many did you visit at the same time? Me: swimming, art school, carving, ship modeling and aircraft modeling. How much does it cost now to send a child to so many circles?
Practically guaranteed employment, they were persecuted for parasitism. In the honor of the specialty of the "real sector" - turners, welders - an economist in the department is considered a squint. In the photo Goblin - before we all worked with our hands, not with our tongues.
Army. Enough of everything, the Belarusians smacked the Kirghiz, the Chechens of the Muscovites, the crests of all the rest, barely getting a snot on the shoulder strap. But it was a cohesive machine, where yesterday's peasants became real universal soldiers entering Afghanistan (read how the border guards seized the bridgehead, let the line units in and also brought them out, clearly, professionally) or operations in Angola together with the Cuban "Black Wasps".
Police. They were respected, until the 70s the murder of a policeman was a sign of complete lawlessness, they were shot like mad dogs. Yes, they drank, the traffic police constantly muddied with cars, but you will be surprised to compare the level of work of the then police and the modern police, with all the means of electronic espionage and the capabilities of digital technology. Police officers after a major scandal with bank robberies with massacres in the United States for the first time saw a fax and a radio station in a car - then they changed the whole style of work. And now everyone has a mobile with the Internet and “grouse-grouse-grouse”.
Culture, art, Soviet ballet. Censorship - then nailing eggs to Red Square and setting fire to doors was not considered art, gaining paint in the ass and soiling canvases in this way went to Napoleon and those who saw aliens. Therefore, now there is our new bad cinema, with rare exceptions from old Soviet directors, and the golden film library of the USSR.
Do you remember Soviet sports? Affordable, successful, bright.
The medicine. And in general, social security, there is no need to shout that in the USA they were and are better. They treated, performed the most complicated operations, they also did it there, if there is medical insurance, but they will do it, and then a bill for $ 20,000 is still an unbearable amount there. Resorts, sanatoriums, you could get from the factory, now this is not there either.
Therefore, the USSR is already history, it cannot be returned, we lived there. Who was not - he will be, who was - will not forget. Everything goes to the fact that the quasi-USSR, crooked, not the same as they wanted, will be built again. But why was it to destroy that one?