A lot of commies have never lived under communism.
Wondering if any of you older ruskies can tell us what living in the soviet union was really like.
Is communism true freedom? is it oppressive? If you could, would you go back to it?
I suppose this question could apply to anyone who has actually lived under communism or has relatives who has.
>also, happy birthday sputnik
USSR wasn't communist, it was just a dictatorship, basically fascism.
So you're saying true communism has never been tried?
There was no communism in Russia, but communism is good by itself.
This is true. Do not reject it just bacause of meme.
Well, I guess (on your terms) what I mean is:
Was it nice living in the soviet union? if you have lived under it
It was socialism and i guess it was not so bad from an average worker point of view and if you happened to live in a special economy zone.
Well yeah it's no secret that little western faggots are delusional.
Don't know about the USSR but from what I've heard from literally anyone here, it seemed fucked up, even if their intention was to praise those times.
Pretty much North Korea in a sense but not THAT batshit.
>money was not a problem but you couldn't do jack shit with it because there was barely even enough food available in stores and you could only buy a certain amount per week
>little contact with everything beyond the border unless you were pretty well off
>only a few hours of utilities like hot water, electricity and television per day
>you'd get seriously fucked up for being a bad goy and everyone was ratting on everyone for good goy points
>they were actively demolishing churches and christianity was under actual oppression
And shit, a lot more, it was bad. That's why I unironically wish that Germany won WW2 and we stuck with them instead of having that scum """"king""""" stab them in the back to suck some russian dick.
>communism
By any chance you meant socialism?
...
As far as i know
Pros: free housing aka commie block
Basic food and stuff like ciggarets is cheap af
Taxes are very humble like bus ticket
Even villages had placea like culutre house there people gathered to do stuff together
Medicine was free and pretty good
Cons: stuff like mayo or bannanas awaylable few times a year.
Lines end pre orders up to years to get a car, furniture and etc
No free speach
No motivation of self inproving and drinking formed post sovieticus class of people
What does OP mean by this?
Also didnt answer my question.
I'm no communist sympathizer but living wasn't that bad honestly. The thing was just that you don't miss shit that you don't know about. We lived in a rural area and always had enough food and money. Father used to steal gasoline and sell it to neighbors for extra cash.
Doesn't mean I didn't know people who where miserable but my family at least, never had any particular trouble. I also remember people living nearby always being super friendly. We moved to germanistan because live was supposed to be better here and they wanted the best for the children. Now I honestly feel like one will be forced to return once shit hits the fan here.
What about nuclear power, space travel, modern weaponry we still use, ternary computer, gas masks, etc.? they invented a lot.
Rating on your neighbours and gulags...
Saged this commie shill ridden thread.
If a bait I take it. I cannot tell a lie. It had some good sides.
> finish work early
> culture easily accessible
> do not worry about employment, retirement, housing
> homogeneous society
> decent free education
> big families
> no mainstream degeneracy
However it was inefficient and had failed. From my point of view it kind of spoiled workers.
What would be a communism with current technology. Even more scary and oppressive probably.
But can't you make some kind of synthesis?
communism is utopian by itself
impossible by definition.
Here is what it is practically like...
You work relatively short hours (compared to modern day America).
Your wife doesn't work, stays home and cooks.
You have an apartment for free.
The apartment is not so bad, you have separate kitchen, and living rooms, sometimes a separate dining room as well, it's not the typical American apartment where it's just one room = kitchen, dining, living all in one.
What's funny is, you guys would probably all prefer communism over what you have now. You're guaranteed your own apartment and stuff like that. We'd probably be better off today with Communism. Shit like food shortages are a meme because a famine would have very little effect in today's world. Communism is honestly the future once more and more things go automated. You'd ironically starve to death in a capitalist world.
btw 58% of russians want communism back
Ok I am back a pirate.
So, it is not a secret that we have a war on information. And since it is kind of total its effects can be as deadly as the one of nuclear weapon. And it is deadly for many sides I guess.
So should you think about some kind of memetic non-proliferation treaty? Because
tfw noosphere broken....
We have managed not to have nuclear war so maybe mental meltdown can be avoided too.
It was real socialism, it had absolutely nothing in common with fascism ideologically
The only problem with modern day communism (at least in the West) is that it is pushed alongside multiculture and multi-racial society. So, idk. Although white population will come back once white workers aren't as cucked as they are today.
whoever sayslife the USSR was worst then in current the Russia dont know what he is talking about
There were some shortages, but it was of goods that weren't that often consumed anyways. Most of the shortages came around the collapse.
However, the centrally planned economy was inefficient as fuck. Almost all Eastern Bloc states can be characterized by a non-stop housing crisis that never seemed to go away, no many how many panelaky they built. Quite often, alot of things just couldn't be produced to keep up with the demands due to the inefficiency and inflexibility of the central planning.
Another thing to highlight, although many individuals were socially conservative etc, and many acted on it (slavic eastern bloc states were always the most conservative, just take a look at german communists and how fucked they were). The problem was none of this was official, and the views varied per member of the Communist Party. As with any big tent party, there were many who were disgustingly progressive but also many who were really conservative. It's a mixed bag. But in general, you couldn't really say anything or else you risk being excommunicated from the party and permanently damaging our opportunities and reputation.
There's alot more to this, but generally it wasn't as bad as westerners like to describe it, but it was still pretty shit. Most of those today in Eastern Europe who call themselves communists are mostly the elderly who have nostalgia, remembering to simpler times and casually forgetting many of the downsides that they faced back then.
Ultimately, there's alot of nostalgia for it, but nobody is actually proposing to bring it back. I remember reading a quote from Putin, "He who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, but he who wants it back has no brain."
tldr; it wasn't all bad but it deserves to stay in the past fuck off westerners you hyper-progressive little twats
>propaganda films
i'm going to kick you in the ribs you fucking western anarchist twink
no... we're socialists user, those were communists
watch the second documentary some time, this is personal for me - my family had to emigrate when i was 5 from russia because things became so bad
As far as i heard it was bad.
You'd have money but little to no things to spend them on.
Full Isolation from outside the commie block.
Electricity would stop for a couple of hours a day.
No christianity (but also no Islam since we had around 800 000 turks, which is good i guess)
I mean i would still prefer to live at those times since degeneracy wasn't so rampant and we didn't have a catastrophic population declining. Things today just make we want to blow my brain out
All the ruskies are on 2chan.hk, ask them.
Come on, does the state in the West give you a flat? It does not feel like the old communism.
But it had also some bad sides. You can not stand everything meager and mediocre, no free speech or fear of thought-crime. And for safety you pay with your freedom.
I think it is hard to explain.
>emigrating during the 90's
it's almost like a complete collapse of the previous government and a sudden shift from state planned industry to free market economics is going to be really harsh for the years to come until things level out
I always knew Antifa was the real fascists!
I always heard the joke "We pretended to work, and they pretended to pay us"
A big part of the Eastern Bloc was the requirement to have a job - as to not be a "social parasite" - however the central planning committee solved this by providing people jobs that were unneeded and didn't produce any sort of profit or net gain, meaning there isn't any real production going and no real profit by the state to reinvest or anything so they ended up paying them an increasingly worthless currency that they could print by the millions as they produced less and less as things stagnated further.
A result of this was relatively low living standards, just enough to get by and whatever the state could provide as cheaply as possible. Along with this there was absolutely no provision for "luxury" items. Soviet women made their owns clothes, they knitted their own jumpers, they all had a plot where they grew vegetables, etc...
I want to make it clear I'm not a l*bertarian or anything but the amount of central planning on things starts to stagnate, as it did in the 70's and 80's. I guess you could say giving every body a job is also a good thing. Going to work every day, even if there is only very little to do is better than staying at home "on the dole". But it was kind of pointless and didn't really produce anything. Everybody was just doing the minimum to get by.
>Come on, does the state in the West give you a flat? It does not feel like the old communism.
I mean, we're not communists so... If we were, then yes, people would get apartments for free (if we became a proper communist state).
Right now... lol, I don't even know what America is.
>But it had also some bad sides. You can not stand everything meager and mediocre, no free speech or fear of thought-crime. And for safety you pay with your freedom.
>I think it is hard to explain.
It's true. Today, it's somewhat similar already though. Where I live and where I work, it's a blue state. People don't like Trump supporters typically. I wouldn't share my political ideas with anyone lest I wanted people to gossip about me and then my career gets ruined and I lose my home, and means to life, and etc.
We don't really have free speech in America.
its 25 years after and things still "haven't smoothed out"
thing aren't "smooth" no where in the world, not in the US either where they knew nothing but liberal-capitalism instead of State-capitalism or Socialism
actually, compared to today, the US in the 60 could be analogous to a socialist country
We're already heading that direction within a capitalist society. Heck, here in Canada, Bell wants powers to blanket ban certain websites for "piracy".
And what happens when Bell is given power to ban Canadians from accessing websites because Bell doesn't like the content on the site?
Bell creates a lot of media. It has a Netflix-like service, called Crave TV. Bell in the past has fought for the ability to limit the speed or access to products that compete with it's media outlets. So far Canadians have won, but the fight has been very hard against very few and powerful corporations that wish to control us as a people.
Private or public, if someone's yanking your ability to say things or view media, you are being denied that free speech.
I've lived under market socialism and it was good
>waiting 20 years for the (((free))) flat [not free of course, taxes are terrible you just don't see them because government chose minimal solare for u]
>to get this pic
>one kitchen for two different families (other family always have mad frandma or grandpa)
>antisemitism
I know that u would like that, Sup Forums
>extra long lines in shops, scarce products only in illegal private shops (and blaming this dealers as betrayers os communism)
>640000 killed political prisoners
It would be very long list but it's enough to say that communism is the worstest thing that happened with my country
Thank you, my ice-haired leader for the victory!
Things have been getting better; corruption is slowly dropping, living standards are rising, the average income the rising, economic output is rising, etc. The only real problem it's faced so far has been the Crimea fiasco, which basically shut Russia off from the western world, which of course has huge economic ramifications as they scramble to find another solution.
You have to understand, these things - they take time. The USSR only reached it's peak during the 60's - That's almost 50 years since the Bolsheviks seized power. The only thing that they had going for them during that time was being relatively immune to the Great Depression, but the inflexibility and inefficiency was still there and it started to hurt as the Brezhnev era started to come to an end.
it was good* until the denbt needed to be repaid
>Right now... lol, I don't even know what America is.
its a failed state
That girl on the bed be THICC
she must eat well
That apartment's pretty aesthetic and you guys had 2 stroke cars back inna day. Plus lots of Urals and here in Canada, Urals are expensive and extremely unreliable (and thus more expensive)
I'll take it.
Stability, healthcare, education, job I can just go to. Put in my forms to get an Ural and go play in the forest with a cute Russian wife on a sidecar. Squirt out like five kids and smoke until I die. Work on my shitty bike with the fancy sidecar and four door box car.
Not too bad, man.
some of you need to wake the fuck up and get a clue. i'm sitting here reading what some of you wrote about true communism not being bad like facism, and this level of naivete deserves a slap in the face with my shit.
the problem with left-wing thinking is that for ideas like socialism and gun control (seeing as it's the topic as of late) is that left-wingers completely ignore the reality of humanity and only consider sunny happy day obedient behaviors and attitude. the reality is that... a lot of people are scum, low class, and/or behave like animals and will fuck you in the ass, or ask you to fuck them in the ass, or try to convince you why you should like being fucked in the ass. this is why when you have more laws only the law abiding will get screwed. and this is why when you go socialist, the state or a dictator will end up raping you.
a lot of you need to get your head out of your ass.
This is the line for the BREAD in USSR
they didn't
>central planning machine broke
>fix that shit gorbi
>ok :-DDDDDDD
>???????
>russia, belarus, kazakhstan, and ukraine have declared independence!
>curb your enthusiasm theme starts playing
the reds had it coming to them
>You work relatively short hours
8 hours daily 6 days a week
>Your wife doesn't work
bullshit
>You have an apartment for free.
not for free, because you pay for electricity, water, etc. also, it's a small shitty apartment. some have kitchen, and toilet, a lot don't.
>communism over what you have now
yes goyim, accept gommunism
look, im not much of a defender of the USSR but its undoubtedly was better, better then whats going on today. this is not much of a political analysis -"it takes time" - people make the time they are living in. what went down in the 90 was a political move, not a force of nature. you should watch this documentary also, skip to 36:35 for what went down in russia those days
user, if most or a large part of humanity were scum, we'd never have gotten out of the mud. Human collaboration is what gets us moving forward. You can more or less trust most people to not be an asshole. Most days of your life, you've not been accosted or robbed or hurt. You've lived through those days with everyone around you without being jerks to each other.
Please, there are bread lines in America. Just go to your local soup kitchens for the homeless and poor.
Grandma grew up in the CCCR, and she said people were REALLY poor. makes todays poverty look cool and good,
They already live in neo-commie country. They want to be feared again, and they want slave countries working their asses for them.
you left tetris off the list you gigantic faggot. Do you really want to get into capitalist inventions vs communist ones?
>picture related true freedom
No, Communism isn't full freedom.
>Was it nice living in the soviet union? if you have lived under it
The Good:
>everyone had a job
>it kept the nation white
The Bad:
>everything else
i liked that cigany almost never had jobs so when the police asked them for their employers paper's they almost always got arrested
get fucked
>but it was of goods that weren't that often consumed anyways
True. Like ham, bread, sugar, chocolate. You can live without it
I hope you understand that your soviet wife will have no female's personal hygiene means cause planning economy didn't make that.
IT'S NOT THE PLACE FOR HOMELESS
It's a everyday shop, such lines in EVERY FUCKING SHOP in USSR
did you even read it? shared with another family no thx
Soviet union was definitely preferable to.the current statw.
>but its undoubtedly was better
For whom? Certainly not for my parents, nor grandparents
EVERY
FUCKING
>Microwaves weren't standard until the late 80s
>Couldn't travel anywhere without permits
>Food is scarce
>Make money, can't spend it
>Everyone ratting each other out or making things up
>Waiting list to get a vehicle is up to 5 years
>Everything you "own" belonged to the state
The only reason why people look back with a somewhat positive light on the Communist USSR is because things were much simpler back then, and the resulting economy after it's collapse was worse than the Great Depression.
That's why Putin is still in, he fixed it. He's respected for that.
It is actually scary to have a real discussion on Sup Forums. But it has to be done. I feel memes are sometimes only an escape from true problems.
True but ironically with all the poverty people felt safe enough to have families. But they say today that the world is overcrowded...
So I tell you something. I think Russia and USA have something in common (although USA won). They are all empires, tired with the war for hegemony. It needs an energy and commitment, and constant vigilance. If you keep it for too long it destroys people from within. But what to do? Maybe I am naive but it need a good will from both sides, words which have been long forgotten. At the end, there were no nuclear war in 89.
Anything totalitarian in scary, is it a government, party, company or liberals. But there is something like Sup Forums, a real hive mind. I hope it will stay good even if chaotic.
SHOP
>muh bread lines
I'm not questioning food shortages but why would this happen? Surely there would be multiple bakeries where people can get their bread, just as there would be today. Even in a free market, you see lines forming outside of high class bakeries and restaurants out of sheer scarcity of that class of good, but if it's just normal ass bread, shouldn't every bakery make it and shouldn't there be a lot of bakeries?
And if they are all missing bread and bread is in such a shortage, shouldn't the lines disperse and go home after hearing the baker go "THATS IT FOR BREAD FOR TODAY, GLORY TO MOTHERLAND FOR PREPARING WHOLE TWELVE LOAFS OF BREAD BUT TWELFTH MAN JUST RECEIVED BREAD"
>True but ironically with all the poverty people felt safe enough to have families.
First thing:
-militia
Second thing
-indoctrination of kids by government.
The reason that there were families was something of a spite against the government.
Same with religion. Officially, commie countries were atheist, but everyone secretly practiced religion.
Russia was piss-poor. If it wasn't, it wouldn't collapse. 2+2=4.
>make an economic system where only high ranking party members get filthy rich but if you question it you get shot in the head
>woosh market capitalism
>those same high ranking party members buy companies offered up on public auctions
>they still stay out on top
>meanwhile, the average joe still can't move out of the state issued commieblock apartment
but at least now he can get a job as a graphic designer!!
Yeah without a doubt there were shortages of that, it varied on the regions. My uncle recalls how when he was rewarded with a trip to Moscow for something (I forget) he was amazed how shitty it was compared to back home in Czechoslovakia (the only reason we weren't a shithole was because we had some sort of development before the coup) and he told me about how he noticed some houses were using like newspapers on windows instead of shades, or how shitty the fucking butchery was with only processed meat sitting out in the air, no cooling, with flies and shit, the rest of the shop was empty, etc.
my favorite shortage was the DDR's inability to get bananas, to such an extent that those who lived near the border would drive to Czechoslovakia to get some oranges and bananas and shit.
I also remember my uncle bought some book for children in the USSR and it showed them how to make toys out of fucking potatoes.
you work relatively short hours, but you spend couple hours daily to get to the work you can't choose
everyone has to work in Commie society. only elites don't
You have an apartment for free. but sometimes you are forced to share it with people you don't know. There are whole movies about it
>The apartment is not so bad
yea those were fucking meme back in times
youtube.com
for the common people. i dont know much about whats going on is poland but i know there are tons of poles using thier EU passport to do plumbing jobs in Britain, your parents and grandparents didnt need to know immigrasion, but hell some people did mange to do well in the new hyper capitalist order, maybe your parents got lucky
we have an exKGB goto american universities and is just dumbfounded at all the capitalist commies
disagree. you can still have bad people work together and produce, and then turn on each other. also, people can turn greedy and corrupt once they attain power.
also, using "getting robbed" as a measure for human greed and corruption is not accurate. life is also based on priority and worth. you could be living in an area where it's actually not worth robbing someone - based on the time and effort - instead, maybe doing something like avoiding taxes so you can pull out ahead. you have to widen the scope in which you view humanity's negative traits.
You said a kitchen shared with a second family. I know this is mostly not the case, and only ever in urban apartment blocks. I already live in an apartment building with lots of common areas. I know other tenants by name, and some of our kids go to school together.
And as a historian, I am aware that many people had large families living together or lived in common dwellings with many people together.
The fact is that it's not much different from what I have and have available to me. Since I will never be able to own a home, or retire, I will work to death in a system that does not protect me in any way. Especially while capitalism falls apart globally and turns into the next system which I cannot currently predict what will be.
I came from a family of factory workers, and as a kid I wanted to have that same security and decent labour. So I can definitely get behind the stability that the Soviet Union offered it's people.
Everything is so closely controlled, and as a result of incompetent control the supply is low. That, and the supply goes to the major cities or left everywhere to go back to Moscow and St Petersburg.
Russians are very superstitious people. They still cast spells and have magical staves and the like. Many pagan ideals, believe it or not.
Czechs were always an anomaly. Even nowadays, you are one of the better countries in Europe, if not the best.
The breads lines were more of a feature during the Gorbachev era, he was unable to fix the stagnation, and he tried going through with Chinese-style reforms but the pressure blew the lid off and the entire economy fucking came tumbling down.
Yeah but you're not gonna go to a fucking gulag, just move to Texas and stop hanging out around leftists
>You'd have money but little to no things to spend them on.
This is overplayed. You couldn't buy western goods, that's about it. But even then the control over the black market wasn't so tough. There's such a huge surplus of old 80s dadrock cassettes and records.
>Electricity would stop for a couple of hours a day.
This actually happened during the 90s, after communist rule. Shit got so bad economically when the USSR collapsed, electricity had to be limited.
>No christianity (but also no Islam since we had around 800 000 turks, which is good i guess)
Only in early communist rule, not late communist rule when it was basically left nationalist state.
It wasn't bad for the average person. Rather decent.
listen, you ignorant fuck, there were breadlines because genius soviets thought seeds would work together, "like people under communism" to grow more foood, so they put a shitload of seeds together when planting. guess what happened
USSR spent a lot of money for propaganda in other countries. I know how many commies in your universities (who's never was in USSR of course)
Nowadays people work as plumbers, while back then people were going to Yugo for trading hand-made products. My grandma run away to US and worked as a maid there. Communism was shit, period.
That last part hit right in the feels
Poland has been pretty cool too, papiez jon was a pretty good meme. You were also one of the first to actively start protesting against the regime, etc.
/v4/ lads for life
Communism is like those Nigerian scams. It is retarded on purpose, to filter out all the people with a brain.If a person answers the call of Communism, the scammer is assured to be in front of a complete idiot that will believe anything.
>But even then the control over the black market wasn't so tough
This is crucial, because former communist countries excel in piracy worldwide. It's an old habit, where you couldn't legally get anything you wanted, and you had to "steal" it. Quote unquote, because everything was public, so you could take for example guitar from culture center, if you had good relationship with the janitor, or so. It's also the reason why we suffered corruption for a long time, after we broke from communism.
That doesn't answer my questions of why lines would exist when there is nothing to line up for.
If there's no food, the lines should disperse. What normal person would stay in line for nothing? Who, after receiving nothing after waiting in line, wouldn't get pissed off and storm out, prompting others in line to realize "oh shit theres no more bread"?
If there is enough bread to line up for, why aren't there multiple outlets for it? Surely before GOMMUNIZM there were many bakeries. Were they all closed and replaced with a single central Bread Repository or something? Communism was a failure there but surely they weren't so stupid as to close ALL the bakeries and then only open up one or two per major city after.
This still doesn't explain the actual deployment methods and subsequent line-ups not making sense together you stupid yank
The best part is that it's something of a common knowledge since at least 70s (hail bezmenov), yet people don't care anymore.
My father says it was shit, but he allways tells funny stories from the youth camps.
However I know people from the soviet union who claim that they liked it. It depends on the person, weather you are ok with being a slave or not. Weather you swallow the propaganda or not.
It is funny, if I think now about it, that commies were against religion but it was flourishing. On the other hand they had some respect for it.
But capitalism had managed to make religion something completely ridiculous and only oppressive.
Ironic, isn't it?
we're taking relatively here, your grandma did enjoy free education, free healthcare, cheap housing, safe retirement. trading hand-made products is not a big humiliation, seeing all that society worked for for decades being privatized in the hand of a few scumbags is
I do remember that in the 90s we were driving to Czechs near border, to do some shopping, because you had better products, and they were cheaper. Weird times.
It was ok. Better than (((capitalist)) Russia at least.
From my understanding they basically 'removed' the middle and upper class who produced a lot of the goods and services. As a result 2m people starved to death in Ukraine in the 1920s and resorted to canablism in the famine.
Daily reminder that real fascism never happened :)
It attracts idiots in college/university because on paper it looks really nice.
Reality is that it has failed in every fucking country who have tried it, China included since they've gone hardcore capitalist with the higher echelons of the party taking the place of the evil capitalists.