How Does a Communist Economy Work?

[zoobyshoe]

taking away other kids toys because "little Johny" thinks he needs to have them all.

We all hate the same guy, then. Here we call him, "Stalin." That stands for any big power, left wing or right wing that tries to take over everything.

There's a subset of modern humanity who have been trained to specifically focus on "little Johny" taking the form of rapacious capitalists, and there's another subset trained to focus on him taking the form of a totalitarian leader. Despite the differences in the fixed idea of what form he must necessarily take, everyone, really, hates the same guy.

It's the fixed idea of what form he must necessarily take that needs loosening up and constant revision.

 

[mheslep]

... His link and book are conservative propaganda, not neutral literature...

Hillbilly Ellegy is an autobiography and a history of the generation migrating out of the abject poverty of Eastern Kentucky and moving into the Ohio rustbelt.

 

[mheslep]

We all hate the same guy, then. Here we call him, "Stalin." ..., everyone, really, hates the same guy...

Not everyone. That's the point raised earlier in the thread, that Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, are not all interchangeable bad guys around the world. There is no country where a majority have a "positive view" of Hitler or Mussolini. Not so for Stalin. The Pulitzer prize for Stalin’s apologist Duranty still hangs on the wall at the NYT.

Over half of Russians have described their attitude to Stalin and his methods of state management as positive in a recent public opinion poll. Researchers say this could be due to the community’s demand for a harsh but effective ruler in a time of crisis.

https://www.rt.com/politics/337183-sympathy-for-stalin-among-russians/

 

[mheslep]

BTW, I'm a big fan of Alexandr Solzhenytsin, and have read many of his books, including "The Gulag Archipelago," "Cancer Ward," "First Circle," "August 1914," and "One Day in the Live if Ivan Denisovich."

As am I. I particular like Solzhenytsin's commencement address at Harvard, 1978:

...The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the titlehttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0895268779/?tag=pfamazon01-20; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Shafarevich's book was published in France -- Shafarevich's book was published in France almost two years ago and so far no one has been found to refute it. It will shortly be published in the United States.

But should someone ask me whether I would indicate the West such as it is today as a model to my country, frankly I would have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society in its present state as an ideal for the transformation of ours. ...

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/alexandersolzhenitsynharvard.htm

 

[Mark44]

I'll never forget how humiliating it was when I stayed in the UK in a host family for 10 days when I was at high school and the lady felt the need to show me how to use the toilet. There are many examples of Western people insulting people I know in similar ways , it would be too long to describe everything.

I doubt that the woman's intent was to insult or belittle you -- I believe she was simply ignorant. I'm going to guess that the woman hadn't traveled very much. .

They don't understand that we are not so rich but we are not primitive.
I also don't like the idea of labeling one self, but if I had to, I'd call my philosophy voluntary simplicity. And it's something that is totally against capitalism, because in capitalism, one always wants more and more stuff and never has enough, is never satisfied with his life.

Always wanting more and more stuff and never being satisified with one's life isn't what defines capitalism, in my view. What you're describing is someone who is greedy or empty or both. I think you'll find people like this in any society.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Hillbilly Ellegy is an autobiography and a history of the generation migrating out of the abject poverty of Eastern Kentucky and moving into the Ohio rustbelt.

So, I'm assuming my calling the "Capitalism means Freedom" link "propaganda" is not controversial.

Calling Hillbilly Elegy "propaganda" was inaccurate due to my phrasing what I meant too compactly. What I meant was that you were presenting it for propagandistic purposes; to disparage section 8. One guy's memoirs are basically mere anecdote.

Not everyone. That's the point raised earlier in the thread, that Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, are not all interchangeable bad guys. There is no country where a majority have a "positive view" of Hitler or Mussolini. Not so for Stalin. The Pulitzer prize for Stalin’s apologist Duranty still hangs on the wall at the NYT.
https://www.rt.com/politics/337183-sympathy-for-stalin-among-russians/

There are people in the former Soviet Union who are still afraid to stop clapping. Post-traumatic stress and Stockholm Syndrome.

Western apologists are harder to explain, or, more honestly, I haven't bothered to try and understand them. Mao and Stalin and others don't get the rightful share of condemnation they deserve because people have a very limited capacity to examine real-life horrors. To the extent they allow themselves to examine it, Hitler gets the most attention for being the most horrifying. That's my take on it: you learn a few things about Hitlerism, and you can't take anymore horror.

 

[mheslep]

There are people in the former Soviet Union who are still afraid to stop clapping...

Ha, something like that. I can't put a finger on the exact reason for the difference in sentiment between post-generic-dictator and post Stalin. Even with all the violence in Iraq and misgivings about the 2003 invasion, there's no lingering majority "positive view" of Saddam Hussein. I don't know if it was the multi-generational length of time the Bolsheviks held power in the USSR, or a deeper, Orwellian damage to the soul done by Marxism's demands.

 

[russ_watters]

Always wanting more and more stuff and never being satisified with one's life isn't what defines capitalism, in my view. What you're describing is someone who is greedy or empty or both. I think you'll find people like this in any society.

As described it also sounds like "ambitious" and "competitive" to me. So, not necessarily a bad thing in that context.

 

[Sophia]

I doubt that the woman's intent was to insult or belittle you -- I believe she was simply ignorant. I'm going to guess that the woman hadn't traveled very much. .

Always wanting more and more stuff and never being satisified with one's life isn't what defines capitalism, in my view. What you're describing is someone who is greedy or empty or both. I think you'll find people like this in any society.

She and Westerners who do similar things are not rude intentionally, but it shows how little do they actually know and that their opinions are only based on prejudices and few reports they read. And they always look so surprised when they come and say things like oooh you even have a wi-fi! Last year, we had a visit from Australia (cousin's husband) and we took them to spa with healing thermal water in Turcianske Teplice. It is the same one that was there during socialism. Both during socialism and now, all insurance companies cover 3 week stay in the spa for many patients. Sure, the interior design has been reconstructed recently, but the Spa and all healing procedures were there before 1989. There are plenty of them in the country, each suitable for different diseases. And the man said he didn't expect to see something like that here. The way he said it didn't sound like praise, more as a surprise that in this ugly hole, there could be something nice.
The main problem I see in this thread is similar. You (not only you personally, Mark, I'd say majority of you from the West) simply can't believe me and Salvador when we are trying to describe our personal experience. You saw documents and heard a few anecdotes and your picture is complete, you don't need to hear anything else.

You know, I could have similar prejudices towards the USA. Most of the reports we see are about shootings and various crazy people and ridiculous cases why people sue each other. I also saw documentaries about how difficult it is when someone is sick and doesn't have money. Or how expensive universities are. So I could think that all you do is carry guns everywhere and someone attacks you at least once a year, that you become homeless if you get sick and live in constant fear that your female friend will sue you because you opened the door for her and she considers it sexual harassment. Really, I could think this based on media and anecdotal evidence.
But you know what? when I ask you and you tell me it is not quite so, I do believe you. I believe that you, common US citizens who live there know better what life in your country looks like then what the media present in sensational reports.
What I don't see in this discussion is the same will on your side. You have the same prejudices towards socialistic countries, yet you don't believe us, who live here, when we are trying to explain the reality. And neither Salvador nor I claim everything was great. We've openly admitted the problems many times. All we are trying to explain is that it wasn't as bad as you think. Since 1960's, unless you caused ideological problems, you could live a decent life. It was modest and no one denies it, but it was sufficient. I really don't understand why you have such a problem to get that.

 

[Mark44]

What I don't see in this discussion is the same will on your side. You have the same prejudices towards socialistic countries, yet you don't believe us, who live here, when we are trying to explain the reality.

You're pretty young, if I recall your saying so in some other thread, so you didn't live through some of the worst horrors of Soviet-style communism, such as the Gulag Archipelago that Solzhenytsin and Nathan Scharansky and many others endured and wrote about, or when the Soviet T-34 tanks rolled into Budapest in 1956. These are things I remember. My feelings about communism aren't prejudices - they come from witnessing over a long period the inhumanities perpetrated on millions of people by a unbelievably cruel system. A question asked very early in this thread was, why is it that Hitler and the whole Nazi system are despised by most of the world (but not all), while Stalin and Lenin and Beria et al. are not, even though the system of government they set up was responsible for the deather of millions of its own citizens.

Much of this thread is in rebuttal to Salvador's claims of how rosy life was in the Soviet Union. Maybe from his perspective of the relatively recent past it has been, but the sources we've cited paint a different picture.

As I recall, you live in Slovakia.(or possibly the Czech Republic) I've never been there, but I have been to countries near there, including Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia (in '74, when it was still one country), and more recently in Slovenia and Croatia. When I go somewhere I spend time studying the language, enough so that I can carry on at least a simple conversation with people. In the countries I've visited, people genuinely appreciate it when you try to speak their language. Slovakia and the Czech Republic are both places i plan to go in the not-too-distant future. At any rate, don't lump all of us Americans together as being completely ignorant of other cultures..

And neither Salvador nor I claim everything was great. We've openly admitted the problems many times. All we are trying to explain is that it wasn't as bad as you think. Since 1960's, unless you caused ideological problems, you could live a decent life. It was modest and no one denies it, but it was sufficient. I really don't understand why you have such a problem to get that.

"unless you caused ideological problems" -- a key difference between life in a communist dictatorship such as the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and any number of "workers' paradises."

 

[Sophia]

You're pretty young, if I recall your saying so in some other thread, so you didn't live through some of the worst horrors of Soviet-style communism, such as the Gulag Archipelago that Solzhenytsin and Nathan Scharansky and many others endured and wrote about, or when the Soviet T-34 tanks rolled into Budapest in 1956. These are things I remember. My feelings about communism aren't prejudices - they come from witnessing over a long period the inhumanities perpetrated on millions of people by a unbelievably cruel system. A question asked very early in this thread was, why is it that Hitler and the whole Nazi system are despised by most of the world (but not all), while Stalin and Lenin and Beria et al. are not, even though the system of government they set up was responsible for the deather of millions of its own citizens.

Much of this thread is in rebuttal to Salvador's claims of how rosy life was in the Soviet Union. Maybe from his perspective of the relatively recent past it has been, but the sources we've cited paint a different picture.

As I recall, you live in Slovakia.(or possibly the Czech Republic) I've never been there, but I have been to countries near there, including Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Yugoslavia (in '74, when it was still one country), and more recently in Slovenia and Croatia. When I go somewhere I spend time studying the language, enough so that I can carry on at least a simple conversation with people. In the countries I've visited, people genuinely appreciate it when you try to speak their language. Slovakia and the Czech Republic are both places i plan to go in the not-too-distant future. At any rate, don't lump all of us Americans together as being completely ignorant of other cultures..

"unless you caused ideological problems" -- a key difference between life in a communist dictatorship such as the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and any number of "workers' paradises."

Mark, I repeat the phrase "unless you cased ideological problems" all the time! I'm very well aware of the horrors of political processes and the tortures that the prisoners went through. If you read the discussion from the beginning, maybe you'll remember that I wrote about forced labour in uranium mines (which I got a first hand account from a person who was there and died recently of cancer). I am well aware of constructed trials of alleged traitors who were sentenced to death, including intellectual women, one of them was dr. Milada Horakova. My country was occupied by Soviet army 1968 and many people I spoke to remember it. The tanks went through this town where I live. (fun fact: the number of tanks was so large that a person I know drunk whole beer before they passed). Solzhenytsin was a compulsory reading when I was at high school. I never in this discussion or anywhere else claimed that these things didn't happen. I also said previously that I'm not a communist and that I don't want the regime to return. The people were fed up with the political regime and rightfully so. That's why the revolution took place.

In this discussion, we were just trying to present the everyday life of people who were not persecuted because it seems that that is the area that many in the West don't hear about very often. We wanted to describe life in all aspects, not only talk about terrible things that everyone knows. That's all it was about.These descriptions of everday life also explain why there are still people who like communism.That is the answer to your question.

It's great that you travel and learn the languages! If you decide to come here and already know some Croatian, it will be easy for you as the languages are similar :)

 

[Salvador]

the opinion expressed here mostly is the same between folks like russ , mheslep and you Mark , so indeed don't feel insulted when I label you all in one category , as this is just one specific category for this thread and the topic discussed here.
Maybe my texts come off as rosy to you because I kind of have this inner wish to level out the inaccuracies and half truths with some stronger and sometimes overly praising words about the USSR much like Hillary focuses on her best parts in trying to defend her weaknesses.

Trust me Mark, I'm not that old too so I haven't seen Stalin atrocities firsthand also , and I believe when the USSR tanks rolled across Europe in the 50's you too were just a kid and payed little attention to that at the time.
I know almost every bad things the USSR has ever done , I have been over it for many times reading , watching visiting memorial sites etc so for me it's old stuff.

You (not just Mark but also russ and many others here) fail to understand one basic thing which is why you stumble again and again on the very same issue, you talk about Stalin and his crime and how folks like him have not gotten the same condemnation as Hitler.I don't want to sound rude which I believe I already do but let me give you a history lesson.
Hitler was no better than Stalin we all know that , in fact Hitler's Germany pales in comparison to what Stalin managed to get through both in body count and world domination and political success.But here;s the big difference , Hitler lost the war , and Stalin's Soviet Union won the war , and as ABBA once sang quite beautifully , "the winner takes it all, the losers standing small" , Hitler's two biggest mistakes were , first the hatred towards Jews , because Jews were among the best scientists and intelligence workers and his second biggest mistake was to face off the USSR and at the same time face off the west. Even though he got little resistance from the west Europe at the first half of the war his decision to open up the eastern front at the same time was simply too much.
So Hitler caused mayhem and then Stalin came as the "liberator" , he also did not touch the Jews , even more so many Jewish folks were and have always been on the top ruling class of the USSR , actually the very Marxist Leninist system was invented by Jews , as Marx , Engels , Lenin and many more were of Jewish origin as many other Russian intelligence.
To many people who were politically correct and did not care and got along fine Stalin was the liberator the one who saved the day , Hitler on the other hand was the bad Jew hating war criminal who made Europe suffer.
This may run into conspiracy but I actually think Stalin had it all planned out even before he signed off with Adolf about the peace treaty.Given Stalin's constant intellectual paranoia I think he surely anticipated that Hitler would sooner or later attack him and he probably had his staff and him already planning out in advance the many different ways in which he could come out victorious from the situation.

Marxism never got the condemnation and probably never will because it's idea always seems a fair one , and actually the only ones deeply denouncing it are the US conservatives , not even Europeans have the same attitude towards the USSR and it's ideology.So the only two branches criticizing the regime are either those who got in trouble back then or those who live in the far west and are conservatives , all the others either pass by or simply don't care or don't know enough to care.As for my father , again here you have to know your history to understand , my grandfather was sent to Siberia because he had big savings and a large farm even though the actual reason I'm not sure because the KGB files are still locked or maybe have been already destroyed, as that happened back in either 1941 or 49.
Then there were the next form of punishment for those who really dared to say something , the gulags , work labor camps , but again when you quote the numbers of hos little survived that's because it was meant to be that way.There is no meaning of talking about how bad these people were treated because that was the essential goal , to kill them.
When you talk about death penalty in the US , you don't say , oh some 5% survived , no all 100% were executed and that's because it was the intention to do so.
The gulag, Siberia , all the various KGB prisons and many more were all just the ways by which the USSR exterminated it's enemies of the state much like the US exterminates it's.
The only difference why you and many others brag about this is that in the USSR many of those exterminated were not killers and sociopaths but also intellectuals and folks who dared to go against the government.Let me again get controversial and say that personally I think that the extermination was necessary but the bad thing is that it killed many of the wrong type , they shouldn't attacked intellectuals and simply hard working folks who had made a small fortune , they should have simply attacked the mobsters and all the ones which went against a socialist system but not for intellectual purposes but for personal wealth and criminal activity ones.Sure that would make the government it's life more painful as there would be a much larger opposition but look at the US , the US has an opposition too and it can't do much about the situation still.

And this is were I want to say something more , @zooby , you said that "we all hate that little johny who takes up all the toys" sure we do , but whenever we talk about him you westerners only imagine him as Stalin , you fail to see that your capitalist system has produced thousands of folks out of millions of ordinary ones who control the population by the means of money which in the modern west is the means for everything.
I have never really understood the role of Wallstreet and why that is necessary , ok I understand how it works etc but I cannot see for example why someone should be allowed to make off money simply speculating on other mans property , all this system is basically "money makes more money" system and so it's no different than a bank loan were the bank simply basically does nothing but gives out money and gets it back with interest.
I don't agree to such a system , I'm not saying it doesn't work it does in the short term but in the long terms such a system will fail just as a communist one , it simply lasts longer because as I've said for many times it plays out much better to our inner selfish ego.Want some more ? many of the US conservatives are also Christians , some even hardcore ones yet their hypocrisy is outstanding , even though I don't like to emphasize it , I believe in the Bible , and Christ has said in many places that it's good to help out your fellow citizens and not wait for anything in return as that is a good deed and shows a good heart , he has said that lending money for interest is bad, I could quote bible verses here in length but that would make my post a book.
So you (i'm not referring to the posters here as I don't know their faith or confession) believe in the Christian God and go to church etc but at the same time you admire and support the very system whose only interest is to ship jobs across seas where it's cheaper to manufacture and exploit everything like a whore simply to get more money.Oh but sure let's not talk about that let's just keep on talking about how bad things in Russia are and that Stalin has a ghost. :D
Both for Russia and for the US it's always the outer enemy that helps to turn away from the very shortcomings and drawbacks of their own system.

I write in such a way because I like to be that counterbalance to things for them to not go simply one direction and then get wrong.That doesn't necessary mean I personally admire Stalin.Another discussion would be , whether Russia would have won the war and did other things if the Kremlin would have been occupied by someone as liberal and sort of weak as Obama.Think about it.

 

[Salvador]

@Sophia , you said

(fun fact: the number of tanks was so large that a person I know drunk whole beer before they passed).

Another fun fact , I know a few alcoholics that can drink a full beer , 0.5 , in a ,matter of few seconds , so maybe only a few tanks passed by ? :D:D A typical Russian who regularly consumes can drink a beer faster than you can blink an eye so for him NO tanks passed by at all and it's all just a matter of western propaganda. :DOn a more serious note , the 1968 Prague spring invasion was not an invasion in the strict sense nor it was occupation simply because Czechoslovakia was already established years ago and it was ruled by a communist government so basically it was the local communist government asking the satellite USSR to come in and help to take care with the ones who were protesting against the government and the leaders who tried reforms in the country.
It's just that Czechoslovakia was always more free than my country Latvia was , we were an official part of the USSR and USSR constitution was the governing law here and so anyone who went against the official USSR was tried under it's law and it was never considered an invasion , the only part considered an occupation which Moscow still denies was the part were the USSR took over Latvia after the Germans left in defeat.P.S. a rhetorical question to both russ, Mark and zooby and mheslep and all others here , How many people have died in a miserable death in order for you to sit in your comfy chairs and wear your jeans and shoes , and for you to be able to purchase them cheaply , who were all made by US corporations in countries like China , Bangladesh , Philippines,. how many died because you poisoned their crops in Vietnam in the Vietnam war using "agent orange" just to win the damn war which you lost anyway.

I think the only reason why the USSR gets more attention and has killed much more than the west could ever dream of is because of the different mentality , a regime doesn't just arise out of nothing it's a consequence of the ideas and inner clashes of the society , much like the Muslims have always had a problem of living in peace , and this is the very reason why US fails in it's foreign policy because it thinks that the people around the world are oppressed and all they need is simply a new clean government which is ofcourse friendly to the US and let's the US exploit their resources but anyway as I said a "clean government" and then all of a sudden things will get good and just like a bad fever it will be gone , what the US fails to realize that it's only a portion sometimes very small who go against these oppressive governments , in many cases such governments are simply the result of the tendencies of the society that live in that specific area.
For example if the Quran demands the true believers of Muhammad to kill the infidels "wherever they are" or kill a woman that has conducted adultery by digging her into the ground and throwing rocks at her head, then one should not wonder that the governments of such majority Muslim states like Saudi Arabia , Pakistan , Iran , etc support international terrorism and participate in such acts as 9/11.
The middle east is probably the best example of the mistake the US has made all over again that they think that somehow just because you helped the Afghans to fight against the USSR they somehow now love you and feel deep sympathy towards you , no they don't because they are in direct opposition to whatever the US stands for bot religiously and socially.

Same goes to the USSR , you somehow think that everything was bad in the USSR and everyone hated it , not necessarily , because the USSR was made by the very people who lived in that territory and reflected their vision of life and this world , the only reason why the USSR collapsed is because over the years those very folks and heir next generations grew unhappy with how things are going and so it collapsed.
But to think that Stalin or the USSR should be hated by 100% of the Russian folks simply because the US conservatives would like to see that is a little fairy tale in which many westerners like to live in.

 

[Sophia]

@Sophia , you said

Another fun fact , I know a few alcoholics that can drink a full beer , 0.5 , in a ,matter of few seconds , so maybe only a few tanks passed by ? :D:D A typical Russian who regularly consumes can drink a beer faster than you can blink an eye so for him NO tanks passed by at all and it's all just a matter of western propaganda. :DOn a more serious note , the 1968 Prague spring invasion was not an invasion in the strict sense nor it was occupation simply because Czechoslovakia was already established years ago and it was ruled by a communist government so basically it was the local communist government asking the satellite USSR to come in and help to take care with the ones who were protesting against the government and the leaders who tried reforms in the country.
It's just that Czechoslovakia was always more free than my country Latvia was , we were an official part of the USSR and USSR constitution was the governing law here and so anyone who went against the official USSR was tried under it's law and it was never considered an invasion , the only part considered an occupation which Moscow still denies was the part were the USSR took over Latvia after the Germans left in defeat.

Sure :) Though I don't think it's necessary to discuss these details now, that would only create another string of topics. To me, it's totally obvious that capitalism and conservative view is morally questionable and it's strange how some don't see it. But that's a matter of ones conscience and values and we can't solve it here. Maybe it's because we saw how capitalism harmed people around us in some ways (they are forced lo leave their homes and work abroad, supermarket chains exploiting employees, parents can't afford music classes for their children, cheap medicines are sold to Germany and few are left for our patients and no law has stopped it yet- this is a very serious problem in my area and my mother's leukemia returned because her medicine was unavailable, sold to another EU country. Something like this couldn't have happened in socialism).
We have a rare opportunity to compare two regimes and see the effect of both on our families and communities. We don't wear pink glasses and see positives and negatives in both. That's why I personally don't trust any regime and I highly doubt that anyone cares about common people. Neither Stalin, nor Angela, nor Wall street.

 

[Salvador]

the reason why capitalism is so bad for us is also because we are new to capitalism , countries like the US have somehow managed to keep capitalism contained and somehow regulated , but they went through some 200 years of capitalism/democracy in order to achieve that , we did not have the 10th of that time.
the US start at capitalism was also a very rough one , the "wild west" I'm sure many folks died and nobody gave two cents about that back in the day.

And even with all this adjustment capitalism still fails from time to time , as the recent 2008 economic crisis.But sure as zooby said , he rather lives under the bridge in the US than east grass soup in a valley somewhere in Central Asia , and to some point he is correct.There is a greater chance of surviving and getting along fine in the US than in countries like N Korea , that surely is an undisputed fact to which even Stalin agrees as we here now "live" from his grave.All in all i think the reason why empires arise and why some of them are more evil some less are just a matter of us humans , look at ancient Rome , such a civilized high society for it's time and it still turned into a chaotic , sexually pervert , and bloody power that was cruel and violent towards it's neighbors and it's own , same goes for literally every thing humans have ever created.
The only reason why Rome did not kill as many as the USSR is simply because at the time there simply weren't enough people and not good enough weapons and technology for that.Invent a time machine go back and present the Romans a few of Kruschevs's hydrogen "Tsar" nuclear bombs and then wait what happens...

This is why I start to like religion more than politics , because politics deals with how to contain the already evil and irreparable human into a somewhat decent and able to get by creature under a "free" market or whatever economy , religion on the other hand addresses the very reason why a man is so bad in his nature and how one can change that by taking a life long journey and understand how all actions made will have to be accounted for as this reality is not the only one that exists.
Stalin for example turned away from his faith and became an atheist , spurred by his personal evil and supplied extra more from the dangerous volatile mixture of Marxism, add the Russian peoples anger and toughness to that mixture and you effectively get yourself the socialist empire of the USSR with all of it;'s gulags and dissidents like the one which westerners like a lot - Solzenitsin

 

[mheslep]

As described it also sounds like "ambitious" and "competitive" to me. So, not necessarily a bad thing in that context.

Depends on the goal of the ambition, seems to me. Doing the best job possible in a chosen profession, admirable. Trying simply to accumulate the most stuff, for the sake of stuff, not so admirable.

BTW, the biblical parables cautioning against pursuit of riches are the scheduled feature in the Christian churches this week (e.g Timothy 6:6-19), a reminder that the follies attending the pursuit of riches existed long before any notion of capitalism. I'll add, there are also many parables about stewardship and not wasting effort.

 

[Salvador]

I'm not sure @mheslep that you went through all of my latest posts and even if you did not I still can understand the reason,

as to what I said I want to add one more factor that went completely forgotten in this discussion.A large reason , I'd say some 50% of the reason why the USSR ultimately fell is because it had tons of vastly different nationalities under it.There was a huge nationalistic problem because the main things and center of power was in Moscow ,Russia , but all the other socialist republics had their own local wishes which were purely nationalistic ones , so there were always this sort of Russians vs the rest thing going on.Heck even Russia itself is built up of many different ethnic Russian minorities , a country so vast in size that half way from Moscow into the middle of Russia and closer to the other side where Siberia is the only thing that is similar with the Russians of the European side is the language and alphabet.
Even with all the power Stalin had , it never reached as far as some of those far regions to the extent that many folks there heard about Stalin death years after it had happened.They simply did not care nor were afraid , a man is only afraid of the things he knows about...

So yes the soviets were made up of everybody starting from Muslims and Asians to Europeans and bits of the middle east.I think it's actually a remarkable achievement that all these different and ethnic groups who on many cases hate each other were somehow kept together and it speaks volumes of the outstanding job of the KGB , yes evil as it may be but it was state of the art.There are rumors that the Chechens - a rather large ethic group know for their terrorist activities and toughness , were even paid to not bomb the Olympic game venues at Sochi in 2014.As some of them are opposed to the Kremlin and participate in bombings across Russia.

Also the recent Ukraine thing, Ukrainians are basically Russians just with some minor differences yet you see how hard they clash with each other, and if you ask me Crimea was historically a part of Russia so let them have it.

@mheslep what do you mean by saying

scheduled feature in the Christian churches this week

, do churches prepare the same material across half of the US much like a radio network or what ?
P.S. Actually religion like Christianity for example is an even bigger utopia than ideas like Communism simply because of the things it requires the follower to do and achieve , but there are people who devote themselves to those ideas and manage to succeed. Also we have seen the atrocities by the catholic church in medieval times and many wrong aka "false prophets" setting up churches and sects which eventually lead their followers into depression and suicide, but do we then go on and say that everything about the church or the Bible is wrong , bad and should be destroyed ? Well many atheists say that but then again they say it more because of their personal feeling against anything that has to do with God, this I always use as a good example of how humans can literally take any idea , any at all and turn it into a nightmare , when all hell breaks loose , simply some ideas are more prone to such misuse while others are not , communism happens to be very prone to this case , maybe even so much so that one has to wonder whether Marx invented a system by which to trick the world into a self approved suicide , a "Trojan horse" type of supersystem that takes over with the approval of the fanatics and the blind ignorance of the masses.As I read his early literary works of which there are just a few I sometimes feel that maybe he indeed secretly wished to not only destroy capitalism but the whole human race.Ok I'll wait , maybe someone here will go through all of my "literature" and provide me some more straws of attack for me to bite into.

 

[mheslep]

So, I'm assuming my calling the "Capitalism means Freedom" link "propaganda" is not controversial...

The definitions at that link come from economists and authors based on a large body of work, especially that of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman. Yes they have a particular viewpoint, but that hardly makes them propagandists. Recall too that I offered that link in response to this earlier comment:

The fundamental idea of capitalism is to make as much money as you can...

 

[Mark44]

It's great that you travel and learn the languages! If you decide to come here and already know some Croatian, it will be easy for you as the languages are similar :)

I remember talking with someone in Slovenia who said the same thing. I studied Russian in high school (a rarity in this country), as well as a couple of years of it in college. This gives me a head start in Slavic-speaking countries, where there are many words that are the same or nearly so, like pivo (or пиво, in Cyrillic letters) for beer and many kinds of food, greetings such as dobar dan (Croat) or dober dan (Slovene), the declensions of nouns and adjectives, verb conjugation, and so on.

 

[Mark44]

Trust me Mark, I'm not that old too so I haven't seen Stalin atrocities firsthand also , and I believe when the USSR tanks rolled across Europe in the 50's you too were just a kid and payed little attention to that at the time.

I was old enough to know about it when it happened.

I know almost every bad things the USSR has ever done , I have been over it for many times reading , watching visiting memorial sites etc so for me it's old stuff.

Unfortunately it's not old stuff for many of the people in the U.S., including virtually all of those under 30 or so.

You (not just Mark but also russ and many others here) fail to understand one basic thing which is why you stumble again and again on the very same issue, you talk about Stalin and his crime and how folks like him have not gotten the same condemnation as Hitler.I don't want to sound rude which I believe I already do but let me give you a history lesson.

No need. I understand that "the victors write the history books."

Marxism never got the condemnation and probably never will because it's idea always seems a fair one , and actually the only ones deeply denouncing it are the US conservatives , not even Europeans have the same attitude towards the USSR and it's ideology.

For the reason that most of the European countries are already socialist. There's one thing we have in the U.S. that doesn't seem to be duplicated anywhere else, and that is talk radio, which is predominantly conservative.

As for my father , again here you have to know your history to understand , my grandfather was sent to Siberia because he had big savings and a large farm even though the actual reason I'm not sure because the KGB files are still locked or maybe have been already destroyed, as that happened back in either 1941 or 49.
Then there were the next form of punishment for those who really dared to say something , the gulags , work labor camps , but again when you quote the numbers of hos little survived that's because it was meant to be that way.There is no meaning of talking about how bad these people were treated because that was the essential goal , to kill them.
When you talk about death penalty in the US , you don't say , oh some 5% survived , no all 100% were executed and that's because it was the intention to do so.

This is a false comparison, placing moral equivalence on prisoners executed in the US versus those in the Gulag who died of starvation or disease. About the only thing that will get someone the death penalty here is being convicted of premeditated murder. These people are guaranteed by the Constitution of legal representation in a court of law, with a jury of their peers. Quite different from the Soviet system where you could be convicted in absentia by a troika, with no legal defense and no jury. In any case, most or all of convicts who have received the death penalty here in the US stay on "death row" for 10 to 20 years before being executed. How many of those who died in the Gulag were there because of their political beliefs? No one in the U.S. has ever been executed for political statements, or owning too much property, or any of the hundreds of other crimes that could send one to the penal camps.

The gulag, Siberia , all the various KGB prisons and many more were all just the ways by which the USSR exterminated it's enemies of the state much like the US exterminates it's.
The only difference why you and many others brag about this is that in the USSR many of those exterminated were not killers and sociopaths but also intellectuals and folks who dared to go against the government.

The "only difference" ... What a difference! Shortly after the founders of this country wrote our Constitution, they added ten amendments (the Bill of Rights), one of which listed the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.

Regarding your statement that "much like the US exterminates it's [enemies of the state]" what are you talking about? Your statement is in the present tense, so I assume you mean now. In the past, say 150 years ago, we did exterminate "eniemies of the state," such as many Indian tribes who we deemed in the way of expansion. This happened by means of diseases to which the Indians weren't immune, as well as through warfare. What we did was a continuation of the same barbarism that some tribes exerted on other tribes that were in the way of their expansion (e.g., when the Sioux came across from Michigan into the Dakotas and Montana, displacing the Crows and Shoshones). It's not a proud moment in our history..

Let me again get controversial and say that personally I think that the extermination was necessary but the bad thing is that it killed many of the wrong type , they shouldn't attacked intellectuals and simply hard working folks who had made a small fortune , they should have simply attacked the mobsters and all the ones which went against a socialist system

Another key difference between the Soviet system and the system in the West, to lump together mobsters and dissidents. We have had mobsters in this country since the 1920s or so, including the Mafia and Cosa Nostra, and more recently the cartels from Mexico and Central and South America. To the best of my knowledge, we haven't "exterminated" any of them just for being mobsters. Even the notorious Al Capone wasn't executed -- he died of syphilus in Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco. And we haven't exterminated any dissidents.

but not for intellectual purposes but for personal wealth and criminal activity ones.Sure that would make the government it's life more painful as there would be a much larger opposition but look at the US , the US has an opposition too and it can't do much about the situation still.

I have never really understood the role of Wallstreet and why that is necessary , ok I understand how it works etc but I cannot see for example why someone should be allowed to make off money simply speculating on other mans property , all this system is basically "money makes more money" system and so it's no different than a bank loan were the bank simply basically does nothing but gives out money and gets it back with interest.
I don't agree to such a system , I'm not saying it doesn't work it does in the short term but in the long terms such a system will fail just as a communist one , it simply lasts longer because as I've said for many times it plays out much better to our inner selfish ego.

The system you describe has worked pretty well for at least 500 years, going back to the money lenders on their benches (bancas) in Italy. If you want to buy something, your options are either to save up enough money so that you can buy the thing outright, or borrow the money from someone, repaying the loan over time, plus interest, to the lender. This has enabled people in much of the world to purchase houses and cars and other expensive items.

In a free market economy, if the interest rate you are offered is too high, you can shop around to see if you can get a better deal.

Want some more ? many of the US conservatives are also Christians , some even hardcore ones yet their hypocrisy is outstanding

In what way? That's a blanket statement with no backing.
According to this article-- http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/11/20/giving-index-charity-united-states-myanmar/70008604/-- the U.S. and Myanmar are tied for being the most generous of 132 countries listed. You can bet that a major share of these generous people in the U.S. are Christians of one or another sect. Are there Christians (or Jews, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or Muslims) who are hypocritical? Of course. They are all human, and humans are fallible creatures. But so what?

, even though I don't like to emphasize it , I believe in the Bible , and Christ has said in many places that it's good to help out your fellow citizens and not wait for anything in return as that is a good deed and shows a good heart , he has said that lending money for interest is bad, I could quote bible verses here in length but that would make my post a book.

I think it's in the Book of Matthew where Jesus goes to the temple and knocks over the tables of the money lenders. It's been a while since I read that passage, but I believe the point was against usury, the act of charging exorbitant interest rates, not so much just the lending of money.

 

[Sophia]

I remember talking with someone in Slovenia who said the same thing. I studied Russian in high school (a rarity in this country), as well as a couple of years of it in college. This gives me a head start in Slavic-speaking countries, where there are many words that are the same or nearly so, like pivo (or пиво, in Cyrillic letters) for beer and many kinds of food, greetings such as dobar dan (Croat) or dober dan (Slovene), the declensions of nouns and adjectives, verb conjugation, and so on.

offtopic about languages in the spoiler :)

Spoiler

It's so nice of you to study these languages. I bet it helps a lot when travelling, because people don't expect someone from the US or UK to speak a Slavic language. It immediately creates an impression that you care and that you are "different".
And of course "pivo" is one of the most important words that will guarantee a friendship :)

In case you are interested, here's a short course in Slovak
If you are unsure, you can use a Russian or Croatian word and there is a chance that you will be understood.

 

[Salvador]

To be honest Russian is one of the most complicated languages on earth, it is definitely hard to pronounce for western folks , and I say this as a guy whose father is of Russian descent.It's probably next after the Chinese which is even more complicated.The beauty about English language is that it;s very easy , the very fact that most young Russians have learned to speak English is a good proof.

As for what you said Mark, it seems you missed a bit of my point about the hypocrisy of US conservatives and Christians , my point was about such things as lending , the history of the US etc etc.Sure it's not as bloody as that of Russia and China , but still from a country whose majority was Christian back in the day you would expect not to kill off native tribes simply because their standing in the way.That is something the soviets did when someone got in their way , they ran him over with a ballistic missile and a tank, and if they got too lazy they simply took away his food...

I never doubted that many of those conservative Christians are very decent and helpful folks as I ahve also met such.It's just that there is a part of them that have a tendency to go full "redneck", I guess it's their weakness.Indeed you were probably one out of tens of thousands who tried to learn Russian given that you probably did it back in the height of the Cold War.I guess I will slow down in my posts as it seems I have exhausted most of your power and will to respond , after all people after their 30's tend to stick with what they have learned in their lives so judging by my own experience I would say that all of this makes very little difference , also only a few of you will ever dare or wish to visit this part of the world so it makes even less use to bla bla bla all the time.
This is not meant as an insult simply it's something I have seen over the years, but whoever wishes to visit and has the money and time go ahead , you will probably get to know much more about the world.
The Baltic republics are especially nice in this regard as we have both the Russian sentiment and the European smell and it's very peaceful here when there's no war going on :D We got our country back with just a few deaths when the 1991 August coup went on which is nothing short of a miracle given the thriller that went on in Moscow.

Maybe a thread with pictures and videos would be of more interest , what do you think Mark?

 

[mheslep]

do churches prepare the same material across half of the US much like a radio network or what ?

The whole planet, more or less. There's that Christmas season, that Eastern season, and after a thousand years or so out comes a calendar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgical_year
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_Common_Lectionary

 

[mheslep]

...Marxism never got the condemnation and probably never will because it's idea always seems a fair one , and actually the only ones deeply denouncing it are the US conservatives ,

The only ones? There was that one guy Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn who condemned and denounced Marxism, so there's that. Maybe he was secretly a US conservative.

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/how-does-a-communist-economy-work.883960/page-8#post-5576493

 

[mheslep]

...think it's in the Book of Matthew where Jesus goes to the temple and knocks over the tables of the money lenders. It's been a while since I read that passage, but I believe the point was against usury, the act of charging exorbitant interest rates, not so much just the lending of money

I don't think against usury, per se. The rebuke seems to be for commercializing the temple in any way.
Mathew 21

...And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves...

 

[Salvador]

In the specific case where the cast out the folks from the temple he was referring to not turning a temple into a "bank" but there are other multiple scripture parts were Christ talks about lending two shirts of you are asked for one , helping out your brothers and even your enemies , and for all of that not wanting anything in return which is a direct opposite to any modern or historical economic system.The only system that this comes near is communism.Surely other areas differ vastly between the bible and communism , the most important one that most ever socialist attempted communist governments were atheists.

Just a sidenote , as I read the news about the upcoming presidential debate , I see big titles are being used , obviously for bias purposes but some of that information is so stuck with the US public I believe it's hard to see the truth anymore.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-strongmen_us_57e7faabe4b08d73b831df76
This is the finest piece of conservative talk points mixed into an absurd overall liberal bias with added propaganda value.The article claims such feats as that the US has won single-handedly WW2, fight against totalitarianism, the Cold War, defeated totalitarianism and communism, and the rest of the article is simply news about how bad Trump is.
It's just so funny for me that Americans really do believe their always on top of all things , and that if something happens in Russia it's caused by them not the Russians and their society.I guess self importance is very crucial for the west.Not to mention that such statements are absolutely absurd , communism never existed so there was nothing to defeat , and the USSR fell mostly because of nationalistic unrest and planned economy.

I'm sure some folks over there in your place might even think that Reagan went to Moscow and won Gorbachev in an arms wrestling competition and the deal was that the loser steps down as the head of his country in a coup... :Dp.s. @mheslep , Solzhenitsyn is a very overused example , sure he made his point but there are others who maybe even did a better job, there is a book but it's only in Latvian , a guy who worked for the KGB most of his life and then defected wrote the book in US.Where he died in the 80's , so he worked for the KGB in the 50, 60's and 70's his story is quite interesting.

I must say that Solzhenitsyn was either not of much importance or not threatening enough because he went back to Moscow in the 90's and died of natural causes , a very rare case for anyone who dared to say a word or two internationally against the motherland.
Most of the folks who defected especially ex KGB agents either went missing in mysterious ways or were slaughtered and it all happened in the west , mostly US , Canada , UK , they had a far reaching hand.
The guy who wrote that book died of a heart attack if I'm remembering correctly even though he had a medical check shortly before and it showed no signs of ill health.
Actually heart attacks were very popular among political prisoners :D It was kind of a style thing in the 40's and 50s
to dare your faith and then have a heart attack , later people usually got mentally ill and were placed in psychiatric care.A very favorite method for the "Cheka" in the 80's was to simply make you mentally ill , they did this by various means of both special interrogation and sometimes simply by giving you meds against your will, but quite frankly most of the folks who got in custody lost their mind simply out of fear.

We now have our local VDK (a local parent division of the KGB) offices open as a special tourist destination , I was inside before they opened the building up , a very interesting house, it's facade is very classical and has some deep and dark colors and vibes and the building even though originally built as a renthouse has never seen actually anyone move in because WW1 and then WW2 followed and it was almost exclusively used by security services all it's life.To be honest the old guy who worked there said they stopped shooting people in that building soon after the beginning of the 1950's so in that sense I can say things were actually rather humane.They have a special room in which enemies of the state and captured German soldiers were executed , a simple room which has a hole in the middle with channels in the floor that go to sewerage , you see the blood levels got too high and they simply decided to drain the blood into the common city sewer, I'd say it's a very functionalist approach to a problem.But other than that I hoped he house would haunt me more but it actually turned out very silent.
They have one of the oldest "Schindler" elevators in the world in that building and it's been there untouched since 1913, the soviets never did care to change it to a faster machine , that elevator transported prisoners as well as staff.Also the staircases are interesting as hey have heavy metal fences around them , when I asked why the man told me that the ones brought into custody frequently tried to make suicides by either jumping out of the higher floors or down the staircase even as they were taken up or down by armed guards.
A very interesting building , if someone plans to come visit this part of the world , let me know there's much interesting stuff I can tell you about that you should see.

 

[Mark44]

To be honest Russian is one of the most complicated languages on earth, it is definitely hard to pronounce for western folks , and I say this as a guy whose father is of Russian descent.It's probably next after the Chinese which is even more complicated.The beauty about English language is that it;s very easy , the very fact that most young Russians have learned to speak English is a good proof.

One of the first thngs I learned about Russian was that "Russian is a language of a thousand rules with ten exceptions; English is one with ten rules and a thousand exceptions. My language has its roots in both the German of the Angles and the Saxons, as well as the French of the Norman conquerors in the 11th century. Russian is complicated in part because of the 12 possible forms of its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Old English had some of that flavor, but most of that business is gone now.

I don't speak Chinese, but I would think that would be much harder than Russian, because two words that sound identical to Western ears can have completely different meanings, depending on whether the inflection goes up, goes up and comes down, or goes down. In addition, sentence structure is completely different, as they don't have the concept of nouns and verbs making up a sentence (I don't believe.)

As for what you said Mark, it seems you missed a bit of my point about the hypocrisy of US conservatives and Christians , my point was about such things as lending , the history of the US etc etc.Sure it's not as bloody as that of Russia and China , but still from a country whose majority was Christian back in the day you would expect not to kill off native tribes simply because their standing in the way.

With regard to lending, as mheslep points out, the verse in Matthew was about the commercialization in the temple, not about the lending per se. As far as wars go, all through the history of the last two millenia there have been Christians at war with other Christians, such as in the Hundred Years War, between France and England, and including WW I, with Protestant England, Catholic France, and Orthodox Russia fighting Lutheran Germany. Although many or most of the wars in the 1500s were religious in nature, not so in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The situation with the Indians in the U.S. is indefensible. Suffice ti to say that the commanders of the troops who fought the Plains Indians were not devout Christians, but then again, we're talking 150 years ago, and I'm hopeful that maybe we've learned something between then and now.

That is something the soviets did when someone got in their way , they ran him over with a ballistic missile and a tank, and if they got too lazy they simply took away his food...
I never doubted that many of those conservative Christians are very decent and helpful folks as I ahve also met such.It's just that there is a part of them that have a tendency to go full "redneck", I guess it's their weakness.

And some of those you disparage as "rednecks" are some of the most generous donors to charities, on a per-capita basis.

Indeed you were probably one out of tens of thousands who tried to learn Russian given that you probably did it back in the height of the Cold War.

Indeed I did - early 60s in high school.

I guess I will slow down in my posts as it seems I have exhausted most of your power and will to respond

Not a chance. Your posts tend to be rather long-winded, though, so it's a chore to read through them all, let alone respond to each point you make.

 

[mheslep]

p.s. @mheslep , Solzhenitsyn is a very overused example

As is, say, gravity as an example of physical law. Both are, nonetheless, correct.

I must say that Solzhenitsyn was either not of much importance or not threatening enough because he went back to Moscow in the 90's and died of natural causes , a very rare case for anyone who dared to say a word or two internationally against the motherland.

Solzhenytsin spoke abroad against socialism and the apparatus of the USSR, which are not the same thing as the Russian motherland. The USSR died before he did, falling on the "ash heap of history" before he returned to Moscow in 1994. All of Solzhenytsin's sons btw later became US citizens So too his wife Natalia.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Solzhenytsin spoke abroad against socialism and the apparatus of the USSR, which are not the same thing as the Russian motherland. The USSR died before he did, falling on the "ash heap of history" before he returned to Moscow in 1994. All of Solzhenytsin's sons btw later became US citizens So too his wife Natalia.

Solzhenytsin deeply loved his native Russia and decided he could not live anywhere else once the repressive Leninist regime came to an to end. BTW, I try to use "Leninist" because "communist" is not very specific. Today China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea all call themselves "communist" but they are only similar in that they are nominally communist authoritarian regimes with distinctly varying degrees of repression. Their economies are quite different. I don't think Lenin would have accepted the economies of China or Vietnam today.

I only use the term "Marxist" or "Marxism" to refer to Marx's economic philosophy. He gave no real examples of how his communist society would operate, or how the state would eventually "wither away".

 

[zoobyshoe]

The Soviet Union, back when it was the Soviet Union, did, in fact, have "crap" goods, as mheslep bluntly put it. This is well known and not controversial. It was the result of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shturmovshchina

The "stories and anecdotes" I've heard from emigres confirm this: I was told the buying strategy for consumers in soviet Russia was to always check the manufacture dates of the individual copies of a product, and never buy one that emerged from the time of the month when they were rushing to complete the quota.

The following is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I used the phrase, "a billion inconveniences" :

In the 1980s shortages continued in basic consumer items, even in major population centers. Such goods occasionally were rationed in major cities well into the 1980s. Besides the built-in shortages caused by planning priorities, shoddy production of consumer goods limited actual supply. Poor work practices such asshturmovshchina were partly to blame for quality problems.

Analyzing shortages in Soviet Union showed very uneven distribution among the population. For example, both Moscow and Leningrad, which were heavily visited by foreigners, were supplied much better than the rest of the country and did not have rationing until the late 1980s. Similarly, presence of goods on the shelves in a state store in a minor city often could simply mean that these goods were rationed and could not be bought at will. But in most cases shortages simply meant either empty shelves or long waiting lines. There were also some hidden channels of goods distribution; for example, in many cases goods were directly distributed/sold at places of work totally bypassing the store shelves.

While it was often possible to buy meat, milk and most kinds of produce on farmers markets (Russian: колхозный рынок), the prices there were typically two to four times higher than in state stores and the availability was highly seasonal.

During the 1980s, the wide availability of consumer electronics products in the West demonstrated a new phase of the Soviet Union's inability to compete, especially because Soviet consumers were becoming more aware of what they were missing. In the mid-1980s, up to 70% of the televisions manufactured by Ekran, a major household electronics manufacturer, were rejected by quality control inspection. The television industry received special attention, and a strong drive for quality control was a response to published figures of very high rates of breakdown and repair. To improve the industry, a major cooperative color television venture was planned for the Warsaw Television Plant in 1989.

Western specialists regarded the quality of goods available to be poor when judged by their standards and by the end of the 1980s, shortages became worse. By the time of the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of 1991, nearly every kind of food was rationed. Non-rationed foods and non-food consumer goods had virtually disappeared from state owned stores. While the gap was partially filled by non-state stores which started to appear in the mid-1980s, the prices in non-state stores were often five to ten times higher than in state stores and were often out of reach for the general population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_goods_in_the_Soviet_Union

This next is really worth a read: how did you go about buying a car in the USSR?

First of all, you had to go to your employer or the Trade Union office and submit a written request stating that your lust for a personal automobile was out of control. Your request then got processed. By processed I mean that a background check on you got made. How many chains did you manage to sharpen last year? Have you tried your best? Have you participated in Pioneer activities during school years? Do you know the basic values of communism? Have you attended the last chainsaw factory workers disco at the canteen?

After a year or so, you would find out whether the request has been approved or not...

The Soviet bureaucracy was insane and reached down into minor everyday things that we, in the west, breeze through without thinking.

Soviet consumer goods were "crap" and the soviet economy was "crap." In this low-grade, non-life threatening sense, the Russians were always eating "grass soup." In other words, literal grass soup is just the ultimate extension of communism, as it gets embodied in practice. The "good" end of the grass soup spectrum is the rationing of inferior products through endless government red tape. The "bad" end is starvation by government incompetence.

Obviously Sophia is too young to have lived like this, and maybe it wasn't nearly as "soviet" in Checkoslovakia for her parents as it was for someone in Russia. But to assert that it wasn't like that in Checkoslovakia or the Baltics is pretty much beside the point since it was like that Russia.

I'm not sure why Borek left the thread, but he'd have a lot to say since he is the author of a published book of stories he collected about what life was like in Poland under soviet rule. Additionally, Astronuc is extremely well read about that part of the world, and would probably be the best person to add more objective, academic links about what life was like in the USSR.

[ed: fixed broken link]

 

[Vanadium 50]

This next is really worth a read: how did you go about buying a car in the USSR?

A friend of mine from the former USSR tells the story of a guy who goes out to buy a car, hands over his money, and is told he can pick it up in ten years. He asks "Morning or afternoon?" He's asked "It's ten years from now - what difference does it make?" He replies, "The plumber is coming in the morning."

(I would love to have a Trabant. The 601S Deluxe.)

 

[zoobyshoe]

A friend of mine from the former USSR tells the story of a guy who goes out to buy a car, hands over his money, and is told he can pick it up in ten years. He asks "Morning or afternoon?" He's asked "It's ten years from now - what difference does it make?" He replies, "The plumber is coming in the morning."

Yeah, that joke is in the link. You should read the whole link because the small part I quoted is only a taste.

http://jalopnik.com/what-it-was-like-to-buy-and-own-a-car-in-the-ussr-1783136956

 

[Sophia]

The Soviet Union, back when it was the Soviet Union, did, in fact, have "crap" goods, as mheslep bluntly put it. This is well known and not controversial. It was the result of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shturmovshchina

The "stories and anecdotes" I've heard from emigres confirm this: I was told the buying strategy for consumers in soviet Russia was to always check the manufacture dates of the individual copies of a product, and never buy one that emerged from the time of the month when they were rushing to complete the quota.

The following is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I used the phrase, "a billion inconveniences" :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_goods_in_the_Soviet_Union

This next is really worth a read: how did you go about buying a car in the USSR?

The Soviet bureaucracy was insane and reached down into minor everyday things that we, in the west, breeze through without thinking.

Soviet consumer goods were "crap" and the soviet economy was "crap." In this low-grade, non-life threatening sense, the Russians were always eating "grass soup." In other words, literal grass soup is just the ultimate extension of communism, as it gets embodied in practice. The "good" end of the grass soup spectrum is the rationing of inferior products through endless government red tape. The "bad" end is starvation by government incompetence.

Obviously Sophia is too young to have lived like this, and maybe it wasn't nearly as "soviet" in Checkoslovakia for her parents as it was for someone in Russia. But to assert that it wasn't like that in Checkoslovakia or the Baltics is pretty much beside the point since it was like that Russia.

I'm not sure why Borek left the thread, but he'd have a lot to say since he is the author of a published book of stories he collected about what life was like in Poland under soviet rule. Additionally, Astronuc is extremely well read about that part of the world, and would probably be the best person to add more objective, academic links about what life was like in the USSR.

[ed: fixed broken link]

It was really the same concerning cars here. When I was like 7-8 years old, I knew several children who'd never rode in a car in their life. It was something special to go on a trip by car! My parents bought their first car (Lada https://www.google.sk/search?q=lada...UICCgB&biw=1047&bih=485#imgrc=XgSVuA2Vb1qocM:) around 1995 if I remember correctly.
Similar procedures applied to owning a telephone. Who do you want to talk to? What kind of information do you want to share?

 

[Salvador]

Ok I think I now got the problem , the problem for many of you here is the tendency to "overkill". What i find especially funny about that is that you overkill even after someone who has real actual proof not just wikipedia articles and a bunch of anecdotes says differently.
Yes there were devices that were made badly and yes the part about the manufacturing dates is also true , but do I really have to photograph my old tv in the basement and give you the full year by year work hours to prove that also good stuff was produced in the USSR ? It just so happens to be that electronics is my thing and we have had that TV , made in 1989 by the way (a year of much turmoil) and it went on for 15 years everyday with no problems.How about that why is nobody talking about that ?
Let me tell you why because the good stuff never makes the news much like your presidential campaign only scandal after scandal because the media buys into that.
I could go into much detail it's just that then this thread would turn into a book , as I have repaired stuff from the USSR I can tell you much like nowdays back then there were better parts and worse ones , for example there was a tube amp by the name "priboi" I managed to get two such units , one had the "K" military style capacitors in the power supply the other was a different year and was supplied with the Armenian "G" caps , the G caps were literally the worst capacitors in the world , I could make a better one by rolling my chocolate tinfoil and applying some cooking oil to it.That's how bad they were , they leaked , they almost never held their rated capacitance longer than few years and god forbid if your room was warm...the Russians called then "Gavno" meaning crap literally as for their first letter G.
And so what ? Don't you have cheap crap quality stuff in the USA? For the less lucky ones who cannot afford the good stuff? I bet you do , and what does it prove , can I now say the USA is nothing but crap , would that sound as an intellectual approach ? Then I want to ask you why are you skipping the details and just focusing on what you want to focus , that is not an intellectual discussion, that is merely a constant childish battle between "No it's good" and " Yes it's bad".

I am more than fine if you folks want to talk about the shortcomings of the soviet system and I can give much proof myself as I have a real life experience of that which somewhat still lingers in the air in some areas, but I just cannot stand when someone tells an anecdote and then someone else doubles down on that anecdote with some half truths and heavily biased personal opinion.

As for the cars , I own a LADA personally , it;'s called VAZ since it was not an export model , I got it from my grandfather and restored it, not to it's original condition but simply to a condition I find satisfying , since the original body was very rusty and it was impossible to make it original , also there is no reason to because LADA was the second most mass produced car in human history right there after vw beetle , so there's plenty of good examples still around in museums and personal collections.
In order to get a car you had to stand in line and in some cases it was long , but the information given here that you were specially checked for a car is pure bullshit, you were checked before you were born so there was no need to double check you for the case of a car , think logically...
Many older folks whom I know bought a second hand car , yes the absurd fact is that they cost higher than new ones because of the shortage of production but since money wasn't that hard to get many folks simply went the easier road to save up more and buy a used one than a new one.
Also your stupid examples fall apart when some folks told me that their car was stolen and they sometimes got it back only after a few years since back in the 60's there were no computer databases and so a clever thief could get away with something like that and this just goes to prove that those background checks you are talking about is an absurd western fallacy.
If someone got some harder time to get one and his checking was longer it's because he was suspicious.And who the hell came up with that telephone conspiracy? We all had stationary phones in our houses there was nothing special about that , sure it wasn't wise to talk about politics over it and nobody did that but there is no logic behind that "in order to get a phone one must be checked etc " No really folks is this some kind of a kindergarten brigade here or what ?
You are literally showing pure stupidity and it sometimes even feels like it's done on purpose.@zoobyshoe the bureaucracy was large yes , in part of because there needed to be all those checks on individuals going on and that requires some big workforce which then itself is checked by an even higher force in the KGB of which the KGB itself is checked so in a sense everyone checks everyone else and this is part of the reason why the system could eliminate any dissidents so efficiently.
But why are we going back to the grass soup analogies ? I really for a little while though you had opened your eyes a bit...

Do you realize that the Russian peasants were eating grass soup literally before the 1917 revolution ? Do you realize that the conditions under Czar were very bad , much like the conditions in China were not good for peasants before the Communist revolution and the same goes for many Central Asia lands that were under the British colony rule , the Russian peasants were really better off later in the Soviet years than they were back in the old factories , sure they could have been even better off if Russia would have developed a path towards something atleast resembling a market economy and some freedoms but you are very incorrect about the analogies you put forward.
The true side is that food production was declining as the USSR went along and especially in the 80's and that is simply because as to what I said earlier , the planned economy proved to be ineffective in the long term.Also I don't like your attitude towards the way you talk about dissidents , yes you too @mheslep , I'm not saying they didn't tell the truth , but the way you always talk about them is that "oh look , this man went away from Russia , denounced it and then his sons became US citizens" there is an underlying sense in such statements which I can clearly smell from afar which says that "oh look, this is what your own people think about your country"
No it's not , the Russians fall and rise with their country and they love their country and just because someone who is too afraid or a weaker person decides to run away that doesn't reflect on the reality of how things are.
What about Snowden , why don't you call him a great man like you talk about the Soviet dissidents ? Why don't you say oh, look this great American hero who now hides in Russia and is probably used by the FSB more than a whore is used by her clients ?
Does Snowden reflect the US citizens? The liberals like him... How about Lee Harvey Oswald ? He went to the USSR and then went back to kill the president.
You only like to talk about the other side and always use that as an example to belittle the very people who worked hard and built their country.

True heroes are those who stay with what they believe in , they don't run , they don't hide , they don't travel away to write a book , we have plenty of such heroes here who fought for this land despite all the bad stuff that may have happened to the land and to themselves.Even the KGB respected such people as they saw that they have something similar to themselves into their hearts - courage to do what ordinary people are afraid to.Running is not courage.
A lady from my country criticized the soviet government all her life , she had problems due to her actions but she is fine and still alive and her sons and grandsons live here and build their lives.I'm not saying I hate anyone who decides to defect or run away , I'm just saying there is no need to praise them as some sort of above all else heroes and somehow think that they have revealed something which no one knew before.
My grandfather fought in the army in the second world war as did many of my relatives and folks from both Russia and my country , and even though our political ideas later had a direct disagreement and the soviet government oppressed us , we still fought for our ideals and respected those who laid there lives for the motherland no matter whether it's Russia or Latvia or the Czech Republic , so I have zero tolerance for traitors and those who criticize our way of life because someone who ran away told them how bad everything is.
I'm not speaking about folks like Solzhenitsyn here as he too went through much in his life and I can understand his feeling about it and I agree on many cases.
All I want to say is that there are people who say , oh look Stalin was a bad dictator because he killed so many in the war, no Stalin was a bad dictator but he did not kill many in the war , the correct way of saying this would be "Many died in the war" because they were first of all fighting for their motherland and only then when your motherland is safe from harm you get to judge it's leaders and policies.Only cowards talk about policies while silently escaping the trenches to save their own life and put their comrades and fellow soldiers in harms way.

Same as those who give oath to serve the US army don't just say , oh I refuse to fight for America because I don't like Trump or Hillary , first you defend your country and then you open your mouth about what policy you dislike.
We have men here, who work on to find the dead bodies of unidentified soldiers and when they find someone they don't care whether he has German Luftwaffe badges on his skeleton or Soviet Red Army ones or my own countries - Latvian flag on his chest , they respect everyone the same way and respectfully deliver the bodies to their relatives if ones can be found.Even if he was the enemy.This is what Americans are so lacking , this is what I personally don't like about how you come across in the way you talk , disrespectful, even though the USSR did the majority of the bloody work in defeating Nazi Germany for which by the way I think you should be thankful , because remember the USSR is not only it's policies and "grass soup" and crap this and crap that , it's also the people who lived their lives and sacrificed themselves for a better world and a better tomorrow , it's not fair when you only attach such slogans to the ones who have died on your side of the front...
and it's also not fair when all you can see about the rest of the world is how bad they live and how good you think or find yourselves in how you live.
before any of you respond take your time and think about that.

I respectfully apologize if someone here is not guilty of my assigned crimes and shortcomings to his persona , and I also hope that my ranting has made the day better or atleast more clear.

@Vanadium, that is really unheard of , If I'm correct you are from Scotland? It is rather unseen of that anyone in the west whether far west or near west wants to have a communist car , given that the Trabant is literally the most communistic of all the commie cars there are , Cars like LADA and Gaz Volga atleast came off with bits of luxury to them but the Trabant was more like a plastic scooter on 4 wheels.That being said I like them myself in a weird way , when I was in Germany I specially bought one mini model Trabant , very real in it's detail.

 

[Sophia]

I'm sorry if my claim about telephones upset you, but what I said was true for my area. In 1993, 3 years after revolution, when my parents opened their small business, they had to pay 2 average monthly salaries to get a phone sooner than others. The problem was that it was only after the revolution many people wanted a phone and they couldn't satisfy the demand so fast. I don't say no one had a phone back then, of course there were people who had one, but it was not widespread.
Because I wrote about this fact, doesn't mean that I claim everything was crap or that I'm ungrateful.
You know what? I don't have a car because I don't need it. I love in the town centre and everything I need is max 15-20 minutes walking distance. My work, 4 grocery stores, hospital, 3 banks, post office, clothes shops, pet shop, hairdresser, primary and secondary school, 2 kindergartens, several pubs and restaurants, 2 pharmacies. I don't need more in my life. The communists made sure that everything was close to where people lived. There was a great public transport and it is a pity that more and more connections are terminated each year. So this is the other side. It was tough to get a car, but it was not needed very much.

I'd like to give a specific example how socialism had a positive impact on the local Roma community which means thousands of people. As many of you may know, we've got serious challenges with this community. The socialist regime had helped about 50% of them to integrate into society. They've become nice, hard working and educated people That's an accomplishment, since it's way, way more than was done in 500 years since they came to this area. Since the regime failed, many of them got totally lost, some might say that for certain individuals, there's little hope. And they cause serious social tension and large proportion of crime. Some and I repeat the word some, people from this community simply can't prosper under democracy. In the evening, when I get home from work, I'd like to explain more about this.