So, friends — today will be a post about eternal Soviet poverty. In the comments to almost any post about the USSR coming fans the scoopis that they are one and the same hurdy-gurdy — “but in the Soviet Union everyone was equal, there were no oligarchs! The Soviet Union was a country which was not rich, no one does not jealous!” One recently actually agreed to what they say in the Soviet Union in the GULAG for nothing could fall and the plant Manager and simple worker — according to this admirer of the Soviet Union, and therein lies all the greatness of this country.
The truth is that the Soviet Union was a country where all citizens (excluding items) were equal in their powerlessness and poverty — all had equally poor. Really, no one does not jealous, but envious was nothing — a neighbor was getting exactly the same 140 rubles, and you thought to alter old ragged fisherman coat to summer jacket but where to get money for an emergency Shoe repair — what really is there to be jealous.
And what about power? Maybe they somehow tried to correct this situation, allowed private business, some private initiatives? No — all this in the USSR was prohibited. Instead, the state publishing house in huge numbers published in books and magazines about how to survive widespread poverty. In books and magazines published tips on how of the collet pencil and old blades to make himself a razor “like the Gillette” as for the New year from improvised some tools bungled “deficient products”, and children were initiated into the mysteries, as from matches and acorns to make a toy soldiers that the quality is not inferior to their foreign tin.
Have you watched shows like “man vs. wild”? The Soviet Union 70 years of its existence, was a country of preppers — the industry was producing only gas masks, aluminum pans and some high quality tungsten relay detachable top-secret dickhead for combustion in the upper layers of the atmosphere — the rest of the Soviet citizens had to do their own.
And all this would be funny, if would not be so sad. In General, in today’s post — the story about endless Soviet “self-made” poverty. In General, make sure you check out the article below, write in the comments your opinion, well to friends to add do not forget)
The history of the question. How it all began.
In fact, immediately after coming to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks announced its ambition for world domination, saying that we need peace, and preferably a whole. In prewar times the project “world revolution” was seen as a very real and serious, and it is for these tasks was in the Soviet Union the so-called “industrialization”, for the resisting farmers were arranged in a famine, and the money robbed from the population, the Bolsheviks built an offensive military equipment (like stanovich tanks “KV”) to take over the world, which by the way in the first months of the war in a vast number of the Germans came.
Looking around in the postwar years, the Bolsheviks angrily stated that to take over the world they will not succeed (have nuclear weapons), and it was decided to build Communism in a single country — the Soviet propaganda began to tell of each iron that soon the country will not have the money and everything will be free. And the bourgeoisie will wipe away the bloody snot and his lace cuffs when you want to get a little of our free and we im — Fig.
The people there were the Bolsheviks simply as a building material to achieve great surgala — “live well” will have some mythical future generation in a hundred or two hundred years, and the present people must suffer, even to suffer and to obey. None of the authorities ever thought about the fact that industry is not the military, launch sites and uranium mines and above all something that should make people’s lives better — no one thought. The whole household consumer goods was created for any “dual purpose plants”, and many useful things in life in the USSR simply was not.
In General, the power to live their projects, and the people survived as best they could — creating a life from scrap materials.
Handmade adults. “Little tricks“.
All sorts of “tricks” on how to improve your life and make your own hands the things that in developed countries long ago sold in stores in a huge number were published in professional books and journals. Such “tricks” was full, for example, the category “Home master” in the journal “Science and Life” — in the seventies the circulation of this magazine was, by the way, a whopping 3 million copies — and read it literally the whole Soviet Union.
What is interesting — even the title of the journal well reflects Soviet reality. The part about “Science” talked about all sorts of orbital lasers, heavy duty gamma-flaw detectors for inspection of nuclear reactor vessels, about the top-secret detachable dickhead for combustion in the upper layers of the atmosphere and other electrocutes that had no relation to the lives of 99.9% of Soviet citizens. And the part about “Life” shamefully narrated how with the help of the blue tape and chip knitting needles to repair the broken, but still good glasses, how to cut a fret saw shelf for the phone (of equal quality abroad) and how to come up with a tattered old umbrella a new exciting and wonderful use in the household.
By the way, all these “councils to the house master” were one and the same character — they tell how to fix/make the most of those household items that cannot easily be bought in shops. And to do all this is offered by the fact that the common man was always at hand — in all the “tips” are tweezers, nails, PVA glue or BF, staples, pasta GOI, pushpin and the blue tape. These things can always and in any quantity could be stolen from the factory/construction site/hospital.
That’s about how it all looked:
What’s interesting — these books with “tips” were published in all the years of Soviet power, not only in the eighties. For example, the cover of the book “Do it yourself” 1934 that offers to make furniture and things for the home out of garbage.
Soviet youth were invited to make their own for themselves snowboards — Soviet industry was not able to master their production. Later the same happened with the skateboard fashion “Board” was made in limited quantities and was creepy and “major” deficiency in the last Soviet years.
The apotheosis of the Soviet “samodelka” was, perhaps,that this little book, that seriously offered a simple Soviet people to do at home “scarce goods” such as ice cream, canned meat, marshmallows, sprats and champagne with lobster. The question is — why do these people-the silicon needed some shops if all this can be done at home?
“Do it yourself” had also been proposed in the Christmas mood. Lobster and champagne you’re already prepared at home, but something is missing? Not a problem — now we will tell you how improvised to make yourself <s>rubber snow maiden</s> Christmas decorations, cards and the rest of the serpentine.
Handmade children. “From matches and acorns“.
Frankly, the Soviet crafts for children look much scarier and more painful than all that were offered to adults do. Adults are already used to survive in the country’s total hypocrisy and lies, but the children, many things were still unclear, and it is very difficult to explain why we have won the man first flew into space, but it is not sold in stores a normal toy.
I well remember the Soviet “Children’s world” — it sold terrible celluloid pebbles, some phony pyramid a La “came Kobzon”, wooden cubes, little blue tin shovels for the sandbox, cookie cutters and a few oak machines. Could still lie some huge wooden whirligig sized overripe pumpkin. Normal toy weapons was not, in principle, soldiers have not been sold, metal designers was horrible deficit (as a set of “Young Chemist”), and complex toys, such as “lunar Rover”, an electric crane or overhead projector cost a third, if not half of government salaries.
When, after the collapse of the scoop came the foreign soldiers, the designers LEGO, dolls and toy sets — it looked like things from other planets or from the distant future — so it was different in appearance, the colors, the flowers and even the smell of it from just shovels.
What is offered to Soviet children? And offered them to make themselves the toys from scrap materials such as straw (in the early Soviet years):
Around the same time came into use acorns and matches — it was believed that from matches and acorns can make soldiers, not inferior in quality to imported tin, and besides — the child will develop, creating his little friends. “Little friends” are usually collapsed on the second day after creation, or years gathering dust on the shelves in kindergartens after all meaningless “contests of Handicrafts”.
In the same years, usage began to enter the deception of Soviet children under the General title “paper and scissors”. And really — why do guys quality soldiers, because it is so difficult — first you need to design and simulate series and then to create a prototype, then to make a quality investment model, then create a mold, cast of toy soldiers, cut the fin, paint it, put it into a box… Easier for a penny to print paper monsters and give away all the scissors and children, and soldiers such as it is.
And if you think that it was only in the early “hungry” the Soviet years, then I have to disappoint you — the “lean years” in the Soviet Union ever was. Here’s the cover of this shit from the seventies and eighties — it is already “developed” of the USSR. Only changed the design of the soldiers — the essence remains the same, take and cut him out.
Some cynically sounded in the book of the words that they say, the Soviet Army defeated the Nazis, and now you instead play with high quality and beautiful toys, cut themselves soldiers of paper in the stone age. The introduction and epilogue in the book sparkle with optimism, saying that children there will be something there to continue to cut out and play, but I will say from experience — playing with paper soldiers is not possible, they quickly rush, the interest lost on the second day, and at best they are somewhere on a shelf or on the bottom of the box; at worst, simply thrown away.
Another book of homemade products, this time the “civilian”, without outfit. Children invited to do “the peoples of the world”. Plastic cowboys and Indians in the Soviet Union also sold — but there were only a few types and they were terrible deficit that had to release a “circle paper friends.”
My favorite is wires glue of Soviet cosmonauts and rocket. Why “the best country in the world” until now, no such high-quality plastic toys? To and the rocket was beautiful and the cosmonauts inside landed? There is no answer. Cut paper Kazakhs in the suit and shut up.
Option about the same for girls. In developed countries, their counterparts played with dollhouses and dress the Barbies, and the Soviet girls offered to cut and glue these outfits. “Adult” dolls in the USSR was not in principle — not Soviet industry could develop.
And for a snack — Soviet gaming set, which also sought to make out of paper. The name as it hints that it will play in the famous Orwell’s dystopia.
Such cases.
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