What was the Soviet Union like and what has Russia become after all the political and economic transformations of the past 30 years?
If we abstract from the state propaganda of both the Soviet period and our time and look at everything through the eyes of an ordinary person, then the comparison will look something like this.
In the Soviet Union, you could walk along the streets of your hometown at any time of the day, and no one that does not attack - will not say a rude word. Bars on the windows on the first floor? What for? The apartment is not a prison! Iron lockable doors on the porches? Where has this been seen? Not only the entrances, but also basements with attics were wide open, but at the same time there were no homeless people and drug addicts in them. Because they just weren't there.
It was common in the Soviet Union to leave keys under the rug by the door - can this be imagined in modern Russia?
Residents of the Soviet house, as a rule, knew each other and could go into any apartment for salt or matches, this was normal. Today, not everyone knows their neighbors on the floor.
There were no guards or surveillance cameras in Soviet stores, but no one stole anything, even in self-service stores. There were soda machines at every corner - and the faceted glasses were in place. I wonder how many minutes the glasses would have stood today?
The best education in the world in the Soviet Union was provided to everyone and free of charge. Today, even the shortest training courses have to be paid for. There are less than half of free places in universities, and school education is losing its quality from year to year.
The Soviet Union guaranteed work in the specialty. Today, less than half of the country works in the specialty.
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Free sports clubs, pioneer camps, resorts, sanatoriums - this is also the Soviet Union. You come to a district clinic and get a ticket to a sanatorium, say, in the Crimea. Is free. Simply because the doctor found you have some kind of health problem and decided that you should fix it. Today all this is paid and sometimes so expensive that it has become in principle inaccessible for many.
In the Soviet Union, in the Caucasus, there was not terrorism and drugs, as it is today - but resorts, sanatoriums and the world's best mineral water. In Ukraine - not Bandera with swastikas, but endless wheat fields, aircraft and tank industries, clean cities and kind, happy people. In the Baltics - not SS marches, but the production of high-precision electronics and radio engineering, cars and world-famous balms.
Families in the Soviet Union were given free apartments, and families with children were given two and three rooms. The Soviet people did not know what a mortgage was at all. Today, every second family does not have their own apartment and lives either in a rented apartment or in a mortgage, paying half of their income for it, or even more.
Soviet television showed not stupefying shows, but educational programs and such films, shot by great masters with the participation of life-giving censorship, from which one could not take one's eyes off.
Prices for Soviet goods were applied directly at the factory and did not change for decades. Today, prices are changing from day to day, and strictly upward, and most importantly, they noticeably outstrip the growth of wages.
Something like this looks like a comparison of the Soviet Union and modern Russia through the eyes of an ordinary person.
This comparison can be continued and continued, but the examples given are probably enough to understand how significant the results of the economic and political transformations of the past 30 years have been. And what kind of political model should we strive for if we want to continue to live better, not worse?
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Voice of the people
Pavel Artemiev:
Well - we ourselves, out of our own stupidity, have loved SUCH country. It means that we should restore it. Nobody will do it for us.
Sergey Sarafannikov:
Metro. Piglet entrance. Now in Moscow - the entrance is 55 rubles. Growth 1100 times. And the cars are basically the same and the speed is the same.
For the State It's a shame:
Increase in the fare by 10 times. Since the salary also increased, but only 100 times
Innokenty Avrokhin:
You can't count either. 55 rub. = 5500kop.: 5kop. = 1100 (times). That is, an increase in the price of metro travel by 1100 times. The average real salary in Moscow for those who ride the subway = 27,000 rubles.
Sergey Bakhmatov:
Now it's time not to compare with the USSR, but to think about how much Russia has left to be with such a leadership. The ominous words are already being heard: if we do not create another miracle, then…. What miracle can one hope for when the authorities seek to discredit those who previously performed such a miracle?
Sergey Sarafannikov:
You always think about why the citizens of the USSR so easily parted with such a wonderful country in 1991. The child could go out somewhere in the next house at night …
Vitaly Vitalievich Burlutsky:
We are opposed by nonhumans, and against nonhumans a person has no chance. No one. There is a faint hope that it will only appear when the utilization of the Russian people takes on signs that are obvious to the herd of vegetables. Or overt.
Sergey Bakhmatov:
Wanderer, you seem to be one of those, because of which in the USSR, glasses were not always in vending machines. The USSR survived three wars. That is, the consequences of the First World War, the Civil War and the Second World War (WWII). From a backward country, overcoming the devastation of wars, he rose to second place in the world in the economy, became a superpower, with which all countries reckoned exclusively, despite the ideological war. Now Russia, without any wars, has lost what it used to be (the rating in terms of GDP is 13th in the world), it is dropping lower and lower, all countries are wiping their feet, despite the ideological compatibility with other countries.
Innokenty Avrokhin:
I was not a communist either, although I was recommended there, but I did not agree with what I saw around me. And now, oddly enough, this government stubbornly makes me a communist.
Sergey Bakhmatov:
The essence of the people does not change, it manifests itself depending on which idea prevails in public consciousness. This is exactly what Putin does not understand. If he says that evil is invincible and has the same right with good (which the “idealists” allegedly talk about), then he forces the majority to think so. At the same time, the people are degrading. However, the truth is that if the people preach universal human values with which capitalism is incompatible, and faith in them, then there is no limit to its perfection.
