So, friends - today there will be an interesting post about how the Soviet rich lived - that is, those who were considered wealthy people in the USSR. Honestly, the word "rich" can be put in quotation marks here - simply because Soviet "wealth" could not be compared with a rich life in normal developed countries - but so as not to put quotation marks every time (which the eye clings to when reading) - we can do without them.
In the “classless” USSR, which was described by Soviet propaganda, there were still those who had more - as a rule, they were Soviet nomenklatura, underground millionaires, or (a tiny percentage) of some pro-government writers or cosmonauts. In comparison with Western countries, the Soviet rich were an ordinary middle class (often even closer to its lower level), but at the same time they stood out among the Soviet poverty and dullness - which in the USSR was presented as a great achievement and a norm of life.
So, in today's post - a story about the life of the Soviet rich. Be sure to go under the cut, write your opinion in the comments, and do not forget to add to your friends. And yes, subscribe to the telegram channel too)
Where did the Soviet rich come from?
To begin with, let's see what the Soviet rich man was doing in his life and where he got money from for a rich life, so to speak. In the USSR, there was no legal way of enrichment other than serving the Soviet system in one form or another. If in a developed country you could invent something, come up with some new product, a new business, make a discovery or be, for example, a good dentist, and thereby get rich, then in the USSR you did not have such a legal opportunity, the state forbade you to do that than you want, but for a dollar in the USSR they gave not "67 cents", but from 3 to 15 years. The Soviet state did not recognize your right to be an individual and independently own the results of your labor.
In general, in the scoop you had only two ways to get rich - either go to the party nomenklatura, or engage in all sorts of gray schemes and clandestine production. Upper-middle-level shovel number-registerers lived quite well - at the expense of the rest of the population they were given luxurious (by Soviet standards) apartments, dachas and cars, plus they were supplied with food in specialized closed stores, for which even sausage was produced in closed “nomenclature” workshops - so that these comrades in the Union lived relatively well.
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The second way of enrichment was all sorts of "gray schemes", which were built most often on meeting the needs of ordinary citizens, the problems with which were created by the Soviet government itself. So, for example, the fortune was made by the one who sat "on a deficit" and was related to the trade, such as meat or good shoes. Those who were in the distribution system also flourished - for example, people who were responsible for distributing “free” apartments and promoting “queues” for cars - many of them took bribes, and when asked after accepting a bribe, “Will you definitely help, won't you cheat? ", They often answered -" Well, what are you, of course, I'm not deceiving, I'm a communist!"
They also made fortunes (especially in the late USSR) by those who sewed in clandestine workshops or simply traded in jeans, sneakers, all kinds of fashionable clothes, and so on. In fact, it was an ordinary business - but in the scoop it was forbidden, the state itself created problems for people, and such an ugly, semi-underground economy arose. Fearing social riots, the soviet state turned a blind eye to all this - we pretend not to notice this, and they pretend to be building communism.
Two groups of the Soviet rich (let's conditionally call them "nomenklatura" and "underground") lived almost equally well - with the only exception that the latter hid more and tried not to flaunt their "wealth". All sorts of actors or famous designers could also become rich - but in relation to the bulk of the population, it was minuscule.
Life of a Soviet rich man
The Soviet rich man usually lived in a spacious apartment - as a rule, at least 3 or 4 rooms. They did not build too large apartments (as, for example, in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg) in the USSR, but even 3-4 rooms, compared to the rest of the wretched free 1-2 room Khrushchevs, looked like luxurious apartments. The nomenklatura received apartments “for free,” but the “underground workers” often invented all sorts of complex schemes for exchange / moving / relocation or simply carried a huge bribe into the housing distribution system (from 3-5 thousand rubles and more).
To furnish an apartment was considered prestigious by all foreigners - both the nomenklatura and underground workers soberly evaluated the quality of Soviet furniture and other production, and tried to get the furniture “from there”. Furniture from the GDR and Romania was considered quite prestigious - Romanian sections and soft corners are still sold on Avito for some crazy money by the aged nomenklatura and underground workers - they often do not understand that now this furniture has no value.
On the walls of the apartment there had to be expensive (preferably non-Soviet) wallpaper with stripes and patterns, on the floor and walls - carpets, and in the sideboards and on the walls - collectibles. There was no normal antiques market in the USSR, so the Soviet rich collected any rubbish that became an ersatz of antiques and was considered "valuable" - every Bohemia crystal was bought at an exorbitant price, terrible chandeliers with pendants were bought at five times the price, and all sorts of old ones were searched for in newspapers rusty Budennovsk sabers and souvenir Georgian daggers - which were supposed to represent a collection of weapons on the carpet.
The horns and skins of animals (especially those of a bear) were held in high esteem, and in the late scoop it became fashionable to collect icons that were rarely understood. In the living room it was possible to install bookcases, books in which were selected according to the color of the covers and which most often no one read afterwards. Clothing had to be necessarily "scarce".
When guests came to such a house, they considered it their duty to admire the “richness” of the situation, and the owner (or, more often, the owner) of the apartment would tell where, what and how they “got”, from which western country this or that thing was brought and how much does it cost - “this chandelier, this is real bohemia! Brought a familiar diplomat from Czechoslovakia, 800 rubles and 200 on top!"
If a Soviet rich man had a car - then as a rule he defiantly boasted of its presence and quality - if he had a Volga, then he could look contemptuously at the owners of Zhiguli, Muscovites, and even more so, Cossacks. The car, as a rule, was parked in the most prominent place in the yard and was decorated with signs of "wealth" of its owner - wooden massaging covers for chairs, a transparent epoxy nozzle with a rose inside on the speed lever and a "devil" of droppers on the mirror.
Instead of an afterword
As a rule, the Soviet rich tried to copy the life of wealthy pre-revolutionary urban families - but on the Soviet texture it looked ridiculous and ridiculous, it was just a cheap imitation. And all this once again showed the fabulousness of "Marxism", which dreamed of some kind of "non-class" society - in any society there will always be those who will want more, who will enjoy what they have more than others - such is the nature of man … And in the USSR there were exactly the same estates of the "rich" as in the West - just in the scoop "wealth" could be obtained not by intelligence and talent, but by nomenklatura or underground activities.
And the funniest and at the same time sad thing happened after the end of the USSR - the Soviet rich saw that in comparison with developed countries, where people own shops, stocks, factories and steamers, all soviet “wealth” is the same fake as “free apartments” and “a dollar at 67 kopecks …
So it goes.