Those nostalgic for the Soviet Union usually recall myths like: "But people were kinder." But for some reason they don't want to live the way they did then. Rather, they pretend that they want to, because they do not remember how it was. Our author Katerina Novitskaya has collected the opinions of those who remember.
Once mayonnaise was brought to our grocery store. I didn't know what it was, and I first heard this word in a store. I was about eight years old, I came for bread and milk, and then the pandemonium began. A lot of women came running from somewhere. They seemed huge, and they noisily grabbed drawers filled with small jars of something white. I stood at a loss, white in a jar seemed very valuable, but I was not sure that it should be bought without parental permission. There was not enough money, what if mom scolds? Having made up my mind, I took one jar. The aunts standing nearby were laughing, they say, why only one? It was unpleasant and strange.
It turned out that it was necessary to buy. Mom gave me more money and sent me back to the store. But the mayonnaise was gone. But they brought an amazing soap - long ribbed bars in bright packaging. It seems that the goddess Fortune, about whom I read in "Myths of Ancient Greece and Rome," accidentally wandered into our store due to her blindness. The line came up again, again they began to push and grab a lot. I took soap for all the money, to be sure. It turned out to be a deep green color (miracles!), We cut each bar into several pieces, and it lasted for a long time. I felt proud - I am also a breadwinner in the family.
I was born a woman in the Soviet Union.
Formally, this state has not existed for 27 years, but it still lives - in our hearts, in our eyes. No matter how trite it sounds, we all come from childhood, and the childhood of those over thirty can be called Soviet. Today it is 96 million people.
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about today's hard life and how calm, confident and good life was in the Soviet Union, where everyone had everything and people were kinder. Most often it sounds like this: “Such a country was, a great power, won the war, raised industry, the first satellite in space, Gagarin, everyone was afraid of us, the right to work and rest, tasty and healthy food, stability, pride. Steamers are sailing - hello to Malchish, planes are flying - hello to Malchish, pioneers will pass - salute to Malchish. They sold such a country like the natives for shiny beads … But everything was in the shops, otherwise where did my mother get food and things?"
This is a very correct question. To get an answer to it, you do not need to torture the Internet on the topic "Ten legendary Soviet delicacies that we have lost." It is enough to open the Soviet press.
Promotional video:
The 1970s Science and Life magazine is full of advice on how to make yourself what you can't buy in the store; how to extend the life of things; how to fix or apply broken. For example, saturate the textile part of the zipper with glue to make it last longer; convert an old electric shaver into a vibrating massager; how to hang a picture or a carpet without a drill; how to make the mirror look neat if the amalgam has worn off; how to assemble a frame for photo printing from scrap materials.
The magazines of all-Union significance and enormous influence, "Rabotnitsa" (in 1979 - 13 million, in 1990 - 23 million) and "Krestyanka" (in 1970 - 6 million, in 1988 - 19 million, in 1990 - 22 million). At the same time, there were significantly more points of contact between readers and publications. Not everyone had the opportunity to buy and subscribe, so the magazines were passed from hand to hand, handwritten tips, recipes, and patterns and patterns were copied.
In 1979, Rabotnitsa wrote that during the past year, Soviet industry had not supplied 21 million pairs of children's shoes. Replaceable shoes for schoolchildren are not produced at all, sneakers, sandals, and girls' boots are in great shortage. In 1979, there were 42 million families in the USSR with children under 18. It is unlikely that the situation was different in 1977, 1976 and previous years, and after all, the children needed to wear something.
Eduard Kotlyakov / TASS.
And not only for children. Here the magazine publishes a long article on women's stockings, which are very few on sale, and those that are, are of poor quality. The soles of the boots peel off on the fourth day, and the T-shirt after the first wash looks like a pillowcase. From other notes, it is clear that there are no basic items in stores, such as clothespins.
Unlike researchers from bygone eras, we have the opportunity to talk with living witnesses. And if you want to know how an ordinary person actually lived in the Soviet Union, ask the women. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the task of obtaining food, clothing, and household items on a daily basis lay with them. Satellites in space are very good, but what are we going to eat today? Rockets are no substitute for winter boots. You don't wash your clothes with the pride and glory of a country.
I asked my friends on Facebook to share my memories. Women, who are between 30 and 50 on average, willingly did it.
Kavashkin Boris / TASS.
The main word is "get"
“We didn't sell the required shoe sizes. As a child, my leg was small, especially before school, when I went, there were only soft booties for sale, my mother miraculously got hold of shoes somewhere. Then she snatched real sneakers for me and was glad that my leg did not grow for a long time. Summer sandals were impossible to get, even burst."
“I am born in 1977 from a relatively well-fed Peter. And I remember how my parents were ashamed of Uncle Vasya's neighbor, who worked in a grocery store nearby. There was anything on the market, but expensive. Uncle Vasya is always drunk and dirty, but he can get decent meat. I still hate this word."
“Summer 1988, I'm eight years old. I have the only green sandals that don't go well, I didn't have a single green thing. But she wore it and did not ask any questions. Winter boots. How bad they were! You will walk through wet snow, your feet will get wet right away. At school, no one had replacement shoes. So you walk half a day with wet feet."
“I remember the cloth tights, I wore it starting from“pulling up to the armpits, and on my knees an accordion”to“cuffing between the knees”. They rubbed on toes and heels. Artistic darning is excellent for developing fine motor skills in primary school."
“Hedgehogs were sculpted from kombat in stores, they were stuck with matches and decorated the counter. I still remember those hedgehogs."
Belinsky Yuri / TASS.
“My mother loves to remember how she bought panties in Moscow: for herself, for grandmother, for aunts, for sisters. While I was standing in line, everything was sorted out, only the 54th size remained. Took 54th at all - better than none. You can tie it up with a rubber band, well!"
“Ufa, 1980, in the shops nina-ilya-khariton-ulyana-yaroslav, but there is a market. The market really has everything, but only a nuance: a kilo of meat costs about seven rubles. My mother, a young specialist with a salary slightly for a steward, could buy 15 kilos of meat for her entire salary. There would not be enough vegetables, no medicine, no clothes, and there would not be enough for a travel pass to work. In the shops the prices were lower, but for the money there was that funny company with Nina at the head."
“I remember a faux fur coat with double sleeves. And in the closet were two “discarded” winter jackets bought for growth, one two sizes larger, the other four”.
“The line for bread for an hour and a half. Wait two hours for the meat to be “thrown” on the counter. Hercules, which the parents bought in boxes "in stock". Vodka on coupons … it was before someone's funeral that parents dragged me five years into a wine and vodka”.
“My mother’s friend with 41 foot size wanted to buy shoes, but the saleswoman deceived and put in the 40, and the girl walked around with her leg tucked in because she had spent all the money, and there were no other shoes.”
"I remember how the light bulb was twisted to sew tights on it."
“We had a girl in the Dadsad group, the daughter of a single mother, who had worked as a watchman all her life. She didn't have tights. Her mother, when her daughter grew out of tights, simply cut off the “trousers” and the girl wore them like stockings, tying each one with an elastic band so that they would not slip."
“There was extremely wholesome food in the stores: skinny blue chickens, apparently dead from hunger and abuse, sausage cheese and Druzhba processed cheeses, milk and sour cream by weight. We were lucky, my grandmother knew the manager of the store, she got milk before water was poured into it to dilute. Sour cream was not given to everyone and not always. Groats with garbage that had to be sorted out. Pasta, which absolutely had to be washed after boiling, otherwise they would stick together into one nasty lump. Unrefined vegetable oil that stinks badly when fried. Dumplings stuffed with veins, fat and old boots, judging by the taste and smell. The food was awesomely tasty and healthy, of course."
Poderni Roman / TASS.
“A classmate at the age of 12 has 41 foot size. Her grandfather learned to make shoes, one model, a kind of pumps without a heel. Because otherwise - even barefoot. She walked in them and was insanely happy. For the winter I changed into some kind of boots, very similar to army boots."
“I remembered the Dione shampoo, for which my mother stood in line with me and her baby brother, so as to immediately take more. One of the first childhood memories. It was such a good shampoo, red, you wash your hair with it, and then you wash the bath from it - and it's good. It was not washed in all places, it seemed to be pink for a long time. But nothing. It was scraped off in a year”.
Food tourism
Guess the Soviet riddle: "Long, green, with a yellow stripe, smells of sausage." I will not torment you, this is a train. The living conditions were such that the happy citizens of our country had to master perfectly what, with bitter irony, can be called domestic food tourism.
“We went to Moscow, brought sausages, sausages (in our city, no sausages were sold at all, never), oranges, crunchy delicious waffles, mayonnaise. Our local food processing plant produced liquid smelly mayonnaise and waffles that looked like wet cardboard filled with clay and sugar. My mother and her friends were happy: “Oh, it's good that we can get to Moscow”. The train was running for less than five hours then.
“Mom went on business trips to Moscow. And carried everything from there. And I remember how she pinned those damn bags, slipped to the floor in her clothes and cried softly from fatigue. And so a strong woman was …"
“Dad took business trips to Tomsk to bring home food (cheese, sausage, butter and what he could find). We had nothing to buy at all. Empty, beautifully arranged gobies in tomato on the shelves."
“If we went somewhere (a business trip, on business somewhere, to visit relatives, on vacation), I go home. Sometimes they were just overwhelmed, summits. Fruit, sausage, etc., everything that could be bought."
“Mom took time off to go to Moscow (1000 km, day by train) for food, clothes and shoes. And then I specially got a job in a supermarket, so that it was easier to get food."
Sayapin Vladimir / TASS.
“Dad and mom in 1988, or something, went to Moscow, brought eight bags of different kinds. Mainly products. In the Urals in those years, almost nothing was sold. And the queues for sausage I remember very well how they wrote the number on my hand, and the queues for milk "from a cow" - in the summer I had to get up very early. Bananas somehow managed to buy green oak trees, they lay there, ripening. I waited, waited, waited. Then I couldn’t believe that this will happen again.”
“In the ninth grade we went to Tallinn with the class. And we, 13-year-old girls, knew for sure that we had to look for cheese. It's delicious there! They stood in line and brought a present to their parents."
"I felt so sorry for my mother, a beautiful 33-year-old woman who had to get everything."
Instant coffee was brought to the base, brought to the base - it dissolved immediately
Union-nostalgic people are very indignant when it comes to the scarcity and difficulties in obtaining a basic set of items and products. At the same time, they are confused in the readings within the same sentence.
"The food was definitely healthier, the fact that food was not everywhere is also a fact, but everyone had everything in their refrigerators."
“It's a lie that there was poverty. No one was starving, the counters were empty, but everyone had everything."
“There were principles, pride, striving for the future, but now we are plowing like slaves, everything is in credits, communication only with the phone, let us have cars, apartments, but that bright light aura is not present”.
Here I recall the anecdote that "under Stalin it was good, under Stalin there was a crap at my grandfather." But seriously, what did Arkady Raikin talk about then in his famous miniature "Deficit"? “Through the warehouse manager, through the merchandiser, through the store director, you got the diffcit. The taste is … mmm … spitz-fit! I respect chibe, you respect mine. We are dear people!"
If there was no total deficit, why does my friend's grandmother still keep a whole warehouse in her attic, where goods are laid out in boxes, collected by enormous efforts that are not comparable to the quality and value of these things. There is a whole bed, and old bedding for rags, pencils and postcards, bent nails and rusty latches, grandfather's jackets and children's dresses.
“My father-in-law keeps an old air mattress in the garage to patch tires. Needless to say, he never did this? There is a tire service and a service station, he himself only adds oil."
“I saw these echoes of scarcity with my grandmother. Until now, I rake fabric cuts and dishes, all this was "taken out", and all this was lying "just in case."
“Products were given in orders, so-called grocery sets, which were distributed at enterprises for the holidays. The stable deficit included mayonnaise, some chocolates (truffles, Little Red Riding Hood, Mishka Clubfoot and Mishka in the North), buckwheat (there was plenty of other cereals, it was unrealistic to buy buckwheat)."
“My grandfathers are both veterans, they were given rations for the holidays, sometimes cool for those times, they always gave them to their grandchildren, fruit compotes, condensed milk, sausage, etc. This was not in the store.”
“I was given scraps for labor lessons, because I spoil it, it's a pity for good fabrics, they will be useful. Flannel will come in handy for my children to sew undershirts. Almost everything has rotted from storage in an unheated closet."
“From early childhood, I saw this painful attitude to every cloth, to every little thing. Grandmother is 85, and for her one of the sobbing memories - how in her youth they did not find shoes for her 34th size, they bought the 37th. It's no good if a decrepit old woman remembers these shoes 70 years later."
Who lives well in the Union
It was pretty good in the Union for those who had not episodic, but constant access to scarce goods, which included not only delicacies and fashionable clothes, but often the most ordinary things that today we take from the shelves without hesitation. These were people who had social privileges, ranging from representatives of the party nomenklatura and ending with "warehouse manager, commodity expert, store director."
And it was also good for those who had gender privileges and were spared the daily grocery race, hours of queuing, and then standing at the stove trying to cook something tasty from what they managed to snatch. Look at photographs of Soviet grocery lines from any decade and you will see only women there. Men can only be seen queuing up for wine and vodka.
In Govorukhin's film “Bless the Woman,” the hero of Baluev says to his young wife: “When I come home from the service, it’s my right to see my wife’s face without a trace of tears. You can cry as much as you like and anywhere, but as soon as I return home, you should be washed, fresh and cheerful … And I absolutely don't care what you make dinner out of. But dinner in this house should be every day. Regardless of worries, exercises and even war. That's my right.
Such a man worked for the good of the Motherland and the party, he came home, his wife met him in a clean apartment and put dinner in front of him. He ate, slapped a glass of vodka, and then the children came up with diaries. The children are clean, tidy, and the diaries have good marks. There is a black-and-white TV, no matter what, but in the program "Film Travel Club", and then "Concert for workers of the sea and river fleet."
Great-power slogans such as “We are the first in space”, “We will catch up and overtake”, “Soviet means excellent” fit very well on such a perception that is not distorted by constant extraction.
And life is not only about space flights and scientific discoveries. Life consists of days and nights, during which a person needs to eat something, wear something, live somewhere. And it is desirable that the food is tasty, the clothes are beautiful and comfortable, and the accommodation is cozy. How many discoveries can you make on dumplings stuffed with old shoes?
The fact that to this day our grandmothers and mothers "love food", striving at every opportunity to feed their children and grandchildren more densely, and are mortally offended by refusal is the merit of the Union.
For the fact that for many a holiday without ten types of salad, five types of hot and three types of alcohol is not a holiday, thanks to the Union.
Many people to this day prefer not to buy paper and a stapler, but to take it away from work (everything around is collective farm, everything around is mine) - hello to the Union.
For the fact that a woman, who cannot fit or does not want to cook the first, second and compote from one sad chicken, is considered defective, - a special thanks to the Union.
The Union is also credited with how painful we perceive the destruction of sanctioned products. This does not mean that food destruction and sanctions are good. This means that many of us have tremendous trauma related to basic needs - food, safety, respect.