Picture from the Article “Back in the USSR: The Art of Soviet Queues” by Kirill Tšernov, Retrieved from: https://www.qminder.com/blog/queue-management/queues-in-ussr/

Was the USSR as good as many people think it was?

Maksym Valchuk

  The 20th century’s political feature was a cold war. It was a confrontation of two ideologies, two political and economic systems. For the western people, the Soviet Union was something unknown and whimsical, especially the “the mysterious Russian soul”- a myth made by Fedor Dostoevsky and other writers.  At that time Soviet propaganda tried to show capitalist countries that they are succeeding in all spheres of life. The Russian analytic agency “Levada-Center” holds a survey every year among people over 18 with a question: “Do you regret the collapse of the USSR?”. A 2018 survey shows that 66% of respondents regret the end of the Soviet Union. Moreover, this percentage grew by 17% since 2012. Some of the respondents never experienced living there but still would like it to return.  But was the USSR as good as many people think it was?

     For more than 70 years of its existence, the Soviet Union lied and terrorised its citizens. Facts about the crimes of this country became public only after it collapsed in 1991. Man-made famine in the Ukrainian and Kazakh lands in the 30s (Applebaum, 2019), “Executed Renaissance” (several hundreds of Ukrainian modernist cultural figures brutally executed in the northern camps) (Hryn, 2004-2005), Gulag and KGB’s repressions of anyone who “thinks different” - all of this can describe Soviet policy towards citizens in the first part of 20th century. During the Second World War, Stalin deported people to Central Asia, the Far-East Asian part of Russia, and Siberia where they were in the status of a “quasi-prison-camp” system that took away their rights and assigned them to a place of residence (Dufaud, 2020). However, people felt socially secure. Yegorov (2019) quotes film director Nikolai Burlyaev that in the USSR everyone could be sure they have a “tomorrow.” It was impossible to worry about things such as ‘Will I keep my job?’, ‘Will I keep my apartment?’ 

The Soviet totalitarian state was deeply hostile to any form of private property.  In the first decades after its establishment, the government confiscated the property of farmers in villages and private little stores in the cities. All years before the crash of the state in 1991, Soviet leaders were aware that private property posed a significant challenge to their rigid ruling ideology (Shlapentokh & Arutunyan, 2013). Despite the fact that people could get a flat in an apartment block or a piece of land from the government, they would first have to sign up in a line in order to get it. In the 1970s, the average waiting time for a flat in a big city was from 8 to 10 years. Even if you had money it would be almost impossible to buy it on a black market. Those who disagree claim that the absence of private property makes everyone equal. So every teacher, doctor, or plant worker would sooner or later get a flat from the state. Of course, members of the Communist Party, actors, and scientists got better and bigger flats. The whole property distributional system can be described in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” (1945/2021):“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

     Before Gorbachev’s “Glanost” there was a total ban on freedom of speech. People were not allowed to express their opinion on politics and other social events publicly. Even during the rule of Gorbachev a lot of things were hidden from the public. In 1986 when the Chornobyl nuclear power plant exploded, the USSR did not inform other countries or its citizens. Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark were the first to register high amounts of radiation, but Moscow denied everything (Vitkovskaya, 2016).  In 1921 the Communists created the “Glavlit” (General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press) which remained the main organisation to control the literature for decades. Workers of this organisation decided on whether a book will be published or banned. Because of this, Soviet people were not allowed to read Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” or Nabokov’s “Lolita” (Yegorov, 2017).  Similar committees were made to censor Western cinema and music. So eternal Hollywood classics such as “Gone with the wind” or “Godfather” were forbidden. But people say that during those years movies in the Soviet cinemas promoted the “right” values, without “sex, drugs, and rock-’n-roll”. People still were proud of their country. Propaganda about their successes together with the tales about an “awful capitalistic West” made a solid base for the blind admiration of the USSR. Yegorov (2019) recalls memories of a woman who was born there. She emphasised that the country promoted the right, idealistic ideas among youth: the friendship of all nations, building a great peaceful society without class barriers, free from poverty, greed, and other crimes. Moreover, people recall that they even felt pity for Western kids because they were not able to live in such a “socially fair and great society”. 

In the first part of the 20th century, the USSR focused more on the goods of group A to develop their army and continue their industrialisation. And only in the late 60s, the government tried to reduce this disproportion (Skrobov, 1985). Pipes (1980) writes that the Soviet government saw the economy as essentially a military force. During the Brezhnev period the USSR started spending dollars from selling oil, not on modernising their factories but on imported Western goods of group B. While the local industry could not cope with the governmental plans for the production of “bread”, the oil industry worked over a plan to get more dollars to import that “bread” from the “Capitalistic West.”  In Moscow in the 70s sometimes it was harder to get a jar of mayonnaise than a package of French perfume. It is clear that in the second part of the 70s the world was developing into a post-industrialised economic model, while the Soviet Union missed this chance and concreted itself as an outdated, raw material oriented country (Slavkina, 2016).  Kornai (1982) says that for people under conditions of a permanent shortage of goods, personal relations become more important than having a lot of money in order to get rare goods. Because of this, the Soviet Union was a country with a permanent deficit.  However, people nowadays are remembering store queues and friendship with the butcher, to get a better piece of meat from “under the cash desk”, with warm feelings. Plenty of people still refer to Soviet “Goststandards” nowadays. “Goststandard” or “GOST”  was a state regulation on producing all products. However, Grabovskyy (2011) writes that in those standards there were exemptions when real meat could be replaced by an artificial one. In the last decade of the country's existence, those exemptions became the norm in producing sausages and salami. On paper regarding the norms and the standards - the products were good quality, however, in reality it was hard to buy them and the quality did not always equal norms. The “Soviet Champagne” was a symbol of a successful life for all years of the Soviet era.

Gronow (2013) writes that the USSR changed the complicated and long individual production of champagne to a new industrial (“reservoir”) one. With this production way, the identity and unique features of the drink are missing, and it became a mass 

product. Of course, it was impossible legally to call it “champagne” but that did not stop the producer. The same story happened with other types of alcohol such as cognac or port wine. They saved the names of foreign wine regions but in reality, their products had nothing in common with them. However sweet “Soviet Champagne” is still widely preferred by Russians during the celebrations. 

Having a wide range of engineers, the Soviet Union was not capable of creating a lot of nice quality consumer goods of group B. For example, cars. The first car produced in the Soviet Union was an American Ford truck produced under the licence. Later there were other attempts of copying western cars, such as a copy of Opel Kadett or Fiat 600. In the late 60s, the USSR asked Fiat to build a car factory and bought a patent to produce Fiat 124 under the name “Zhiguli” (Lada) (Chapple, 2017). For decades the Lada car was the most innovative car that soviet citizens could buy, of course after signing in a queue and waiting for 6-8 years. But by the time it was launched it became very outdated. Famous British car journalist Clarkson (2014) called it a car powered by beetroot. Ergonomics, brakes, and comfort of the car were roughly criticised. On the other hand, that was a car created by Italian designers and was much better in all senses than the copies of other cars.  Unsurprisingly, the posterity of the original Fiat 124 was produced till 2011 and was very respected in Russia despite its solid age.  

Being in a state of Cold War with the United States, the USSR had to develop its military potential constantly.  Moreover, the victory in the Second World War strengthened the militaristic ideas inside the country, especially among the civilians. So unsurprisingly a lot of games for children, books, and movies were produced on war themes. Lenkevich (2022) writes that the militaristic ideas were one of the forms of controlling people. The constant danger of the West wanting to attack the Soviet Union kept people united together against the external enemy. The results of this policy we see in modern Russia nowadays, when according to the recent “Levada-Center”(2022) survey, 81% of respondents starting the age over 18 support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And 35% of them named protecting Russia and defending from NATO as the reason for this war. However, people support it, as 51% of people said that they felt pride for their country, and only 31% mentioned “fear, anxiety, horror.”

The Soviet Union was a significant state on the political map of the 20th century. Having a totalitarian system and only one ideology the country kept its citizens bound and unfree. Despite having several advantages for people's well-being, such as free flats, society unity and a strong feeling of patriotism. It still remains a country that brought a lot of pain to its citizens and kept hiding the truth from the majority of people in the West. However, such a rise in numbers of people feeling pity and nostalgia for the USSR, only proves that the echoes of Soviet propaganda are still strong in modern Russia. It will take decades for them to see an alternative view on their history. 

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