What was daily life like in the USSR? How did a family get food? Were there ration books given out (was food rationed?)? Was the whole economy nationalised, or was there some private enterprise (weren’t some farms privately owned?)? How much intrusion/spying was done by the state on civilians?
I don’t mean to evade your question, but the Soviet Union existed for about seventy years, and life was different there under Stalin, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.
Furthermore, you’re asking a lot of questions about life there.
Whole books have been written about each of these questions, or aspects of them, and you’re rolling them all into one big question. That’s going to make it hard to answer.
I don’t have a direct answer to DM’s questions at the ready. But upon noticing the OP’s location, he may be interested in the writings of Scottish journalist Hedrick Smith. I recommend especially The Russians, which is a great read that addresses the OP’s questions for the early-to-mid-70s USSR.
Not only that, but things would depend on the background of the person we’re talking about. A ‘connected’ Russian bureaucrat from a Party family in Moscow? A Jewish engineer in Kharkov? A Kazakh farmer? I assure you, these people would live different lives. (The first two may have had surface similarities, but there would be a vast gulf in opportunities)
It’s like in the States - a WASP from Manhattan in 1984 would live a life quite different from a black Alabaman farmer in 1952. The USSR was hardly a monolithic entity, irregardless of the image that was projected to the West.
In Mother Russia, questions ask you.
Sorry.
This is not a direct answer to your question, but since Cuba’s governement was set up on the soviet model, at least until the 1980’s, I think this might give an idea.
Everything is rationed, food, drink, clothing, gasoline (if you have a motor vehicle), shoes, toys, and individuals and/or families are given a ration book with different columns for the items. With the ration book you can go to a government store and purchase those items that are listed, and available. Many items are never available, or only rarely. For instance, shoes are never ever in the store.
I didn’t know this when I lived in Cuba, but apparently the food rations amount to the 1000-1200 calories per day diet. Since nutritional content is not published in Cuba all we knew was that rationed items only lasted about half of the month. Consequently much of the time is spent in finding other sources of food, mostly in the black market. In the late 1990’s farmer’s markets were authorized so this became a little easier.
The entire economy is nationalized, that means that everyone in Cuba works for the government, including, and this would be funny if it wasn’t so sad, the worker’s unions. All housing is owned by the government, all businesses, all cars. To illustrate this, those who emigrate from Cuba can not, when leaving, sell their possesions. When they declare their intention to apply to emigrate their possesions, from clothing to furniture to appliances are inventoried, and if and when they receive permission to emigrate a new inventory is taken that must match the earlier one, otherwise the permission to leave is revoked and fines must be paid.
As for spying, each block has a house designated as the block watch (CDR), and neighbors are compelled to join the CDR, which entails attending meetings and standing watch at various times throughout the day and night, looking for suspicious activity. At every place of work there is an ideology leader, whose job is to monitor for activities that deviate from communist ideology, same at schools. But those are just the ones that are visible, it is generally known that every group has an “infiltrator”, whose sole job is to spy. And when I say every group, I mean chess clubs, boxing academies, poetry clubs and so on.
P.J. O’Rourke (more or less) described life in Soviet-era Warsaw as akin to being at a really dreary summer-camp where participating in pointless games of capture-the-flag was mandatory, food was mediocre, bedding worse and don’t bother writing your parents to come get you - they’re in the next bunk.
I spent the fall semester of 1989 studying in (then) Leningrad. I lived in a regular university dorm – the dorm was only 3 – 4 years old, but the plumbing and elevators worked sporadically, and the electrical outlets were falling out of the walls. We had ration coupons for tea, sugar, soap, and laundry detergent (though the items rationed varied greatly by location – my Ukrainian roommate’s mother visited at one point, and she said that although nothing was rationed in her town – Romny – many basic items, such as butter, were simply not available on a regular basis). Fresh produce and non-repulsive meat, with very limited exceptions, were only available at the few private farmers’ markets, at prices that most people simply couldn’t afford. I had hard currency, so I tried to keep fruit, etc. in our dorm room to share with less fortunate friends. However, the produce at the private markets was fabulous; there’s nothing like an Azerbaijani pomegranate in season, and people from food-growing regions could make a quite decent living schlepping produce out-of-season to the frigid areas of northern Russia. Many people would pickle and preserve produce in the summer if they wanted to have vegetables at all after the harvest was over.
The beautiful 19th century building where we had class essentially had no heat; we took notes while wearing long johns, wool socks, insulated boots, turtlenecks, heavy wool sweaters, and overcoats. I’m not a fan of wearing fur, but I seriously considered buying a fur hat just for survival, and if you look at my location you will see that I am well-accustomed to cold weather. The difference is that in the U.S., once you come in from outside, you can usually count on the heat working.
At one point, my wisdom tooth got impacted, and the dentist told me “yeah, that’s a wisdom tooth, alright – rinse it with warm tea 3x a day, and you’ll be fine.” There was no discussion of, say, antibiotics, or even aspirin to ease the pain, because these items were simply not available except on the black market. (I wish the dentist had just told me to get antibiotics; at least then I would have known to try the black market angle.) And this was the fancy dentist in the clinic where foreigners and other “connected” people went; we’d had to bribe them 2 bottles of French perfume to see me.
By the end of the semester, the situation was getting more and more tense; even basic items like bread were sometimes spottily available, and with all the upheaval elsewhere in t he East Bloc (the fall of the Berlin Wall, Romania, etc.), I seriously thought it was possible that things would completely go kablooey, and was telling my Soviet friends that if war broke out and they could make it to the U.S. somehow, I would do whatever I could to help them.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything; among many, many other things, Soviets really placed a high value on friendship, and people would do just about anything to help their friends.
(I’ve written a few other bits over the years around here about my experiences in the USSR; you should be able to find them if you poke around.)
Thanks for this reply, your travels through the USSR are a very interesting read. And to add to what you’ve written, in Cuba we viewed life in the USSR and the eastern block as much better than in Cuba, and many people did whatever they could to get sent there to study. And it might have been, but at least we were warm in Cuba.
Actually, when I was in Russia I had a good friend who was Cuban (actually, half-Cuban and half-Slovak). He found the Soviet Union at that point to be much more politically liberal than Cuba, if with worse weather. Unfortunately, he found out the hard way that Cuba hadn’t yet experienced glasnost’ - to make a long story short, he went to visit his grandparents in Czechoslovakia without permission from the proper Cuban gvernment official, and was eventually expelled in his final year of university and sent back to Cuba.
(I always thought, “hey, he was a competitive swimmer; maybe he’s in Miami by now!” A few years ago I found him, via Google - he did get out somehow, and was then a real estate agent in Miami. I e-mailed him to say hi, but sadly, he never replied.)
Another vote for Hendrick Smith’s book The Russians for a look at daily life there in the 1970s, mostly in Moscow.
What, are Lenin and Khrushchev now unpersons?
Mr. Moto is right: life was very different under the different leaders. Based on a fairly extensive reading of the history and culture of the Soviet Union:
[ul][li]Under Lenin and Stalin: the Terrors, purges and persecutions; devastating declines in goods and services; civil and external wars; internecine conflicts; population resettlements; and the rebuilding of modern industry, with a bent toward a military industrial economy, especially in the 'Forties onward. [/li][li]Under Khrushchev were attempts at political and economic reforms, including limited privatization; strategic conflict and parallel development of nuclear arms and space exploration; a limited degree of increased autonomy for the individual republics; an increased focus on production of consumer goods; and in late term, economic stagnation. [/li][li]Under Brezhnev: progressive economic stagnation; increased scrutiny internally and tightened controls on satellite republics; a decline in the overall quality and availability of consumer goods (but the importation of Western goods for high Party members became more commonplace); increased control of information; unrest, crime, alcoholism and drug abuse become notably more pronounced. [/li][li]Andropov and Chernyenko: increasing rhetoric in answer to Reagan; progressively desperate attempts to control the satellite ‘client states’ including advanced placement of Soviet troops; confusion and concern about the state of health and mind of the terminally ill leaders; rapidly collapsing economy with declining availability of consumer goods and basic necessities. [/li][li]Gorbachev: Economic reform, attempt in shifting industry from military production to agriculture and exportable consumer goods; political liberalization and the “Sinatra Doctrine”; some relaxation in censorship and increased availability of Western news and information; acknowledgment of human rights violations and ecological destruction; economic and political collapse.[/ul][/li]
Despite attempts at hardcore Marxist-Leninist “reform” there was always some degree of privatization in agriculture, especially after the Russian Famine of 1921, which was often the saving grace; both Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov estimate that the majority of available agricultural goods came from the few percent of free holdings, and what credible records exist tend to support this. There was a thriving black market, even in “closed cities” like Gorky for produce, but meat could be scarce. Khrushchev instituted reforms allowing some amount of private industry (although there was regression with Brezhnev) but most major industry was strictly state controlled, often resulting in massive stockpiles of unneeded goods to be destroyed while goods in demand remained unproduced. In general, Soviet industry relied heavily on the more productive “client states”, particularly Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, and became increasingly dependent upon trading raw commodities for agricultural goods (essentially all through the Brezhnev era). Soviets tended to have smaller families (one or two children) and lived in a manner akin to low middle class or lower class Western Europe nations or the United States.
Spying and surveillance could be done on anyone at any time, but the arbitrary and corrupt persecution was substantially curtailed after Khrushchev’s Destalinization campaign; nonetheless, saying the wrong thing, or failure to say the right thing or sign a letter of condemnation could result in surveillance, and at a minimum restriction of career, apartment availability (always a problem, especially in Moscow), and access to medical and other care. In retrospect, surveillance was often not very effective, and the Fifth Chief Directorate (responsible for monitoring internal dissent, censorship, et cetera) were largely regarded as a bunch of buffoons in comparison to the First Chief Directorate (foreign operations) and the Eighth Chief Directorate (Signals Intelligence). Many instances of known recruitment of Soviet citizens by MI-6 and CIA occurred for long periods without apparent KGB knowledge, and certainly others unknown occurred. (This was mostly undermined by the Cambridge Five, including the reveal of Oleg Penkovsky).
Stranger
Apparently all Cubans end up in Miami. After a number of years in Canada, and extended stays throughout the US I’m pretty sure I’m here to stay now.
Well, to be fair, wasn’t Lenin incapacitated through much of his reign? I believe it was Stalin and Trotsky, along with Lenin’s wife, running the show.
My area of study was the Tsarist period, but my Russian professor, who defected in the '80s, told us some of his experiences. One thing I remember was that the government would go back and forth on “opening up trade with the US”. They’d encourage companies to pass out, say pens and office supplies, or other paraphenilia from the US and then do a 180, and confiscate it all, making it a crime.
Said professor was sentenced to the gulags at one point, for owning American made items.
Would you like me to contact him and see if he’d be willing to share his experiences?
I have several old books about the Soviet Union (some intended for a high school audience). And my late great aunt visited the USSR several times as a tourist. The USSR had a system of internal passports and one was restricted as to where one was allowed to live (ie a rural peasant couldn’t up and move to Moscow). Shops in Moscow and Leningrad where usually much better stocked than those in the provinces. Also I think Intourist (the state travel agency) had seperate hotels for domestic (& Soviet bloc?) tourists and foreign tourists. My aunt told my that on one trip there wasn’t a foreigners’ hotel in an area they visited so they were put up in a Party guesthouse. Oh and somethat that struck be as totally bizarre were Soviet vending machines. Instead of dispensing bottles or cans there was a single glass and one was expected to stand there and drink then rinse it out for the next person. :eek:
These things are still true of Russian Federation. There are still internal passports, and you can’t legally even be in Moscow for any significant length of time (not sure how long) without a registration – for tourists the hotels handle the registration as far as I know. Often there are passport checks on the streets and public transport (mostly targeting males of military age or people of darker skin colors) and not having a proper registration can potentially result in a heap of trouble.
We had some friends visit us during the Brezhnev era. We took them grocery shopping with us, to an moderately upscale grocery store. They began to hyperventilate and had to be taken home. The sight of so much, all in one place, was overwhelming.
I believe most of our impressions of life in the USSR is based on life in Moscow and the other larger cities. It was, basically, glum.
And much worse in the “republics”.
Regards,
Shodan
I had a Russian friend , what he told me that there was no rhyme or reason for what was available in the stores. For example-apples might not be available-no apples to be had anywhere-then-all of a sudden, the stores would be filled with apples! You would run out and buy all you could afford-because you never knew when apples would be available again!
When I think of the Soviet Union, it always brings to mind long lines of people shivering in the cold as they wait to buy toilet paper.
I had a friend in high school who was from Kazakhstan (I graduated in 2000). His family moved to the US around 95 or 96 I think.
I never asked alot of questions about life there. But he told me this. When he was a kid, before the USSR fell, his family was doing pretty good. And as far as he could tell, so were the other people in the town. They always had food, cloths. The family would go to the movie theater often (Don’t know what moves were showed though).
But after the USSR fell, things changed. People didn’t have as much money. The movie theater went out of busness (may or may not have been a result though). But he said things generally got worse. That is the reason they left.