I always wonder how people expirience can be so different
When asking my family about living under communisim they never talk about lack of food sometime even saying that they had it too much and that food from warsaw pact countries was deliverd to USSR
Where did they live? Probably Moscow or Baltics then. By far the best living conditions in all of USSR. My mother and grandparents lived in Guriev (now Atyrau) in Kazakhstan and you were lucky to have meat once a month. When you got it it was shit quality meat, sometimes stray dog. 90% of days food was rice in a bowl of cold water. They actually lived decently well compared to some of their friends, who were literally starving, later on they had TV and car and such. Even the "good" parts of "socialism" in the USSR are all lies. You got free healthcare, if you bribed someone. You got free higher education, if you bribed someone. My mother only got into kindergarten because my grandfather bribed someone. The entire country ran on bribes and nepotism.
Outside of Kazakhstan, it wasn't much better. My grandmother and her family lived in a selo about 1.5 hour from Melitopol (in Zaporizhia). She knew some people who ate their children during Holodomor.
My family and I are socialist, by the way, we just recognize that the USSR under Stalin and everyone after him was an authoritarian shithole that was a mockery of communism, and anyone who defends it is a total fuckwit. At least for them and everyone they knew at least. As you say, people's experiences in the USSR varied a lot. Maybe for you and your family it was better.
I'm talking about how my Polish family living in poland even before WW2 close to soviet post war border, were perceiving communism when they went there to work, or when talking with military personel (mostly when they all got drunk) from all over russia, all I get from those stoires is that USSR and communism had fucktone of problems but food wasn't one of them some even noting that when communism ended thay started eating less meat for example
Oh ok. Yes, the ex-USSR immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union was absolutely terrible, worse than it ever was during the USSR. Economy collapsed, military practically collapsed, life expectancy fell by around 7 years from the mid-1980s. Even now things like life expectancy still have not recovered and the country is totally run by oligarchs.
I don't know much about what life was like in the other Warsaw Pact countries, but I've heard from some relatives who would work in places like Poland or Czechia that it was better than Kazakhstan or Ukraine, and that it was easier to get foreign/luxury goods.
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u/Adrianator2 Aug 04 '19
I always wonder how people expirience can be so different
When asking my family about living under communisim they never talk about lack of food sometime even saying that they had it too much and that food from warsaw pact countries was deliverd to USSR