What was it like to live in the USSR?

Miscellaneous History
21

Im a Canadian who’s lived in Harbin (North Eastern China) for a little over a year now.

It’s certainly not as a bad as some would make it out to be- though its no paradise.

Note that the city I’m living in, is relatively backwards, non-westernized, and more communist than many other parts of China such as, Shanghai, Hainan, and others lucky enough to be designated “Special Economic Zones”.

Pros:

-Very little government interference in everyday life, living here day to day is almost identical to living at home, from this perspective.

-The lack of minimum wage makes shopping, going to restaurants, and other activities related to low wage labour a far more enjoyable experience. For example, supermarkets have employees cleaning, stocking shelves, tidying up, etc, everywhere. It also means that no one who wants to work, is out of a job; if you’re willing to work, you can find a job that will support you, even if it is at a low level.

-Business is, in certain aspects, unregulated. This means you’ll see more mom and pop type restaurants, grocery stores, and the like, than you could imagine seeing back home. Also factoring into this, is that everyone pays in cash, so aside from not having to abide by health & safety regulations, minimum wage laws and registration costs, you can also get away without paying income tax. So, unlike back home, you can see giant chains like Wal Mart, operating alongside local grocery stores, both of whom make a profit.

Just generally speaking, walking around a Chinese city is almost identical to walking around a western one. It’s certainly not the heavy handed image of communism some would expect.

Cons:

-The bureaucracy is just disastrous. Just the act of losing my bank card was a hell of standing in lines, filling out endless amounts of identical paperwork at separate locations, and all the typical bureaucratic nightmares. Any act which remotely involves government is the same.

-Corruption is rampant. It’s common knowledge that government workers will get advance knowledge of all events, even to the extent of government workers being warned about potential national disasters, (such as the earthquakes a few years ago) while public knowledge is actively suppressed. Also, every foreigner I know who has tried to start a business has been approached by the police, threating to shut the place down, if they wont pay them a bribe. The police are even bigger jokes than the ones at home, they don’t even make efforts to appear hardworking, trustworthy, etc.

-Compulsory military service, most males must spend 2 years in the military (unless you’ve got enough money)…the same applies to the one child policy…

-News outlets are hilariously pro government. Seriously. Watching CCTV (China Central Television) is like banging your head against the wall. FOX, MSNBC, and the rest of them appear almost anti-statist by comparison. The government makes no effort to hide the censoring of content it doesnt like. Also, the internet is tightly controlled, youtube is banned by the government, along with many other sites.

There are many other pros and cons, thats just the most general of outlines. Any questions, feel free to ask. As I said, Im lucky enough to be living in a fairly backwards region of China (culturally and otherwise) so its perhaps a better view of the ‘real’ China than you’re going to get living in Hong Kong or Shanghai.

22

Lenin openly stated that any attempt at communism was not at all practical.

“You know from the debates in the Central Committee that we are not opposed to placing workers at the head, but we say that this question must be settled in the interests of production. We cannot wait. The country is so badly ruined, calamities—famine, cold and general want—have reached such a pitch that we cannot continue like this any longer. No devotion, no self-sacrifice can save us if we do not keep the workers alive, if we do not provide them with bread, if we do not succeed in procuring large quantities of salt, so as to recompense the peasants by properly organised exchange and not with pieces of coloured paper which cannot keep us going for long. The very existence of the power of the workers and peasants, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake. With management in the hands of incompetent people, with fuel not delivered in time, with locomotives, steamers and barges standing unrepaired, the very existence of Soviet Russia is at stake.”

Trotsky:

"I consider that the if the civil war had not plundered our economic organs of all that was strongest, most independent, most endowed with initiative, we should undboutedly have entered the path of one-man management in the sphere of economic administration much sooner and much less painfully."

The Bolsheviks openly crushed worker collectives, why would they do that if they were trying to reach communism?

23

Actually if you read the article, Lenin stated that communism that merely came about that wasn’t based off of capitalism is mythical. To get to communism, you must go through capitalism which is the highest advancement of capitalism intensive labor. You must build on capitalism to get to communism, just like capitalism was built on feudalism. This is basic Marxian doctrine. And why did the Bolsheviki crush other collectives? Simple because they were not state collectives. Just like the sailors who got shot down at Kronstadt, those who were power rivals against the state apparatus were destroyed under the guise that they had false consciousness. Don’t presume that Stalin did all the killing in Soviet Russia

24

I totally agree, that is what I meant by the material conditions in my first post. Post-Civil War Russia was an impoverished, war ridden, peasant society. Not a thriving industrial capitalist society, that is why many revolutionaries looked at Germany during that time as the next place for a successful leftist revolution.

The Bolsheviks favored economic centralization and basically nationalization. No matter who stood in there way, be it the kulaks, other socialist revolutionaries, Makhovinists, if they stood against the Bolsheviks they stood against the working class, which is fallacious.

For the record, I oppose all Leninist branches of Marxism and all centralization branches of Marxism.

25

Because the Bolsheviki thought of themselves as the consciousness of the working class. It is a claim that many socialists make, the difference between them and the Bolsheviki is that the latter actually had the power to substanciate the claim in the sense that they could monopolize the fabricated legitimacy of it. By the way all of Marxism is centralization. The only decentralist communists were individuals like Bakunin and Kropotkin.

26

I’ve never understood this ambiguity in socialist thinking.

Honestly, I have argued with marxists that said the same thing while they defended the USSR and Cuba.

27

someone should say something about calculating.

28

No fair, you economists get to talk all day about your theories. [:P] Let us have one discussion that doesn’t involve economic doctrine.

29

in the spirit of compromise I’d like to offer a joke on political-economy from someone that was a superior comedian than he was a president.

30

Ah the merchant of death has a comedic side

31

I have been able to talk to a lot of Russians which lived under the USSR, and almost none of them have anything good to say. My uncle’s wife is Russian, from St. Petersburg, and her family suffered heavily at the hands of the Soviets. This includes parts of her family being killed, and her family’s wealth being confiscated a number of times. From father earned his masters in Russian, and his interest in the language took him to the Soviet Union a couple of times, and from what he’s told me (he lived with families there), life in the Soviet Union was horrible. On the other hand, none of it really matches what the West depicts life in the Soviet Union to be, which is interesting. Another interesting thing I’ve found in my talks with former citizens of the Soviet Union is that many Ukrainians prefer to have lived under Soviet authority. Most of these are in the military or were prior-military, and so apparently they were accomodated much better under Soviet rule. On the other hand, many non-military Ukrainian citizens I’ve talked to generally agree that the secession from the USSR was a very good move on the part of Ukraine.

Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to talk to one Chinese man. He lived with me as an exchange professor. He said that the Communist regime in China was superior to the Democratic system in the United States. He also went on on how he was going to buy a BMW and all of that. I think that either he was thoroughly brainwashed, or he had some sort of agenda. IIRC, he was also a member of the Party, which goes a long way in explaining his sympathies. But, again, I haven’t been able to gather any more first hand information from any other Chinese person. I met a Chinese girl at Cato University 2009, but she lived in Singapore and was from Hong Kong (I believe). I didn’t talk to her about Communist China (she supported welfare, though, if that matters at all).

32

[:|]

Dont make me die.

33

Go figure. The commies, murderous thugs, and the military, murderous thugs, get along well.

34

Enough with this silly generalising. Both of my my grandfathers were in the Soviet Army. They hated the government but viewed Nazis as a worse threat. Anyone who calls them “murderous thugs” would NOT be welcome in my home [^o)]

35

uh oh. I’m so sorry if you can’t face facts, but it is not my fault.

36

What facts? What I see is bashing people you didn’t even know.

37

People are opening up and posting about their personal experiences and family. It’s really in poor taste to attack their family members. No one was glorifying the military. Sometimes you could lay off a little. This is a lot different than when you are challenging a poster for his or her views.

38

I made a general comment on the connection between the commies and the military.

39

And what’s the point of this comment? It simply dismisses the issue without trying to understand the complexities of human reactions and behavior. Not to mention insulting since it implies that absolutely all soldiers enjoy killing or join the military to kill innocent civillians. I can just as well say that we’re all murderers because we pay taxes to support the war machine.

40

To highlight the connection between communism, totalitarianism, the military, nationalism and collectivism.

As I said elsewhere, I think that’s true. People who join the military enjoy killing. Fact.

There are people who are happy to pay in order to ‘support’ the military. But taxes are usually paid under compulsion, you know.

Anyway, you can take it personally if you want. I don’t care. I’m not going to change my views because you think that some members of your family, who belonged to the most brutal institution (the army) of a brutal state, are beyond criticism.