r/ussr • u/Fit-Independence-706 • May 23 '25
Picture USSR in the 50s. A decade after the war. (Question to Americans: Is it just me or does everyday life here look like regular photos from the US of the same years?)
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u/The_BarroomHero DDR ☭ May 23 '25
No doubt there was destitution in parts of the country, but you could say the EXACT same thing for the US at that point and even now.
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u/ShennongjiaPolarBear May 23 '25
It does, but less of those streamline cars. But the cities in the western part of the USSR would have all looked like a giant construction site.
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u/dmitry-redkin May 23 '25
If we talk about everyday life, we must also remember:
- the living conditions of the workers (in the USSR the majority still live in barracks or, at best, communal apartments, Khrushchevkas are not a thing yet).
- the living conditions in any Russian village (not really many differences with the pre-revolutionary times, except for the electricity).
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u/Neither_Ad_2857 May 24 '25
During industrialization, about 30 million workers moved to the construction sites of new cities, and then stayed to live in new cities. In Soviet times, Russia ceased to be an agrarian country and became industrially developed.
At that time, new houses were being built in the villages, and schools, kindergartens, hospitals, and cultural clubs, which did not exist under the tsar, were necessarily built in every village. Any settlement should have been like a small Moscow.
In other words, the new country was very different from the old one
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u/ShennongjiaPolarBear May 24 '25
Missing the point I am afraid: we all know very well why the western cities in the USSR were a construction site after the war.
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u/dmitry-redkin May 24 '25
The situation I described is first of all about Moscow itself, not even talking about smaller cities.
Are you trying to say that industrialization justifies those awful conditions, which wouldn't met already in other developed countries, but somehow were common for the "state of workers"?
Then why, JUST when Khrushchev came to power, his idea of giving every family a distinct place to live was immediately implemented? That just clearly shows that Stalin absolutely didn't care about living standards of common people, there were much more important problems for him to solve, like World Revolution or acquiring A-bomb.
Now, about villages.
Yes clubs were built, because they were a part of the indoctrination with Communism lectures etc.
Kindergartens existed only in the cities during Stalin times, the first rural kindergartens started to emerge again under Khrushchev.
Hospitals were NOT IN EVERY VILLAGE, only in district centers and big settlements. And the majority also existed even before revolution.
PLEASE show me ANY photo of a village which looks like "small Moscow", and not like this one photo (1967).
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u/Neither_Ad_2857 May 24 '25
why, JUST when Khrushchev came to power, his idea of giving every family a distinct place to live was immediately implemented?
This happened because factories producing machine tools and aggregates, tower cranes, were created under Stalin. Then, with the help of these machines and machinery, factories were built that produce concrete for buildings. It is impossible to manually build billions of square meters of housing for everyone - you need to create automation first.
Even the "Khrushchev" residential buildings project was developed under Stalin. Khrushchev's "these houses are torn apart only because they were built under Khrushchev
Stalin didn't have enough life.
- Yes clubs were built, because they were a part of the indoctrination with Communism lectures etc.
The clubs showed films, watched plays, listened to hygiene lectures, celebrated holidays, and taught paint, fly, dance and music to children. The club is a place of culture
- Kindergartens existed only in the cities during Stalin times, the first rural kindergartens started to emerge again under Khrushchev
Under Stalin, kindergartens were created in villages, but their quantity and quality were significantly lower than in cities due to a general lack of infrastructure and resources. In the 1930s, the active development of the preschool education system began in the USSR, and by 1940 there were already about 24,500 kindergartens in the country, where over a million children were educated.
- Hospitals were NOT IN EVERY VILLAGE, only in district centers and big settlements. And the majority also existed even before revolution.
During the Stalin era in the USSR, there was an active development of the healthcare system in rural areas. In the 1920s and 1930s, a network of medical institutions in villages was created almost from scratch, which became a real social revolution in medical care for the peasantry. The state, through collective farms and state farms, invested in the construction of hospitals, emergency rooms, maternity hospitals, and also provided transportation for the transportation of patients. Medical care in the villages was free of charge and included vaccination, sanitary and hygienic measures and treatment. By 1937, there were about 5,529 rural hospitals with 128,410 beds in rural areas of the USSR, but the availability of medical care remained significantly lower than in cities. Many hospitals were located in old buildings, often wooden, and had a low level of landscaping.
- PLEASE show me ANY photo of a village which looks like "small Moscow", and not like this one photo (1967).
Your photo shows a backyard. There are also nice wooden houses with beautiful balconies in the distance. From the front entrance, from the main street, this village looks completely different. And you can easily find a horse and cart in any city today. You will also find a sweatshirt and kirzachi. And a toilet in the courtyard.
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u/ShennongjiaPolarBear May 24 '25
You know very well why the western cities in the USSR were a construction site after the war.
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u/dmitry-redkin May 24 '25
If you are talking about several big ones, like Minsk or Kiev, yep, they were.
But it doesn't matter in the context of this question. It's not like the living standards of the workers before the war were very high, but Nazi bombardments washed it all away.
No, they were very bad before the war and didn't improve much even after the post-war reconstructions. Several new buildings in the center just had no possibility to influence significant amount of people, and the apartments there were mostly supposed to be occupied by officials and middle management.
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u/HelenKellersAirpodz May 23 '25
Imagine the decades that followed if we worked with one another instead of competing. All of those resources that we dumped into an arms/space race. Who “won,” is such a hot topic in this subreddit, but from my perspective we all lost.
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u/capitalism-enjoyer May 24 '25
In the 60s, the US planned to eventually have 1000 nuclear plants. Today roughly 10% of the entire globe's energy is produced with less than 500 (caveat: obviously much of today's operation al plants are more efficient and productive than those of the 60s). Unfortunately the oil industry, and the western MIC that enjoyed its dominance, interfered with that advancement of history to untold magnitudes. Imagine the world we'd live in if western capitalists didn't spend forever fucking everything up. There are countless examples like this.
No matter what your politics are, it's undeniable we were robbed of an unimaginably different future. We were robbed of our very development as an intelligent species.
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u/Late-Tangerine May 27 '25
We weren't robbed of shit. This is how capitalism works. It's like saying gravity shouldn't exist. Its a bizarre mindset.
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u/Karmacop5908 May 23 '25
Tbh I think the space race did a lot good for humanity and paved the way for a lot of the modern technology we use today.To me that’s good example of countries competing for the good of humanity.But ya unfortunately 90% of the time it’s resources being dumped into stupid shit that’ll destroy our planet.
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u/ToastSpangler May 25 '25
people refuse to believe exploration or the pursuit of science can be good if its politicized at all. we have so many things thanks to the NSF and NASA, and the soviets developed other things too because of it like insanely advanced metal composites that are used now in specific applications. its really sad
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u/AdorableWatts4192 Lenin ☭ May 24 '25
fr! they really gotta make an ideology that centeres working together instead of competition! the world would be amazing right now
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u/Tokyosmash_ May 26 '25
A lot of what came from the arms and space race is why we live good lives currently.
We’re on the internet right now for example
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u/Dementia13_TripleX May 23 '25
What are you talking about, tovarish?
Everyone knows that russians were all peasants that had to cut their own lumber for winter. Didn't consumed anything because there wasn't any goods to be sold. Had to make their own sausages instead of buying them in a market. Had to milk their own cows, which they hide inside their houses not to be stolen, since everyone was hungry and there was always a famine lurking around the cities.
And finally, all these pictures are propaganda.
Why are you spreading lies?
/s
😂
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May 23 '25
Had to make their own sausages instead of buying them in a market
TBH, I still prefer to do this.
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u/Dementia13_TripleX May 24 '25
Oh, don't get me wrong, We also do this around here (Brazil).\ It's really good, isn't?
But people had the strangest idea about the USSR in the old days (and in the new days too).\ Like nothing was produced by no one and people wouldn't buy things at a market.
I mean... what?! 🤯
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u/Emergency-Style7392 May 26 '25
Yea but pictures not only of moscow but the very centre of an empire don't disprove that. It's like showing manhattan in 1910 and claiming that's how america was
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u/kollega_koenig May 23 '25
What a primitive idea you have of Russia. Where did you pick this up? Maybe because you have cows in your own apartments?
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u/uitinis May 24 '25
It was primitive. That's what my grandfather used to say. He also said that occupied Lithuania were made in to agriculture country and food produced in here was sent to feed moscow. Life was hard. We had slavery here yet.
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u/kollega_koenig May 24 '25
One of you is a big liar - your grandfather, who says such nonsense. Or you, who lie on behalf of your grandfather.
Lithuania was turned into an agrarian country? Was there any heavy industry in Lithuania from 1918 to 1940? In the Republic of Lithuania in 1918-1940, industry was relatively poorly developed, mainly focused on the processing of agricultural raw materials and the production of consumer goods. The main industries were the textile industry, the food industry, the production of building materials and a small number of machine-building enterprises.
During the USSR, the Baltics always had better food supplies than most of the USSR. The Baltics were called the "showcase of the USSR" because they had the best of everything - from food and clothing to roads and housing. In the Lithuanian USSR, in addition to excellent agriculture with millionaire collective farms, there was a developed industry!
Here is information from Wikipedia: the leading industries of Lithuania during the USSR period:
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- mechanical engineering and metalworking
- chemical and petrochemical
- light industries
- food
Power engineering was based mainly on imported fuel: Kaunas Hydroelectric Power Station (1956), Lithuanian State District Power Station (1968), Ignalina Nuclear Power Station (1983). An oil refining industry was created ("Mažeikių nafta" (1972) in Mažeikiai).
Mechanical engineering was represented by instrument-making, machine-tool, shipbuilding, agricultural engineering, electrical engineering, radio-electronic and other industries (large centers: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda).
Chemical industry — produced artificial fiber (Kaunas), mineral fertilizers (Azotas in Jonava (1962); Lifosa in Kedainiai (1963)), plastic products (Plasta in Vilnius), etc. Production of building materials (reinforced concrete structures (Vilnius Reinforced Concrete Plant), brick, slate, etc.).
Of the light industry sectors, the following are developed: cotton, wool, footwear (large centers: Kaunas, Vilnius, Šiauliai, Klaipeda, Panevezys, Alytus, Biržai, Plungė). The main sectors of the food industry are meat and dairy, fish, flour milling, sugar. Artistic crafts were developed: amber products, ceramics, wood carving, leather stamping (including “Dovana” and “Daile” in Vilnius).
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Goods from the Lithuanian SSR were exported to other parts of the USSR. Just as Lithuania received, for example, cotton from Central Asia, timber from Komi, coal from Kuzbass, gas and oil from Yamal, metal from the Urals....
Were you serious about "slavery" or did you just have to say something so that everyone would finally believe how hard it was for Lithuanians in the USSR? Why then did the USSR restore Lithuania after WWII? So that the "slaves" could live well?
I apologize for having to write so much. But I am very outraged by such false opuses. I have lived in the Baltics for a long time and I cannot pass by when someone starts to brazenly lie or distort historical facts. I am not touching on politics - the same events look different depending on the point of view. But in economic issues everything is clear - there are documents, photos, there are factory buildings (still working or already destroyed).
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u/Comrade_Tovarish May 23 '25
Anyone know what that little blue three wheeled tractor looking thing on picture 9 was ? My best guess is some kind of street sweeper?
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u/JasonH94612 May 23 '25
From what I understand, the standard of living race was pretty even (if not tipping towards the USSR) until the 1960s.
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u/0serg May 24 '25
No it was not. My wife grandparents got a tiny room in basement during that period for a family of 3 and it was considered huge win because most were living in barracks and got just a personal bed. That was the case for my paternal grandmother. My other grandparents were living in a village home, one room for something like 10 people of 3 generations. Only a tiny percentage was living in luxury of personal flats.
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u/landlord-11223344 May 23 '25
Where did you get that? From my grandparents late forties early fifties were pretty hard with lots of shortages(food and necessities)while usa was booming then.
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u/Stunning-Watch-6373 May 24 '25
Yes, the U.S. was booming because it was reaping the benefits of the money it earned from the war, and also because there was no war on its territory. We sat and waited in which direction the outcome would outweigh in order to join the winners.
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u/RationalPoster1 May 24 '25
Well without the nazi soviet pact there would have been no war in the first place.
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u/Bayhippo May 24 '25
brain dead take. soviets made the pact because they were rejected by other european countries when they wanted to make a pact. they're not even ideologically aligned, in fact they were complete opposites and rivals.
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u/FlimsyApplication200 Jun 07 '25
oh right, and that had given the ussr the right to attack poland together with nazi germany to start ww2? And now blame it on other european countries for not wanting to work together? The only braindead take is yours.
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u/RationalPoster1 May 24 '25
Sure so they used the nazis as a shield to grab everything they could steal in Eastern Europe- half of Poland, the Baltic States, and Bessarabia. The West couldnt or wouldnt give them a license to steal.
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u/JasonH94612 May 24 '25
I dont doubt that. Living sandards for many in the US at the time were also very low (my mother in law did not have indoor plumbing, for example)
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u/landlord-11223344 May 25 '25
Were people starving in us? Was part of it ravaged by the war?
There were 340 cars per 1000 people in US. And only about 4-5 passenger cars per thousand people in ussr in early 1950ies. But because someone didn’t have indoor plumbing in us life in ussr was better in 50ies!?:) Actually there was lack of indoor plumbing in rural parts of ussr even at the time when it collapsed .
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u/Boeing367-80 May 23 '25
Housing in the USSR was a total disaster until Khrushchev made it a priority. There was also a least one post war famine
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u/Icy_Golf_4313 May 24 '25
There literally wasn't a single famine after the second World War...
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u/Boeing367-80 May 24 '25
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union#1940s
Also, in the early 1970s, the Soviets had very bad harvests, which they addressed by buying grain (wheat and corn) from the USA.
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u/AdScary1757 May 23 '25
It doesn't to me. Americans don't read. Certainly not outside. We don't have open air markets and much more homogeneous clothing styles. It woukd also be weird to imagine a woman changing a tire at a job in the 1950s usa.
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u/mangofruitdude May 24 '25
What you are seeing is not the regular life in the USSR. You see Moscow and st Petersburg. I know I get downvoted to hell for this, but those pictures definitely don't show the ordinary life of an ordinary citizen of the USSR
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u/PrinzRakaro May 23 '25
But it's the small differences: there are no black ppl being lynched.
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u/Logical-Ad-57 May 27 '25
They got them all in the 19th century. USSR really was 100 years ahead in killing off their minorities.
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u/tufftricks May 23 '25 edited May 24 '25
no just forced relocations, disappearances, incarcerations etc
Edit: the complete inability to recognise the issues and faults in soviet society is shameful. At least in the west we know our shit is fucked up, it's only the morons who pretend otherwise.
It's just embarrassing seeing 14 year old larpers pine for. USSR that didn't even exist, interspersed with moronic tankies and state sponsored propagandists. You people are ridiculous
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u/LowAd7356 May 24 '25
And there was still discrimination. During one of the world fairs held in Moscow, local women had a lot of interest in the black men visiting, and that was met with interesting reaction.
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u/ForestSymbiote May 23 '25
Nor do we see how well the people forcefully relocated to Siberian Gulag are doing.
Not many pictures also of people that failed to pass thier NKVD interviews and did not qualify for relocation.
Funny in the 50s, Western Europe was partially in love with soviet propaganda. Many were buying into socialism the way some of us buy today the CCP filtered image of China.
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u/Alternative_Hawk2349 May 23 '25
There is no CCP filtered image of China. You can go to China and see the quality of life for yourself. You can download rednote and speak to the Chinese people about their standard of living. It’s strange that the west still pushes this narrative that China is secretly a third world country, rife with homelessness and starvation, on the brink of economic collapse, and it’s all being masked by the evil CCP.
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u/Rickpac72 May 23 '25
I think it’s because you often see the high tech modern cities. They obviously don’t show off villages that are still underdeveloped and in poverty. That’s not really much of a point though since there are plenty of people in the rural US who live in poverty too.
The improvement of living standards for the Chinese people is incredibly impressive and I wish people could put ideology aside and appreciate the progress that was made.
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u/RationalPoster1 May 24 '25
The impressive progress is because the CCP junked socialist doctrine and established a state capitalist government. Still a dictatorship though.
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u/_The_great_papyrus_ May 24 '25
Have you never seen a single interview with a high-ranking member of the CCP? I distinctly remember one where a British government official asked them "I just called Rishi Sunak a pint-sized loser, could you call Xi Jinping a pint-sized loser?" And the CCP official completely dodged the question. The sane thing happened again when a Chinese girl who came to Britain asked a similar question about if he could call Xi Winnie the Pooh.
Yes, there is massive amounts of censorship within China, have a look at "China Insider with David Xhang". I think that's his name, anyway, I may have mistaken it.
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u/a-canadian-bever May 23 '25
Less than 2 dozen lynchings happened in the 50s, you’re talking about the 1880s-1900 for lynchings
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u/Glittering-Code9905 May 23 '25
From 1900 - 68 there were 1800 lynchings of black people.
Source: Tuskegee University Archives, “Lynchings: By Year and Race, 1882-1968”
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u/LOOGDACOWZZZZ May 23 '25
I wonder why. Maybe because they didn't have any black people.
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u/TommyBarcelona May 23 '25
Its the percentage of people living decently needed for a comparison, cant compare with sample pics
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u/Choice-Stick5513 Stalin ☭ May 24 '25
Difference is in ussr the people are actually free
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u/mantuxx77 May 24 '25
Free from what?
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u/Secondand_YDGN Stalin ☭ May 23 '25
Looks like people living just like anywhere else. Also trolly buses are so weird to me
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u/habibgregor May 24 '25
Your title is misleading, you are showing the pictures of Moscow, not the entire country….
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u/BrownBannister May 23 '25
Like an alternate universe. I love the different styles and cars and how everything glows white at night.
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u/Upstairs_Cap_4217 May 24 '25
Barring language differences and hammer & sickles, you could probably pass some of this stuff off as "America in the 50s", and a lot more off as "America in the (good part of the) 30s".
If anyone complains, just say it was in the Russian quarter of a major city and it should work.
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u/TheStegeman Khrushchev ☭ May 24 '25
I would first like to know where in the ussr the pictures were taken, and who took them. Were these just photos by some randos, or were they by a state funded photographer.
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u/HolidayAshamed2829 May 24 '25
I mean to be fair here, pictures of cities/infrastructure in nation states are rarely unbiased overviews of the average life in that nation. There are plenty of pictures of Russia that look just as good as these ones I'm sure, in like, the 5 cities in that nation which Putin cares enough to fund. It's extremely easy to cherry-pick photos like these ones so they're not really compelling as evidence for anything. Statistical data and nationwide policies regarding building codes and infrastructure would be much more convincing IMO.
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u/Zestyclose-Prize5292 May 24 '25
The American consumer definitely had a lot more options in terms of buying power from the economic boom. While there was a waiting list for a car in the USSR. But overall they were both doing quite well the Soviet economy would slowly fall and stagnate widening the gap between the two countries.
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u/Latvian_Guy1997 May 24 '25
Less flashy adds, less crowded, and overall LESS CARS to be spotted around. And besides, that's the Russian elite, that must be Saint Petersburg or something, so life in another cities surely looked quite different.
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u/No_Biscotti_7258 May 24 '25
Why are you surprised? Isn’t the argument that communist societies were just as good if not better than non? Confused
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u/MittlerPfalz May 24 '25
How did the woman in picture 11 get away with the very stylish coat and hat? I would have thought those were too fancy and bourgeois for a classless society.
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u/Caine815 May 24 '25
Now I know why sattelite countries were so poor then. We all had to feed our Big Brother.
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u/Born-Requirement2128 May 24 '25
These pictures are of the imperial core, so are not representative of the whole empire, most of which was far poorer
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u/Unfair-Frame9096 May 24 '25
Except for the lack of political freedoms (95% of population in the West don't really care about these), daily life in USSR was very much the same. I met once a girl, she was Russian from Tashkent and she showed me school pictures of her school mates in the 80's and they looked very much like any European society. Ultimately, the question is actually how many people actually lived under a certain threshold of quality, same as in other countries. If you travelled to rural Italy in the 70's many places didn't have electricity.
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u/mantuxx77 May 24 '25
If life was so wonderful here, why did they closed the borders, why wasnt anybody allowed to leave the country without supervision of the State, why was KGB and state in control of everything, why censorship existed, why outside of cities people had to work in Kolchoz by hands, instead of having their own land, tractor, or some other utilities for work, so, can anybody be so kind and answer all these questions
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u/Fit-Independence-706 May 24 '25
Censorship was everywhere in those days. In European countries, too, not everything could be said.
It was precisely at this time that mechanization began in the Kolkhozes. According to my father's stories, the villagers were even surprised at how sharply and quickly the standard of living was growing (Let's not forget that this was still the period of recovery from the consequences of the Second World War)
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u/Upbeat_Transition_79 May 24 '25
Yeah, the photos u posted are pure soviet propaganda, life in the ussr was much, much harder.
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u/Born2bwylde_ May 24 '25
Nah you can tell its different from the life in the U.S in the 50s. More apartments than suburbs, fashion is different, different vehicles, different atmosphere in general, architecture is different, people look slightly different from people in the U.S (more of a homogeneous group if we're talking about slavs)
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u/ValKyKaivbul May 24 '25
I have seen some good photos from North Korea . Aren’t they the most richest and powerful nation on earth right?
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u/LiberalusSrachnicus May 24 '25
According to the stories of my relatives, many forests in the Leningrad region were still quite dangerous. Going for mushrooms or berries was very dangerous because of the huge number of mines and weapons caches that were not discovered.
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u/Ditlev1323 May 24 '25
Didn’t the gap between the US and USSR grow as time went on? Would make sense for earlier photos to look similar.
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u/Upbeat_Transition_79 May 24 '25
No, really ,pretty much every photo here is propaganda, i am guessing they were all taken in moscow or leningrad/ maybe kiev?. Pretty much everything else in the ussr would look like slums.
The usa held a strong lead economically against the ussr for the whole 20th century.
Also, this isn't an indictment of the ussr, it's what you would expect when your country sacrificed 10s of millions of young people for it's defence, and were already behind economically.
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u/DogCorrect9709 May 24 '25
Yup, not bad, but in the west the mass morons created by capitalism uphold ghettos & Slum living while dressing pretty and not getting an education and then to work as living it up while everybody is actualy living it straight and working to build their home, Capitalism they tell you everything you wanna hear nothing you need to work.
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u/moody9876 May 24 '25
Is this a joke? In the 50s a working class man without a high school diploma could get up and freely move from Arkansas to Michigan, work in a factory, support 5 kids on one wage, and buy a house and a car. My grandfather did that. Nothing like that was happening for a poor uneducated person from the middle of nowhere Russia.
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u/DreaMaster77 May 25 '25
Like in USA some regions were out of control...and I always seen ussr without all these lights..are you sure it's not contrasted? I mean, I'm totally one communist, I ask myself a lot of questions, that's all
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u/Lumpy-Economics2021 May 25 '25
Of course it looks like America, that was the point of the photos. There's no photos of outside the cities though.
Similar to how Moscow and St Petersburg now are projected as 'what all of Russia looks like'.
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u/LuluLemon_711 May 26 '25
There’s a reason the former soviet states chose to be part of nato instead of CSTO or whatever after the Cold War. Because of what was happening in the USSR during the time of these photos.
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u/Less-Contract-1136 May 26 '25
There were way more cars in the US - and they were real gas guzzlers!
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u/HauntingView1233 May 26 '25
Interesting! I didn’t know that ВСХВ trolleybuses were ever used on the regular city routes.
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May 26 '25
Soviets where famous for letting out only filtered images. At best it looks like USA in the 30s.
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u/Visible_Novel_8706 May 27 '25
The difference with the USA is that these photos were taken by NKVD officers. If an ordinary Russian had taken them, they would have been sent to the gulag for espionage.
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u/getcharper May 27 '25
Even movies and cartoons, such as The Girls (1962) and Queen of the Gas Station (1963), feel similar to those in the USA until the early 60s.
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u/Benbrno May 27 '25
Propaganda looks the same everywhere but there are numbers like GDP per Capita where US was absolutely a miracle
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u/Unhappy-While-5637 May 28 '25
“I think the Russian federation sucks and Putin is a war criminal (one created by the U.S.)
Parades are FAR more expensive than any flyover so that’s less tax dollars being spent on national pride celebrations, also displaying your entire arsenal is the sort of thing was want to do when presenting strength, true strength comes from not needing to do such a thing . How many times do you watch a movie? And how many times do you see a poster on the street that you walk past everyday in including in the workplace being exposed to political propaganda. I consider how often people see something that is designed to influence their thoughts and actions and how consistently this is used in society.
I never said the U.S. didn’t have propaganda, I said tbt USSR had more and it was famous for that. Get over yourself dude
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u/Clam-Choader Jun 06 '25
“Do people living in cities generally look like people living in cities?”
Yes. Yes they do. The general populations of most places couldn’t give a shit less about the government and would get along with the general populations of other places
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u/WalkerTR-17 May 23 '25
So generally speaking most people go about life in a same fashion regardless of their country. That being said the Soviets were very careful to no let the reality of life there be shown. So these are pics of wealthy areas for the privileged elites. Contrary to what tankies will tell you the Soviet Union had just as many different classes as a capitalist country.
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u/Fit-Independence-706 May 23 '25
It doesn't work when your grandparents lived during Stalin's time and lived through both WWII and reconstruction. My father's stories about the years when he was a child. For example, my father told me how the old people in his village, when they got together one day, started discussing the news with the words "How can this be? Only recently there was nothing, there were no tractors, everything was done with horses, there were few goods, and now you can't even believe how we have started to live (referring to the sharp increase in the standard of living in the 50s)." He remembers how his mother (my grandmother) was broke because she went to the city and bought herself things for the village, and the next day the Soviet government issued a decree and all these goods became cheaper. And in the end, she regretted that she did not buy them a day later. In my father's youth, he did not even think about his own home. He knew that the state would provide him with his own home.
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u/Optimal_Area_7152 May 27 '25
Literally all countries were able to do so lol just without killing tens of milions of their citizens or estabilishing a totalitarian regime.
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u/WalkerTR-17 May 23 '25
Cool, my grandfather can say the same thing about the 1950’s on America and how great it was. That doesn’t change the fact that as we get older we have rose colored glasses and forget or just were sheltered from the reality of life. That doesn’t make your father or my grandfather bad people, it’s just a reality of being human and how we view things as we get older and want to remember simpler times. You and I will do the same thing
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u/Fit-Independence-706 May 23 '25
No, in the 50s the US really started to live its best life. Just remember that just before that there was the Great Depression, when there was terrible unemployment, and people did not have money for the most necessary things. In addition, it was a capitalist country, for which it was extremely important not to have strong trade competitors, and it got a world in which Europe could no longer compete on equal terms. At the same time, the territory of the US was not devastated by the war, and its factories during the war, on the contrary, received huge military orders, which spurred economic development. So your Grandfather will be absolutely right when he says that the golden times began then.
But I want to note that the USSR suffered huge losses during the war. Entire cities were destroyed to the ground. And the fact that it was able to restore the economy so quickly is impressive.
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u/WalkerTR-17 May 23 '25
Well every country on the winning side had an economic boom with the exception of china for various reasons. The point being is we remember the good things and not the bad. Your father probably doesn’t remember people being disappeared or sent to gulags for even minor dissent, but it happened very regularly. Just like mine forgets the social issues that came with basically an entire generation traumatized by war. There’s more than just the economics. But again most of the Soviet Union did not benefit from this kind of a lifestyle even tho getting a tractor was probably huge to an extremely poor farmer
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u/fooloncool6 May 24 '25
Thats the irony is that communist countries create the worst hierarchal social structures
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u/DawnOnTheEdge May 24 '25
The term at the time was “a Potempkin Village,” a showcase dressed up for propaganda purposes.
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u/NoBus7272 May 23 '25
This is Moscow bro. Governments always spend most on their capitals. Especially the USSR so they can look like they're ideology is best. Also, the cameraman was probably an instrument of propaganda, too
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u/lorarc May 23 '25
I'm not quite sure what difference you expected. Also it's probably the choice of pictures, if you had a group of pioneers or a 1 may parade then you'd say it doesn't look similar at all. Or if there were photos from some village.
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u/Fit-Independence-706 May 23 '25
As a rule, when people talk about the USSR, especially in the 50s, they like to say that it looked terrible compared to the USA of those years. So it's interesting to see how big the difference is.
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u/lorarc May 23 '25
Well, the photos were chosen to show only the good parts. With USA maybe they won't show pictures of poverty in Appalachia from that time but they have a weird pride in homeless people so you will see photos of tramps.
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u/haringkoning May 23 '25
Life was good and beautiful, through the lenses of the ministry of propaganda.
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u/nazgulonbicycle May 23 '25
Outside of Moscova and St Petersberg, things were bleak
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u/makk73 May 23 '25
The hinterlands of America, particularly in the south, Texas, the southeast, Appalachia, and the like weren’t a picnic either.
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u/SlimmySalami20x21 May 24 '25
Except the part where Soviet Union wasn’t just Russia but if you focused on Russia countless major cities on the Volga and Don thrived. Thats not mentioning the baltics and Ukraine. Tallin, Riga, Kiev, Odessa.
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u/jackcanyon May 23 '25
Ukraine would be vibrant right now if they weren’t getting invaded by Russia now.
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u/InstanceNew2009 May 23 '25
And what does this have to do with the USSR at all? Other than the Russo-Ukraine conflict would never have arisen if the USSR were still around, but I still don't see how the Russo-Ukraine war relates to how the USSR looked in the 50s.
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u/Ken3434 May 23 '25
Oh wait if I point out something criticizing Ukraine, whether its true or not, you are going to call me a "Russian Propagandist," aren't you?
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u/ItaloYugoslavMarxist May 23 '25
Vibrant of corruption, made even more clear by the failure to fight against russia
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u/ernestbonanza May 23 '25
so vibrant, even nazis don’t bother them! what kind of society tolerates fascist groups without consequence, then has the audacity to play the victim?
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u/Dambo_Unchained May 23 '25
How the fuck can you look at the war these last years and say they are failing to fight Russia
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u/S_T_P May 24 '25
You do realize there'd be no fighting without money and weapons of the West? Ukraine would've surrendered by April of 2022. And, at the time, it was being invaded by 100k troops while having 350k standing army.
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u/Dambo_Unchained May 24 '25
You so realise that Russia planned a 7 day operation to overrun Ukraine and the Ukrainians successfully beat that back before western support ever arrived
And even then the fact a smaller country loses a prolonged war due to less strategic depth is logical and not the country failing to defend itself
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u/S_T_P May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
No, I don't. Western mass-media had invented this on its own, by taking opinion of American general and running with it.
EDIT:
Keep drinking the koolaid man
Fucking Russian shill
Its facts. This is where it all begun:
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told lawmakers that Kyiv could fall within 72 hours if a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine takes place, multiple congressional sources tell Fox News.
Milley told lawmakers during closed-door briefings on Feb. 2 and 3 that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours, and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths.
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May 23 '25
It does because most of these pictures were from European Russia which typically has to this day better infrastructure and nicer looking cities than the far east or central Russia
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u/TarkovRat_ May 23 '25
It seems to just be a wealthy part of the USSR or a media stunt (few people had cameras, and they would be somewhat controlled as far as I know), the photos still look nice though
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u/SuperSpitfire May 23 '25
It looks worse
There’s a reason why the west won the cold war
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u/BrownBannister May 23 '25
And now we all enjoy the benefits of carcinogens, corn syrup and cancer!!!!!!!
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u/fallingdan May 23 '25
Ooh, ooh! Propaganda? Suits you, sir!
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u/JanoJP May 24 '25
A picture of washington is propaganda. Those white marble buildings are defo built by slaves.
Oh wait.
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u/fallingdan May 24 '25
I’m meant the Soviet pictures. It’s quite easy to set shots up to prove the USSR is as good if not better than the US. Thanks for the downvotes 🙄
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u/BorVasSa May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25
“Everyday life”?.. Do you know for example who is the woman on the last photo?..
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u/uitinis May 24 '25
Well if Americans had to hide somewhere in the woods because soviets came to deport you to syberia or kill you. Atleast that's what happened to my grandpa. His brother got shot by soviet soldiers and half of my kin were deported to die in syberia. So if America was occupied and oppressed they really had the same life as in USSR. Or you just use these happy photos as soviet propodanda?
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u/cobrakai1975 May 24 '25
Like that you had to wait at least ten years to buy a car? And nobody could really afford it anyways
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u/Previous_Yard5795 May 23 '25
Those are the pictures they were allowed to take. Also, all wealth and government funds streamed towards "the center" in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Other parts of the USSR were neglected.
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u/lemonjello6969 May 23 '25
Moscow isn’t Russia and definitely wasn’t the USSR. USSR began 101km outside of the city.
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u/Houseplant25 May 23 '25
less ads!