Life in the Soviet Union

[Glocksman]

During the early 1980's, I was fortunate enough to find a local bookstore that carried Soviet Life magazine.
The glossy full color pictures and depictions of 'average' Soviet citizens were interesting because despite being a full fledged Reaganbot at that stage of my life, I'd always wanted to travel and experience foreign cultures firsthand.

In fact, you could say that my exposure to SL at that formative period of my life (high school years) opened my eyes to the fact that Russians and other foreigners were human beings just like myself, with hopes and dreams similar to my own.

I don't mean to give the impression that I was a hippie peacenik at that point, because I wasn't.
My point is that SL was my first inkling that there was more to the USSR than the caricatures I was exposed to in Soldier of Fortune magazine (another of the periodicals I bought back then) and that peace just might be preferable to war in some cases.

Keep in mind though that the time frame I'm talking about was when I was between the ages of 12 to 16, so my opinions weren't always the result of rational discussion between adults.

This sometimes incoherent 'stream of remembrance' post was brought to you by Glocksman.

[Logical Mike]

Great thread guys, just great!

My question is on dating and marriage.

I guess I simply have a few Q's for the enlightened.

1) How controlled was dating? Did a factory worker have access to the daughter of a political leader? Or was there a class discrepency that tended to be in place?

2) What happens if 16 year old Boris knocked up 15 year old Natasha?

3) Did you live together pre-marriage like we tend to do here? Or was this frowned upon?

4) Who pays in the USSR?

5) How is divorce handled?

6) Were you even allowed to watch Rocky 4?

Thanks in advance!

[K. A. Pital]

1) How controlled was dating? Did a factory worker have access to the daughter of a political leader? Or was there a class discrepency that tended to be in place?

Yes he had the access, but the parents of such a child would frown upon such relations. In general, it depended on the parents, family, friends, etc. Some famous actors in the USSR for example were married to simple engineers (as opposed to similar art people), etc.

2) What happens if 16 year old Boris knocked up 15 year old Natasha?

Hmm... most likely nothing actually. The 1960 Criminal Code had penalties for "sex with minors" but what constituted a minor was defined as "a person who has not reached sexual maturity" without a precise indication of age. The Code of Penal Medicine and biology textbooks placed the "sexual maturity" at 14 years, so technically he might get away.

However, if the prosecutor would be relentless, he might try to push the age limit higher and this will basically get Boris in jail.

Did you live together pre-marriage like we tend to do here? Or was this frowned upon?

Marital status gave benefits when receiving new flats and/or houses, therefore people tended to just marry quickly regardless of the seriousness of relationship to get separate housing. They would divorce later.

Who pays in the USSR?

EDIT: Bleh, thanks to Pezook. The man always pays.

5) How is divorce handled?

Divorce was commenced by the Z.A.G.S. (civil status registration bureau) without much paperwork after one of the family members filed for divorce. The details of property division were later solved in a civil court. In Stalin's times, there was a deviation from this rule where divorce might only be commenced through a court of law (it was part of Stalin's "family values" political line). In pre-Revolutionary times, divorce was simply nigh nonexistent in Russia (only through a church, which rarely gave permission).

Were you even allowed to watch Rocky 4?

Not in the cinemas, Rocky 4 was banned from screening. I don't remember if under the article "anti-Soviet" or "racist" but banned nonetheless.

[PeZook]

1) How controlled was dating? Did a factory worker have access to the daughter of a political leader? Or was there a class discrepency that tended to be in place?

No legal restrictions of this sort existed in communist Poland. Social restrictions, on the other hand, well

3) Did you live together pre-marriage like we tend to do here? Or was this frowned upon?

Flats were always in short supply, so people tended to marry, move in with his or her parents, then move out to their own flat/home.

4) Who pays in the USSR?

The man, of course. Duh.

[Logical Mike]

Thanks for the answers guys.

If you were working in a field, let's say you were a civil engineer. Then as you hit your 30's you realized your true calling was the medical field, how does one migrate his career?

How was homosexuality handled?

If I were your neighbor, and you overheard me discussing things that were illegal, what was the proper manner to report this to the authorities? What would be the reprecussions?

Was marijunia as freely available as it was in states? We were pretty dogmatic in the 50's and early 60's, yet it was able to be acquired rather easily.

[Samuel]

How was homosexuality handled?

It was illegal. Stas can give the details, but a quick glance reveals Stalin criminalized both homosexuals and lesbians.

How accurate is this?
http://www.savanne.ch/tusovka/en/pilot/ ... ussia.html

Was marijunia as freely available as it was in states? We were pretty dogmatic in the 50's and early 60's, yet it was able to be acquired rather easily.

The US was not a totalitarian regime. I'm sure if they wanted it illegal, they could make it disappear.

[K. A. Pital]

If you were working in a field, let's say you were a civil engineer. Then as you hit your 30's you realized your true calling was the medical field, how does one migrate his career?

Apply for public education in another city. The nationwide register re-checks were not quite as ubiquotous, so you had a good chance of getting higher educaton free again. Failing that, you could get middle professional education for free. Also, the hospital might send you for re-education if you made it as a nurse into it initially but later tried to push for a doctor.

How was homosexuality handled?

Male, criminalized in 1934. Female, status undefined - depended on the willingness of local authorities, local customs etc. For more, see here
Communism and homosexuality

I'm not sure there was active reporting of lesbians to the police, since no legal basis existed for it; there is contradicting information on whether they faced penalties or not, though it's possible that in Stalin's time they did (not criminal, like males, but psychiatric).

If I were your neighbor, and you overheard me discussing things that were illegal, what was the proper manner to report this to the authorities? What would be the reprecussions?

A call to the police, a call to the KGB or a written note to either would be appropriate. Reprecussions depend on the era. In Stalin's times, you'd get a criminal case on your name and a trial. Later, mostly nothing. What are "illegal things"? Joking about leaders is not "illegal". If you overheard your neighbor planning a crime, that would be different of course. The common cases of "reporting" included people with a material interest reporting their neighbors planning crimes whereas they did nothing in reality. In Stalin's time that'd be enough for a cointoss (50-50) probability of landing in jail. Later, the prosecutorial system was reformed so that without "undeniable evidence" a case would simply never reach trial at all; meaning that any report that would not be substantiated by clear material evidence would not reach trial.

Was marijunia as freely available as it was in states?

Marijuana was never a popular drug in Russia. In fact, drug addiction was nigh absent in the USSR. The common problems were alcoholism and, during the last years, a rise of toxicomania among the youth. Drugs like marijuana, or heavier substances like heroine, cocaine were not present in any quantities whatsoever, as far as I know.

[Mayabird]

Toxicomania? First time I've encountered that term. Do you mean stuff like sniffing chemicals or actually ingesting poisons?
[line 2]

[K. A. Pital]

Toxicomania? First time I've encountered that term. Do you mean stuff like sniffing chemicals or actually ingesting poisons?

Ingestion or inhalation of glue, construction chemicals, toxic utility gases and other toxic substances, with side effects for the brain quite obviously.

[[R_H]]

Stas, I have a question about foreign students.

Did most of them go to study in the Soviet Union, and relatively few in the rest of the Warsaw Pact?

I'm only asking because the Ambassador from Benin went to university in Yugoslavia, which seemed strange to me.

[Samuel]

Yugoslavia wasn't in the Warsaw Pact.

[K. A. Pital]

Nations of the Warsaw Pact took their own students, albeit in lesser quantities than the USSR did, but simply because they were, um, smaller. Also, Yugoslavia wasn't part of the WARPAC, it was part of the NAM. Anyhow, what's so strange? The "student" chooses which nation to go to, depending on diplomatic relations with the nations that offer education.

[[R_H]]

Yugoslavia wasn't in the Warsaw Pact.

Ahh

Nations of the Warsaw Pact took their own students, albeit in lesser quantities than the USSR did, but simply because they were, um, smaller. Also, Yugoslavia wasn't part of the WARPAC, it was part of the NAM. Anyhow, what's so strange? The "student" chooses which nation to go to, depending on diplomatic relations with the nations that offer education.

I wasn't aware that they had a choice.

Thanks for the clarification.

[Netko]

Because Yugoslavia was big in the non-aligned movement, and also one of the most developed members (if not the most developed one), it hosted numerous students from African and Middle Eastern members of the NAM, to whom it offered the best education available to them, along with stipends to allow them to come over and get the free education. That has a legacy even today in that bit of strangeness where a good chunk of the educated in Africa is Yugoslav-educated.

It also happens to be pretty lucrative for Croatia these days, do to it allowing good contacts in a lot of those countries, so it was a bit of farsightedness of the people in charge back then.

A lot also stayed, usually do to the usual "meet local girlfriend who you marry" situation (and obviously, the quality of life is better here then there). Its not a large minority, but its present, and its disproportionally well educated and integrated do to their method of immigration. I've had a friend each in both primary and high school with such a background.

[Shroom Man 777]

How much did the USSR have in the way of theme parks and stuff? Did they ever have anything on the scale of Disneyland?

[Kaiser Caesar]

This might seem like an odd question, but how prevelent were VHSs and other such devices in the Soviet Union?

[PeZook]

This might seem like an odd question, but how prevelent were VHSs and other such devices in the Soviet Union?

My family had one, and my father was a repair technician in a state owned electronics company.

[Kaiser Caesar]

Another question: how popular/prevelent were Western books, both fiction and nonfiction, in the Eastern Bloc?

[PeZook]

Another question: how popular/prevelent were Western books, both fiction and nonfiction, in the Eastern Bloc?

Oh, missed that.

Looking at the book collection my parents accumulated during the PRL, I'd say - not very. The selection was pretty good, though, and contrary to what some ignorant people write, censorship wasn't that much of a problem after Stalinism came out of fashion.

If a book stayed out of politics, it was pretty much guaranteed to pass the process (remember, that's for Poland), which meant there was quite a vibrant market for fiction - especially science fiction. The oldest sci-fi book I have is a 1955 edition of "Magellan's Cloud" by Stanislav Lem. It had some pretty obvious lip service to socialism in it, later books by Lem didn't. I also have dozens of small and large sci-fi books, by authors both known and unknown.

Non fiction books are few and far between, mostly textbooks and advice books of various kinds. I have some really excellent Communist sex-ed manuals for parents and teenagers alike, though: very factual and no-nonsense, unlike some of the more recent publications which seem to quake in fear of the religious idiots, or at least pay lip service to them.

Small disclaimer: that's a review of my parents' book collection. I haven't had the opportunity to shop around during the PRL, so I may be wrong about the availability of some books.

One thing I remember is one of my uni professors describing how they had to translate foreign economic textbooks themselves on a typewriter, and then hand our copies to the students. But that's obvious, since Samuelson wasn't really all that hot for communism

[fgalkin]

Another question: how popular/prevelent were Western books, both fiction and nonfiction, in the Eastern Bloc?

My family has an extensive collection of Western classics, mostly French, in Russian translations (Flaubert, Balzac, Dumas (both), Guy de Maupassant), as well as various "adventure" novels, preferably with an anti-colonial twist (Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Read were popular). So was Mark Twain. I've read the entire collected literary works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells in Russian. There was also a series called "The Library of Modern Science Fiction," which had selected works by Asimov, Bradbury, Simak, Vonnegut, Kobo Abe, etc). O. Henry and Jack London were huge in the Soviet Union, much more so than in their home country, without relation to their actual literary merits.

With 20th century Western writers, things get a lot more complicated- that's where the censorship would come in, or books would be banned in their entirety. However, it was possible to amass a library of hundreds of "non-threatening" Western books in Soviet-published Russian translations, as my family's example shows. The books in the original language would be much harder to get, and I'd imagine one would have to be a translator of some sort to get one's hands on a decent selection.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... just how bad was collectivization for Russkie agriculture? And what could've been done to fix the problem? Because I've been reading on Russian agriculture problems and am curious as to any proposed solutions to the whole mess.

[K. A. Pital]

Hrm... just how bad was collectivization for Russkie agriculture?

Pretty bad, primarily for everything connected with food and light industry. The heaviest blow was against the stock-breeding sector. Until the onset of WWII the livestock fund did not recuperate to pre-collectivization levels. As a direct consequence, the leather industry and fur industries suffered as well. Grain harvests were impacted negatively far more by Stalins' export policies than collectivization itself.

And what could've been done to fix the problem?

I'd say (and I'm not alone in this opinion) the best solution for the 1930s' would be to abandon the collectivization as a policy. Alternatively, implement a milder version that would not result in such a drastic livestock fund collapse. Modernization of agricultural equipment could have been anyway guided in a centralized way without resorting to measures that forced mass livestock slaughter.