@@davidroberts1689 In free world, corn shoots out of the ground if you plant it. In Soviet Russia, soldiers shoot you to the ground if you don't plant corn.
I've seen Khrushchev in Denmark in 1964 driving on to a dinner with the then rather young coming queen of Danmark Margrethe II, he waved with his straw hat at us kids. Never forget that guy :)
@@wisdomleader85 I remember when the "net" was 1200 Bauds landline modems, no "WWW" but only BBS one had to know the telephone on, sure today's internet is a revolution.
My grandad was born in 1947 Lithuania SR and became tractor driver in one of these collective farms (cholkoz). He said you productivity was measured by amount of fuel your tractor used, so they would just drive till the end of the field and release some fuel in the ditch, also working while drunk was normal.
@@johnarbuckle2619 unfortunatly yes, it was too naive and did not take into considiration people's laziness and desire to do nothing and get everything. It expected people to actually work.
@@Tabris94 More than laziness is the fact that you are setting up a perverse incentive by measuring productivity that way. Allocating resources using arbitrary measurements that some bureaucrat came up with is always going to be inferior to using price signals.
@@Tabris94 You are looking at this the wrong way, they did that shit because they didn't own what they were working with/for. Nobody dumps fuel they paid for and nobody works drunk on their own land.
Fun Fact: Khrushchev is obsessed with corn, he used corn to launch the virgin lands campaign, a campaign to boost Soviet agricultural output where corn is the centre of attention, which subsequently failed. In fact he loved corn so much that when he visited the US he became a very close friend with one US farmer. He was also obsessed with US agricultural methods and technology which he attempted to duplicate back home to boost the USSR's total agricultural output.
He never took into account the enormous geographical advantages the US had: incredible climate for agriculture, lots of arable land and ample water, not to mention an incredible inland water system to easily transport commodities to markets. The USSR had almost none of these.
The Kim regime in North Korea did the same. Originating in the Western Hemisphere, corn is not, to say the least, a traditional staple in Korea or anywhere in Asia, but Kim Jong Il imposed it as a major supplement to rice. With both crops failing in the 90s, causing famine, they've pushed potatoes. The Irish could tell you the risks of that...
A relative of mine has a picture of himself (2 years old) sitting on top of Khrushchev’s shoulders during his visit to the US in ‘59 at a farm in Iowa.
I get actually excited when Cold War uploads. Since Khrushchev is one of my favorite interesting figures in Soviet Union history, I am glad his good side gets a spot light too! Thank you very much!
Imagine a timeline in which Khrushchev had not been austed and his dynamic style survived beyond him. He surely wasn't perfect but overall his heart seems to have been in the right place.
His heart in the right place at scale only with how bad other Communists were. If Tito is the nicest and most flexible Communist Dictator then Kruschev is in the middle of that and your stereotypical brutal Communist.... so agreed, better for the Soviet people if his style was maintained instead of going back to hardline with Brezhnev.
Why would an American mom be working? Only dumb broads simultaneously pursue career and family; you can half ass both or dedicate yourself to specializing in one or the other. Cry me a river for the femoids who've been brainwashed into wanting to be men.
Comparing US living conditions to the USSR in after war period is very unfair though, considering US was untouched by the war, while USSR was almost completely destroyed, with tens of milions dead.
Only the most western parts of the USSR was destroyed. Most of the land west of the Ural Mountains remained untouched. Besides, last I checked, though I could be wrong, the living standards didn't dwindle that much prior to WW2 anyway.
@@stephenjenkins7971 you're kidding right? Prior to WW2 there were basically nothing but taiga and ice on the other side of the Ural mountains. As the matter of fact, it was the relocation of industry during WW2 that helped to skyrocket the development of Siberia and Far East of Russia in the first place (after that it was oil and gas deposits).
@Gachibass Commentator I never said anything that went against this. It was a serious damage to the USSR economy, but most of everything east of Moscow and west of the Urals were untouched.
@@stephenjenkins7971 that is like saying most of the Amazon Rainforest is untouched.... Last I check Amazon rainforest doesn't produce refrigerators and cars.
@ The Cold War Please cover the Novocherkassk Massacre, it is way too little talked about in the west, and in Russia. I lost family in that mess, and I personally would welcome seeing someone with an audience talk about it.
I had relatives who lived near this place. They told my grandparents about this incident, but they did not believe them. However, in the 80s, newspapers began to write about this incident and they changed their minds.
My Muscovite girlfriend almost cried when we were at the memorial to the victims of starvation in Ukraine. I said to her,"Because of Stalin." She said," No, no." Later that evening when we were back in our apartment she surreptitiously looked it up on the internet and then admitted it really did happen because of nutbag Stalin.
@@toplak What you are failing to see is the Soviet Union was not Socialist, it was Vanguard Communist. A form of Pseudo Socialism. The closest to real Socialism this world has seen is Scandinavian countries. China, and Cuba, who claim they are Socialist or Communist, are like the Soviet Union, really not. They too are Vanguard Communist.
@@ninja011 I don’t think that in Scandinavia the production is centrally planed. Socialism is not just communism. Socialist county was Nazi Germany (National Socialist) and Mussolini’s Italy (Fascist) and yes is not the same but there are similarities. But in all the above mentioned countries the production was centrally planed and there was not a free market. Everything was regulated by the state.
Great vlog as always! In Norway in the major cities the housing problem did not end until the 1980s! Cars was limited until 1960! Yes, please. When Nikita visited Scandinavia in 1962 he was shown all the newest and fancyest flats. He got a angry at that on PMs of Sweden and Denmark. When he came to Oslo he was shown a not so fancy part of of the city with no indoor plumming and outhouses. Our PM at the time, MR Einar Gerhardsen said we are still working on this to have them removed and all new housing by 1970. Nikita said with a smile. We only have this in Russia! Our PM invited him home to his flat that was about 140m2. Nikita said : nice flat, but where do you really live? True story! This is a true social democrat! Mr. Gerhardsen was in power from 1945-1965. He and his fellow social democrats were wrighting down how the wellfare state of Norway was going to be while being in prison in Germany during the war.
Your PM Gerhardsen reminds me of the Dutch PM Willem Drees. He lived in a simple 45 square meter appartment in the Hague. When a American official came to visit him, the American was very much impressed by his simple lifestyle. So the Americans gave the green light for the Marshall Aid to the Netherlands. Drees was a true social democrat.
I really love how you discuss the Soviet Union and other socialist states. Not shying away from the ugly parts, sure, but also ready to give credit where credit is due. It's a great example of proper scholarship and gives us in the modern day a better frame of reference to critically examine what worked and what didn't instead of relying on the common understanding in the west of "gulags and no food, lol!".
Yes, people forget that the USSR had some hugely successful sectors (education, infrastructure, health and - obviously - defence) to offset its miserable failures elsewhere. The "markets versus central plannng" debate is not quite as one-sided as people think.
@@joriankell1983 It failed because of the sectors that were the "miserable failures" I referred to. And do not forget, BTW, that it took over 70 years to fail.
@@joriankell1983 It failed for multiple reasons (including socio-political ones), and it's failure is also relative. Compared to the Russian Empire it failed far less.
@@MrSleepyMan101 Worked tool and die with a guy that was a spetznatz said his sister was a doctor and hadn’t been paid in a year. That they house everyone in those ugly high rise apartments and people would jump out of them every day to their death.
@@MrSleepyMan101 Worked with a woman that was a practicing Olympic gymnast and held 2 other jobs and was not being paid by any of them. She gave herself up to be a bride as her husband was dead and she and her daughter were literally starving to death. Was married by an American vet. Eight months later her mother gets a hold of her and says I have some money from one of your jobs. She told the mother keep it I’m in America now. She also told how her father saved most of his life to buy a car. It was crazy. It could only be Russian made and he had to tell where he got it who he got it from why he wanted it and so on. When perestroika came he went get his money and there wasn’t enough left to get a loaf of bread. I asked who took it. She replied. The government.
@@MrSleepyMan101 A man in our church married a woman when he was a missionary to Russia. She was very beautiful and very smart and was a doctor over there. People encouraged her to test out and be one here. She had no interest. We were at a dinner one night and found she was kinda spoiled. Her father was a general and in the black market. She got into real estate. Found a rich guy and left the guy from the church. She told how nothing got done without a box of chocolates or nylons at a doctor or dentist. And there was a town near a lake and they wanted to run water to the town but they mayor wanted a kick back and they would pay it so it never got done.
Just the video I was waiting for. I was curious to know Khruchev's policies. Great work once again. Hope someday they will cover Gorbachev's policies. Eagerly waiting for that
Really nice to finally see content on Soviet History and the Cold War that isn’t full-blown propaganda towards one side or the other Thanks for putting this out man
I hope you will find the time to discuss the 1958 education reform and, in particular, the implications for the USSR's nationalities and language policies. There are excellent works on this by Laurent Coumel and Jeremy Smith, among others. The crisis it caused to "national schools" in many Union and autonomous republics emerged later in the Perestroika years.
He was very old when he lost his position. I don't think this would lead to something good, but I also don't think this would change history very much.
@@chisinau1302---Well thanks for that. And I really didn't care that people replied or not. I was just glad I typed it down. But I really love that I got a bunch of likes for my comment. I usually don't get this many. It's nice.
Khrushchev made errors however I still feel that it was he and not Kennedy who got out of the Cuban missile crisis without making the earth into a charcoal briquette.
This was my first time on your channel and it was fascinating. We are taught so little about Soviet Russia and any information you provide would be interesting, including the massacre in 1962.
In the late 1930s, the Central Committee in Moscow sent an urgent telegram to an obscure Soviet republic deep in the Caucasus : "Urgent. Warning of a risk of strong telluric activity in your republic. Take all necessary measures and report to Central Committee." Two days later, the authorities of the said Soviet republic reply : "In accordance with the warning received, we proceeded to arrest 6,532 Tellurics, who confessed their crimes and were immediately liquidated. It is possible that some of the Telluric leaders escaped us, because our operations were hampered by violent earthquakes."
@@BichaelStevens "Urgent: Warning of a risk of strong soil/earth activity in your republic. Take all necessary measures and report to Central Comitte." They were warning of a possible strong earthquake.
People do actually still live in Khruschtovkas in Czechia. Most of them have been repaired and their prices have risen significantly as the new democratic state failed to provide anything close to a sufficient housing among other infrastructure such as parking lots, modern highways or railways. By the way, 2 of 4 main city districts in my hometown were built after the WW2. The first one nicknamed the 'Little Moscow' almost entirely in the Stalinist style and the second mostly made of Khruschtovkas and larger blocks of flats later on originally called 'Stalingrad' but renamed soon. Comrade Khruschev himself visited the city and the first new district before the construction of most of the second in 1957. However, local party leaders were not happy when they received an unpleasant surprise as they were criticized for the overly decorated style.
"as the new democratic state failed to provide anything close to a sufficient housing among other infrastructure such as parking lots, modern highways or railways" Which obviously is not true. You forgot that part, when the new government privatised those flat for equivavelnt of 5 or 10 month incomes to the former renters making them property owners.
It has been forgotten to say that in USSR, there was no such thing as planned obsolescence. That means the products were more durable then in US. In many cases multiple times more. So that could give that 1958 staitistics a bit more nuanced meaning.
My dad had a handcranked drill that was made in India in the 90s. India was a socialist democracy which leaned more towards pure socialist practices in governance back than. The drill was used to put screws on PVC sprinkler pipe joints above 2 inches in diameter on top of using solvent glue to counter the water pressure. The drill was bought when the farm was first opened and it outlasted every other tool from 1990s despite it being exposed to rain, mud and everything in between. I remember my dad mentioning the reason India is still very poor is because stuff they make never needs to be replaced as he pointed towards the drill. Mind you, our first electrolux washing machine lasted a good 15 over years with only one breakdown in all those years. It was retired and replaced with another electrolux after the exterior panelling had rusted off so badly that it started wobbling during the spin cycle. In between the old machine and the new, Electrolux Malaysia had ceased operations for a few years after an explosive growth period in the early 90s before restarting back closer to the new millenium. Their earlier machines were so well made it rarely needed to be replaced.
Oh I can use this joke: Khrushchev: I will promise that every Soviet citizen will have bread every day. "Do we get butter with it?" - someone asks from a crowd. Khrushchev: Every two weeks with a slight chance to increase it to once a week.
A few notes: 1)A massive step made by Khrushchev was the liberalisation of soviet culture and science. It pulled away the mass stagnation of such areas during the Stalin administration (which would return under Brezhnev) and allowed the soviet superior, populist education system to propel the nation to one of world-Benchmark technological innovation. 2) Furthermore, his attempts of limiting the, by then, bloated and dominating bureaucracy, which shared a significant blame for driving policy during the Stalin years and created resistance to technological implementation. Policies such as reducing their numbers and adopting a 3-year rotation led to a more flexible and subservient bureaucracy, solving many inefficiencies produced by them. 3) the belief that the private sector in agriculture was more efficient than the collectivised sector is largely a myth, perpetuated by false interpretations of data. i. This was calculated taking into account value, rather than volume, which showed the socialised farm produce, which was heavily subsidised and sold at much lower prices, to appear less than the proportional size of private-produced produce. ii. The private sector was significantly larger than calculated, since in such statistics, land allotted as private plots does not include the large area allocated to the peasants as pasturage for their private livestock; combined with land used to produce grain for fodder, the pasture and the individual plots total almost 20% of all Soviet farmland. iii. Private farming may also be relatively inefficient, taking roughly 40% of all agricultural labor to produce only 26% of all output by value. iv. Another problem is these criticisms tend to discuss only a small number of consumer products and do not take into account the fact that the kolkhozy and sovkhozy produced mainly grain, cotton, flax, forage, seed, and other non-consumer goods with a relatively low value per unit area. 4) it is wrong to compare the living standards of the US and the USSR, since the comparison doesn't take into account the large disparity of domestic and "allied" economic power, compared to population. The US had a stronger economy from the beginning, significantly stronger allies (which, aside from raw economic power, led to them being able to spend less money to the military than the soviet union could) and far more access to cheap labour and resources from the third world, partly by military might and partly by the soviets' ideological opposition for such method. However, for countries with similar conditions and economic development, the USSR and its allies created significantly better living conditions than their western counterparts.
I live in the US version of the Xrushchaev housing plan. 2 rooms + bathroom, with a kitchenette at the corner of the living room. In 2021. And the rent is wayyy over my retirement (700/month versus my 400/month retirement).. Add basic utilities (I do not watch TV or own a car. Nor do I have a cellphone) and my housing/quality of life is considered fair to good in my "fringe of the city" neighborhood . . . but is unaffordable to a retiree. If I reduce expenses to the barest minimum I would still be unable to support the place without government assistance, access to foodbanks, and considerable largesse on the part of my friends. The gap between rich and poor has not decreased in 50 years, but it has considerably increased. Economic opportunity remains low for all sectors below the college degree level. As a veteran with learning and cognitive difficulty I am near the nadir of society standards. But so are a lot of others, not just here, but everywhere. The biggest difference between myself and my more fortunate friends is that I have no credit payment. Credit is the death of restraint. It urges us to buy more than we can afford. I see it all the time in friends who own cars and cellphones. They live in fear of each month's mail. So-o yeah. The media hides our gradual sublimation into the rest of the world. It paints a glowing picture of access, excess, and surplus . . . which is simply untrue at the street level-where most Americans live. The difference between truth and the big lie is the whole reason I switched political affiliations. I don't think it matters, realistically, but it was a statement of my change from believing the Big Lie to seeing that advertising lies wastes a great deal of effort AND reduces voter confidence in the government's oft stated drive to provide better housing at affordable prices and increase in wages/purchasing power closer to the bottom. Disclaimer: your experience in the American Fun House might be different. If so, good for you. I feel no rancor, only sadness, that the USA could not reach its full standards of living potential. Naturally, I have hopes for the future. A lot of us live on hope, as good jobs are not nearly as prevalent as the "haves" pretend. Upward mobility is only available to a very small slice of our population. Some of our towns and even whole cities look like war zones. I cite specifically New Kensington, Pa., due to my proximity with and experience within its limits.
@@ShubhamMishrabro Thanks for you comment and for joining the forum. The more the merrier. I am having a good life, thank you. I have friends and loved ones. I have leave to pursue my loves, my talents, and my imagination. The reason for my personal addition was I was giving my perspective, so I felt some description of my existence would provide context.
Please cover the town that protested against the Soviet Union, I know it a difficult video to make but I feel it is important to discuss these points in history, hopefully to prevent them hapening again
@@pandepanda31 That sounds like an admirable idea! I think a couple of folks have thought about this for a few thousand years... Your thoughts on the solution???
The Food Minister czar was a traditional route to the top job in the USSR. Gorby came up this way, Khrushchev came up this way. He was the guy that really began to drain the Aral Sea, BTW. He used that watershed to massively expand cotton agriculture in the Kazhak desert. Said cotton proved instantly to be a real money spinner as an export crop. The Bolsheviks had an unlimited thirst for Western currency to obtain Western imports. This was also the era of totally crazy attempts to get citrus crops to grow in Siberia -- and other such stunts. There was even a directive to get farm workers to feed straw to their hogs -- in imitation to feeding hay to cows. Those Moscow boys sure were jolly jokers.
Thank you ! I was despairing to see an equivalent to the "lost world of communism" for the USSR ! And yes, I'd like to see an episode on the demonstrations and massacre.
I liked the video but felt that you were maybe comparing the USSR and the USA by USA standards (who owned more vacuum cleaners and so). I have liked to hear about other indicators such as access to higher education
Khrushchev did a lot of good for many in the CCCP if they continued his style of leadership the union may have continued. I'd like to see the chanel project the improvement of lifestyles compare to living condition today
Nice first presentation on their rebuilding activities and trying to take care of the people after 1953. A BIG YES to more on the demonstration. Cheers
Had John F Kennedy lived and Chairman Kruschchev’s policies been given more time we would have inherited a better world. History now reveals that Kruschchev’s threats and shoe pounding were a bluff from a strategically inferior Soviet Union and Kennedy was beginning to see that. Following the Cuban Missile crises the two sides had begun the process of a new Reapproachmeant. Kruschchev was committed to bettering the lives of the common Soviet citizen while maintaining the honor and dignity of his country. Rather than an uncontrolled arms race we could have enjoyed decades of strong economic competition pitting the virtues of our two systems against each other.
I used to judge very harshly the soviet economic policies because I found them very hipocritical, but after some analisys it is easy to understand stalin's priorityzing heavy industry over consumer goods. That is because the soviet union was barely industrialized since the little industrial infrastructure the mostly feudal russian empire had was destroyed, so the best course of action for the government was to spend resources to make more resources(i.e: use the leftover steel to make steel mills to then use this steel to make the machines to only then fabricate consumer products) Unfortunately to the average citzen who was too concerned in working to not starve to understand the big picture this had the effect of causing a disconect between the citizens and the state who was suposed to represent them, such disconect led to a growing resentment on the soviet people that saw their leadership and all that it represented as a bloated and ineficient system, this resentment was furthermore aided by the fact that in the postwar USA everybody had cars, appliances and big houses. Of course most people fail to remerber that the american war industry was not bombed to oblivion which made possible the conversion to civilian use. Other point that people seem not to pay attention is the fact that a similar transition between heavy and light industry ocurred in the west, but it took about 100 years or so for the english coal mines and steel mills of the 19th century to give way to the eletrodomestics factories of the 1960s
'Unfortunately to the average citizen who was too concerned in working to not starve to understand the big picture' - I'm working hard reading this. Lol
Great video! Please make similar videos about other major Cold War players as well. Most will know about US life in the 50-60s, but France, West-Germany, Italy are less known. Cheers
I find it ironic that capitalist countries, even developing ones, at one point had much more living space than the average Soviet citizen. But nowadays, me and a lot of my middle-class colleagues are living in capitalist kruschevskas, because housing is just too expensive I sincerely have little hope of ever owning a house and I'm well aware that things people took for granted decades ago are high-level luxuries to the average person. Sure, we have stuff that'd be unimaginable to people from the 60s, but at the same technology progressed I feel the hope of achieving an actual better life than our parents is just dead at this point Communism failed, but capitalism's victory feels bitter at this point
More like when Commienism failed, Capitalism got relieved to drop any of the pretenses of bringing a better quality of life and become no different from what they were against in the beginning...
The reason why a major portion of the industry went into military production was that the Soviet Union under no circumstance wanted a repetion of WW2 with it's 27 million deaths. In the next potential war they wanted to have the upper hand in terms of technology and they succeeded. Even today Russia is among the top producers of top tier military hardware. Part of this was the fact that the US created NATO which was a clear signal for the USSR that war was indeed a possibility.
I agree and it seems odd that the Cold War is being taught like it's ancient history! Khrushchev said in the 60s that America and it's values would be defeated and it would come from within. We have a population that vote for and are in favor of Communists and Socialists. Mr K kinda got it right... Yall Take Care and be safe, John
@@terrorgaming459 Cuban missile crisis was a serious issue for American Security. Soviet missiles that close to the United States may have given the Soviets the idea that a first strike attack could be winnable. It wouldn't have been but could have been enough to get the world destroyed by WW3. My Pop was part of the Naval blockade, that ended that mess. Yall take Care and be safe, John
It’s always crazy to me when people compare the ussr to the us art the same time. The us was for the entire existence of the ussr the center of a global empire and had 250 years of capitalist development as a head start. These countries were never on an equal footing, ussr is much better understood when compared to India or Brazil at the same time, places that experienced a similar economic exploitation at the hands of European empires in the 19th century but remained capitalist in the 20th century.
People forget that under the USSR, Russia went from a feudal agrarian state with mass illiteracy and no industrial base to being a nuclear powered industrial giant that conquered space within less than half a century. There were numerous shortfalls and deficiencies in the Soviet Union, but to deem it as having been a complete failure is short-sighted and lacking nuance.
It has nothing to do with it. Japan surpassed Russia in 4 years, and even demolished its military in the ruso Japanese War. They went from feudal to modern state in no time. Then in ww2, Japan literally got nuked and it recovered and become the 2nd richest country per capita and as a whole in less than 25 years. Socialism doesn't work. That's all
Which European Empire exploited Russia? Russian wasn't a colony it was an empire subjugating other countries. But to see the difference in systems you only need to compare the USSR in 1989 to Russia of today.
Yep - far the most successful part of the Soviet economy was in education, from very unpromising beginnings. There's reasons for that - for some parts of the economy the free market does not work very well at all.
If you think you could just write yourself in any university you are wrong, its the same process as you to get in some to Harvard or any prestigious university, merit.
@@kenoliver8913 except that you had to accept the party indoctrination and toe the party line. Plus you lived under a tyrannical regime. There's always a cost.
I'll bet Comrade Sergei at the Ushanka Show will be a recurring source of info for these videos on everyday life in the USSR! And yes, I would like to see you guys cover the Novocherkassk massacre. If not by itself, maybe do it as part of a video that covers protests, uprisings, and demonstrations in the USSR or the Eastern bloc in general?
Life of an average worker in any european country (at least any country devastated by WWII) in late '50s-early '60s was no better than the one of a soviet worker - comparison with the US, which enjoyed a standard of living unthinkable to much of the world, is not fair.
I remember taking a seminar at Columbia from Selwyn Bialer and I gave a report on Krushev's economic reforms in March 1964. I remember getting all bogged down in a discussion of regional planning versus central planing. That was the main focus by the CIA led American media coverage at this time. Bialer did like what I said about "localism" because the nationality issue was very important. But I barely mentioned in my oral report that Kruscehev was concerned about public dissatisfaction towards ruling party and he wanted more food, better pay and better housing. I should have emphasized that his reforms showed that the Party had to change its previous economic policies. The party could not separate itself from the wishes of the people. I liked what you say here very much. I have often thought about my presentation to this graduate school class and how much I was a victim of what I read in CIA's "Problems of Communism". I did much better using what I read from Pravda and did not dismiss it as mere propaganda. You might think about the bias against reporting realisically about Russia among academics who depend on CIA sources do not question CIA biases. I have thought about this. The CIA did not want me, I remember, because I was seen as too "red" by associations, activities and travel. They did not want people who believed that economic reforms would change or undo the Communist's Party's control. Interestingly, Radio Free Europe in Manhattan has great translations of East European economic reformers like Otto Sik which I used in another seminar with Brezezinski the next year. Are you familiar with the analyses by EE economists of the need for serious reform if socialism was to succeed? On other thing thing: I have long believed people's careers seem to be influenced by their names. For example, the British cold warrior ROBert CONQUEST was surely a well-named writer fighting for Western imperialism against Soviet Empire in the 1950s. In that context, Krushev's name begins with the russian word, "крах", thus making him ever mindful of something like the Soviet economic system's risk of collapsing, if he didn't change its central focus and make it meet the needs of the Soviet people much more.
"Soviet Life" rattled a few cobwebs when he said it. My Jr. High social studies teacher had a subscription and kept them on a rack in his classroom. This was 30 years ago and I'm pretty sure he's gone now, but I wonder what happened to that collection. I hope it didn't just get tossed in the trash. That's piece of history that should be preserved.
I do not know why but our local funeral home had copies of "Soviet Life". As years came and went and they never got any new issues but I enjoyed looking at them.
a lot of the comparisons at 14:00 onward don't take into account the different lifestyles in the USSR. the most obvious example is cars, the USSR had so few cars mainly because public transit was so good, even just on rail the USSR at times had TWENTY times the number of passenger kilometres compared to the US, rapid transit metros were also common in the USSR, even today the US only has 2 more than the USSR did with significantly smaller systems. soviet cities were also generally far better designed with walkability and community in mind while American cities are bankrupting urban sprawls of parking spaces and stroads
This is a good video, I really liked that you took a neutral approach to the topic. When hearing these comparisons between the Socialist and the Capitalist sector, I always wonder about how to compare these two economic systems equally. This is because I noticed that essentially, the Warsaw Pact countries closed their economies to trade with the rest of the world. Thus, I wonder if you should not only compare the richest capitalist country with the biggest socialist country, but instead try to compare the capitalist and socialist economies including all countries. On the other hand, large portions of non-western countries were not fully bound into the economic processes of the global economy, as many were instead focusing on subsidient farming. To conclude, this disparity makes a full comparison between the two economic systems rather difficult, yet still very interesting.
One thing I loved about lenin was he learnt from mistakes. After heavy protests he implemented state capitalism one of the golden age times for soviet union.
@@joriankell1983 yeh that was the time of private entities then stalin and ww2 happened. Soviet mostly didn't had golden age one this then other 60 to 75 then Gorbachev reforms ruined economy otherwise it would have been golden age too
I just want to mention, that a lot of these needed domestic electrical devices ,where produced in the GDR( East Germany). My family told me very often about it. In Reverse, the GDR received Heavy military gear, oil and sometimes cars. Unbelievable to imagine, but the living conditions in the gdr where often better, then in the Soviet Union.
Its important to add that the focus on heavy industry during the "Stalin era" wasnt because of some idea from Stalin himself, its was out of necessity if the Soviet Union was to survive in a hostile world, they would never had survived the second world war if it wasnt for the focus on heavy industry in the early Soviet Union. Its the same with Khrushchev, after the war most fascist states in Europe had been crushed, Soviet Union had new allies in most of the eastern Europe and was now a great military power, the most acute threat was gone and that open up for possibility to work with the living standard of the people, also after many years of internal and extrernal fighting many communists had died and among those still alive there was a wish for a more peacful life and therefore this detente and more liberal standpoint, the party was split between this and those pro class struggle hard liners (pro Stalin). Its never about single leaders
@@goodcomrade2949 No, every single one of those countries, from DDR to Romania where far more independent than any western nation of today or at that time
@@goodcomrade2949 🤣 DDR was so independent that West Germany had to build the wall from preventing their people to fled east, God some people are so stupid.
Gorbachev was visiting Margaret Thatcher and asked her how she makes sure her people have enough food. She said, I don’t, markets do that. Gorbachev had no concept of the law of supply and demand and the function of prices to allocate limited resources. Unbelievable but true.
I really feel like Nikita Khrushchev tried to do his best for the average person. Well, as best as a politician in this world can do especially one in such a flawed and unproven system as the Soviet Union.
This reminds me of my time in the Finnish army. The sergeant major asked us if we knew what a Soviet ass-shaking machine is like. "Well it doesn't shake or fit in your ass."
Lived in a couple of Khrushchyovka while working in the former Soviet Union. One was scruffy, the other in much better condition. Both were quite pleasant to call home. Two bedrooms, endless free hot water and tropical heating in the minus 30 winters. The only way to cool them down was to open the windows. Twin front doors and neighbours smoking in the stairwells. I've lived in much worse in the West.
In the 1950's we lived in Kruschov communal housing, we normally had a feces tax, sometimes a urine tax - If neighbours left their feces in the toilet, they would pay a feces tax of 10 roubles per offence - the urine tax was rarely enforced as it was usually comitted by men who were usually drunk and often wet on the floor. My family were eventually bankrupted due to the feces tax, my uncle was incontinent, but they never took this into consideration, he had to work in the heavy steel industry constantly soiled
Brezhnev instituted some of the changes u credit Khrushchev for like the US grain purchases (with Nixon) and the 1970s pension eligibility adjustment. Would have been helpful if u mentioned Krushchev’s ouster & Brezhnev’s rise. No one seems to remember Brezhnev but for the Cold War generation he was the Soviet Union.
My family lived in one of those flats during reconstruction, they ware really hot in the summer and super cold during winter. Me as a kid had to steal kerosene from nearby helicopter base. The soldiers really liked honey, candies and alcoholic beverages and stuff, so we traded for it.
In the post-war years, the Soviet population did NOT increase, it began to RECOVER. That is not the same thing. Production, most especially of food, did NOT exceed pre-war levels, ever. This only became worse in the 60s.
Obviously something went wrong, otherwise Nicky wouldn't have been "retired"! David, I would like a video on the Brezhnev years! Isn't that the time when bureaucratic corruption peaked and apathy among the population also peaked?
OMG yes please do a Novocherkassk episode, and also on the cultural thaw in general (I remember Khruschev personally insisted on printing Solzhenitsyn, but he also called abstractionist painters "f**gots") As to khruschevkas, I've never lived in one for a long time, but of course lots of my friends and relatives did. They are not awful, just bad. There are no garbage chutes or elevators, the bathroom is cramped with the toilet and the bath in the same room, there is a small window near the ceiling in the bathroom that goes into the kitchen so that you can save on electricity or use it in a blackout, often you can't lie down in the bath, and also the ceilings are typically 2.5m (8 ft 4) high, which is really uncomfortable compared to the old Stalinkas. It still beats the wooden barracks built during and after the war, some of which haven't been demolished to this day.
I am not sure the USSR should be directly compared with the UK and USA who had industrialized several decades before the USSR did, i.e., they had a decades long head start over the USSR. Russia in 1917 was still a mostly feudal peasant society with a very low literacy rate. Direct comparisons should be made with countries that began modern development at a similar time. This applies even more with China, who did not begin industrializing in earnest until the 1950s, so began over a century behind the UK etc.
@@bluemoondiadochi Also the kind of environment they are in and the fact that the US and Britain typically had other massive empires as allies and a host of banana republics. The Soviets only really had China as their most powerful ally and they are still recovering from WW2.
One old eastern corn joke:
- Have you heard that in USSR the corn is like telegraph poles?
- So big?!
- No, so far apart.
There's a Star Trek episode where Chekov mentions the Winter Gardens in er Leningrad.
@@blueberrypirate3601 Alas, futures past and pasts of the future - the bane of every scifi/futurist fantasy writer's life!
In the Soviet Union, the corn doesn't grow you, you grow the corn.
@@davidroberts1689mostly mainly in secret. Shhhh
@@davidroberts1689 In free world, corn shoots out of the ground if you plant it. In Soviet Russia, soldiers shoot you to the ground if you don't plant corn.
I've seen Khrushchev in Denmark in 1964 driving on to a dinner with the then rather young coming queen of Danmark Margrethe II, he waved with his straw hat at us kids.
Never forget that guy :)
The fact that you're commenting about it over five and a half decades later is pretty insane tbh.
@@tylerbozinovski427
It's why the internet is so revolutionary, isn't it?
@@tylerbozinovski427 Well, I am +70 and that moment is worth remembering for me.
@@wisdomleader85 I remember when the "net" was 1200 Bauds landline modems, no "WWW" but only BBS one had to know the telephone on, sure today's internet is a revolution.
he was a good guy, i wish he stayed as a leader of USSR with marshal Zhukov as his vice
My grandad was born in 1947 Lithuania SR and became tractor driver in one of these collective farms (cholkoz). He said you productivity was measured by amount of fuel your tractor used, so they would just drive till the end of the field and release some fuel in the ditch, also working while drunk was normal.
That's central planning for you.
@@johnarbuckle2619 unfortunatly yes, it was too naive and did not take into considiration people's laziness and desire to do nothing and get everything. It expected people to actually work.
I'm carrying on the tradition of work while drunk in 2021
@@Tabris94 More than laziness is the fact that you are setting up a perverse incentive by measuring productivity that way. Allocating resources using arbitrary measurements that some bureaucrat came up with is always going to be inferior to using price signals.
@@Tabris94 You are looking at this the wrong way, they did that shit because they didn't own what they were working with/for. Nobody dumps fuel they paid for and nobody works drunk on their own land.
Fun Fact: Khrushchev is obsessed with corn, he used corn to launch the virgin lands campaign, a campaign to boost Soviet agricultural output where corn is the centre of attention, which subsequently failed. In fact he loved corn so much that when he visited the US he became a very close friend with one US farmer. He was also obsessed with US agricultural methods and technology which he attempted to duplicate back home to boost the USSR's total agricultural output.
He never took into account the enormous geographical advantages the US had: incredible climate for agriculture, lots of arable land and ample water, not to mention an incredible inland water system to easily transport commodities to markets. The USSR had almost none of these.
@@kchall5 Not to mention the USSR always have bad luck on weather...
@@axelpatrickb.pingol3228 That's not bad luck it's called Siberia.
@@whoknows7968 who knows
The Kim regime in North Korea did the same. Originating in the Western Hemisphere, corn is not, to say the least, a traditional staple in Korea or anywhere in Asia, but Kim Jong Il imposed it as a major supplement to rice. With both crops failing in the 90s, causing famine, they've pushed potatoes. The Irish could tell you the risks of that...
The more I learn, the more I can't help but like Khrushchev...
A relative of mine has a picture of himself (2 years old) sitting on top of Khrushchev’s shoulders during his visit to the US in ‘59 at a farm in Iowa.
That's really cool
PRAISE BE TO THE CORNLORD
I am the great Cornholio!
CORN FOR THE CORN GOD,
COBBS FOR THE CORN THRONE!
Maize master
So many corny jokes 🌽
You're all aMAIZEing!.. Eh, eh!.. I'll show myself out...
The way Khrushchev laughs while holding the corn cob in that fashion, cracks me up every single time.😂😂😂
Good man.
Khruschev Corn God 😂
"Now imagine porn, but replace the "P" with "C". " -Kruschev probably
ua-cam.com/video/QtWNnmb8Kwg/v-deo.html
NKVD Chief Genrikh Yagoda was a Porn addict.
😏🤤🌽
-Kruschev
So all of this was because he had a corn fetish. Guess eggplants didn't do it for him.
Unfathomably based.
Khrushchev does love his corn.
Cant blame him i love corn
@The Chekist do you even know what chekists did to innocent people they shot them with no reason sent them to gulag so dont use that name pls
@@brunogrende4360 😔
@@brunogrende4360 Maybe he's a Stalinist or something.
@@getmeoutofsanfrancisco9917 that could be true
Please do the Novocherkassk massacre, I’ve never heard of it. Anything that improves general knowledge is always good!
Two rooms and mushroom filling? I would never dare dream of such extravaganza.
I get actually excited when Cold War uploads. Since Khrushchev is one of my favorite interesting figures in Soviet Union history, I am glad his good side gets a spot light too! Thank you very much!
Khrushchev was the single most responsible person for the fall of the Soviet Union
@@prysrek8858 as well as Brezhnev and Gorbachev
He was called the butcher of Kiev for a good reason. Please find it out
Imagine a timeline in which Khrushchev had not been austed and his dynamic style survived beyond him. He surely wasn't perfect but overall his heart seems to have been in the right place.
His heart in the right place at scale only with how bad other Communists were. If Tito is the nicest and most flexible Communist Dictator then Kruschev is in the middle of that and your stereotypical brutal Communist.... so agreed, better for the Soviet people if his style was maintained instead of going back to hardline with Brezhnev.
Revisionist propaganda
Please cover the Novocherkassk massacre, you're the first history UA-cam guy to talk about it
Yes please
Pretty please :)
Yes, please provide this information.
I never heard of this and I would like to know more.
You Tube has the film "Dear Comrades" about the Novocherkassk events.
8:56 "Paid pregnancy leave was also increased from 77 days to 112 days." Wow, that's 112 more days than American moms get!
Why would an American mom be working? Only dumb broads simultaneously pursue career and family; you can half ass both or dedicate yourself to specializing in one or the other. Cry me a river for the femoids who've been brainwashed into wanting to be men.
Comparing US living conditions to the USSR in after war period is very unfair though, considering US was untouched by the war, while USSR was almost completely destroyed, with tens of milions dead.
Only the most western parts of the USSR was destroyed. Most of the land west of the Ural Mountains remained untouched. Besides, last I checked, though I could be wrong, the living standards didn't dwindle that much prior to WW2 anyway.
@@stephenjenkins7971 you're kidding right? Prior to WW2 there were basically nothing but taiga and ice on the other side of the Ural mountains. As the matter of fact, it was the relocation of industry during WW2 that helped to skyrocket the development of Siberia and Far East of Russia in the first place (after that it was oil and gas deposits).
@Gachibass Commentator I never said anything that went against this. It was a serious damage to the USSR economy, but most of everything east of Moscow and west of the Urals were untouched.
@@stephenjenkins7971 that is like saying most of the Amazon Rainforest is untouched.... Last I check Amazon rainforest doesn't produce refrigerators and cars.
@@legokingtm9462 B E T
@ The Cold War Please cover the Novocherkassk Massacre, it is way too little talked about in the west, and in Russia. I lost family in that mess, and I personally would welcome seeing someone with an audience talk about it.
I had relatives who lived near this place. They told my grandparents about this incident, but they did not believe them. However, in the 80s, newspapers began to write about this incident and they changed their minds.
My Muscovite girlfriend almost cried when we were at the memorial to the victims of starvation in Ukraine. I said to her,"Because of Stalin."
She said," No, no."
Later that evening when we were back in our apartment she surreptitiously looked it up on the internet and then admitted it really did happen because of nutbag Stalin.
I thought everybody was equal in the Soviet Union and it was a socialist paradise. What a shambles socialism is.🙈
@@toplak What you are failing to see is the Soviet Union was not Socialist, it was Vanguard Communist. A form of Pseudo Socialism. The closest to real Socialism this world has seen is Scandinavian countries. China, and Cuba, who claim they are Socialist or Communist, are like the Soviet Union, really not. They too are Vanguard Communist.
@@ninja011 I don’t think that in Scandinavia the production is centrally planed. Socialism is not just communism. Socialist county was Nazi Germany (National Socialist) and Mussolini’s Italy (Fascist) and yes is not the same but there are similarities. But in all the above mentioned countries the production was centrally planed and there was not a free market. Everything was regulated by the state.
Great vlog as always! In Norway in the major cities the housing problem did not end until the 1980s! Cars was limited until 1960! Yes, please. When Nikita visited Scandinavia in 1962 he was shown all the newest and fancyest flats. He got a angry at that on PMs of Sweden and Denmark. When he came to Oslo he was shown a not so fancy part of of the city with no indoor plumming and outhouses. Our PM at the time, MR Einar Gerhardsen said we are still working on this to have them removed and all new housing by 1970. Nikita said with a smile. We only have this in Russia! Our PM invited him home to his flat that was about 140m2. Nikita said : nice flat, but where do you really live? True story! This is a true social democrat! Mr. Gerhardsen was in power from 1945-1965. He and his fellow social democrats were wrighting down how the wellfare state of Norway was going to be while being in prison in Germany during the war.
Your PM Gerhardsen reminds me of the Dutch PM Willem Drees. He lived in a simple 45 square meter appartment in the Hague. When a American official came to visit him, the American was very much impressed by his simple lifestyle. So the Americans gave the green light for the Marshall Aid to the Netherlands. Drees was a true social democrat.
I really love how you discuss the Soviet Union and other socialist states. Not shying away from the ugly parts, sure, but also ready to give credit where credit is due. It's a great example of proper scholarship and gives us in the modern day a better frame of reference to critically examine what worked and what didn't instead of relying on the common understanding in the west of "gulags and no food, lol!".
Yes, people forget that the USSR had some hugely successful sectors (education, infrastructure, health and - obviously - defence) to offset its miserable failures elsewhere. The "markets versus central plannng" debate is not quite as one-sided as people think.
@@kenoliver8913 how hugely successful can it be if it still failed?
@@kenoliver8913 Infrastructure is debatable, but the rest yeah (I would add scientific research).
@@joriankell1983 It failed because of the sectors that were the "miserable failures" I referred to. And do not forget, BTW, that it took over 70 years to fail.
@@joriankell1983 It failed for multiple reasons (including socio-political ones), and it's failure is also relative. Compared to the Russian Empire it failed far less.
Will you do video about black market during soviet era its very interesting
I could tell you some stories from people that were actually there.
It was awful.
@@whereswaldo5740 please do
@@MrSleepyMan101 Worked tool and die with a guy that was a spetznatz said his sister was a doctor and hadn’t been paid in a year. That they house everyone in those ugly high rise apartments and people would jump out of them every day to their death.
@@MrSleepyMan101 Worked with a woman that was a practicing Olympic gymnast and held 2 other jobs and was not being paid by any of them. She gave herself up to be a bride as her husband was dead and she and her daughter were literally starving to death. Was married by an American vet. Eight months later her mother gets a hold of her and says I have some money from one of your jobs. She told the mother keep it I’m in America now.
She also told how her father saved most of his life to buy a car. It was crazy. It could only be Russian made and he had to tell where he got it who he got it from why he wanted it and so on. When perestroika came he went get his money and there wasn’t enough left to get a loaf of bread. I asked who took it. She replied. The government.
@@MrSleepyMan101 A man in our church married a woman when he was a missionary to Russia. She was very beautiful and very smart and was a doctor over there. People encouraged her to test out and be one here. She had no interest.
We were at a dinner one night and found she was kinda spoiled. Her father was a general and in the black market. She got into real estate. Found a rich guy and left the guy from the church. She told how nothing got done without a box of chocolates or nylons at a doctor or dentist.
And there was a town near a lake and they wanted to run water to the town but they mayor wanted a kick back and they would pay it so it never got done.
Ah, another Saturday evening, another fantastic Cold War video.
Just the video I was waiting for. I was curious to know Khruchev's policies. Great work once again. Hope someday they will cover Gorbachev's policies. Eagerly waiting for that
Really nice to finally see content on Soviet History and the Cold War that isn’t full-blown propaganda towards one side or the other
Thanks for putting this out man
@Camouflage Kumquat social democracy left or communist left?
@Angus Chandler Easy on him. Probably not a reader.
@Angus Chandler Oh good so it isn’t just me.
I hope you will find the time to discuss the 1958 education reform and, in particular, the implications for the USSR's nationalities and language policies. There are excellent works on this by Laurent Coumel and Jeremy Smith, among others. The crisis it caused to "national schools" in many Union and autonomous republics emerged later in the Perestroika years.
A quality episode. Good use of Soviet stock footage. This channel does great work.
I wonder how different history would've been had Khrushchev stayed in power? What do you think?
He was very old when he lost his position. I don't think this would lead to something good, but I also don't think this would change history very much.
@@chisinau1302---Okay. Thanks for replying.
@@brokenbridge6316 no problem. I just felt bad about the fact that nobody replied.
@@chisinau1302---Well thanks for that. And I really didn't care that people replied or not. I was just glad I typed it down. But I really love that I got a bunch of likes for my comment. I usually don't get this many. It's nice.
Khrushchev made errors however I still feel that it was he and not Kennedy who got out of the Cuban missile crisis without making the earth into a charcoal briquette.
This was my first time on your channel and it was fascinating. We are taught so little about Soviet Russia and any information you provide would be interesting, including the massacre in 1962.
In the late 1930s, the Central Committee in Moscow sent an urgent telegram to an obscure Soviet republic deep in the Caucasus : "Urgent. Warning of a risk of strong telluric activity in your republic. Take all necessary measures and report to Central Committee."
Two days later, the authorities of the said Soviet republic reply : "In accordance with the warning received, we proceeded to arrest 6,532 Tellurics, who confessed their crimes and were immediately liquidated. It is possible that some of the Telluric leaders escaped us, because our operations were hampered by violent earthquakes."
LOL - Best comment!
you know it's a joke, because they couldn't get their shits together to do anything in just two days
@@BichaelStevens
"Urgent: Warning of a risk of strong soil/earth activity in your republic. Take all necessary measures and report to Central Comitte."
They were warning of a possible strong earthquake.
I've been slightly binge-watching this channel for about a week, and the deadpan references to "the Great Mustache" crack me up every time.
Please do cover the massacre.
People do actually still live in Khruschtovkas in Czechia. Most of them have been repaired and their prices have risen significantly as the new democratic state failed to provide anything close to a sufficient housing among other infrastructure such as parking lots, modern highways or railways.
By the way, 2 of 4 main city districts in my hometown were built after the WW2. The first one nicknamed the 'Little Moscow' almost entirely in the Stalinist style and the second mostly made of Khruschtovkas and larger blocks of flats later on originally called 'Stalingrad' but renamed soon.
Comrade Khruschev himself visited the city and the first new district before the construction of most of the second in 1957. However, local party leaders were not happy when they received an unpleasant surprise as they were criticized for the overly decorated style.
"as the new democratic state failed to provide anything close to a sufficient housing among other infrastructure such as parking lots, modern highways or railways" Which obviously is not true. You forgot that part, when the new government privatised those flat for equivavelnt of 5 or 10 month incomes to the former renters making them property owners.
"Leadership of the Great Mustache" 😂😂😂
It has been forgotten to say that in USSR, there was no such thing as planned obsolescence. That means the products were more durable then in US. In many cases multiple times more. So that could give that 1958 staitistics a bit more nuanced meaning.
My dad had a handcranked drill that was made in India in the 90s.
India was a socialist democracy which leaned more towards pure socialist practices in governance back than.
The drill was used to put screws on PVC sprinkler pipe joints above 2 inches in diameter on top of using solvent glue to counter the water pressure.
The drill was bought when the farm was first opened and it outlasted every other tool from 1990s despite it being exposed to rain, mud and everything in between.
I remember my dad mentioning the reason India is still very poor is because stuff they make never needs to be replaced as he pointed towards the drill.
Mind you, our first electrolux washing machine lasted a good 15 over years with only one breakdown in all those years. It was retired and replaced with another electrolux after the exterior panelling had rusted off so badly that it started wobbling during the spin cycle.
In between the old machine and the new, Electrolux Malaysia had ceased operations for a few years after an explosive growth period in the early 90s before restarting back closer to the new millenium.
Their earlier machines were so well made it rarely needed to be replaced.
Yeah, of course Novocherrkask should be covered. By the way, thanks for the videos!
I second this motion.
Yes please, give us in details all those topic you mentioned.
Oh I can use this joke:
Khrushchev: I will promise that every Soviet citizen will have bread every day.
"Do we get butter with it?" - someone asks from a crowd.
Khrushchev: Every two weeks with a slight chance to increase it to once a week.
Yes I would like more on any demonstrations in the USSR.
A few notes:
1)A massive step made by Khrushchev was the liberalisation of soviet culture and science. It pulled away the mass stagnation of such areas during the Stalin administration (which would return under Brezhnev) and allowed the soviet superior, populist education system to propel the nation to one of world-Benchmark technological innovation.
2) Furthermore, his attempts of limiting the, by then, bloated and dominating bureaucracy, which shared a significant blame for driving policy during the Stalin years and created resistance to technological implementation. Policies such as reducing their numbers and adopting a 3-year rotation led to a more flexible and subservient bureaucracy, solving many inefficiencies produced by them.
3) the belief that the private sector in agriculture was more efficient than the collectivised sector is largely a myth, perpetuated by false interpretations of data.
i. This was calculated taking into account value, rather than volume, which showed the socialised farm produce, which was heavily subsidised and sold at much lower prices, to appear less than the proportional size of private-produced produce.
ii. The private sector was significantly larger than calculated, since in such statistics, land allotted as private plots does not include the large area allocated to the peasants as pasturage for their private livestock; combined with land used to produce grain for fodder, the pasture and the individual plots total almost 20% of all Soviet farmland.
iii. Private farming may also be relatively inefficient, taking roughly 40% of all agricultural labor to produce only 26% of all output by value.
iv. Another problem is these criticisms tend to discuss only a small number of consumer products and do not take into account the fact that the kolkhozy and sovkhozy produced mainly grain, cotton, flax, forage, seed, and other non-consumer goods with a relatively low value per unit area.
4) it is wrong to compare the living standards of the US and the USSR, since the comparison doesn't take into account the large disparity of domestic and "allied" economic power, compared to population. The US had a stronger economy from the beginning, significantly stronger allies (which, aside from raw economic power, led to them being able to spend less money to the military than the soviet union could) and far more access to cheap labour and resources from the third world, partly by military might and partly by the soviets' ideological opposition for such method. However, for countries with similar conditions and economic development, the USSR and its allies created significantly better living conditions than their western counterparts.
I live in the US version of the Xrushchaev housing plan. 2 rooms + bathroom, with a kitchenette at the corner of the living room. In 2021. And the rent is wayyy over my retirement (700/month versus my 400/month retirement).. Add basic utilities (I do not watch TV or own a car. Nor do I have a cellphone) and my housing/quality of life is considered fair to good in my "fringe of the city" neighborhood . . . but is unaffordable to a retiree.
If I reduce expenses to the barest minimum I would still be unable to support the place without government assistance, access to foodbanks, and considerable largesse on the part of my friends. The gap between rich and poor has not decreased in 50 years, but it has considerably increased. Economic opportunity remains low for all sectors below the college degree level. As a veteran with learning and cognitive difficulty I am near the nadir of society standards. But so are a lot of others, not just here, but everywhere.
The biggest difference between myself and my more fortunate friends is that I have no credit payment. Credit is the death of restraint. It urges us to buy more than we can afford. I see it all the time in friends who own cars and cellphones. They live in fear of each month's mail.
So-o yeah. The media hides our gradual sublimation into the rest of the world. It paints a glowing picture of access, excess, and surplus . . . which is simply untrue at the street level-where most Americans live.
The difference between truth and the big lie is the whole reason I switched political affiliations. I don't think it matters, realistically, but it was a statement of my change from believing the Big Lie to seeing that advertising lies wastes a great deal of effort AND reduces voter confidence in the government's oft stated drive to provide better housing at affordable prices and increase in wages/purchasing power closer to the bottom.
Disclaimer: your experience in the American Fun House might be different. If so, good for you. I feel no rancor, only sadness, that the USA could not reach its full standards of living potential. Naturally, I have hopes for the future. A lot of us live on hope, as good jobs are not nearly as prevalent as the "haves" pretend. Upward mobility is only available to a very small slice of our population. Some of our towns and even whole cities look like war zones. I cite specifically New Kensington, Pa., due to my proximity with and experience within its limits.
Don't need to explain why you switched parties or you're having a bad life. I can understand when you can't afford things
@@ShubhamMishrabro Thanks for you comment and for joining the forum. The more the merrier. I am having a good life, thank you. I have friends and loved ones. I have leave to pursue my loves, my talents, and my imagination. The reason for my personal addition was I was giving my perspective, so I felt some description of my existence would provide context.
@@WildBillCox13 yeah cost of living must be hard for you 😢 now imagine I'm twenty only what future will be for me
Please cover the town that protested against the Soviet Union, I know it a difficult video to make but I feel it is important to discuss these points in history, hopefully to prevent them hapening again
Well to prevent massacres of people protesting against an oppressive communist government, you first need to prevent having a communist government...
@@JohnDoe-pv2iu why dont we raise the standards to prevent oppressive governments in the first place....
@@pandepanda31 That sounds like an admirable idea! I think a couple of folks have thought about this for a few thousand years...
Your thoughts on the solution???
@@JohnDoe-pv2iu I'm sure you know about the Harlan County War? The US was at certain points much more oppressive towards its workers than the USSR.
@@szymonskoczylas5225 but what about the average citizen or state worker In Russia everyone was state worker.
The Food Minister czar was a traditional route to the top job in the USSR. Gorby came up this way, Khrushchev came up this way. He was the guy that really began to drain the Aral Sea, BTW. He used that watershed to massively expand cotton agriculture in the Kazhak desert. Said cotton proved instantly to be a real money spinner as an export crop. The Bolsheviks had an unlimited thirst for Western currency to obtain Western imports. This was also the era of totally crazy attempts to get citrus crops to grow in Siberia -- and other such stunts. There was even a directive to get farm workers to feed straw to their hogs -- in imitation to feeding hay to cows. Those Moscow boys sure were jolly jokers.
Didn't said draining of the Aral destroy the Agriculture of the region?
@@TheSunderingSea yes, catastrophically so
Thank you ! I was despairing to see an equivalent to the "lost world of communism" for the USSR !
And yes, I'd like to see an episode on the demonstrations and massacre.
im amazed by quality of your content good sir.
Yes, I'd like for y'all to cover the massacre.....
I liked the video but felt that you were maybe comparing the USSR and the USA by USA standards (who owned more vacuum cleaners and so). I have liked to hear about other indicators such as access to higher education
Khrushchev did a lot of good for many in the CCCP if they continued his style of leadership the union may have continued.
I'd like to see the chanel project the improvement of lifestyles compare to living condition today
Nice first presentation on their rebuilding activities and trying to take care of the people after 1953. A BIG YES to more on the demonstration. Cheers
Great presentation and balanced analysis - greetings from Greece!
Had John F Kennedy lived and Chairman Kruschchev’s policies been given more time we would have inherited a better world. History now reveals that Kruschchev’s threats and shoe pounding were a bluff from a strategically inferior Soviet Union and Kennedy was beginning to see that. Following the Cuban Missile crises the two sides had begun the process of a new Reapproachmeant. Kruschchev was committed to bettering the lives of the common Soviet citizen while maintaining the honor and dignity of his country. Rather than an uncontrolled arms race we could have enjoyed decades of strong economic competition pitting the virtues of our two systems against each other.
Yeah, I want an alternative history book on that.
As always another great episode. Thank you.
I used to judge very harshly the soviet economic policies because I found them very hipocritical, but after some analisys it is easy to understand stalin's priorityzing heavy industry over consumer goods. That is because the soviet union was barely industrialized since the little industrial infrastructure the mostly feudal russian empire had was destroyed, so the best course of action for the government was to spend resources to make more resources(i.e: use the leftover steel to make steel mills to then use this steel to make the machines to only then fabricate consumer products)
Unfortunately to the average citzen who was too concerned in working to not starve to understand the big picture this had the effect of causing a disconect between the citizens and the state who was suposed to represent them, such disconect led to a growing resentment on the soviet people that saw their leadership and all that it represented as a bloated and ineficient system, this resentment was furthermore aided by the fact that in the postwar USA everybody had cars, appliances and big houses. Of course most people fail to remerber that the american war industry was not bombed to oblivion which made possible the conversion to civilian use.
Other point that people seem not to pay attention is the fact that a similar transition between heavy and light industry ocurred in the west, but it took about 100 years or so for the english coal mines and steel mills of the 19th century to give way to the eletrodomestics factories of the 1960s
'Unfortunately to the average citizen who was too concerned in working to not starve to understand the big picture' - I'm working hard reading this. Lol
Great video! Please make similar videos about other major Cold War players as well. Most will know about US life in the 50-60s, but France, West-Germany, Italy are less known. Cheers
I find it ironic that capitalist countries, even developing ones, at one point had much more living space than the average Soviet citizen. But nowadays, me and a lot of my middle-class colleagues are living in capitalist kruschevskas, because housing is just too expensive
I sincerely have little hope of ever owning a house and I'm well aware that things people took for granted decades ago are high-level luxuries to the average person. Sure, we have stuff that'd be unimaginable to people from the 60s, but at the same technology progressed I feel the hope of achieving an actual better life than our parents is just dead at this point
Communism failed, but capitalism's victory feels bitter at this point
More like when Commienism failed, Capitalism got relieved to drop any of the pretenses of bringing a better quality of life and become no different from what they were against in the beginning...
For writing this you will be shot. Oh wait, communism is over.
I'd be shot for criticizing capitalism? I don't get it
Very interesting! Thanks for providing this kind of information.
The reason why a major portion of the industry went into military production was that the Soviet Union under no circumstance wanted a repetion of WW2 with it's 27 million deaths.
In the next potential war they wanted to have the upper hand in terms of technology and they succeeded.
Even today Russia is among the top producers of top tier military hardware.
Part of this was the fact that the US created NATO which was a clear signal for the USSR that war was indeed a possibility.
Very important information. Thanks.
Russian military hardware actually falls behind a number of countries.
@@anzaca1 Which ones? On the whole, they're solid, from the Ka-50 attack helicopters and SCUD missile trucks to their AK-12 and 15 service rifles.
well you need to remember the reason why they lost so many men in ww2 is because of the purges of many military staff
The Soviet Russian Industrial Comlplex. A significant source of income. Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!the 😉
Great video with good information that I felt was balanced and fair.
As one who lived a significant part of the cold war, this channel is surprisingly accurate.
How old are you?
Like are you from the 60s or 70s?
I agree and it seems odd that the Cold War is being taught like it's ancient history!
Khrushchev said in the 60s that America and it's values would be defeated and it would come from within. We have a population that vote for and are in favor of Communists and Socialists. Mr K kinda got it right...
Yall Take Care and be safe, John
@@JohnDoe-pv2iu how did u react to arab Israeli and Cuban missile crisis
@@JohnDoe-pv2iu What do you thought about the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan?
@@terrorgaming459 Cuban missile crisis was a serious issue for American Security. Soviet missiles that close to the United States may have given the Soviets the idea that a first strike attack could be winnable. It wouldn't have been but could have been enough to get the world destroyed by WW3.
My Pop was part of the Naval blockade, that ended that mess.
Yall take Care and be safe, John
It’s always crazy to me when people compare the ussr to the us art the same time. The us was for the entire existence of the ussr the center of a global empire and had 250 years of capitalist development as a head start. These countries were never on an equal footing, ussr is much better understood when compared to India or Brazil at the same time, places that experienced a similar economic exploitation at the hands of European empires in the 19th century but remained capitalist in the 20th century.
Yeah, that's why the takes that "the USSR lost the cold war because socialism" takes lack nuance or historical context.
People forget that under the USSR, Russia went from a feudal agrarian state with mass illiteracy and no industrial base to being a nuclear powered industrial giant that conquered space within less than half a century. There were numerous shortfalls and deficiencies in the Soviet Union, but to deem it as having been a complete failure is short-sighted and lacking nuance.
@@dutchkosmonaut7257 I thought it was more about guns and butter, and how they were devoting a large portion of their GDP to militarily keep up.
It has nothing to do with it. Japan surpassed Russia in 4 years, and even demolished its military in the ruso Japanese War. They went from feudal to modern state in no time. Then in ww2, Japan literally got nuked and it recovered and become the 2nd richest country per capita and as a whole in less than 25 years. Socialism doesn't work. That's all
Which European Empire exploited Russia? Russian wasn't a colony it was an empire subjugating other countries. But to see the difference in systems you only need to compare the USSR in 1989 to Russia of today.
I like to see more episodes like these
Stalin: "the wages of the workers should double by the end of the decade"
Also Stalin: heavy industry go brrrrrr
As a college student my ears started to be jealous when I heard tuition free college
Yep - far the most successful part of the Soviet economy was in education, from very unpromising beginnings. There's reasons for that - for some parts of the economy the free market does not work very well at all.
If you think you could just write yourself in any university you are wrong, its the same process as you to get in some to Harvard or any prestigious university, merit.
I was just weirdly surprised when I found out that most former soviet countries have a 99-100% education rate in adults.
@@kenoliver8913 except that you had to accept the party indoctrination and toe the party line. Plus you lived under a tyrannical regime. There's always a cost.
@@JastwatchingYT I'm not. Easy to get those numbers. Even easier to fabricate.
Excellent video really enjoyed it.
I'll bet Comrade Sergei at the Ushanka Show will be a recurring source of info for these videos on everyday life in the USSR!
And yes, I would like to see you guys cover the Novocherkassk massacre. If not by itself, maybe do it as part of a video that covers protests, uprisings, and demonstrations in the USSR or the Eastern bloc in general?
Education system was very good, I remember going to school there. Life was tough short supply of everything
Life of an average worker in any european country (at least any country devastated by WWII) in late '50s-early '60s was no better than the one of a soviet worker - comparison with the US, which enjoyed a standard of living unthinkable to much of the world, is not fair.
I remember taking a seminar at Columbia from Selwyn Bialer and I gave a report on Krushev's economic reforms in March 1964. I remember getting all bogged down in a discussion of regional planning versus central planing. That was the main focus by the CIA led American media coverage at this time. Bialer did like what I said about "localism" because the nationality issue was very important. But I barely mentioned in my oral report that Kruscehev was concerned about public dissatisfaction towards ruling party and he wanted more food, better pay and better housing.
I should have emphasized that his reforms showed that the Party had to change its previous economic policies. The party could not separate itself from the wishes of the people. I liked what you say here very
much. I have often thought about my presentation to this graduate school class and how much I was a victim of what I read in CIA's "Problems of Communism". I did much better using what I read from Pravda and did not dismiss it as mere propaganda. You might think about the bias against reporting realisically about Russia among academics who depend on CIA sources do not question CIA biases. I have thought
about this. The CIA did not want me, I remember, because I was seen as too "red" by associations,
activities and travel. They did not want people who believed that economic reforms would change
or undo the Communist's Party's control. Interestingly, Radio Free Europe in Manhattan has great
translations of East European economic reformers like Otto Sik which I used in another seminar
with Brezezinski the next year. Are you familiar with the analyses by EE economists of the need
for serious reform if socialism was to succeed?
On other thing thing: I have long believed people's careers seem to be influenced by their
names. For example, the British cold warrior ROBert CONQUEST was surely a well-named
writer fighting for Western imperialism against Soviet Empire in the 1950s. In that context,
Krushev's name begins with the russian word, "крах", thus making him ever mindful of something like
the Soviet economic system's risk of collapsing, if he didn't change its central focus and make
it meet the needs of the Soviet people much more.
Unreadable rant, no idea what your comment was about
"Soviet Life" rattled a few cobwebs when he said it. My Jr. High social studies teacher had a subscription and kept them on a rack in his classroom. This was 30 years ago and I'm pretty sure he's gone now, but I wonder what happened to that collection. I hope it didn't just get tossed in the trash. That's piece of history that should be preserved.
Along with a file of 'Signal,' the magazine of the National Socialists.
I do not know why but our local funeral home had copies of "Soviet Life". As years came and went and they never got any new issues but I enjoyed looking at them.
a lot of the comparisons at 14:00 onward don't take into account the different lifestyles in the USSR. the most obvious example is cars, the USSR had so few cars mainly because public transit was so good, even just on rail the USSR at times had TWENTY times the number of passenger kilometres compared to the US, rapid transit metros were also common in the USSR, even today the US only has 2 more than the USSR did with significantly smaller systems. soviet cities were also generally far better designed with walkability and community in mind while American cities are bankrupting urban sprawls of parking spaces and stroads
This is a good video, I really liked that you took a neutral approach to the topic. When hearing these comparisons between the Socialist and the Capitalist sector, I always wonder about how to compare these two economic systems equally. This is because I noticed that essentially, the Warsaw Pact countries closed their economies to trade with the rest of the world. Thus, I wonder if you should not only compare the richest capitalist country with the biggest socialist country, but instead try to compare the capitalist and socialist economies including all countries. On the other hand, large portions of non-western countries were not fully bound into the economic processes of the global economy, as many were instead focusing on subsidient farming. To conclude, this disparity makes a full comparison between the two economic systems rather difficult, yet still very interesting.
Thanks for your channel. Did you consider doing an episode on "Operation Gold a.k.a. Operation Stop Watch."
I had never thought about photoshop being like propaganda before. Good analogy.
Discovered your channel a few days ago, seen a couple of posts. Great channel, just subb'd. Thank you very much.
One thing I loved about lenin was he learnt from mistakes. After heavy protests he implemented state capitalism one of the golden age times for soviet union.
Golden age?
@@joriankell1983 yeh that was the time of private entities then stalin and ww2 happened. Soviet mostly didn't had golden age one this then other 60 to 75 then Gorbachev reforms ruined economy otherwise it would have been golden age too
@@joriankell1983 Of course it was a golden age!! Lenin only killed people by the hundred thousands rather than by the millions as did Stalin!
@@craiga2002 checks out
I just want to mention, that a lot of these needed domestic electrical devices ,where produced in the GDR( East Germany). My family told me very often about it. In Reverse, the GDR received Heavy military gear, oil and sometimes cars. Unbelievable to imagine, but the living conditions in the gdr where often better, then in the Soviet Union.
It’s not surprising, Germany was a lot more industrialized and richer than most of the Soviet Union
Its important to add that the focus on heavy industry during the "Stalin era" wasnt because of some idea from Stalin himself, its was out of necessity if the Soviet Union was to survive in a hostile world, they would never had survived the second world war if it wasnt for the focus on heavy industry in the early Soviet Union. Its the same with Khrushchev, after the war most fascist states in Europe had been crushed, Soviet Union had new allies in most of the eastern Europe and was now a great military power, the most acute threat was gone and that open up for possibility to work with the living standard of the people, also after many years of internal and extrernal fighting many communists had died and among those still alive there was a wish for a more peacful life and therefore this detente and more liberal standpoint, the party was split between this and those pro class struggle hard liners (pro Stalin). Its never about single leaders
allies ? More like vassals
@@goodcomrade2949 No, every single one of those countries, from DDR to Romania where far more independent than any western nation of today or at that time
@@tonilourdes yeah right 😂😂
@@goodcomrade2949 🤣 DDR was so independent that West Germany had to build the wall from preventing their people to fled east, God some people are so stupid.
@@goodcomrade2949
Taking orders from Moscow be they: East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland or Czechoslovakia.
It is always fascinating to look behind the Iron Curtain
2:06 let’s peel back the many layers of the Soviet onion!
Gorbachev was visiting Margaret Thatcher and asked her how she makes sure her people have enough food. She said, I don’t, markets do that. Gorbachev had no concept of the law of supply and demand and the function of prices to allocate limited resources. Unbelievable but true.
I really feel like Nikita Khrushchev tried to do his best for the average person. Well, as best as a politician in this world can do especially one in such a flawed and unproven system as the Soviet Union.
Please do an episode on the Novocherkassk massacre--we need history, warts and all! (Wish UA-cam agreed)
"If I had some bacon, I would cook a bacon omelet, but I don't have any eggs"
This reminds me of my time in the Finnish army. The sergeant major asked us if we knew what a Soviet ass-shaking machine is like. "Well it doesn't shake or fit in your ass."
@@Perkelenaattori typical military joke, and this one is funny
"Why do you want pants comrade? Isn't a shovel good enough!?"
Lived in a couple of Khrushchyovka while working in the former Soviet Union. One was scruffy, the other in much better condition. Both were quite pleasant to call home. Two bedrooms, endless free hot water and tropical heating in the minus 30 winters. The only way to cool them down was to open the windows. Twin front doors and neighbours smoking in the stairwells. I've lived in much worse in the West.
"I've lived in much worse in the West."
it's can't be
I have enjoyed Khrushchev's observation - "Politicians are all the same. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.".
2:05 Shrekist David confirmed ?
I just want to be left alone in my swamp...is that too much to ask?
@@TheColdWarTV I love this reference so much.
@@TheColdWarTV But in the USSR... OH Shit, it's no longer Stalin. With comrade Khrushchev you can have your own small and uncomfortable swamp.
If you have ever been into the basement of a Khrushchevka, some of them are pretty swampy, actually.
In the 1950's we lived in Kruschov communal housing, we normally had a feces tax, sometimes a urine tax - If neighbours left their feces in the toilet, they would pay a feces tax of 10 roubles per offence - the urine tax was rarely enforced as it was usually comitted by men who were usually drunk and often wet on the floor. My family were eventually bankrupted due to the feces tax, my uncle was incontinent, but they never took this into consideration, he had to work in the heavy steel industry constantly soiled
You should cover the Massacre!
Brezhnev instituted some of the changes u credit Khrushchev for like the US grain purchases (with Nixon) and the 1970s pension eligibility adjustment. Would have been helpful if u mentioned Krushchev’s ouster & Brezhnev’s rise. No one seems to remember Brezhnev but for the Cold War generation he was the Soviet Union.
My family lived in one of those flats during reconstruction, they ware really hot in the summer and super cold during winter. Me as a kid had to steal kerosene from nearby helicopter base. The soldiers really liked honey, candies and alcoholic beverages and stuff, so we traded for it.
In the post-war years, the Soviet population did NOT increase, it began to RECOVER. That is not the same thing. Production, most especially of food, did NOT exceed pre-war levels, ever. This only became worse in the 60s.
Obviously something went wrong, otherwise Nicky wouldn't have been "retired"! David, I would like a video on the Brezhnev years! Isn't that the time when bureaucratic corruption peaked and apathy among the population also peaked?
нет не это время коррупция началась с приходом к власти горбачева тогда же и апатия ) наркомания спид бандитизм межнациональная ненависть и прочее
I've read about unrest in the other Eastern Bloc countries but never heard about the massacre in the USSR, so please do cover it in a future video.
OMG yes please do a Novocherkassk episode, and also on the cultural thaw in general (I remember Khruschev personally insisted on printing Solzhenitsyn, but he also called abstractionist painters "f**gots")
As to khruschevkas, I've never lived in one for a long time, but of course lots of my friends and relatives did. They are not awful, just bad. There are no garbage chutes or elevators, the bathroom is cramped with the toilet and the bath in the same room, there is a small window near the ceiling in the bathroom that goes into the kitchen so that you can save on electricity or use it in a blackout, often you can't lie down in the bath, and also the ceilings are typically 2.5m (8 ft 4) high, which is really uncomfortable compared to the old Stalinkas.
It still beats the wooden barracks built during and after the war, some of which haven't been demolished to this day.
I would really like to hear more about that massacre. Again, something I had never heard of before. I really appreciate what you are doing.
I am not sure the USSR should be directly compared with the UK and USA who had industrialized several decades before the USSR did, i.e., they had a decades long head start over the USSR. Russia in 1917 was still a mostly feudal peasant society with a very low literacy rate. Direct comparisons should be made with countries that began modern development at a similar time. This applies even more with China, who did not begin industrializing in earnest until the 1950s, so began over a century behind the UK etc.
Exactly. Turns out using slaves and exploiting the world for your profit for centuries helps development. More news at 11
exactly. not to mention US economy was untouched during the war (it only expanded), while soviet economy, infrastructure and demography was gutted.
@@bluemoondiadochi Also the kind of environment they are in and the fact that the US and Britain typically had other massive empires as allies and a host of banana republics. The Soviets only really had China as their most powerful ally and they are still recovering from WW2.
Thank you 🙏 AGAIN 🙏 for your excellent work 👍
YES I want to know more about the uprising 🤔
i work for the us government, and I work 6 and 7 day work weeks... no overtime is paid either as required by federal law.
funny that.
"i work for the us government"
They pretend to pay you and you pretend to work - Old Soviet gag.
Thanks
Malenkof was the First but still Khrushchev said the priority is the heavy industry