@Pamphlets Well, at least for most of the former satellite states of the USSR and the non-European Russian territories it got much worse but they were already a huge failure before Soviet Russia funded them like crazy. It's like you lived your whole life on welfare without ever learning a job or having any kind of useful education and then, after more than 60 years, you suddenly have to do something yourself to provide your living AS IT SHOULD BE! Of course this is not an easy pill to swallow but it's absolutely necessary and I can't see how "very very wealthy" oligarchs are worse than very very wealthy communist government officials who - unlike the oligarchs - have the power to control the entire economy (which didn't work out too well...) and the power to put you and your entire family in a fucking gulag if you cough in the wrong direction. However, the biggest problem for them is actually not the lack of Soviet funding but the complete ineptitude to establish Western democracies with real free market economies that ACTUALLY WORK and don't depend solely on the exploitation of finite geological resources...
@Pamphlets What a bunch of BS! These polls are fucking meaningless (as most polls are), especially if you consider that a lot of these people are still very much indoctrinated into the communist/socialist maxim and/or just feel deeply nostalgic about these times for a variety of reasons - mostly subjective and personal. And yeah, a lot of them definitely benefited from the welfare they got from the government, I'm not even denying that! But it's also a fact, that their economy was a complete disaster for the most part and the few parts of it that somehow worked weren't sustainable because they relied mostly on the selling of rich geological resources (similar to the economies of the Middle East) and they had an undoubtedly tyrannical government that robbed them of almost all the freedoms that every individual in Western-run countries had at that time. And your excursion of Western colonialism in Africa is just pathetic and completely out of place in this context and maybe you should have educated yourself about the countless colonial endeavors of the USSR all throughout the Middle East and Asia! Admittedly, they totally failed in colonialism, just as they failed in everything else, but you can't say that they never tried. Anyway, I see that you already prepared these comments beforehand but i gotta tell you, that you are not very well prepared, my dear comrade!
@Pamphlets Easy: A prison (in a Western country) punishes individuals who severely impair the freedom of others, (e.g. by killing or physically hurting them or by stealing from them) and also to protect the rest of society from those criminals! Gulags on the other hand existed exactly for the reason of committing such crimes against the citizens of the USSR, like taking the freedom of people to criticize the government or to form a political opposition or to defend themselves against the oppressive forces of the government or to defect to the West or to create a private business, etc. Everyone who dared to claim these basic Western/human rights had to fear of landing in one of these hellholes someday and the living conditions there... Well, let's just say, even the hardcore criminals in Alcatraz probably had it better back then, than the poor souls inside these "Russian prisons", which is just a different name for the same shit.
@@electronicraisin5956 You’ll be first against the wall when your revolution comes. You’ll die confused and afraid, begging your masters to let you live. “But I was a good revolutionary, wasn’t I?! I did everything you asked for! I’m not a prole! I’m one of y-“ That’s just it, though. You did everything they asked. It’s just that they asked you to die. You didn’t get the memo. Enjoy.
there were huge lines always at the store, like if apple came out with the original iphone every day. Stock was non-exsistent as usual. Bananas were hard to find or there weren't even any. It was always like this, every single day.
Soviet economy was really fallen behind compare to western economy, while western europe and America produce more goods everyday with both food, cloth and with newer abd better electronics goods, Russia and Eastern Europe can't keep up with them, Russian military maybe modern but their economy is sore that even the basic need are hard to find
Well you not saw Yugoslavia in 90s still plus there all fall down and sanctions and war,here they have something there nothing 1 can on all market,ppl wait for milk ir bread all day and inflation,till you waiting for milk price riže 10 times,inflation was 220 000 percent
From what I've heard, even before it got THIS bad, the Soviets were having to import large amounts of meat from France in the 80s to ensure it would stay in the diets of their people. Agriculture and livestock production in the country had never been phenomenal IIRC, but by Brezhnev's last years in power, it was having serious problems and decline in production. Before the Russia-Ukraine War and other stuff, Russia in the 2000s actually had a miraculous agricultural revolution that saw them go from being an importer of grain in the Soviet era to becoming one of the Top 5 exporters on earth. If THAT doesn't prove the superiority of a capitalist system, what does?
American grocery carts are the size of Fiats to make you feel like you didn’t get enough. Russian grocery carts are the handbags to make you feel as though you have more than enough.
True. The Soviet Union suffered constant meat shortages. Kina like what the US is experiencing right now except these days we have IQF and cryoseal technology, combined with a strong distribution network. Meat prices are high but at least they're reaching their destination before they expire.
I was born in Soviet Union, in 1981. But I don’t remember being hungry, because my grandma had sort of mini farm. She owned: couple of cows, pigs, rabbits, chickens, goats. We grew our own vegetables, fruits e tc. My grandma made our own bread, cheese, ice cream. As a result I was super healthy kid, never had any allergies, never had a cold! And it was super cold in the winter in Ural Mountains. I remember there are used to be separate shops for different things. Separate shops for milk, for bread, or meat for example. Only when supermarkets came in to play, with extensive choice of food, I suddenly developed some allergies and my immune system went down. Although, I am happy that I’ve kept some of my childhood healthy eating habits up to today. 👍
@@TheButterMinecart1 sorry i forgot how sensitive you people are, try not to cry. Everything is going to be okay, do you need a coloring box and books and a safe space. Like many of the universities there offer.
It was the same way in Cuba. It also was really hurt by corruption when the supermarkets showed up. Somehow the distribution of more luxury foods always ended up in the stores that only ministers and officials could shop at. That got really bad in the late 80’s
It was in 20th with millions dead from artificial famine created by communists ,and again it definitely was with more than millions dead for the same reason, it was in 30th with 1at least 11 millions dead in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Don, Cuban and etc., it was again in 40th with 1+ million dead, and the reason was communist policy... so 80th and 90-91 were a kind of relaxed mode comparing to previous 50 years in USSR. And yes, I was born in fucking USSR in one of the countries occupied by Red Russia, I remember empty shelves in grocery stores, generally in any shop/supermarket empty shelves all over USSR, with some exceptions for city like Moscow and Leningrad!
@@chrissthrlnd Yes, it was crazy for me to see that people, those uneducated, but "useful idiots" for Commies, those who bought all this socialist crap again. BTW those on TV generally were first in line to shoot when Commies take full power, i.e. they don't need more "useful idiots" who could compare their promises and the Commies reality.
@@ezrathegreatconqueror F@ck all and any of these Commies abomination AKA Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin... Brezhnev, Gorbachev and etc.! USSR is dead and I like it! I am from Ukraine occupied by Red Russia and I didn't remember time when harvest was bad that time, but Red Russia Commies Policy "magically" created multiple famines and deficit of food continuously from 1917 to 1991.
It was a different world. Thank you for the video. Feels like travelling back in a time machine. I was a young woman when I left USSR. I now can't recall in such details what people wore, what it all looked like having lived for so long in the West. Those videos enable us to reconnect with our childhood (somewhat)
@@gregoryrodriguez5621 I am not sure if you know it but the first thing the Soviets did back in 1917 they'd destroyed churches and annihilated tens of thousands of priests in the Stalin's prison camps. Each country has its own history...
@@tandlreeve " Each country has its own history..." вот только история россии вечная жопа почемуто- как были у карамзина бояре и опричнина , так и остались. проклятая страна
50+ years of sanctions and embargoes against the USSR by the entire West did this....not socialism/communism. The greatest lie ever told was that socialism causes this. If you were sanctioned/embargoed for 50+ years, you would be eating your neighbor's cat out of hunger.
So you’re saying that the capitalistic system was the one producing the supply, and when they denied the supply, the communist system couldn’t produce it on their own. Is that correct?
Actually not.Please, make some effort over yourself, to read below "cc" post and comment from Django. Both are very accurate. Django's observations are exactly righ. Because I remember 70s, and 80s.So in this way I will agree with every Django and cc words
You have no experience, cause you never lived in USSR. You parents and grandparents lie to you. What about Riga's radio factory, was famous all over USSR? It' bankrupt under capitalism.
A family friend of my husband, he’s Filipino brought his Russian wife to live in the Philippines (90s) and she was so shock to have all the Coke she can drink. Lol Filipinos found it weird as Philippines is a 3rd world country but Russia had no access to soda. And we thought we had it bad
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM no, this was 1917 to 1991, the only reason the footage is from during Khruschev is because no other leader would allow anyone to film how shit it was
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM I meant Gorbachev, and no, there is no uncensored footage of what the reality of life for the Soviet people was There were still films made in the 30s and 40s that were only released properly in the late 80s because Gorbachev was the first leader who didn't want to brutalise his own populace for not believing state "thruths"
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM yes, on paper it took a nosedive, but that's only because of how the Soviet system was setup- the USSR never actually recovered from WW2, and the stagflation under Khruschev was only openly revealed when the government stopped hiding it under Gorbachev Why else would the USSR admit that for decades it was far behind most other nations in consumer industries under Gorbachev? It wasn't that he suddenly flicked a switch and then everyone lost their jobs, it was the result of stopping the massive state spending, hyperinflation of currency, and strict state censure of information Quality of life in the USSR was terrible, hence why when we see a huge crisis in Western states supermarkets are still fully stocked, while even "good times" in Communist countries result in massive shortages and poor economic results
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM Nothing you have just said is true. The economy never recovered after WW2- it was never given the chance. The military was, from 1941 to about the middle of the 1980s, consistently absorbed far more of the Soviet economy than it had any right to. The economic "growth" experienced post-war was much like the "growth" seen under Stalin pre-war- it wasn't real growth, as in the economy of the country increasing, it was paper-growth in that what was recorded was wrong, the areas that grew were state subsidised and over-represented and the true economy, the supply of goods, services, labour and demand through consumption *decreased* due to the capital extraction and population decreases Now, one may argue the merits of this. I certainly do not agree that it was neccessary to kill millions of people through collectivisation to build industry, but if you do you cannot say it "grew" the economy, only pivoted it away from agriculture to industry. That's fine if you are arguing purely on the merit of state functions, but it is not conducive to actual economic growth. The Soviet economy, from its inception, was based around massive, hyperinflation. If you read the party documents, especially during Lenin and Stalin's rule, it is especially prevalent that they (and the Politburo) wanted this- by hyperinflation the currency and making it worthless to people, the Communist utopian ideal of people abandoning money would occur. The shortages did not develop under Gorbachev, they began under Lenin, *as a result of intentional state policy*. And when people were clearly angered by this, the Soviet state responded by increasing wages and lowering prices. It doesn't take an economist to tell you what will happen if goods are in short supply and people then are given more money and have more value for their money: they will buy more of it when they can, exacerbating shortages further. I'd seriously recommend reading Kotkin's three-parter tome on Stalin, but in essence it describes in several hundred pages what I just said. When the USSR entered the post-war world, it was severely crippled, industry was virtually zero because what wasn't destroyed was entirely geared towards now-useless military applications, which is not a moral condemnation but an observation of fact. It's population had not recovered to the pre-war total of ~185-195 million until 1955, and then its issues became impossible to ignore. From 1945 to 1950, the USSR grew a few percentage points of GDPpC in comparison to both Europe and the USA, from about 50 to 60% and 25% to 30%, respectively, yet then immediately took a drastic turn it never recovered from, reaching 50% of Europe in the 70s and 40% in the 90s. Stagflation absolutely affected the USSR, because stagnation was inherent to economy because of the way the central planning worked and inflation was state policy. Inflation was actually worse under Khruschev and Brezhnev because they did not operate the slave labor of the Gulags which allowed them to extract precious gold and platinum for very little cost, which meant unlike Soviet citizens the state could trade on the international market for what it needed. One of the few lifelines the state had during the 70s and 80s was Russia's incredible supplies of oil and gas, supplanting the previous decades reliance on increasingly difficult to extract metals. Ultimately, Gorbachev had little-to-no impact on the Soviet economy- supplies were already bad in the 20s and never reached a sufficient level in the first place. All Gorbachev did was to open the system to sunlight, to try and take an objective look at the real situation the Soviet Union faced. There is a reason he reached power, and its precisely excuse the Soviet Union had reached a crisis point under previous leadership, which was inevitable given the economic principles governing the country. There is a man who understand this, and that man is Reagan. Unlike the USSR, the USA was not an extractive economy, it was productive. It had the consumer economy as priority, and was therefore able to tax it lightly to produce an arms industry that far surpassed the Soviet Union's, which meant it could expand while the USSR would eventually collapse if it attempted parity, and that's what happened in history. Unlike the US in Vietnam, the USSR was unable to sustain Afghanistan and collapsed under the economic pressures from that. Now, you can certainly argue a counter-factual reality, like a more conservative Soviet leader crushing the independence movements within the USSR, but ultimately that would have most likely ended up with the state in a similar position in at most a decade. Instead of internal collapse, the economy would have shattered and you'd have civil war between the state and all its constituent territories wanting freedom. There is a reason that China pursued economic liberalism while tying it to the CCP, it can actually truly grow now and that is evident in the difference between China in 1990 and China in 2010, or 2020. Unlike the USSR, China has gone from an agriculturally extractive economy to a truly consumer based economy, like the USA, and therefore has the funds to do what it wants, which is why I find them a far larger threat than the USSR ever was. Unlike the USSR which died with its people having decades long waiting lists for massively outdated cars, China has the largest market for cars, smart phones, video games, etc. That is the real headstone of the USSR- its legacy is failure, having been supplanted by what it saw as an even greater rival than the USA
Thank you for posting this historical footage. The picture is beautiful and the sound is clear. I am studying Soviet culture and historical media like this video is priceless.
The Finnish Commercial TV (MTV) was able to watch in Soviet Estonian Tallinn. We had much food commercials and the best were those where our K-Market ”Meat Counter Väiski” named man told how to make good beef and what kind of meat is now the best and on sale etc. showing delicious chunk of meat in close-ups. The counters were of course full of meat as the markets usually were here. When Tallinn people were angry that they don’t have meat like in Finland, the party told them that all the commercials we aired, were only propaganda and the meat were not real or not really for sale for the puclic. The same story was told when we aired washing machine, hoover or freezer commercials.
Worth to note that this video was taken sometime around 1990-1991. The whole Soviet empire was collapsing at this point. It is obviously a fair representation of grocery stores during the twilight of the Soviet empire(although stores from Moscow or St. Petersburg would probably be a lot better off), but it isn’t m quite a fair representation of stores in the decades before.
But it did decline, and it did collapse. And the people who lived there suffered. You know what the definition of crazy is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. People keep saying socialism will be different this time. Yeah, sure, with so many more people in the world today (many of whom have no desire to work) I’m sure it will be different. I’m sure it will fail that much sooner.
@@snowwhite5842 gorbachevs pestroika policy did this man. Not planned economy. He was privatizing industries at massive levels. It couldnt handle markets and private ownership and such
That fact that it ever got to that point and then totally collapsed says enough. A terrible venture that lasted less than a century and killed millions
my mom told me the story of his father life how lucky they were others were basically starving and my grandfather had very good life they had lots of food and also they had a car,cars were soo rare in ussr atleast in my country (estonia)
9:05 They had to literally smell the food to make sure it wasn’t rotted because in the USSR, they’d sell anything no matter if it gave the customer a disease or poisoned them. There was no rules.
They couldn’t sell rotten meat or eggs or anything that was inedible. They could sell stale bread. It was common for bakeries to sell the stale bread at the end of the day.
@@CzechtoU Why should I go to North Korea if my Homeland is the USSR? The USSR was the greatest country in the history of Mankind, which gave UNBELIEVABLE freedom from capitalist slavery for ALL people! And North Korea is also a good country, they have their own missiles, processors, satellites, OS, etc and all this for a 70-year blockade from Western traitors.
And now gen Z thinks socialism is something we need to go back to, even though the 20th century is littered with the millions of dead from socialist regimes. I wish those young people could be sent off to a place where the government rations out everything in their lives, so they could experience the realities of socialism.
In the west, we forget that food security is a thing. Most times, we dont understand that the typical human condition is just above starvation. We've been here for 200 thousand years, and only within the last 150 has there been any real food security for any large section of the world. Industrialization has given us the idea that there will always be plenty. Now, we see that our food supply chain is a luxury, that is guaranteed to noone. Imagine if something major happened. You want to see people get crazy, stop tricking in food. A few days of hunger and you will see how quickly order descends to chaos. It really surprises me that more people do not realize this.
Modern farming is so insanely effective that it would be next to impossible for food security to fall apart in America. Farming equipment and fertilizer has enabled thousands upon thousands of acres to be worked by a small handful of people. This in addition to the vast amounts of viable farmland. Commodity foods can be produced so cheaply and at a level of automation that it would take a very intense war fought on American soil to cause food security issues.The USSR has starvation entirely because of how challenging switching to collective farming is. There was no highly technical near automated tractors and half the farmers had been killed or sent away for refusing to be turned into de facto slaves losing their land. Let’s also not forget almost all the grain was being sold to fund industrial growth as well. There didn’t ever need to be starvation in USSR it was man made.
@MainstreamPoPsucks3 That goes not just for food butalso electricty and thesecond a shortage appears the individual countries in the EU without production are in the shitter. France stole medical hygiene deliveries meant for Sweden passing through France shortly after Covid started. EU should simply be a trade bloc and nothing else.
The Soviet Union has always really fascinated me. Im no communist or socialist and I was only 2 Years old when the collapse occured so obviously I have no memory of said collapse, but Its just really interesting for someone whos lived in a capitalist system all his life, to actually see things like these videos with my own eyes. Its like a time machine!
Being from the UK I was lucky to have been around alot of Eastern Europe. As a whole the system was very beaureucratic and not very practical. In most shops there were several qeues you would join before purchasing an item. One to order, one to pay and one to collect. Ordering something as simple as a dish cloth or light bulb could be a 3 hour experience. Believe it or not, but toilet paper was like gold. People would exchange thier toilet paper rations for things such as perfumes and beauty products, there was literally hardly any spare toilet paper around. However alot of the stores weren't as drab looking as this one on the video. In fact many within bigger towns and cities were actually quite beautiful looking. Very high ceilings, wooden detailed skirting and fixtures, they almost had an elysee Palace feel to them. But usually that was more your department store type shops, many of them in places like Moscow still exist. Some of the products were also very good quality. I used to buy beautifully made glass ornaments and China ware for a very cheap price. Over the years Western products did begin to creep in, I remember being in warsaw around 1986 and there was a shop that sold Pepsi, the line was around the corner, and the prices were extortionate for Eastern wages . In the end the system could no longer override the ambition and will of the people who wanted to progress, after 50 years of toilet paper rationing and queueing up for hours to buy a bath towel, the system was only ever going to collapse with exhaustion. But fascinating times.
Well the world still have China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam,Laos and Cambodia. All of Communist nations. Chinese Communist government decided to lease land to Capitalist nations because they people were staving after the Maoist "Great Leap Forward". North Korea rather stay Soviet and Stalinst. Laos is being like China and Vietnam. Vietnam is bring like Laos and China Cambodia is acting like Vietnam. And Cuba is rather stay like Khrushchevism with Little spice of Che Guerrera.
I mean wouldn’t you feel al little scared if someone with a large camera was walking around and showing everything in your local place? They don’t know the camera person, and they don’t know who the camera person might be, and it was a pretty closed off place at the time. And it was the Great Recession.
Might I add, this was around the same time the US was trying to sell products to the USSR for expensive and get good quality products for cheap from the USSR.
@@nicktasteless360 Uhhh no they didn’t. Not in 1990 when this was filmed. Maybe in like 1940. Our shopping carts were big in the 90’s. I remember shopping with my mom in like 1994 at ShopRite. You’re confused sweetie.
@@cordeliachase601 i think you're the confused one here. I said "used to look like that". i didn't say that it was during the 1990s. All i said was, the shopping carts once looked like that.
I spent 3 months in Minsk in 1982. This is typical of 'supermarkets' in those days. I once visited a store with only piles of hundreds of white cabbages on sale. You had to go prepared with your own bag; finding produce unexpectly on sale, I often walked home with eggs or potatoes in my pockets! On my return to the UK, I experienced reverse culture shock.
Good times... no need to worry about what to buy, which brand, what's good for you or bad.... you just took whatever was there without thinking because having something to eat is always better than having nothing.
I don’t know if you’re just a libtard, but have you maybe considered the quality of the food perhaps? Also, just by doing something called paying attention and watching the video would help you notice that most of the shelves in that store aren’t even stocked with anything at all.
@@josephbannon8484 I don’t know if you’re just a libtard, but have you maybe considered the quality of the food perhaps? Also, just by doing something called paying attention and watching the video would help you notice that most of the shelves in that store aren’t even stocked with anything at all.
@@jacobtennyson9213 no one was happy to be poor. People simply had no clue just how much more well-off people were in the West. There was always thirst for Western clothes and electronics and movies and music. People simply had no say in how they lived and speaking up was dangerous.
I can see the tankie in this comment section going like "uuuhm aschtually, my uncle's stepfather's brother's son's friend lived in the soviet union and said it wasn't bad so yeah, checkmate"
I hope the many people living in remote regions were able to practice some degree of self reliance, such as hunting and keeping vegetable gardens, etc.
I feel sad for them. They had their potential great life taken away from them but were probably unaware of it, still keeping a smile to the face here and there.
@@r-gart The Soviet Union was collapsing when this video was made. The woman in the video was young and may have had a good, prosperous life post-collapse.
Это были действительно тяжелые времена! Купить-то можно было все, но через знакомых работников торговли. Еще заметил очень важную деталь, почти никто не улыбается! Ведь просто по количеству улыбающихся людей можно определить уровень экономической ситуации в стране. Всем добра и здоровья в этом мире. )))
Саботаж, на который народ попался, но вы правы, люди не улыбались уже. К сожалению, эта безрадостная жизнь надолго затянулась и дело не только в еде!!!
@@piterpen9254 те совковые деньги ничего не стоили, как страна рухнула советские деньги сразу в фанттики превратились, когда империя рухнула те деньги еще 10 лет принимали и акции на бирже торговались вплоть до 1929 года
The woman at 16:23 is very pretty. It's a shame to see her facial expressions, as her reality was this result. Whoever filmed this whole video did a good job to capture people's faces.
Imagine enduring this on a daily basis simply to feed your family? No wonder the people looked so glum. Some items were in such demand that they didn't even bother placing them on the shelves, just distributing them directly from the boxes...and that seemingly rotting meat couldn't even be given away! The look on the clerk behind the cosmetics/flotation device counter pretty much summed it up..."after 73 years of central state planning, we're all f**ked!"
The Russians thought that a Communist utopia will solve their hunger issues. Not they are really hungry. That what they get when read Karl Marx's quacky dialectical materialistic plans.
Тебе ссы в глаза все божья роса, в Киеве проспекты названы буквально в честь нацистских коллаборационистов и военных преступников, но нацисты почему-то в России, ага
@@peterkachman9259 Масковію трэба знішчыць Красная Армия "освободила" Освенцим, но советские лагеря она охраняла до последнего. Мало кто знает, что нацистские концлагеря использовались в этом качестве еще пять лет. Из самых известных - Бухенвальд и Заксенхаузен (спецлагерь № 2 и спецлагерь № 7, в советской терминологии). С 1948 года спецлаги были переподчинены ГУЛАГу, в 1950-м ликвидированы. Но их оборудование не пропало: новые рачительные хозяева вывезли и использовали по назначению в отечественных лагерях. Как следует из этого документа, в СССР были вывезены разборные деревянные бараки, оборудование кухонь и прачечной, медицинское имущество. А также некие «производственные механизмы» - что скрывается под этим зловещим определением, в документе не расшифровано.
@@peterkachman9259 Moscow horde´s war record :- 1856 defeated by Britain and France 1905 defeated by Japan 1917 defeated by Germany 1920 defeated by Poland, Finland, Estonia and all Baltic states 1939 defeated by Finland 1969 defeated by China 1989 defeated by Afghanistan 1989 defeated in the Cold War. 1996 defeated by Chechnya 2022 defeated by Ukraine WW2 won USA/Britain , meanwhile Stalin's officers were shot or sent to the Gulags. Millions went to the Gulags, including Solzhenitsyn Moscow's only victories come from invading smaller countries :- a) Hungary 1956 b) Czechoslovakia 1968 c) Moldova 1992 d) Georgia 2008
Multiply the prices by about 3x to get current US dollar pricing feel. (Late Soviet ruble felt like about 200 current rubles or more, exchange rate is 70+ rub/usd)
It was during Gorbachev's rule you know the one where the soviet union liberalized its way of ruling and economy and honestly you should blame Gorbachev for the store being empty because the Gorbachev regime had to export more food to cover costs of their administration than actually provide the food to the people.
@@schopen-hauer From the photos, videos and stories I've read through the years, 'socialism' and 'funny' should never be used in the same sentence. The biggest impact I had was seeing starving people standing in daily food lines and walking away with hardly anything to feed their families AND sometimes people walked away with nothing when food lines ran dry. Most parents were skin and bones, as they sacrificed their portions to their children, hoping that their kids would survive that hell. People died while their gov't enslaved them. Where in this hell is it the least bit funny? SOCIALISM IS EVIL.
Yeah in the Soviet Union you can just find one brand made by one company in the stores. Over here you can find MANY brands.... all owned by one company in the stores.
@@Zellig thats because the soviet union was efficient, it didnt produced 50 different types of strawberry marmelade but just one, and remaining ressources were put into space exploration which was much more efficient than the american one.
@@KingScorpio84 Do you know the process of growing wealth? If you think that "efficiency" equals "wealth" you're completly wrong. Also, do you think that by 1957 they had the same economy policy that they had in 1918-1921?
nao sei que idade tens nem se estou a responder mt tarde, mas portugal teve uma fase assim depois do 25 Abril em 74 na fase comunista, quase de repente começaram a subir os preços e nao havia nada nas lojas, tínhamos de pedir a frança para mandar toneladas de carne para portugal, em 76 as lojas estavam assim
@@schopen-hauer Sou brasileiro, seu país experimentou dessa praga chamada comunismo, e pensar que aqui ainda existem idiotas defendendo essa merda, socialismo é tão cruel quanto comunismo, basta observar venezuela e cuba.
Yes, I agree ... This video was filmed in the late 80s when the traitor Gorbachev destroyed the second economy of the world (the economy of the USSR) with the help of his so-called "perestroika" and inefficient economic policy. It was during the reign of Gorbachev that empty shelves in stores, poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and all the other "charms" of Western life began to appear.
Interesting how the guy was able to film all of this without somebody approaching and asking a bunch of questions. My best bet is that it was cut out. Horrible living conditions.
Interestingly enough, this appears to be outtakes from a US news segment about the changes under way in the USSR due to perestroika and glasnost. By that time, most camera crews could more or less operate freely without harassment from the authorities, which was unheard of even a few years back before Glasnost.
caspence56 i'm russian and it is still so. Situation is better with stores (but 300-400$ is monthly salary lol). Everyone and everything still looks gray. I can even sent you a pic of my town if i'd know how
Back in the eighties Estonia (then part of Soviet Union) had access to Finnish TV-channels, as Finland was so close. Soviets were enraged as Estonians could see tv-shows and ads that showed grocery-stores full of food, and people in general enjoying way higher standard of living than they had in Soviet Union.
Their country and entire system that they can remember was obviously collapsing at the moment. Rather civilized even compared to how the US eats itself apart in relatively good times.
I was there in the 80s its hard to explain to people back in the west what it was like. Restaurant food was awful except for Chicken Kiev beef tasted old thank god I brought peanut butter I also remember birds pooping on people from the roof of the mall
@@trzaskubejbe first of all it was SOCIALISM, Sweden, Canada and Venezuela are Social Democratic, second Communism means no State, no Police, no Army, no Communist Party, no Money the level between Capitalism and Communism is Socialism, Socialism is a condition when The Companies belong to the State and they are controlled by the Councils of the workers, with every Representative in the State is elected and can be recalled at anytime by the Councils and everyone, from a single worker to the President of the Socialist Republic is getting paid according to his family's needs, equally and the Economy is planned according to the productive abilities of the Country and the people's needs. Socialism's goal is to put every mean of products under under people's councils' control, under Social ownership, when the Policy of the State is "the free of the people the free of the market" and the Slogan is "liberalisation" means capitalist Policy
@@DavidLopez-up3qm Yeah, first of all "elections", secondly what about communst Russia before 46? Especially after the commies took over, when they won the civil war. All of that killing, and starving people to death, especially in Ukraine, sending everyone to Siberia into work camps.. Im sure CIA did that too... I am curius what kind of mental gymnastics will you use this time
Explains an old Soviet humorous saying: "Things are getting better! Well, not as good as yesterday, but better than tomorrow!"
Thats what I say about Argentina too!!!
@@ezequielalberto720 Well, peronism applies basically the same policies as the USSR, so not surprising.
@Pamphlets Well, at least for most of the former satellite states of the USSR and the non-European Russian territories it got much worse but they were already a huge failure before Soviet Russia funded them like crazy. It's like you lived your whole life on welfare without ever learning a job or having any kind of useful education and then, after more than 60 years, you suddenly have to do something yourself to provide your living AS IT SHOULD BE!
Of course this is not an easy pill to swallow but it's absolutely necessary and I can't see how "very very wealthy" oligarchs are worse than very very wealthy communist government officials who - unlike the oligarchs - have the power to control the entire economy (which didn't work out too well...) and the power to put you and your entire family in a fucking gulag if you cough in the wrong direction.
However, the biggest problem for them is actually not the lack of Soviet funding but the complete ineptitude to establish Western democracies with real free market economies that ACTUALLY WORK and don't depend solely on the exploitation of finite geological resources...
@Pamphlets What a bunch of BS! These polls are fucking meaningless (as most polls are), especially if you consider that a lot of these people are still very much indoctrinated into the communist/socialist maxim and/or just feel deeply nostalgic about these times for a variety of reasons - mostly subjective and personal. And yeah, a lot of them definitely benefited from the welfare they got from the government, I'm not even denying that!
But it's also a fact, that their economy was a complete disaster for the most part and the few parts of it that somehow worked weren't sustainable because they relied mostly on the selling of rich geological resources (similar to the economies of the Middle East) and they had an undoubtedly tyrannical government that robbed them of almost all the freedoms that every individual in Western-run countries had at that time.
And your excursion of Western colonialism in Africa is just pathetic and completely out of place in this context and maybe you should have educated yourself about the countless colonial endeavors of the USSR all throughout the Middle East and Asia! Admittedly, they totally failed in colonialism, just as they failed in everything else, but you can't say that they never tried.
Anyway, I see that you already prepared these comments beforehand but i gotta tell you, that you are not very well prepared, my dear comrade!
@Pamphlets Easy: A prison (in a Western country) punishes individuals who severely impair the freedom of others, (e.g. by killing or physically hurting them or by stealing from them) and also to protect the rest of society from those criminals!
Gulags on the other hand existed exactly for the reason of committing such crimes against the citizens of the USSR, like taking the freedom of people to criticize the government or to form a political opposition or to defend themselves against the oppressive forces of the government or to defect to the West or to create a private business, etc.
Everyone who dared to claim these basic Western/human rights had to fear of landing in one of these hellholes someday and the living conditions there... Well, let's just say, even the hardcore criminals in Alcatraz probably had it better back then, than the poor souls inside these "Russian prisons", which is just a different name for the same shit.
The Soviet Union was truly ahead of its time -- the shelves at my local Trader Joe's didn't look like that until late in March 2020
That was exactly what I thought when was a limit imposed how many of each items one could purchase. I grew up with that in USSR.
@Dope Cat gov: reforms the economy(perestroika) into a more capitalist chinese(dengist) model
right wingers: "look how terrible gommunissm iz 😭"
@Dope Cat Soviet women were not thin, potatoes and cheap macarons are not very good for health.
@@electronicraisin5956 You’ll be first against the wall when your revolution comes. You’ll die confused and afraid, begging your masters to let you live. “But I was a good revolutionary, wasn’t I?! I did everything you asked for! I’m not a prole! I’m one of y-“
That’s just it, though. You did everything they asked. It’s just that they asked you to die. You didn’t get the memo. Enjoy.
@@RealTallestSkil take your pills grandpa, youre drifting off to your fantasies again
me: walks into walmart
me: finds 80 different types of cookies
me: "these suck"
appreciate what you have.
"I will reestablish communism"
- Gandhi 3298-6486
4 months later...
there were huge lines always at the store, like if apple came out with the original iphone every day. Stock was non-exsistent as usual. Bananas were hard to find or there weren't even any. It was always like this, every single day.
@@henriaunin bananas are important , but poteto is essential
The entire store looks like my refrigerator whenever I'm hungry.
Imagine how they felt
@@alixritter9851 put soviet patato in the refrigerator 😂
Do you want brown ketchup? Or brown ketchup?
We have many colors of lipstick, red and dark red. We also have flesh color...it is no lipstick.
Yea fr 😭😭
This is the most depressing grocery store that i have ever seen
Soviet economy was really fallen behind compare to western economy, while western europe and America produce more goods everyday with both food, cloth and with newer abd better electronics goods, Russia and Eastern Europe can't keep up with them, Russian military maybe modern but their economy is sore that even the basic need are hard to find
@Surreal_NewsFull with what? Empty jars?
Well you not saw Yugoslavia in 90s still plus there all fall down and sanctions and war,here they have something there nothing 1 can on all market,ppl wait for milk ir bread all day and inflation,till you waiting for milk price riže 10 times,inflation was 220 000 percent
From what I've heard, even before it got THIS bad, the Soviets were having to import large amounts of meat from France in the 80s to ensure it would stay in the diets of their people. Agriculture and livestock production in the country had never been phenomenal IIRC, but by Brezhnev's last years in power, it was having serious problems and decline in production. Before the Russia-Ukraine War and other stuff, Russia in the 2000s actually had a miraculous agricultural revolution that saw them go from being an importer of grain in the Soviet era to becoming one of the Top 5 exporters on earth. If THAT doesn't prove the superiority of a capitalist system, what does?
@@ishikawagoemon4397 russian military isn’t modern 😂 they use machinery from the 1960s
American grocery carts are the size of Fiats to make you feel like you didn’t get enough. Russian grocery carts are the handbags to make you feel as though you have more than enough.
In both cases you still don't have enough😂😂😂
Nah. Shopping carts used to be like that across Europe back in that time
7:37 That women took one sniff of that meat and said "Ight imma head out"
😂😂😂😂😂
True. The Soviet Union suffered constant meat shortages. Kina like what the US is experiencing right now except these days we have IQF and cryoseal technology, combined with a strong distribution network. Meat prices are high but at least they're reaching their destination before they expire.
Cat meat has a acquired smell
So much meat rejection in this video, even when there isn't much meat to choose from.
@@Xapheus Who would want to shit their guts from food poisoning?
I was born in Soviet Union, in 1981. But I don’t remember being hungry, because my grandma had sort of mini farm. She owned: couple of cows, pigs, rabbits, chickens, goats. We grew our own vegetables, fruits e tc. My grandma made our own bread, cheese, ice cream. As a result I was super healthy kid, never had any allergies, never had a cold! And it was super cold in the winter in Ural Mountains. I remember there are used to be separate shops for different things. Separate shops for milk, for bread, or meat for example. Only when supermarkets came in to play, with extensive choice of food, I suddenly developed some allergies and my immune system went down. Although, I am happy that I’ve kept some of my childhood healthy eating habits up to today. 👍
Atleast Russian's arent confused which batbroom to use and have identity crisis
@@Иванпонимаете-г4ш What does that transphobic drivel have anything to do with the original comment?
@@TheButterMinecart1 sorry i forgot how sensitive you people are, try not to cry. Everything is going to be okay, do you need a coloring box and books and a safe space. Like many of the universities there offer.
@@Иванпонимаете-г4ш It's not about sensitivity, you're just shilling your completely unrelated ideology in this conversation.
It was the same way in Cuba. It also was really hurt by corruption when the supermarkets showed up. Somehow the distribution of more luxury foods always ended up in the stores that only ministers and officials could shop at. That got really bad in the late 80’s
This was in 90s during the recession ultimately led to the collapse of the country.
It was in 20th with millions dead from artificial famine created by communists ,and again it definitely was with more than millions dead for the same reason, it was in 30th with 1at least 11 millions dead in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Don, Cuban and etc., it was again in 40th with 1+ million dead, and the reason was communist policy... so 80th and 90-91 were a kind of relaxed mode comparing to previous 50 years in USSR. And yes, I was born in fucking USSR in one of the countries occupied by Red Russia, I remember empty shelves in grocery stores, generally in any shop/supermarket empty shelves all over USSR, with some exceptions for city like Moscow and Leningrad!
Denis Oko Brezhnev era was far far far better than your fuсking Gorbachev the impostor
@@denisoko8494 Have you seen all the videos on YT with people saying how great the USSR was?
@@chrissthrlnd Yes, it was crazy for me to see that people, those uneducated, but "useful idiots" for Commies, those who bought all this socialist crap again. BTW those on TV generally were first in line to shoot when Commies take full power, i.e. they don't need more "useful idiots" who could compare their promises and the Commies reality.
@@ezrathegreatconqueror F@ck all and any of these Commies abomination AKA Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin... Brezhnev, Gorbachev and etc.! USSR is dead and I like it! I am from Ukraine occupied by Red Russia and I didn't remember time when harvest was bad that time, but Red Russia Commies Policy "magically" created multiple famines and deficit of food continuously from 1917 to 1991.
It was a different world. Thank you for the video. Feels like travelling back in a time machine. I was a young woman when I left USSR. I now can't recall in such details what people wore, what it all looked like having lived for so long in the West. Those videos enable us to reconnect with our childhood (somewhat)
Well if you're in America get ready to relive history at the rate we're going
@@gregoryrodriguez5621 I am not sure if you know it but the first thing the Soviets did back in 1917 they'd destroyed churches and annihilated tens of thousands of priests in the Stalin's prison camps. Each country has its own history...
@@tandlreeve " Each country has its own history..." вот только история россии вечная жопа почемуто- как были у карамзина бояре и опричнина , так и остались. проклятая страна
@@gregoryrodriguez5621 Go back to Mexico then
its going to be russia any minute now
If party says that store is full, then the store is full
Not in Mother Russia.
NYET! This topic is forbidden. Ministry of Truth will handle all communicades to outside world. Report to Gulag! NOW!
It's like a dystopian Costco
I was thinking looks more like Aldi, actually. Dystopian Aldi. It’s German, now I wonder, EAST German?
At least the plants are feed
Or a Post-Brexit Britain...
50+ years of sanctions and embargoes against the USSR by the entire West did this....not socialism/communism. The greatest lie ever told was that socialism causes this. If you were sanctioned/embargoed for 50+ years, you would be eating your neighbor's cat out of hunger.
So you’re saying that the capitalistic system was the one producing the supply, and when they denied the supply, the communist system couldn’t produce it on their own. Is that correct?
Wow this shop is stacked, probably its because in Moscow... In smaller cities you couldnt find at least half of this stuff.
))) soo funny, you make my week)), you make my month))). I'll have good mood for New Year.
doghammer1 but thats what reality in soviet union was... yeah now it looks like comedy, but then people had to suffer coz of some commies...
Actually not.Please, make some effort over yourself, to read below "cc" post and comment from Django. Both are very accurate. Django's observations are exactly righ. Because I remember 70s, and 80s.So in this way I will agree with every Django and cc words
doghammer1 well I am talking from my experience. My parents, gandparents lived in ussr occupation... so nice try, but no... ussr was awefull.
You have no experience, cause you never lived in USSR. You parents and grandparents lie to you. What about Riga's radio factory, was famous all over USSR? It' bankrupt under capitalism.
A family friend of my husband, he’s Filipino brought his Russian wife to live in the Philippines (90s) and she was so shock to have all the Coke she can drink. Lol Filipinos found it weird as Philippines is a 3rd world country but Russia had no access to soda. And we thought we had it bad
She should be thankful for him of taking her from "worker paradise" imo
Yeah...sugar water!
And ? Like who needs that poison anyway ? Coke 🤦🏻♂️
Found this upsetting, cannot imagine the struggles she went through during Soviet rule.
At that time, a woman said to her husband: "if I had bacon, I would have made you a bacon omelet, but unfortunately I have no eggs ....!"
At least have a McDonald's in Moscow. Until it close down.
@@jacobtennyson9213 They don't even have McDonalds anymore
"When all you have is nothing, there is enough to go around"
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM no, this was 1917 to 1991, the only reason the footage is from during Khruschev is because no other leader would allow anyone to film how shit it was
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM I meant Gorbachev, and no, there is no uncensored footage of what the reality of life for the Soviet people was
There were still films made in the 30s and 40s that were only released properly in the late 80s because Gorbachev was the first leader who didn't want to brutalise his own populace for not believing state "thruths"
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM yes, on paper it took a nosedive, but that's only because of how the Soviet system was setup- the USSR never actually recovered from WW2, and the stagflation under Khruschev was only openly revealed when the government stopped hiding it under Gorbachev
Why else would the USSR admit that for decades it was far behind most other nations in consumer industries under Gorbachev? It wasn't that he suddenly flicked a switch and then everyone lost their jobs, it was the result of stopping the massive state spending, hyperinflation of currency, and strict state censure of information
Quality of life in the USSR was terrible, hence why when we see a huge crisis in Western states supermarkets are still fully stocked, while even "good times" in Communist countries result in massive shortages and poor economic results
@Awawawa “Awawawa” CM
Nothing you have just said is true. The economy never recovered after WW2- it was never given the chance. The military was, from 1941 to about the middle of the 1980s, consistently absorbed far more of the Soviet economy than it had any right to. The economic "growth" experienced post-war was much like the "growth" seen under Stalin pre-war- it wasn't real growth, as in the economy of the country increasing, it was paper-growth in that what was recorded was wrong, the areas that grew were state subsidised and over-represented and the true economy, the supply of goods, services, labour and demand through consumption *decreased* due to the capital extraction and population decreases
Now, one may argue the merits of this. I certainly do not agree that it was neccessary to kill millions of people through collectivisation to build industry, but if you do you cannot say it "grew" the economy, only pivoted it away from agriculture to industry. That's fine if you are arguing purely on the merit of state functions, but it is not conducive to actual economic growth.
The Soviet economy, from its inception, was based around massive, hyperinflation. If you read the party documents, especially during Lenin and Stalin's rule, it is especially prevalent that they (and the Politburo) wanted this- by hyperinflation the currency and making it worthless to people, the Communist utopian ideal of people abandoning money would occur. The shortages did not develop under Gorbachev, they began under Lenin, *as a result of intentional state policy*. And when people were clearly angered by this, the Soviet state responded by increasing wages and lowering prices. It doesn't take an economist to tell you what will happen if goods are in short supply and people then are given more money and have more value for their money: they will buy more of it when they can, exacerbating shortages further.
I'd seriously recommend reading Kotkin's three-parter tome on Stalin, but in essence it describes in several hundred pages what I just said.
When the USSR entered the post-war world, it was severely crippled, industry was virtually zero because what wasn't destroyed was entirely geared towards now-useless military applications, which is not a moral condemnation but an observation of fact. It's population had not recovered to the pre-war total of ~185-195 million until 1955, and then its issues became impossible to ignore. From 1945 to 1950, the USSR grew a few percentage points of GDPpC in comparison to both Europe and the USA, from about 50 to 60% and 25% to 30%, respectively, yet then immediately took a drastic turn it never recovered from, reaching 50% of Europe in the 70s and 40% in the 90s.
Stagflation absolutely affected the USSR, because stagnation was inherent to economy because of the way the central planning worked and inflation was state policy. Inflation was actually worse under Khruschev and Brezhnev because they did not operate the slave labor of the Gulags which allowed them to extract precious gold and platinum for very little cost, which meant unlike Soviet citizens the state could trade on the international market for what it needed. One of the few lifelines the state had during the 70s and 80s was Russia's incredible supplies of oil and gas, supplanting the previous decades reliance on increasingly difficult to extract metals.
Ultimately, Gorbachev had little-to-no impact on the Soviet economy- supplies were already bad in the 20s and never reached a sufficient level in the first place. All Gorbachev did was to open the system to sunlight, to try and take an objective look at the real situation the Soviet Union faced. There is a reason he reached power, and its precisely excuse the Soviet Union had reached a crisis point under previous leadership, which was inevitable given the economic principles governing the country.
There is a man who understand this, and that man is Reagan. Unlike the USSR, the USA was not an extractive economy, it was productive. It had the consumer economy as priority, and was therefore able to tax it lightly to produce an arms industry that far surpassed the Soviet Union's, which meant it could expand while the USSR would eventually collapse if it attempted parity, and that's what happened in history. Unlike the US in Vietnam, the USSR was unable to sustain Afghanistan and collapsed under the economic pressures from that.
Now, you can certainly argue a counter-factual reality, like a more conservative Soviet leader crushing the independence movements within the USSR, but ultimately that would have most likely ended up with the state in a similar position in at most a decade. Instead of internal collapse, the economy would have shattered and you'd have civil war between the state and all its constituent territories wanting freedom.
There is a reason that China pursued economic liberalism while tying it to the CCP, it can actually truly grow now and that is evident in the difference between China in 1990 and China in 2010, or 2020. Unlike the USSR, China has gone from an agriculturally extractive economy to a truly consumer based economy, like the USA, and therefore has the funds to do what it wants, which is why I find them a far larger threat than the USSR ever was. Unlike the USSR which died with its people having decades long waiting lists for massively outdated cars, China has the largest market for cars, smart phones, video games, etc.
That is the real headstone of the USSR- its legacy is failure, having been supplanted by what it saw as an even greater rival than the USA
Thank you for posting this historical footage. The picture is beautiful and the sound is clear. I am studying Soviet culture and historical media like this video is priceless.
Seems like the time you’re living in is priceless for studying Soviet culture
The Finnish Commercial TV (MTV) was able to watch in Soviet Estonian Tallinn. We had much food commercials and the best were those where our K-Market ”Meat Counter Väiski” named man told how to make good beef and what kind of meat is now the best and on sale etc. showing delicious chunk of meat in close-ups. The counters were of course full of meat as the markets usually were here. When Tallinn people were angry that they don’t have meat like in Finland, the party told them that all the commercials we aired, were only propaganda and the meat were not real or not really for sale for the puclic. The same story was told when we aired washing machine, hoover or freezer commercials.
The cameraman has noticed the beautiful face at the end - and he has shared this little ray of light to us through many years
Soviet smiles LOL
You know Russian girls... All 10s and 1s. WOW😍... woah🤢.... WOW😍.....woah🤢...
"woah".... Awwwww, I'm a "woah" 😥
@@ralphralpherson9441 Thanks Family guy!
Two beautiful faces, one behind the other. Holy moly. If they didn't have those dowdy haircuts and clothes they'd be super hot.
"May I speak to the manager"
This is Communism, everyone's a manager.
she/he is in the gulag :D
Everyone is manager and everyone is clerk.
Comrade Gorbachev is busy...
[gets shot on site!]
Worth to note that this video was taken sometime around 1990-1991. The whole Soviet empire was collapsing at this point. It is obviously a fair representation of grocery stores during the twilight of the Soviet empire(although stores from Moscow or St. Petersburg would probably be a lot better off), but it isn’t m quite a fair representation of stores in the decades before.
it is, stores in USSR sold only basic essential things, in comparative to western stores they were basically empty.
But it did decline, and it did collapse. And the people who lived there suffered.
You know what the definition of crazy is? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. People keep saying socialism will be different this time. Yeah, sure, with so many more people in the world today (many of whom have no desire to work) I’m sure it will be different. I’m sure it will fail that much sooner.
@@snowwhite5842 gorbachevs pestroika policy did this man. Not planned economy. He was privatizing industries at massive levels. It couldnt handle markets and private ownership and such
That fact that it ever got to that point and then totally collapsed says enough. A terrible venture that lasted less than a century and killed millions
@@coldsake07It collapsed because of Perestroika, which was markets.
91年の4月にシベリア鉄道に乗りたくて、崩壊寸前のソ連を旅行したことがある。
クレムリン近くのでかいデパートがまさにこんな感じだった。何も商品がないのに従業員がうつろな目で立っていたのが印象に残っている。いまでもスーパーに行くと、溢れかえる商品を見てあの時の光景を思い出す。
This looks like stores during corona virus.
Damn...you beat me to it!!!!
@@Hillers62 hahah
@@athandog lmao
@@athandog tfw corona shortages are literally caused by capitalism. Fuck off, moron
@@Diax1324 >Doesnt know how to use tfw meme
my mom told me the story of his father life how lucky they were others were basically starving and my grandfather had very good life they had lots of food and also they had a car,cars were soo rare in ussr atleast in my country (estonia)
they weren’t so rare in latvia, i guess it’s a matter of relocation of industrial complexes.
Nothing....it’s what’s for dinner
😂 I shouldn't laugh, but that was damn funny, and you nailed it. 👍God Bless You for you humor.❤️
Marie Antoinette's Cake It isn’t even funny, it’s propaganda, and it isn’t creative. And just going to say this was the 90’s.
DDBR Naujaliai you could eat nothing in the ussr, because there was nothing to eat.
S D my family lived under the Soviet Union and they ate, there was only one major famine, and hell, I’m a Leftcom and I don’t like the USSR.
S D shut up you idiot. There was always something to eat
Watching this after seeing black Friday videos. Talk about two extremes.
LOL!
Empty shelves but potted plants on top!
How cute!
Distracts from the empty shelves...
Those were refrigeration units.
Serge Stodolnik - That is Communism in a nutshell
Lipstick on the ol pig routine.... But in Russia no pigs. Not even in deli case
@@tes420 Communism is a fantasy fairy tale that has nothing to do with reality.
My favorite part is the butcher behind the glass just chucking random meat parts onto the shelves below.
Imagine a world where "meat" has to be kept behind the closed doors so that no one storms the butcher area and raids all the meat. LOL
Here is your allotment of 1 Meat Unit.
9:05 They had to literally smell the food to make sure it wasn’t rotted because in the USSR, they’d sell anything no matter if it gave the customer a disease or poisoned them. There was no rules.
Actually, there were rules. The abbreviation «ГОСТ» means «State standard» and complying with it was a mandatory thing.
They couldn’t sell rotten meat or eggs or anything that was inedible.
They could sell stale bread. It was common for bakeries to sell the stale bread at the end of the day.
@@gmodrules123456789i just can say they deseve not more than rotten meat, putrid vegetables and moldy bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner
Fantastic camera work. Very stable and gives a solid perspective on what it was like back then.
@@CzechtoU This is not an USSR. And USSR was the greatest state on Earth!
@@CzechtoU Why should I go to North Korea if my Homeland is the USSR? The USSR was the greatest country in the history of Mankind, which gave UNBELIEVABLE freedom from capitalist slavery for ALL people! And North Korea is also a good country, they have their own missiles, processors, satellites, OS, etc and all this for a 70-year blockade from Western traitors.
@@CzechtoU Also, u dont have freedom at all, u have cancel culture, that's all, EU = big prison for nations.
And now gen Z thinks socialism is something we need to go back to, even though the 20th century is littered with the millions of dead from socialist regimes. I wish those young people could be sent off to a place where the government rations out everything in their lives, so they could experience the realities of socialism.
For a video from the 80's the video quality is impressive!
I remember seeing USSR in my social studies textbook in 6th grade.
It's 'cause it's not from the 80s. This was happening already after the fall of the USSR. I would say 1991-92 maybe? In the USSR we had everything.
@@riccardonoce4832
The USSR fell apart in 1991.
It was after the Perestroika when everything went to shit...
@@elena79rus You had? Where are you from because as someone from a country that was once a part of ussr I can disprove this.
In the west, we forget that food security is a thing. Most times, we dont understand that the typical human condition is just above starvation. We've been here for 200 thousand years, and only within the last 150 has there been any real food security for any large section of the world.
Industrialization has given us the idea that there will always be plenty.
Now, we see that our food supply chain is a luxury, that is guaranteed to noone. Imagine if something major happened. You want to see people get crazy, stop tricking in food. A few days of hunger and you will see how quickly order descends to chaos. It really surprises me that more people do not realize this.
Modern farming is so insanely effective that it would be next to impossible for food security to fall apart in America. Farming equipment and fertilizer has enabled thousands upon thousands of acres to be worked by a small handful of people. This in addition to the vast amounts of viable farmland. Commodity foods can be produced so cheaply and at a level of automation that it would take a very intense war fought on American soil to cause food security issues.The USSR has starvation entirely because of how challenging switching to collective farming is. There was no highly technical near automated tractors and half the farmers had been killed or sent away for refusing to be turned into de facto slaves losing their land. Let’s also not forget almost all the grain was being sold to fund industrial growth as well. There didn’t ever need to be starvation in USSR it was man made.
@@domnoya4130 well unless there is a plague that kills all the corn :D
In the west our poor people are obese
@MainstreamPoPsucks3 That goes not just for food butalso electricty and thesecond a shortage appears the individual countries in the EU without production are in the shitter. France stole medical hygiene deliveries meant for Sweden passing through France shortly after Covid started. EU should simply be a trade bloc and nothing else.
@MainstreamPoPsucks3 Is the salary in Norway enough to have a decent life?
The Soviet Union has always really fascinated me. Im no communist or socialist and I was only 2 Years old when the collapse occured so obviously I have no memory of said collapse, but Its just really interesting for someone whos lived in a capitalist system all his life, to actually see things like these videos with my own eyes. Its like a time machine!
It makes you glad capitalism exists. But capitalism has its fair share of problems, especially with greed.
Do you think the USSR didn't run on greed?
Being from the UK I was lucky to have been around alot of Eastern Europe. As a whole the system was very beaureucratic and not very practical. In most shops there were several qeues you would join before purchasing an item. One to order, one to pay and one to collect. Ordering something as simple as a dish cloth or light bulb could be a 3 hour experience. Believe it or not, but toilet paper was like gold. People would exchange thier toilet paper rations for things such as perfumes and beauty products, there was literally hardly any spare toilet paper around. However alot of the stores weren't as drab looking as this one on the video. In fact many within bigger towns and cities were actually quite beautiful looking. Very high ceilings, wooden detailed skirting and fixtures, they almost had an elysee Palace feel to them. But usually that was more your department store type shops, many of them in places like Moscow still exist. Some of the products were also very good quality. I used to buy beautifully made glass ornaments and China ware for a very cheap price. Over the years Western products did begin to creep in, I remember being in warsaw around 1986 and there was a shop that sold Pepsi, the line was around the corner, and the prices were extortionate for Eastern wages . In the end the system could no longer override the ambition and will of the people who wanted to progress, after 50 years of toilet paper rationing and queueing up for hours to buy a bath towel, the system was only ever going to collapse with exhaustion. But fascinating times.
Well the world still have China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam,Laos and Cambodia. All of Communist nations.
Chinese Communist government decided to lease land to Capitalist nations because they people were staving after the Maoist "Great Leap Forward".
North Korea rather stay Soviet and Stalinst.
Laos is being like China and Vietnam.
Vietnam is bring like Laos and China
Cambodia is acting like Vietnam.
And Cuba is rather stay like Khrushchevism with Little spice of Che Guerrera.
@@TheDarknightRemix ... Their leaders are.
They all look angry and depressed
well yeah, it was during the recession
I mean wouldn’t you feel al little scared if someone with a large camera was walking around and showing everything in your local place? They don’t know the camera person, and they don’t know who the camera person might be, and it was a pretty closed off place at the time. And it was the Great Recession.
Might I add, this was around the same time the US was trying to sell products to the USSR for expensive and get good quality products for cheap from the USSR.
Thats how russian people are. We smile a lot in the US
@Average Joe there is so much wrong with your sentence
How bad must that meat have been?? They ALL put it back. Omg.
Was that meat?
@@yingnyang i guess it was......
@@haroldfromthebikinibottom7335 🤮🤮
It looked like roadkill.
@@edgabrielocay3376 I'd choose roadkill over that lol
The size of the shopping carts says it all lol
you forgot shopping carts in America used to look like that
@@nicktasteless360 Uhhh no they didn’t. Not in 1990 when this was filmed. Maybe in like 1940. Our shopping carts were big in the 90’s. I remember shopping with my mom in like 1994 at ShopRite. You’re confused sweetie.
@@cordeliachase601 i think you're the confused one here. I said "used to look like that". i didn't say that it was during the 1990s. All i said was, the shopping carts once looked like that.
Couldn't imagine not being drunk off vodka walking into this place.
I think what makes thos video unsettling is the fact there is no store music, not just the empty shelves, but the whole environment is depressing
True. Sadly as I get older and more peculiar, a shopping 🛒 trip to Walmart is almost fun, (almost) 😊😊
I cannot stand the blaring music in modern stores. I wish it were more like this
I was born in Moscow in 1982 and remember this well. Thank you for this footage. Posting for all to see
3:19 Çernobil'den etkilenen çaylarımızı tekrar sovyetlere satmak.
Joker gibi gülesim geldi 😄
Aklıma direk aynı şey geldi.
Topluca çakallık genlerimizde sanırım
@@dexon777 Çakallık yıllarca o çayları kendi halkına içirmek olmasın?
yanlışın var o çayları biz içtik. ruslara temiz çay satıldı
Stonks📈
Amazing footage for history nice work.
In Soviet Russia- Store buys you
in usa today- store buys you
Great camera quality for the 90s.
I spent 3 months in Minsk in 1982. This is typical of 'supermarkets' in those days. I once visited a store with only piles of hundreds of white cabbages on sale. You had to go prepared with your own bag; finding produce unexpectly on sale, I often walked home with eggs or potatoes in my pockets! On my return to the UK, I experienced reverse culture shock.
nowadays they call it aldi
In austria, they call it hofer
Lmao
@@mustafaamiri3277 Switzerland too. I'm not swiss.
In Portugal, they call it Minipreço.
in Greece they call it Lidl/Carfour
8:52 Worker throwing meat rolls out the window.
Michael Reyes _ Costco )))
No fear of getting fired or unemployment = no incentive to have decent customer service or do a good job lol
Aldi
Good times... no need to worry about what to buy, which brand, what's good for you or bad.... you just took whatever was there without thinking because having something to eat is always better than having nothing.
I don’t know if you’re just a libtard, but have you maybe considered the quality of the food perhaps? Also, just by doing something called paying attention and watching the video would help you notice that most of the shelves in that store aren’t even stocked with anything at all.
@@josephbannon8484 I don’t know if you’re just a libtard, but have you maybe considered the quality of the food perhaps? Also, just by doing something called paying attention and watching the video would help you notice that most of the shelves in that store aren’t even stocked with anything at all.
In the Soviet Union people were happy to be poor. But they work and shut up.
@@jacobtennyson9213 no one was happy to be poor. People simply had no clue just how much more well-off people were in the West. There was always thirst for Western clothes and electronics and movies and music. People simply had no say in how they lived and speaking up was dangerous.
@@mrvk39 .. Some Russians are happy of being poor under communism and some were not.
I can see the tankie in this comment section going like "uuuhm aschtually, my uncle's stepfather's brother's son's friend lived in the soviet union and said it wasn't bad so yeah, checkmate"
B-b-but that wasn’t real communism
food is road kill quality, i feel sorry for those people
That life inside the Iron Curtian.
Thanks for taking the time to post this. "Attention shoppers: Meat special scurrying up Aisle 4!"
I hope the many people living in remote regions were able to practice some degree of self reliance, such as hunting and keeping vegetable gardens, etc.
Russian has always been called "Medieval Nation with a Medieval Regime. From the Czars to the General Secretaries and dictators.
Yes, we could.
Exactly how most people were feeding and survived, from local farms, villages, gardens
17:17 when she smiles.
we got heart attack!
I feel sad for them. They had their potential great life taken away from them but were probably unaware of it, still keeping a smile to the face here and there.
@@r-gart The Soviet Union was collapsing when this video was made. The woman in the video was young and may have had a good, prosperous life post-collapse.
Это были действительно тяжелые времена! Купить-то можно было все, но через знакомых работников торговли. Еще заметил очень важную деталь, почти никто не улыбается! Ведь просто по количеству улыбающихся людей можно определить уровень экономической ситуации в стране. Всем добра и здоровья в этом мире. )))
Зато щас все есть, только денег ни хрена нет,и также никто не улыбается
Саботаж, на который народ попался, но вы правы, люди не улыбались уже. К сожалению, эта безрадостная жизнь надолго затянулась и дело не только в еде!!!
@@piterpen9254 те совковые деньги ничего не стоили, как страна рухнула советские деньги сразу в фанттики превратились, когда империя рухнула те деньги еще 10 лет принимали и акции на бирже торговались вплоть до 1929 года
I saw a vid about 2 Russians visiting the US in Soviet times and people laughing and smiling so often was alien to them.
@@piterpen9254 ... You think that in the Iron Curtian, you are happy to be poor.
The woman at 16:23 is very pretty. It's a shame to see her facial expressions, as her reality was this result. Whoever filmed this whole video did a good job to capture people's faces.
The blonde or the brunette?
You mean the one on the left I am sure. Yeah she is actually model tier. I wonder whatever happened to her.
She’s still waiting in that line.
She was probably a KGB. She looked to good for a Babushka
but if you look real close....looks like she's sizing up the clerk TO EAT FOR DINNER!!!!!
Imagine enduring this on a daily basis simply to feed your family? No wonder the people looked so glum. Some items were in such demand that they didn't even bother placing them on the shelves, just distributing them directly from the boxes...and that seemingly rotting meat couldn't even be given away! The look on the clerk behind the cosmetics/flotation device counter pretty much summed it up..."after 73 years of central state planning, we're all f**ked!"
The Russians thought that a Communist utopia will solve their hunger issues. Not they are really hungry.
That what they get when read Karl Marx's quacky dialectical materialistic plans.
This time will come again for some countries
We had it for a few first weeks. Scary shit.
@@chadwarden1179 how? Oh right "me american other poor" *dies in front of hospital*
-Ваня, пора на войну
-А с кем воюем?
-С фашистами 🇷🇺.
- Отлично! А против кого?"
Тебе ссы в глаза все божья роса, в Киеве проспекты названы буквально в честь нацистских коллаборационистов и военных преступников, но нацисты почему-то в России, ага
@@peterkachman9259 Масковію трэба знішчыць
Красная Армия "освободила" Освенцим, но советские лагеря она охраняла до последнего. Мало кто знает, что нацистские концлагеря использовались в этом качестве еще пять лет. Из самых известных - Бухенвальд и Заксенхаузен (спецлагерь № 2 и спецлагерь № 7, в советской терминологии). С 1948 года спецлаги были переподчинены ГУЛАГу, в 1950-м ликвидированы. Но их оборудование не пропало: новые рачительные хозяева вывезли и использовали по назначению в отечественных лагерях. Как следует из этого документа, в СССР были вывезены разборные деревянные бараки, оборудование кухонь и прачечной, медицинское имущество. А также некие «производственные механизмы» - что скрывается под этим зловещим определением, в документе не расшифровано.
@@peterkachman9259 Moscow horde´s war record :-
1856 defeated by Britain and France
1905 defeated by Japan
1917 defeated by Germany
1920 defeated by Poland, Finland, Estonia and all Baltic states
1939 defeated by Finland
1969 defeated by China
1989 defeated by Afghanistan
1989 defeated in the Cold War.
1996 defeated by Chechnya
2022 defeated by Ukraine
WW2 won USA/Britain , meanwhile Stalin's officers were shot or sent to the Gulags. Millions went to the Gulags, including Solzhenitsyn
Moscow's only victories come from invading smaller countries :-
a) Hungary 1956
b) Czechoslovakia 1968
c) Moldova 1992
d) Georgia 2008
17:15 Damn, what a beauty!
Notice: NO MAKEUP.....
just a normal woman
@@rodrikforrester9343 great rarity nowdays.
She is an old granny now((((
Multiply the prices by about 3x to get current US dollar pricing feel. (Late Soviet ruble felt like about 200 current rubles or more, exchange rate is 70+ rub/usd)
Yes but there's no food in the shops
Brakes my heart to this I grew up in (80s) NYC hearing about this now I get to see it.
I want to laugh at the way they look at the beef, realize it’s Soviet garbage, and move on; but it’s saddening as hell
History shall repeat itself!
Russians will face this once again. We as the world will turn our backs on them until they overthrow that midget dicatator.
What a truly grim place to live. Not only for the regime that controls things, but also the general atmosphere and basic offerings.
It was during Gorbachev's rule you know the one where the soviet union liberalized its way of ruling and economy and honestly you should blame Gorbachev for the store being empty because the Gorbachev regime had to export more food to cover costs of their administration than actually provide the food to the people.
Many people loved Brejnev
Well, many of us can expect this becoming a reality amidst the 'The Great Reset', and NWO. Isnt it great?
Idiot
mom whats for dinner? rotten meat and toilet paper
KABOOM If you don't clever enough, better to shut up.
i saw a big bin full of napkins.
It's not funny though
@@schopen-hauer From the photos, videos and stories I've read through the years, 'socialism' and 'funny' should never be used in the same sentence.
The biggest impact I had was seeing starving people standing in daily food lines and walking away with hardly anything to feed their families AND sometimes people walked away with nothing when food lines ran dry. Most parents were skin and bones, as they sacrificed their portions to their children, hoping that their kids would survive that hell. People died while their gov't enslaved them. Where in this hell is it the least bit funny? SOCIALISM IS EVIL.
They had toilet paper!!!
2.35 ITS LUNCH LADY DORRIS , what a coincidence 😂🤭😮🧐
The tea brand you see at 3:24 is Turkish. Weird to see it there. Did not know that they were somehow open to foreign products.
somebody is going to comment "but west is worse than this"
this was right after the crush and the recession you should get one from 1980
Yeah in the Soviet Union you can just find one brand made by one company in the stores. Over here you can find MANY brands.... all owned by one company in the stores.
@@Zellig thats because the soviet union was efficient, it didnt produced 50 different types of strawberry marmelade but just one, and remaining ressources were put into space exploration which was much more efficient than the american one.
@@KingScorpio84 Do you know the process of growing wealth? If you think that "efficiency" equals "wealth" you're completly wrong. Also, do you think that by 1957 they had the same economy policy that they had in 1918-1921?
other parts of the world are paying the price for the west being wealthy soviet union was selfsufficient it didnt stole labour from others
a productive peace is a lot harder than war
High Quality products and happy customers.
vodka rations are top priority comrades!
That "meat" (or whatever that is) looks disgusting!!!!
caspence56 ok hahaha
This is what capitalism did to Russia.
caspence56 *you're disgusting* *you* *CAPITALIST PIG*
Oh yes, Commie dearest, we're all sure you would love to travel back in time and live like that.
@@someguy-cd4gb This was the result of near 100 years of Communism.
16:40 a kgb agent :)
@@athandog you are a chutya..
She was literally queuing
No, an agent of the CIA, who know how to kill and carry out coups d'état.
Incredible footages. well done
nao sei que idade tens nem se estou a responder mt tarde, mas portugal teve uma fase assim depois do 25 Abril em 74 na fase comunista, quase de repente começaram a subir os preços e nao havia nada nas lojas, tínhamos de pedir a frança para mandar toneladas de carne para portugal, em 76 as lojas estavam assim
@@schopen-hauer Sou brasileiro, seu país experimentou dessa praga chamada comunismo, e pensar que aqui ainda existem idiotas defendendo essa merda, socialismo é tão cruel quanto comunismo, basta observar venezuela e cuba.
Fascinating look at the old USSR. Thank you.
Back in the USSR.
Rather live in the wild than this depressing shit
Yes, I agree ... This video was filmed in the late 80s when the traitor Gorbachev destroyed the second economy of the world (the economy of the USSR) with the help of his so-called "perestroika" and inefficient economic policy. It was during the reign of Gorbachev that empty shelves in stores, poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and all the other "charms" of Western life began to appear.
@@Anonymous-qj3sf it was happening well before Gorbachev, though I agree I was a good thing he left
@@swynty5767 This was not the case before Gorbachev. Life under Brezhnev (1964-1982) was the best
Interesting how the guy was able to film all of this without somebody approaching and asking a bunch of questions. My best bet is that it was cut out. Horrible living conditions.
Hmm curious why someone would ask questions and of what?
Interestingly enough, this appears to be outtakes from a US news segment about the changes under way in the USSR due to perestroika and glasnost. By that time, most camera crews could more or less operate freely without harassment from the authorities, which was unheard of even a few years back before Glasnost.
Glad I live in Canada with full grocery stores all the time.
@Final Battle if you unironically think that neolib is communist you're braindead
@Final Battle
True. Under socialism everyone is the same. Poor, Hungry, and Broke.
@@BridgesDontFly Yes, but everyone is equal. That's all that matters, right?
@Adam Defibaugh Then vote conservative.
@@BridgesDontFly socialism isnt communism ya sped
Особенно понравилась продажа мяса,как собакам бросали куски,это жесть просто.
My God, that was depressing. All the people seem to be dressed in gray, shopping in a gray "store", for food that looks gray, too!
Sabotage 1989
caspence56 i'm russian and it is still so. Situation is better with stores (but 300-400$ is monthly salary lol). Everyone and everything still looks gray. I can even sent you a pic of my town if i'd know how
You Know what they say if it's grey it healthy for you
color is against the party, comrade.
Back in the eighties Estonia (then part of Soviet Union) had access to Finnish TV-channels, as Finland was so close. Soviets were enraged as Estonians could see tv-shows and ads that showed grocery-stores full of food, and people in general enjoying way higher standard of living than they had in Soviet Union.
3:21 It s a turkish product, Çaykur.
runningforbetter it says its from turkey on the price tag in russian.just fyi. турция
@@k.b.7424 Didn't know Russians enjoyed turkish tea... well you learn something every day...
As bayraklari as.
that was very suprising because of the chernobyl
Radioactive tea is tastier
I thought it was apple juice in those bottles, but apparently it’s ketchup.
Just look at their eyes. It speaks volumes.
Their country and entire system that they can remember was obviously collapsing at the moment. Rather civilized even compared to how the US eats itself apart in relatively good times.
At least they are happy to be poor. Lenin give Mother Russia, peace, land and bread.
The plants growing on those freezers look far more edible than anything else I saw in that horrible place!
“The stores are empty but the fridges are full”
What fridges?
@@edgabrielocay3376 Probably morgue fridges.
5:42 Is that mashed potatoes and grechka?
they have a surprisingly large selection of ethiopian food in ussr
Much of it was probably donated.
venezuelan cuisine
OpticLightning your hilarious, Ethiopia donating to ussr in the 90s
Because Ethiopia sided with the Soviets after Somalia broke away from them.
@@opticlightning3353 ☠️☠️☠️
I was there in the 80s its hard to explain to people back in the west what it was like. Restaurant food was awful except for Chicken Kiev
beef tasted old thank god I brought peanut butter I also remember birds pooping on people from the roof of the mall
It was in the late 80s
Mandatory visiting spot for youtubers making videos about the economic conditions of late Soviet Union
I remember shopping like this in 1995 on my 1st trip. I didn't understand the system or language so I left with nothing.
Special sale next week for soylent green and long pig
Long pig?
Did I hear English speaker on the background of this video?
Strange to see the prices denominated still in Soviet roubles... How awfully long ago it was. Pretty nostalgic
Yakov Smirnoff: In US, they have these grocery stores in Texas called HEB. In Soviet Russia, you shopped at KGB! What a country!
Bahahahahahaha! You make shutki, Да?
The camera quality is better than modern day security cameras wth
Just think that this was the "Liberalisation" of the USSR and the "free market"
Nope that was the bankrupcy of the communism.
@@trzaskubejbe first of all it was SOCIALISM, Sweden, Canada and Venezuela are Social Democratic, second Communism means no State, no Police, no Army, no Communist Party, no Money the level between Capitalism and Communism is Socialism, Socialism is a condition when The Companies belong to the State and they are controlled by the Councils of the workers, with every Representative in the State is elected and can be recalled at anytime by the Councils and everyone, from a single worker to the President of the Socialist Republic is getting paid according to his family's needs, equally and the Economy is planned according to the productive abilities of the Country and the people's needs.
Socialism's goal is to put every mean of products under under people's councils' control, under Social ownership, when the Policy of the State is "the free of the people the free of the market" and the Slogan is "liberalisation" means capitalist Policy
Guys, this was in 1990. The country was falling apart at that time.
Communist nations are falling apart from the very day their "revulotion" "wins". It's just matter of time
Most communist nations fell apart due to CIA coups.
@@DavidLopez-up3qm Keep telling that to yourself, and your starving family under communism. It will satisfy their hunger Im sure
@@GroueTeam The U.S. has executed at least 81 overt and covert known interventions in foreign elections during the period between 1946-2000.
@@DavidLopez-up3qm Yeah, first of all "elections", secondly what about communst Russia before 46? Especially after the commies took over, when they won the civil war. All of that killing, and starving people to death, especially in Ukraine, sending everyone to Siberia into work camps.. Im sure CIA did that too... I am curius what kind of mental gymnastics will you use this time
“The trick to social stability and economic prosperity is keeping a tidy refrigerator” - Aristotle
Aristotle about refrigerator..?
I can't believe how quiet it is.
Misery, desperation, suppressed anger. All these ladies look well-fed though. Which means they were coping somehow.
That's because men are disposable assets to society. Its always been like that. Well men are waking up now.
@@BridgesDontFly 😅😅😅