My parents also had to learn Russian at school. I remember those communist years in our country. All Eastern European countries had to learn Russian. Same restrictions in all Eastern European countries. My father went to Moscow and on a business trip. He also visited Leningrad. Leningrad is how we always knew it. I remember that well because he bought us some really nice things from there.
and, Soviets had to learn English . What's funny was that East Germans or Czechs could visit USSR but not the West but USSR regular folks were prohibited from visiting even Socialist states. In other words, you can travel only East.
I had 4 months of Russian in elementary school before my family left Poland for the West. My parents used to be fluent in Russian and still remember a decent amount of basic Russian. When they were in their 20s they used to travel all over the Western Pact. They are still quite nostalgic about that time and are quite angry about communism destroying their hopes in the 80s.
@@mrvk39no, you definitely could visit other countries, even capitalist ones, it was just a pain in the ass to get through the paperwork. it all also depends on the period
@@KOTEBANAROT no, you couldn't if you were a regular citizen. If you were foreign ministry, trade ministry, tourism ministry, maybe some military - yeah and you were cleared by the KGB you could. If you were a celebrity - some did travel and if you were friends/relatives of high government officials. Normal people couldn't travel. The only exception was the late 80s to 91 - then yeah they relaxed all rules OR during WWII and right after. My grandfather was an officer and was stationed in Germany and then Romania with his family and they traveled to Yugoslavia. That's right after the war. After 1950s, that was closed too unless you were some special military deployment.
It's amazing, and quite sad, that relations between Russia and the west were better during the time of the arms race and the iron curtain than they are now.
Back then we were told to view the their government with Disdain and contempt but to Love the Russian people and have sympathy for them and not to blame the Russian people for the actions of their government but today we are told to hate the Russian people and blame them for the actions of their leaders with the media openly calling for the punishment of the Russian population. The French media were recently talking about Crimea and openly stated that once Crimea was taken back by Ukraine the Ethnic Russian population needs to be deported in order to de russify Crimea . There is a term for that and it's called ethic cleansing. The hate for ordinary Russian people is getting frightening. Some world leaders are openly saying that Russian immigrants living in different countries need to be put under strict surveillance. People are trying to rehabilitate what Anerica did to the Japanese during WW2 so they can use it as an example they can point to as precedent and justification for doing it to Russians .
@@russiasvechenaya58 Yeah, blame someone else for Russian invasion of Ukraine, for corruption and nepotism in Russia, all while acting like the entire world is in some kind of debt to you - such a typical Russian mindset. Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible - long periods under megalomaniacs in Kremlin that attack neighboring countries under some lame excuse ('historic right', 'sacred mission', etc, etc) and oppress their own people, and then brief moments when you stop invading other nations, just to have a civil war or economic collapse. That's Russia in a nutshell.
These tourists don't seem to understand that starving and illiteracy is not freedom. The fact that they compare the USSR to the US, instead of to Africa or the Philippines at the time is silly - but also a compliment to the USSR.
In late 1989 I worked with a man from St. Petersburg. We got friendly after a while. Because we worked at a computer manufacturer I asked what kind of work he had done in the Soviet Union. He mentioned the factory he had worked in. This factory made both military and civilian products. I asked how he was able to leave his country since he has worked on some serious military hardware. He laughed."I left the old fashioned way. I bribed an official to declare me a Zionist Jew. Then I was deported as an "undesirable citizen". I asked about anti Semitism in the Soviet Union. He didn't know. He wasn't Jewish. He took advantage of the system.
Virtually all assigned "interpreters" and "guides" were with KGB. They were either actual agents or informants/associates. They had to make sure the foreign guests didn't see what they weren't supposed to see and didn't stray too far away or, worse of all, didn't interact unsupervised with random Soviet citizens. There were hand-selected citizens that were vetted like these 2 teens that knew what to say to the foreigners. Truth is, in 1986-87, no one believed in Communist ideals, least of all Communist Party members. Membership was required for good career opportunities, which was the only reason young people joined and by late 80s, everyone saw that Communism was collapsing and that markets were opening up and then no one wanted to join. T
No zest, just day to day labor? Well here in the United States most people don’t exactly approach life with much zest or spark, they just work. Tom Sisson
Amazing how hospitable Russian people are and friendly if you stop to talk to them, even get invited inside their modest home, and risk their lives doing so. An American would NEVER do that.
No, they are definitely not hospitable, they are just cunning and want to get information out of you and at the same time complain about how no one from the West understands their great Russian soul and everyone is hurting them. Sasha also directly complains and accuses the USA that the city has no money, because his country spends a lot on the army, but he doesn't even think of complaining about his government. They only know how to attack neighboring countries and their so-called allies, while whining that they have to do it because everyone wants to destroy them. And at the end of 48:00 min. you can see their "hospitality" with your own eyes...they don't trust anyone, they are afraid of everything foreign!!!
“Risked their lives” I’m assuming you mean from the government which is ridiculous but I mean risking his life from this strange interviewer would be reasonable
@cba.literallycant. you can still travel to Russia .. Just don't show up with Marijuana vape pens and you will be fine. You can still travel to Ukraine as well and why would only Americans not be allowed to travel to Russia . Why would other people from other countries still be allowed to go and not Amerifand
@@siberiancajun Think I'll stick close to good old Louusiana (a native will understand the spelling) where the gumbo is fresh and the only bullets flying are the ones going after possums.
The journalist talking about IBM being unable to sell to the USSR because of the US government is important. The USSR constantly wanted to import and export not only to be able to focus on what it was good at but also because its engineers and factories craved feedback. The USSR started out not where the USA was in 1917 but where Brazil was in 1917. All the production techniques and technologies essentially had to be re-discovered in the USSR and rushed into production with little testing just to keep up. Many of the issues of low qualitiy soviet goods were due to internal problems, sure, but the effect of being effectively embargoed was immeasurable. The US would one day say that the USSR needed to respect its intellectual property laws to trade with it and then turn around and deny the USSR licenses for using patents or importing technology.
Yeah exactly. If it werent for embargos whos to say the Soviet and eastern block products couldnt be as good as those from the likes of Scandinavian companies. Scandinavia with its social democrat welfare is probably the closest look as to how things couldve worked out for the eastern block without the sanctions.
@@drdewott9154 Japan is another good example. Japan had a large semi-central planning agency called the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. It basically ran the economy of Japan during the post war and wasn't broken up until 2001. It was set up by the US occupation and the results of its central control on the economy are obvious.
Lol. This reminds me so much of North Korea documentaries you can see today on UA-cam. Same cat-and-mouse games, same paranoia, same cultural and political misunderstandings, same focus on drama and sensationalism.
Wow, Soviet psych tactic right in the beginning. "This is normal weather, we have not misinformed." This statement is used to establish the authoritative voice of the Party's representative. If you accept this, you will accept the rest. How that works simply. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it as I paused at 4:05 to write this part.
That glasses lady is soooooo smart "you've seen a museum before, you dont need to go to a museum in another country, pfft" yeah sure man. i seen a beech in montenegro, why would i go see a beech in thailand? very sound logic i really cant complain
28:52 "How much does it cost to remove the tooth? "0!" That much was true. However, Soviet dentists operated in sort of a medieval era of dentistry. They didn't have state-of-the-art dental tools, toothpaste was hard to find, and dental floss practically non-existent. Dentists in the Soviet system didn't even use anesthetic! Not because they didn't know about it or how to apply it. They just. . . didn't. You could actually go to a black-market dentist (if you knew where to find one) and have anesthetic with your dental work. There are photos of Soviet dentists literally pulling teeth *by hand!* So yes, your tooth was pulled for free, but it really wasn't worth it.
Использовали новокаин всегда и сейчас в России можно удалить бесплатно с новокаином . Зубная паста всегда была в продаже , помню советскую зубную пасту " Лесная" ," Жемчуг " и " Зефир" .
Не понимали мы, что дарить счёты с предприятия нельзя. Кто предлагал обмен, тот соображал, что так не делается при централизованной системе обеспечения предприятий? Вот так и развалились предприятия с щедрости одних, и "подталкивания" других. С сосисками в коробках на улице тоже некрасиво получилось, мы сами виноваты в развале той системы получается.
Evil Soviet regime forcing people to walk through small door instead of opening the gate! Will they EVER have MERCY on people!?!?!? Think about the CHILDREN!
@@Slavic_fox That is the point. Have you failed to see the sarcasm? The whole video is about him NOT finding anything bad about the USSR and resorting to making shit up. Like with the guy who invited them to his place and proved all the Western propaganda wrong, author says that the guy will probably go to GULAG later for doing what, according to the author, is A DEADLY SIN in USSR
God this documentary is cringe, yall gonna turn me into a tankie or something. Trying soooo hard to make life in Leningrad seem horrible and dreary and then shows beautifully glistening church and wonderful fountains. Just... lmao. "Other soviet citizens told us us coming to their place is impossible" because of the evil communist regime surely!! not because youre asking to barge in with a filming crew into somebody's house on such a short notice! god this sucks, and i dont even like sovok
My parents also had to learn Russian at school. I remember those communist years in our country. All Eastern European countries had to learn Russian. Same restrictions in all Eastern European countries. My father went to Moscow and on a business trip. He also visited Leningrad. Leningrad is how we always knew it. I remember that well because he bought us some really nice things from there.
and, Soviets had to learn English . What's funny was that East Germans or Czechs could visit USSR but not the West but USSR regular folks were prohibited from visiting even Socialist states. In other words, you can travel only East.
I had 4 months of Russian in elementary school before my family left Poland for the West. My parents used to be fluent in Russian and still remember a decent amount of basic Russian. When they were in their 20s they used to travel all over the Western Pact. They are still quite nostalgic about that time and are quite angry about communism destroying their hopes in the 80s.
@@mrvk39no, you definitely could visit other countries, even capitalist ones, it was just a pain in the ass to get through the paperwork. it all also depends on the period
@@KOTEBANAROT no, you couldn't if you were a regular citizen. If you were foreign ministry, trade ministry, tourism ministry, maybe some military - yeah and you were cleared by the KGB you could. If you were a celebrity - some did travel and if you were friends/relatives of high government officials. Normal people couldn't travel. The only exception was the late 80s to 91 - then yeah they relaxed all rules OR during WWII and right after. My grandfather was an officer and was stationed in Germany and then Romania with his family and they traveled to Yugoslavia. That's right after the war. After 1950s, that was closed too unless you were some special military deployment.
Still they liberated Eastern Europe from the nazis eh?
It's amazing, and quite sad, that relations between Russia and the west were better during the time of the arms race and the iron curtain than they are now.
lol just like they’re good now, with china.
cause they got their asses beat
Back then we were told to view the their government with Disdain and contempt but to Love the Russian people and have sympathy for them and not to blame the Russian people for the actions of their government but today we are told to hate the Russian people and blame them for the actions of their leaders with the media openly calling for the punishment of the Russian population.
The French media were recently talking about Crimea and openly stated that once Crimea was taken back by Ukraine the Ethnic Russian population needs to be deported in order to de russify Crimea .
There is a term for that and it's called ethic cleansing. The hate for ordinary Russian people is getting frightening. Some world leaders are openly saying that Russian immigrants living in different countries need to be put under strict surveillance. People are trying to rehabilitate what Anerica did to the Japanese during WW2 so they can use it as an example they can point to as precedent and justification for doing it to Russians .
thanks to the US
@@russiasvechenaya58 Yeah, blame someone else for Russian invasion of Ukraine, for corruption and nepotism in Russia, all while acting like the entire world is in some kind of debt to you - such a typical Russian mindset.
Nothing has changed in Russia since Ivan the Terrible - long periods under megalomaniacs in Kremlin that attack neighboring countries under some lame excuse ('historic right', 'sacred mission', etc, etc) and oppress their own people, and then brief moments when you stop invading other nations, just to have a civil war or economic collapse. That's Russia in a nutshell.
thank you for the material
I hope Sasha is alright.
These tourists don't seem to understand that starving and illiteracy is not freedom. The fact that they compare the USSR to the US, instead of to Africa or the Philippines at the time is silly - but also a compliment to the USSR.
In late 1989 I worked with a man from St. Petersburg. We got friendly after a while. Because we worked at a computer manufacturer I asked what kind of work he had done in the Soviet Union. He mentioned the factory he had worked in. This factory made both military and civilian products. I asked how he was able to leave his country since he has worked on some serious military hardware. He laughed."I left the old fashioned way. I bribed an official to declare me a Zionist Jew. Then I was deported as an "undesirable citizen". I asked about anti Semitism in the Soviet Union. He didn't know. He wasn't Jewish. He took advantage of the system.
'Sasha likes to come here in the middle of the night to talk to strangers and insomniacs'
Sounds like the Soviet equivalent of a Beat poet!
Fascinating..that long gone era was so charming and relationships between people from the West and the East so interesting. Wonderful exchanges
25:15- Sasha's cruising
If dentists are free, my brother Sacha needs to know.
Virtually all assigned "interpreters" and "guides" were with KGB. They were either actual agents or informants/associates. They had to make sure the foreign guests didn't see what they weren't supposed to see and didn't stray too far away or, worse of all, didn't interact unsupervised with random Soviet citizens. There were hand-selected citizens that were vetted like these 2 teens that knew what to say to the foreigners. Truth is, in 1986-87, no one believed in Communist ideals, least of all Communist Party members. Membership was required for good career opportunities, which was the only reason young people joined and by late 80s, everyone saw that Communism was collapsing and that markets were opening up and then no one wanted to join. T
No zest, just day to day labor? Well here in the United States most people don’t exactly approach life with much zest or spark, they just work.
Tom Sisson
Amazing how hospitable Russian people are and friendly if you stop to talk to them, even get invited inside their modest home, and risk their lives doing so. An American would NEVER do that.
No, they are definitely not hospitable, they are just cunning and want to get information out of you and at the same time complain about how no one from the West understands their great Russian soul and everyone is hurting them. Sasha also directly complains and accuses the USA that the city has no money, because his country spends a lot on the army, but he doesn't even think of complaining about his government. They only know how to attack neighboring countries and their so-called allies, while whining that they have to do it because everyone wants to destroy them. And at the end of 48:00 min. you can see their "hospitality" with your own eyes...they don't trust anyone, they are afraid of everything foreign!!!
“Risked their lives” I’m assuming you mean from the government which is ridiculous but I mean risking his life from this strange interviewer would be reasonable
Americans are very friendly and open as well
Pretty sure they were handed money .
You can see why in the 90s the people felt betrayaed by American Capitalism and Yeltsin.
Does anybody know what the song at about 18:23 is?
Looks like this ua-cam.com/video/peC0jBBO8vw/v-deo.html
Лидия Русланова - Эх, матушка
Places you soon won’t be able to go as an American ☹️
Dude with enough money you can go anywhere. Even the Titanic, I'm mean only once but yeah.
@@sid2112bro there is a war going on
@cba.literallycant. you can still travel to Russia .. Just don't show up with Marijuana vape pens and you will be fine. You can still travel to Ukraine as well and why would only Americans not be allowed to travel to Russia . Why would other people from other countries still be allowed to go and not Amerifand
We just got back from eastern Ukraine. You can go to Eastern Europe, just a little more risky.
@@siberiancajun Think I'll stick close to good old Louusiana (a native will understand the spelling) where the gumbo is fresh and the only bullets flying are the ones going after possums.
"You steal money from me...from me Sasha with arms race"
What a beautiful and interesting person.
I love how Maryan Marzynski is just harassing people on the street just trying to obtain food.
😂😂😂
amazing.
"I mean, long live ussr."
Sweet Man Sasha
Love from India to Russians and Americans 🥰
no
I wonder if the Jewish family has ever been able to immigrate abroad at some point.
What did it mean to be a party member of the Soviet Union?
Very interesting. Love from Sweden.
The journalist talking about IBM being unable to sell to the USSR because of the US government is important.
The USSR constantly wanted to import and export not only to be able to focus on what it was good at but also because its engineers and factories craved feedback. The USSR started out not where the USA was in 1917 but where Brazil was in 1917.
All the production techniques and technologies essentially had to be re-discovered in the USSR and rushed into production with little testing just to keep up. Many of the issues of low qualitiy soviet goods were due to internal problems, sure, but the effect of being effectively embargoed was immeasurable. The US would one day say that the USSR needed to respect its intellectual property laws to trade with it and then turn around and deny the USSR licenses for using patents or importing technology.
Yeah exactly. If it werent for embargos whos to say the Soviet and eastern block products couldnt be as good as those from the likes of Scandinavian companies. Scandinavia with its social democrat welfare is probably the closest look as to how things couldve worked out for the eastern block without the sanctions.
@@drdewott9154 Japan is another good example. Japan had a large semi-central planning agency called the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
It basically ran the economy of Japan during the post war and wasn't broken up until 2001. It was set up by the US occupation and the results of its central control on the economy are obvious.
Love it❤
Que hace el Spok en el minuto 23:35 ?
Lol. This reminds me so much of North Korea documentaries you can see today on UA-cam. Same cat-and-mouse games, same paranoia, same cultural and political misunderstandings, same focus on drama and sensationalism.
Wow, Soviet psych tactic right in the beginning. "This is normal weather, we have not misinformed." This statement is used to establish the authoritative voice of the Party's representative. If you accept this, you will accept the rest. How that works simply. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it as I paused at 4:05 to write this part.
By the 9:00 mark you can almost taste the paranoia.
By the 10:30 minute mark it quadruples. I pray he made it to Israel.
Ahahah typical american, allways lacking autocriticism
Nunca culto en tácticas psicológicas soviéticas... pero parece que las estadounidenses no se las estudio.
All these "documentaries" are just one bit of ugly propaganda, at least the ones about russia
That glasses lady is soooooo smart "you've seen a museum before, you dont need to go to a museum in another country, pfft" yeah sure man. i seen a beech in montenegro, why would i go see a beech in thailand? very sound logic i really cant complain
Nothing changed
10:50 "we should live in piss" - well put.
28:52 "How much does it cost to remove the tooth?
"0!"
That much was true. However, Soviet dentists operated in sort of a medieval era of dentistry. They didn't have state-of-the-art dental tools, toothpaste was hard to find, and dental floss practically non-existent. Dentists in the Soviet system didn't even use anesthetic! Not because they didn't know about it or how to apply it. They just. . . didn't. You could actually go to a black-market dentist (if you knew where to find one) and have anesthetic with your dental work.
There are photos of Soviet dentists literally pulling teeth *by hand!* So yes, your tooth was pulled for free, but it really wasn't worth it.
Использовали новокаин всегда и сейчас в России можно удалить бесплатно с новокаином . Зубная паста всегда была в продаже , помню советскую зубную пасту " Лесная" ," Жемчуг " и " Зефир" .
10:54 what happened to this guy
❤️
Tetris
Ignorance
14:02
¡Viva la unión soviética! URSS USSR
U can suck it
Были люди. Была документалистика.
It had some places in it too.
Не понимали мы, что дарить счёты с предприятия нельзя. Кто предлагал обмен, тот соображал, что так не делается при централизованной системе обеспечения предприятий? Вот так и развалились предприятия с щедрости одних, и "подталкивания" других. С сосисками в коробках на улице тоже некрасиво получилось, мы сами виноваты в развале той системы получается.
Evil Soviet regime forcing people to walk through small door instead of opening the gate! Will they EVER have MERCY on people!?!?!? Think about the CHILDREN!
No se puede esperar menos de un documental favorable a los intereses de EEUU.
Religion ruins everything
@@waitaminute2015Nice deflection that doesn’t address the posters argument.
So what
They do anyways to go through
I don't even question it bro
I just wait like for a food pickup
@@Slavic_fox That is the point. Have you failed to see the sarcasm?
The whole video is about him NOT finding anything bad about the USSR and resorting to making shit up. Like with the guy who invited them to his place and proved all the Western propaganda wrong, author says that the guy will probably go to GULAG later for doing what, according to the author, is A DEADLY SIN in USSR
😁🤙
God this documentary is cringe, yall gonna turn me into a tankie or something. Trying soooo hard to make life in Leningrad seem horrible and dreary and then shows beautifully glistening church and wonderful fountains. Just... lmao. "Other soviet citizens told us us coming to their place is impossible" because of the evil communist regime surely!! not because youre asking to barge in with a filming crew into somebody's house on such a short notice! god this sucks, and i dont even like sovok
People live in churches and fountains? How 'tarded are you?