
Postcards from Big Brother: The Curious Propaganda of a Brutal Soviet Era - prismatic
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/curious-propaganda-of-a-brutal-soviet-era/
======
smacktoward
I know we're meant to look at the subjects of these postcards and marvel at
how horrible they are, but some of them actually look quite interesting.

You've got plenty of your standard dreary Soviet-era monumentalism, of course,
but the Flower of Life memorial is humble and affecting, the Armenian Writer's
Union guesthouse annex is straight out of _The Jetsons_ , and the Soldier's
Field Memorial is one of the most creative war memorials I've ever seen.
Compare the latter to the new-ish, thuddingly literal World War II Memorial in
Washington, DC
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_World_War_II_Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_World_War_II_Memorial)),
for instance, and it's no contest; as a way to remember both war and what war
really _is_ , the Volgograd memorial wins hands down.

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Mediterraneo10
That postcard with an aerial shot of housing blocks in Novi Beograd must
represent a regional trend. In Romania after the turn of the millennium, I
found some old postcards from the 1980s in a bookshop that were still, though
covered in dust, for sale. Several of them were the same: aerial shots of new
residential neighbourhoods with buildings of not particularly impressive
architecture. I don’t know if Communist officials actually thought that
Western tourists would be interested in these kind of shots, or if postcards
were just exploited as one more disingenuous propaganda medium for boasting
about development statistics. Probably a mix of both.

~~~
simias
Even in non-communist France these horrible concrete boxes were once hailed as
the future of housing. When they were first built they had all the comfort the
middle class yearned for at the time. The problem is that they degraded very
fast and soon became synonymous with "poor people houses".

Here's a postcard from the 60's for instance:
[https://i.redd.it/3ofea4jd6k2z.jpg](https://i.redd.it/3ofea4jd6k2z.jpg)

~~~
baybal2
>horrible concrete boxes

The cubic shape has the best utilisation of materials per unit of usable
space. Houses must be cubical.

~~~
Jedd
> > horrible concrete boxes

> The cubic shape has the best utilisation of materials per unit of usable
> space. Houses must be cubical.

I think parent was describing combination of box-like aesthetics with the
unpleasantness that is concrete.

I think you may be mistaken - domes are perhaps a better utilisation per unit
of usable space.

Also, it's definitely not the case that houses _must_ be cubical, for any
reason(s), let alone just to attempt to maximise the ratio of materials per
unit of area / volume.

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duxup
The regime was terrible, but I enjoy the scale of some of these soviet
monuments.

~~~
myst
Why do you think it was terrible?

~~~
swebs
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB)

~~~
d0mine
How is it terrible compared to other similar in scale countries?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism)

~~~
d0mine
I don't get the logic: if _you_ do it, you are a terrible person. If _we_ do
it, we are fighting for freedom or some such.

If you use the term "whataboutism", you are either ignorant or a shill.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's terrible no matter who does it. You tried to claim that it was _less_
terrible for the USSR to do it, because other countries did it too.

~~~
d0mine
Worse than no justice is only selective justice: one set of rules for us vs.
another set of rules for them

~~~
PhasmaFelis
True, but no justice is still pretty bad, and you're advocating for it
vigorously.

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amatecha
Hmm, I was in Bosnia/Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia this past summer, and
saw many "spomenik"[0]... It is interesting to see these in person and their
size is usually surprising. If you are traveling in the area there's a site
dedicated to cataloguing the location & appearance of these monuments.[1]

0: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spomenik-memorials-
yug...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spomenik-memorials-yugoslavia-
balkans) 1:
[http://www.spomenikdatabase.org/](http://www.spomenikdatabase.org/)

------
gumby
That monument to the conquerors of space (it's on top of the Museum of Space)
is as impressive today as it must have been in the 1960s. I was there just a
few months ago.

As for the pictures of apartment blocks, I remember those kinds of postcards
from the 60s and 70s myself in Western Europe, USA, Australia, Malaysia etc.
In this regard the Soviet Union and Warsaw bloc were no different.

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Quequau
Something that fascinates and discourages me is how effective propaganda is
even when it is transparently (at least to outsiders) propaganda. There is so
much media today which is also transparently propaganda but somehow the people
it's directed at fail or refuse to recognize it.

~~~
ilaksh
There seems to be a belief (in the US) that the United States stopped creating
or commissioning propaganda at some point in the past. Most people might say
around the end of WWII. It's part of a greater American exceptionalist belief
system.

I am curious to know when people in this thread believe that American
propaganda stopped. For me there are so many obvious examples, from misleading
explanations on the news for military actions to giant blockbuster films and
TV shows.

~~~
jvanderbot
Yes, we switched to media. Easier to distribute.

I was on a flight and noticed a large number of modern war movies produced in
China. They were quite like American "Blackhawk down" or "12 strong". Clearly
meant to demonstrate the professionalism and ingenuity of their army vs the
rest of the world.

------
TaylorAlexander
Detractors aside, does anyone here think that we should build subsidized
housing en masse for the homeless in, say, San Francisco? If so, how do we do
it?

~~~
smacktoward
"Tax the rich" seems like a decent starting point.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I’d be particularly interested in solutions that do not involve taxation or
any involuntary contributions. Can we change the law so that building housing
for the homeless is cheaper, for example?

~~~
davidgould
Do you have some ideas on how to make building housing cheaper? Make
substandard housing for the homeless, no need for fire or seismic code
compliance? Enslave the construction workers? Forced relocation to North
Dakota to take advantage of lower land cost?

~~~
stale2002
Building good housing is already very cheap, when you compare it to the actual
market price.

The reason why price is so high is because the government makes it literally
illegal to actually build stuff. AKA building height limit zoning laws.

Just go look at how much it costs to build a _good_ apartment building in any
place in the mid west. It's cheap. Cost has nothing to do with actual
construction costs. Its zoning and government regulations that cause all this.

------
shortoncash
Anyone know what to Google to see what the insides of those buildings looked
like? They look interesting.

------
kushti
"Though most of the memorials were built from the 1960s through the 1980s, the
most abstract designs harken back to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when
Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks promised to empower workers and take the
reins from the Tsarist bourgeois." \- the propaganda language of the article
is illiterate as there were two revolutions in Russian Empire in 1917, Tsarist
regime was overthrown by February Revolution and bolsheviks overthrew
bourgeois regime in October revolution, thus talking about "Tsarist bourgeois"
vs bolsheviks is simply not literate.

~~~
v_lisivka
Historically, Russia has one revolution (February Revolution) and October coup
(Putsch)[1], which was then renamed into Great October Socialist [bla bla
bla]... Revolution much later.

[1]:
[http://grachev62.narod.ru/stalin/t4/t4_38.htm](http://grachev62.narod.ru/stalin/t4/t4_38.htm)

~~~
kushti
Then you need to provide a credible source which provides an explanation why
FR was a revolution and other is not, not a Stalin's article from 1918 you
provided which is not about that at all. Left-leaning historians often define
(a real) revolution as a change in ruling class, based on that definition both
FR and OR were the very real revolutions (one was about passing power to
bourgeois class, another about passing power to the working class), but if you
are using other definitions, please provide them.

~~~
v_lisivka
If direct speech of executors of coup are not credible source for you, then
what I need to provide to convince you? Wikipedia article?

First hand evidence is enough for any court in the world.

~~~
a7776f88862
You are being disingenuously pedantic by making a distinction between
synonymous words. From the linked document:

"Уже с конца сентября ЦК партии большевиков решил мобилизовать все силы партии
для организации успешного восстания. В этих целях ЦК решил организовать
Военно-революционный комитет в Питере"

Which translates to:

"From the end of September, the central committee of the bolshevik party
decided to mobilize all party forces for the organization of a successful
_uprising_. To these ends, the central committee decided to organize a
Military- _revolutionary_ committee in St. Petersburg"

Also note the reference to the counter-revolutionary plot. For Stalin, the
October coup was clearly the continuation of the February revolution.

~~~
v_lisivka
No, I don't. You need to understand that whole process, started in February
1917, was named "Russian revolution", while October episode was just part of
it. They were separated in to two "revolutions" much later.

See [1] for more details.

[1]:
[https://pikabu.ru/story/ot_revolyutsii_k_perevorotu_i_obratn...](https://pikabu.ru/story/ot_revolyutsii_k_perevorotu_i_obratno_kak_menyalos_naimenovanie_sobyitiy_1917_goda_za_proshedshie_sto_let_5717461)

~~~
a7776f88862
Did you even bother to read the article you linked to? The citations make it
quite clear that the terms were synonymous, and it was multiple groups (not
just the Bolsheviks) who referred to the October Bolshevik takeover as a
revolution.

~~~
v_lisivka
Yes, I read it. But I taken into account only claims backed by historical
sources.

