
Everyday Soviet Nostalgia - tintinnabula
https://newrepublic.com/article/145801/everyday-soviet-nostalgia
======
IWeldMelons
I live in ex-USSR, in Central Asia precisely. The life before the fall of USSR
was in many ways much, much better than it is now, and before the Soviet rule
it was a medieval swamp. There is still respect towards Russians here, a
plenty of Russian schools, despite the fact that the Russians are a small
minority here.

~~~
Feniks
Well what keeps your country from uplifting itself?

My own country is one of the safest, wealthiest and politically stable on the
planet but just a hundred years ago there were slums with child prostitution
and cholera. As recent as the 1950s there were people LITERALLY living in
holes under the ground.

~~~
dang
This comment crosses into a nationalistic swipe, which is not allowed here, so
please don't do it again.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Why on Earth are you saying this? What the OP says is that their country was
very poor and now it's now thriving. I was just about to ask what advice he
could give to the grandparent when I read your comment and it made me
speechless. What do you mean by "nationalistic"? I really, completely have no
clue whatsoever what you mean. Maybe you wanted to use a different word?

~~~
dang
What keeps your country from doing admirable X so that it can be more like
mine is a loaded, patronizing question. It's also ahistorical and therefore
unsubstantive, as if one simply chooses to make things better and then they
are. That argument is disrespectful to make about another person, let alone a
whole country. Also, to my ear, prefixing the whole comment with "well" is a
trivializing gesture, as if to say: "well, what's the matter with you? Pull
yourself together and you could be more like me."

I realize the comment didn't land with you that way, but I can guarantee you
that it would with others, and that is how we get nationalistic flamewars.
Moreover, the account has a pattern of making ideological comments. Such
accounts are by far the most prone to flamewarring, so when we see signs of
that we err on the side of replying.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
Oh I see. I just saw it as a honest question, encouraging discussion. If
someone asks me "what keeps you from doing X?", when X is something I want to
do, sometimes it's an a-ha moment for me, something actually very useful.

~~~
dang
Thanks for this! It's always something of a miracle to me when one of these
loops gets closed with mutual understanding.

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hal9000xp
I hate USSR, communism and socialism but I'm very nostalgic to late years of
USSR
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika))
and early 1990s. It was time full of hope for new capitalist Russia (inspired
by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher). Unfortunately, all these hopes fell
short when Russia fell under control of clans which later transformed to
Putin's Russia.

Anyway, here is my 2 cents of nostalgia:

[https://www.shrimptoncouture.com/blogs/curated/80026817-reds...](https://www.shrimptoncouture.com/blogs/curated/80026817-reds-
vogue-us-september-1990)

(I got this while listening new Retro Wave music :) )

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dvfjsdhgfv
It's interesting to see the binary view of the world even here, in HN
comments. It should be clear that there is no one prevailing, unanimously
accepted perception of the Soviet past. There are people who long for it, and
there are those who hate it; some people don't have any strong feelings about
it. They all have their valid reasons to do so, whether being young and
associating pleasant memories with the past epoch or losing a family member in
repressions etc. It makes no sense to impose one's views on others and trying
to explain it to them why they should perceive the past in a different way
than they already do.

~~~
Const-me
I agree with your comment.

But the reason why people are discussing the subject, and for that article to
be published now in 2018, is not the past. The reason is Russians have
recreated much of that past. KGB rule, human rights issues, military
aggression towards neighbor countries, cold war rhetorics and propaganda,
state sponsored terrorism, it’s all right now in the present.

And it looks like the world either doesn’t care, or doesn’t know what to do
about that. Both options are kinda scary.

~~~
cassianoleal
The world has yet to find out what to do with the US's version of all those
issues.

Once we solve that, we might turn to Russia, or perhaps we find a solution for
both at the same time.

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moltar
The article feels very much agenda filled. The past was not all so terrible.
And remembering the past is just history. It’s good to know history, whatever
it is. I know it’s hard for the west to understand that where history has been
rewritten numerous times to fit the narrative.

~~~
golergka
It was not all so terrible indeed. It was much worse. A couple of American
journalists in 1940s USSR? They would see as much of real Soviet life as
modern tourists would of North Korea.

~~~
mantas
USSR even had a special programme targeting famous artists/writers etc. They'd
invite them to Moscow or Leningrad and give them a majestic tour about how
nice Soviet life is.

We had an interesting situation in Lithuania. A lot of local inteligentsia
took the tour in 1930s and initially supported Soviet occupation. Quite a few
of them quickly backpedaled when they saw how real day-to-day soviet life
looks like.

That programme is one of the reasons why a lot of famous people in the West
supported USSR during cold war. Old the bad things must be bourgeois
propaganda anyway..

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archagon
On the flip side: in 1935–36, two famous Soviet humorists, Ilf and Petrov, did
a road trip around the US and chronicled their experiences in "Odnoetazhnaya
Amerika", or "Little Golden America" in translation. Vignettes from the book
include encounters with Henry Ford, Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and even
FDR; amused descriptions of a rodeo, wrestling match, and football game;
several captivating conversations with hitchhikers on topics ranging from
health care to racism to religion; a visit to the Hoover Dam and a chat with
one of the little-known and undecorated head engineers; awe-inspiring looks at
the Grand Canyon and the Petrified Forest; and a ferry ride between the still
under-construction Golden Gate and the Bay bridges. (More in my Goodreads
review[1].) It's a fascinating, fantastic book, and especially stunning in how
so much of the authors' bemused commentary on American culture remains
completely relevant to this day — though I feel much of the charm and humor is
lost in Charles Malamuth's translation.

[1]:
[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2114423486)

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fractallyte
One significant error: _" 2017: Circus performances are now held in Moscow’s
Dubrovka Theatre, where Chechen militants took theatergoers hostage in 2002,
killing 130."_

The majority of those deaths were actually due to Russian special forces, who
controversially decided to flood the theater with an unnamed chemical agent...

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diimdeep
Seems like these new 2017 photos just don't match quality and don't capture
same depth compared to 1947.

~~~
ggm
Agree. Capa had what Cartier-Bresson or Weedgee had. You can't bottle it, its
either there or it isn't

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woodandsteel
However the USSR might have been good in some ways, it doesn't really matter.
That's because its economy was fundamentally dysfunctional and so it was bound
to crash at some point.

