
Pictures from the Eastern Bloc in the 80s - danielam
http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works?cat=all
======
dvh
University in '80s Warsaw - a math professor realizes he would make more money
if he worked in the docks, so he quits his job and goes working in docks. And
truly his first paycheck is double that of a university professor.

Party wants to increase education of working class so they offer 10% bonus to
those who would visit evening school. So the professor sign up for it.

Very first day, the first class is math. But the subject is so simple that
professor becomes bored and starts reading book under the desk. Teacher
notices that and call him up to calculate area of circle on the blackboard.

Professor is taken by surprise and suddenly cannot remember the formula, so in
his head he transfers circle to polar coordinates and uses integral to get the
formula and starts writing on the blackboard: -πr²

Then he scratches his head and start thinking where the minus came from when
suddenly from the back row someone shouts: flip the interval of integration,
colleague.

~~~
gammateam
I've already heard this as "engineer in Russia quits to do non-intellectually
stimulating job, finds a bunch of engineering 'comrades' already there"

your version is a ton more verbose though

~~~
matt4077
That actually reads like a sort of meta-joke, on the central planner’s
obsession with efficiency.

------
jeena
Damn, those pictures really show my childhood (I'm born 1978 in Silesia which
then already was part of Poland).

I was on a used car marked like that with my dad, my parents had the same car
as those people with the pigs in the car, my grandma had the same cupboard as
the boys rearing chicks, I lived in one of the panel house like in the picture
of the Moscow suburb, my aunt was a egg saleswoman, my dad worked in a
coalmine, the church was present constantly in all parts of our lives, my mum
worked at one of those car factories, etc. ...

~~~
candytronx
Oh, my! The panel houses where you could hear everything, the omnipresent
elevator engine sound, neighbors fighting or making love or basically anything
else, sounds of life, anonymized by concrete ... Sometimes, I ponder renting a
flat in such a house for a week just to listen and dream of my childhood.

~~~
aasasd
Several years ago I rented an apartment in which you could hear people through
the walls, and the cherry-on-the-top was a neighbor from below who early on
weekend mornings played wartime songs on a bayan.

I'm _not_ an early bird.

------
peshooo
It seems the pictures are mostly from Poland. For more perspective, here is a
large collection of old pictures from Bulgaria:

[http://www.lostbulgaria.com/index.php?cat=9](http://www.lostbulgaria.com/index.php?cat=9)
(You can see the translated descriptions with the language combobox on the
top)

------
jsmit
Love the gritty aesthetic of old photographs like this. Actually prefer it to
modern, razor-sharp photography. Or maybe analogue just fits the image we have
of the past better?

I wonder what kind of equipment was used for these photos.

~~~
nyolfen
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium
will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital
video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated
as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art
is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits
and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too
loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked
voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that
releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white,
is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned
to record them.”

― Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices

~~~
ferongr
>CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video

What

~~~
ThrowawayR2
Not exactly the same but there are devices used when restoring arcade games
that simulate the scan lines of the original CRTs on a modern display, e.g.
[https://paradisearcadeshop.com/en/home/electrical/video-
conv...](https://paradisearcadeshop.com/en/home/electrical/video-converters-
and-tools/scan-line-generators/1253_mini-slg)

------
mtarnovan
One of the photos is from my hometown - Sibiu, Romania:
[http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works/sibiu-1978](http://chrisniedenthal.com/en/works/sibiu-1978).
I'm sure I recognise the area, it's in the historical
center.([https://www.google.com/maps/@45.7991068,24.150571,3a,75y,11....](https://www.google.com/maps/@45.7991068,24.150571,3a,75y,11.52h,83.53t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1setu61uzikP4EWV8MAI6_0g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)).
Surprisingly well preserved.

------
agumonkey
A bit different, Poland in the 80s
[https://imgur.com/gallery/960KNrY](https://imgur.com/gallery/960KNrY)

~~~
nerdponx
People relying so much on horses in the 1980s is a pretty surreal thing to
see.

Was anyone here alive in Poland in the 80s (doesn't seem like such a long
shot)? Would love to hear your experiences with transportation.

~~~
skrebbel
The first time I was in Romania, in 2013, we drove on a provincial road and
there were people in BMWs driving 100km/h taking over horse carriages going
10km/h. It was "pretty surreal" to me (I'm Dutch) and it also seemed extremely
dangerous.

~~~
sverige
Ah well you can get the same experience in Amish country today in the U.S.
Midwest. I pass a horse and buggy every couple of weeks at least; rider on a
horse less frequently but still occasionally. It's best to drive slower. Most
people in cars are idiots though.

------
uxhacker
For anybody who is interested here is the bio of Chris Niedenthal. He is one
of the most respected photojournalists covering the Eastern Bloc in the 1970
to 90's. [https://culture.pl/en/artist/chris-
niedenthal](https://culture.pl/en/artist/chris-niedenthal)

------
vzaliva
Most pictures are from Poland which was relatively better off than USSR at the
time. My childhood memories from USSR are way grimmer than these pictures.

~~~
bogomipz
Any idea why this was? Was it just a more manageable population size? I
believe the then Czechoslovakia and Hungary were similar in terms of being
"better off" no?

~~~
kingofhdds
There was more economical freedom in Eastern European countries compared to
those incorporated in Soviet empire. At least small private initiative was
somewhat tolerated. Also, in countries like Poland communists weren't able to
completely suppress religious attachments of populace. They had to accept the
existence of alternative, competing moral, and cultural values, and it had the
general effect of less-controlled cultural, and private space. Very unlike the
strict USSR model where everything had to be in line with central-planned
norms.

~~~
mantas
Well, technically USSR didn't succeeded in suppressing religious attachment
either. But they tried much much harder, creating more resentment and wasting
a fuckton of resources.

For example... What do people love drink on Christmas eve? Poppyseed milk!
Guess why schools had mandatory dentist exams the next day...

------
gambler
Somehow, they seem far more "real" than the actual photos I have taken or seen
from my relatives in the last decade. And no, it's not just the gritty analog
fell, it's the content.

Edit: Although, the lack of digital artifacts definitely helps. Digital
smoothing or digital noise is something I can still see on a lot of photos
from last-generation cameras. Maybe we should stop throwing so much procesing
on top of "raw" images.

Edit 2: It feels like these photos have a very distinct color palette. But do
they, really? Honestly, I spend so much time looking at digital images, it's
becoming hard to judge what's "realistic" anymore, especially when you can't
look at the scene in real life.

~~~
jeena
It might also not be the editing but just the content and framing, etc. It's
quite obvious that the person who took those photos were a professional
(street) photographer(s). If you're not one, it would be expected that your
pictures would not match that quality.

------
bogomipz
I was surprised to see the pic - "TV antennas directed towards the West,
Neustrelitz 1984, East Germany."

Was that forbidden? It's seem like that would have been influence the
government would have tried to filter out no? Or was it forbidden but just not
enforced?

~~~
lower
Watching Western German television was not officially forbidden and in the 80s
most people did it. It was, however, frowned upon and seen as suspect by the
authorities. Imagine having to justify yourself in a discussion with the Stasi
for consuming the enemies' propaganda.

~~~
usrusr
I think that there is a lot of confusion between what was actually forbidden
and what was merely making people more suspect of getting recruited by enemy
intelligence and the like. And that this confusion wasn't at all exclusive to
outsiders looking back, but was present, or even dominant, within Stasi
itself.

"Make a list of people to check in the emergency of a CIA counterrevolutionary
project" can quickly turn into "Make a list of people to crack down on for
lack of ideological commitment", particularly in an organization in the spy
game, where need-to-know must be the norm.

------
ohiovr
Great pictures, thank you for sharing. Loved the C64 pic and the guy walking
his pig home.

------
Markoff
Prague in 80s [https://www.hankermag.com/prague-in-1980s-ed-
sijmons/](https://www.hankermag.com/prague-in-1980s-ed-sijmons/)

------
xixixao
To some, these might infuse some level of specific nostalgia[0], which is in
many respects picking up steam in these regions in the last few years.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia)

~~~
archagon
I was born in Russia in the late 80's, but I guess it's a similar feeling of
an entire generation's childhood, lost. (I imagine this phenomenon is
exacerbated by the fact that so many families basically had all the same
stuff.) Can't wait to read more of Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time,
which covers this topic in interviews with people who survived the collapse of
the Soviet Union.

------
13415
"Moscow suburbs" pretty much sums it up.

------
qwerty9876
Something I noticed: nobody seems to have acne

------
conistonwater
Bloody hell, there were food stamps in 1980?! What did I miss?

~~~
dullgiulio
In the early nineties. The implosion of the USSR caused hyperinflation and
disrupted the supply chain. Luckily it went back on track quite quickly, at
least on the European side.

~~~
baybal2
It did not disrupt the supply chain, it was already non-existent. At no time
in USSR's history were there full shelves anywhere except for Beryozkas
(stores for party members.) It was a political system without any credit of
legitimacy and political credibility.

The state system of Bloc countries was completely unredeemable.

~~~
hristov
That is not true. In Bulgaria there were generally full shelves in the grocery
stores during socialism. There were some hard to get things like coca kola
that caused lines but otherwise all basic foodstuffs were easy to get and
quite affordable.

However I have heard from other people that grew up in socialist countries
that Bulgaria had it easier than most in that respect.

In the transition to capitalism things got quite worse. Then there were empty
shelves there was rationing, prices went up drastically, etc.

------
foreigner
Why do the "Pilgrim Girls" have bloody knees?

~~~
anigbrowl
There's certain Catholic pilgrimages where you're supposed to complete a
journey on your knees, usually to commemorate someone's martyrdom. The 'Sancta
Scala' in Rome is the most famous example but I can think off a bunch in
different countries.

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

------
dominotw
perfect. Just got a monthly pass at

[https://sovietmoviesonline.com](https://sovietmoviesonline.com)

for the holidays.

------
kobrad
sorry, 490 euros? what?

------
aquarin
Strange, I send the same link 1 day before. 3 points...

------
mc32
I like this collection. They complement the more recent series like Simon
Roberts' Motherland (mid Aughts). Also some have an echo of Chris Killip's In
Flagrante's aesthetic.

Wonder if any of it might get published by Steidl, as a collection.

------
buf
Aside from the clothing, it looks like the Eastern Bloc now.

~~~
keiferski
No, actually, it doesn’t. Warsaw, for example, makes many western cities look
dirty, old and outdated. Compare the Warsaw metro to the Parisian one
sometime.

~~~
mamon
Except Warsaw metro has 1.5 line, 32 stations, compared to Paris 16 lines and
300 stations

