Did you ever have *that* conversation with your parents, /his/? About what it was like to live in the Cold War and with the Soviet Union?
What did they tell you?
>>382167
It was cold
Not my mother, but one of her friends lived in Ukraine during Soviet rule. Said it was awful, crime ridden and never enough food to go around. They eventually moved to East Germany and escaped from there, how they did it I have no idea because it's not a topic I bring up.
No because the only connection between my family and USSR is that my grandfather was in the war keeping those fuckers out of our country
Family from both sides say that Russkies were worse than Germans. But that's WWII. From then on it was only righteous anger and some humor too because the Soviets were incredibly petty.
>>382167
My friends father lived in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution, he said you need to imagine what it would be like if the government gave carte blanche to chavs/niggers/etc., and if you had middle class parents or didn't join in then you would become their target.
>>382167
Well, for me it was about Yugoslavia, but still...
Older people always have those "wonky" stories about cheating the system and whatnot, like:
>trading favours to get the 6 month wait period for a car diminished
>bribing the border policeman with foreign smokes so he let them go buy shit just across the border in austria
>getting the wedding raided by cops because festivities were forbidden just days after Tito's death
>doing weird check cash-in/deposit scams to earn money out of thin air during the hyper inflation period
There's a lot of rose tinted glasses though, but it's probably just because those were the prime years of the old folks (20s, 30s), so of course they have fond memories of the time.
>>382167
My parents don't talk about history, even their own history. The most they might do is make a comment about how absurd they think North Korea is or something else that's pretty much true but insubstantial. They rarely weigh in on serious or big picture type issues. My mother tends to ignore extraneous details that don't directly pertain to her life (and this works really well for her because she is able to juggle a lot of responsibilities) and my dad doesn't really focus on anything aside from the local history he learns on his job and sports.
>>382167
My Dad came from a place where they literally had to have a coup every 20 years to prevent Islamists or the reds from taking power. He was the child of German-Jewish refugees escaping the Germans ironically enough. However, he hates Marxists more than any Nazi.
In the run up to each coup, the Reds would be out on the streets organizing gangs to beat up voters. In the mountains and countrysides they'd massacre villages if they didn't fall into line.
Eventually the situation would so destabilize to the brink of civil war that the Army would step in.
Uncle Sam liked my Dad's work so much they asked him to come here.
He has said he'd rather deal with Islamic radicals than Marxists insurgents any day of the week.
My mother was the daughter of a hardcore cold war military family. She'd said she'd have no problem if nuclear war broke out to stop the Reds.
She sincerely believes that any people who give into communism are subhuman and deserve what they got as a reward.
She has gotten a bit softer in opinion as she gotten older. However, it was... interesting to hear her comments on other cultures when we visited post-commie countries.
Her visiting those countries made her feel some pity for the survivors. Although she has stated that despite the pity,they deserve poverty for having joined or tacitly supported by inaction what the Reds were doing.
These are my parents opinions. Even today there is a geneal disdain for openly red ideas here.
>>382167
>stayed in east germany 5 years ago
>host family never said one good thing about the russian rule of the GDR/DDR
>not one
>>382167
I did live during the Cold War.
The big issue was the constant worry about nuclear annihilation.
My Dad was in the Navy (US Navy) in the mid-late 80's, so he has all kinds of fun stories about playing cat-and-mouse with Russian subs, and spending literal months watching Russian ports (particularly Vladivostok and some secret Russian sub pen in Sakhalin) in the pacific.
He says that by the time he was old enough to be really "conscious" of what was going on in the cold war, no one really took the Soviets that seriously anymore.
Apparently the US subs were waaaay better than the Russian subs too. The Soviet navy was mostly using loud-ass diesel subs while the US had already switched to ultra-quiet nuclear subs.
>>382167
Funny how a thread like this is always devoid of the middle class, college age, communist, soviet apologists that plague this board.
>>383114
Back to the gulag.
I had a friend that was born in the late 80s near Moscow. He said that he didn't notice much difference before and after the dissolution of the USSR. The main thing that he remembered from before the fall was that his family had to eat potato and cabbage soup a lot because they had to eat food from the garden to get enough to eat.
>>383114
Usually because we've read just how difficult oral history is, even when you're distanced from the matter at hand, and prefer to read historical monographs and journal articles rather than shit up the board with /int/ posts.
It'd probably be that.
Go fuck yourself to death with a bandsaw.
>>382176
Because they were rich kulaks obviously.
>>382167
family emigrated during the 1905 revolt, fuck communism, fuck Russia in general actually
>>382518
>he hates Marxists more than any Nazi.
>She'd said she'd have no problem if nuclear war broke out to stop the Reds.
Your family sounds like they deserve to stand against the wall desu lad
I once asked my dad about growing up in that era. He was born in '49. Said they had drills in case of nuclear attack. I asked him what the drills consisted of and he said hide under your desk, put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye.
>>385194
Woah now. No reason to get upset.
Just because everyone living in your communist utopia despised their government and led lives of squalor doesn't give you reason to be upset with me.
>>385234
you sound like you need to be dropped headfirst out of a helicopter tbqh
>>385262
>Just because everyone living in your communist utopia despised their government
Trivially falsified: the nomenklatura.
>and led lives of squalor
Again, see above.
Not my utopia by any stretch, if you call me a tankie to my face, you're going to lose an eye.
>doesn't give you reason to be upset with me.
No my reason to be upset is that this isn't >>>/int/ with dates. Fuck off back to your board and stay fucked off.
Read some fucking history if you want to post here.
>>385288
>if you call me a tankie to my face, you're going to lose an eye.
awww shit we got a badass over here
better steer clear
My dad was born in 1958 and he said that while there was an acute apprehension in the 1960's and the 1970's, it kinda died down in the 1980's when the Russians were having a taste of their own Vietnam in Afghanistan. Everybody knew that Ivan wasn't fearsome anymore when they didn't go apeshit like they did in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And these were against brown Muslims for crying aloud! Didn't give a fuck about Reagan, but he said that at least he wasn't weak-kneed like Carter was.
My dad even said that he didn't care about the geopolitics and was enjoying the 80's feel-good era of hedonism. He was worried about AIDS/HIV when it was revealed that it affected heteros as well.
He says that he does miss the idea of actually dealing with a nation-state instead of these extremist groups. At least there was this sort of semblance of order and not a clusterfuck that today's nutjobs have.
>>382346
Yeah what is most interesting about life in the eastern bloc before the mid 80s was more the surrealness of the situation. In this instance, it's actually totally appropriate to say "kafkaesque".
>>385288
So butthurt over so little.
I really did strike a cord with you, didn't I? It must be tough being an adolescent collectivist in a world where communism is doomed to failure. Your mom probably wants you to get a job but all you want to do is liberate the proletariat.
>if you call me a tankie to my face, you're going to lose an eye.
ow the edge
>>385262
>Just because everyone living in your communist utopia despised their government
I like there is basically one account in this thread about someone's parents being old enough to be an adult in a Communist country that isn't "I totally have this friend and he say..." and the user had to dismiss it as "rose tinted glasses".
>>385332
>accuses others of being adolescent
>obviously writes like a child
Life was better. Everyone looked out for eachother. We sang patriotic songs and had hope for the future.
>>385343
>nothing but edgy obscenities and threats
>"go fuck yourself to death with a bandsaw"
>accuses the other of writing like a child
Seriously though, how soon until you graduate highschool?
>>385350
Somehow I doubt people old enough to remember life in the USSR are on 4chan.
>>385343
Must be a long wait in the bread line today…
>>385359
Did you read the OP?
>>385386
Does the post I'm replying to look like a second hand account. Word your post better next time.
Local world was a lot safer, people didn't worry about every detail like they do now. Just growing up in the 1990s I remember everything being so much simplier and, well, almost happier in every way.
Everything has gone downhill since 2001, then we went full skydive in 2014 and haven't stopped.
>>382167
I recently met this really old German guy that was alive during WWII, the war ended when he was eleven. He told me about some bad shit the Russians did to them. He escaped East Germany in the 60's. Didn't have anything good to say about communists
>>383114
that's like two people
>>382167
It's a recurring subject considering I come from a family of military brats (raised by the one "hippy" ie, didn't join the military).
My father was born on Pearl, and was raised in West Germany, then moved to Texas around the end of Vietnam when my grandfather retired.
All my dad really said was he thinks the "fucking reds" (his exact words, seriously) did JFK.
From his brothers and sisters they said it was pretty scary for them because until they were in their 20's they were on what was expected to be the front lines, atleast the way they put it seemed that way.
USA here.
My dad told me that people were sometimes fearful and that when he was in the military he was specifically trained to fight them and entirely prepared to fight them.
He also said that he didn't really hate them and didn't mind the USSR.
dad was in georgia and he liked it
MY dad was born in 1963 and never really thought about it that much when it was happening.
But he says he'd take back the USSR and the detente era over the age of terror any day. At least back then the only terrorists in the US were crackpots like the Puerto Rican terrorists or the symbionese liberation army.
>>383064
It's true that American submarines were lightyears ahead of their Soviet counterparts in terms of being quiet and listening, but the Russians had a full nuclear navy, same as the Americans. It just wasn't near as quiet, so the American could shadow the Soviets for entire patrols and Ivan was none the wiser.
Also we cheated with shit like the SOSUS network, a line of sonar listening devices on the seabed in a chain from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland. The sort of thing a bloated runaway military budget gets you.
Anyway I was born in '81 so I remember them being a thing, I remember watching the Day After when I was a kid and staring out my bedroom window imagining what the nuclear fireballs would look like. However by the time I was old enough to start understanding the world outside my suburban bubble, the Soviets were coming apart.
My parents weren't fans of the Soviet Union.
>>385288
Quiet, tankie.
Look, no one has any faith that you're somehow different. You post on a therianthropic fur suiting database along with the rest of us raging faggots and oxygen thieves. I'm sorry if we don't think that you'll do any better once you have to actually put this shit into practice rather than just talk about it around the coffee shop with the rest of your fucking beardy, trust fund, faggot friends.
Actually, I take that back. I'm not sorry.
>>382518
What country?
>>385317
>didn't go apeshit
>literally caused 2 million civilian casualties
>>385810
You people and your strawmen. Get a grip.
>>385255
That's not too different from the official drills from the US government.
>>385288
>Being this delusional
>My father was born in 1938. He joined the USAF straight out of high school and became a radio operator for the TITAN II ICBM missiles. He never said much about that job.
>He later became a Combat Controller, and served in Vietnam. He told me about how we'd throw chinks from airborne helicopters to frighten other, more important chinks to spill the beans. He had a variety of missions over there, one of which was flying over the Ho Chi Min trail, and dropping flares/lights/etc to guide bombers to targets. He was very afraid about being shot down and captured during those times
>After his 20 years, he went and worked with an oil company in Saudi Arabia, where he met my mom. Both of them could hear and feel the bombs the Iraqis and Iranians were dropping on each other ( they were in Eastern SA). After that, they toured Western Europe, and had a great time.
>My mother was born in 1956. She was never really involved in anything "Cold War", but did a lot of "duck and cover" drills in school.
I feel like I missed out on tons of cool stuff, but at the same time, so many lessons from the Cold War are applicable right now, and shit is hitting the fan right now. So, fun times ahead
>>385912
>He told me about how we'd throw chinks from airborne helicopters to frighten other, more important chinks to spill the beans
Did they shoot them first?
>>382167
Tfw Grandpa sent to labor camps in Siberia for 7 years, for starting anticommunist regime poetic society
>>385216
How little your victim blaming differs from stormfags when you get to the grisly details. I hardly think they would have been underfed if they were kulaks.
>>385912
Your Dad is a war criminal and should be hanged
>>385931
Just wondering, why would you shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane?
>>382167
According to them Soviet Poland was nice in the 70's, lots of growth and liberalization.
The 80's on the other hand were really stagnant, like absolutely nothing changed year to year. The political upheavals in the 80's didn't make much of an impression(except for the tanks during martial law). It seemed like communism in Poland just falling apart by itself rather than was being overthrown.
>>385966
Neo-Nazi shills denying Nazis killed Jews, Gypsies, and communists and invaded every country on its borders is obviously very different from saying people that could afford to smuggle themselves from the Ukraine to West Germany was most likely a fat-cat upset about having to share their things.
>>385983
Luckily the good guys won that one. Hopefully America collapses soon and the UN will have the balls to round up people like him and give the world some justice.
>>51913905
My mom was born in 74 and had me when she was 20. The apex had already been reached at that point. Never asked my dad though.
Both born around '70 in the GDR and punks in their youth.
Dad's father was part of the border police, but actually wanted to be a cowboy in Murica so he constantly filled out forms to move there, all denied obviously. Supposedly saw some shit, heard a story of a western paratrooper that they caught and trapped in a field and sent the dogs for him, but the dude shot himself before they reached him. There also was a soviet military base close to where my father lived, and he said he could hear them doing wargames in the night sometimes. At least when he was a child he often had nightmares about nuclear war.
Mom's father was a soviet officer. She told me that once he and her mom actually got abducted for a few days by I either the KGB or Stasi because they suspected him of some wierd double-agent stuff. Don't know the details, but it was pretty shit for my mother because she was really ill at the time. Also he was supposedly a super asshole that hit her and her mother. Was also very strict and specific in how he raised her; didn't allow her to have long open hair, absolutely no West TV, stuff like that.
Overall though they both say life back then was pretty good and care-free as opposed to today. No worries about money, food, rent or stuff like that.
>>382167
My father kept saying that people were in line waiting for a piece of bread while western teachers keep bragging about how orderly an nice communism was
My father lived in the sovjet union, for him it wasn't bad but then again he was part of what you could call the high class in the USSR, and was part of the olympic gymnastics team while my grandfather was a high rank engineer
>>382167
I had lived in a heavily targeted area for nukes during the late '80s (next to Moffett field in California). We actually did duck and cover drills, the teacher explained nuclear war as best she could to elementary school children.
>Be at church event as a kid
>Parents talking with family friend's parents
>"What is gommunism, daddy?"
>"It'd be like if in school when one kid gets an A, and another an , they would both get C's."
>Mom chimes in. "That's a really good way of explaining it."
>mfw
>>386260
Whats the face for.
>>385912
was he a big guy for you?
>>386270
Disgust.
Canadian here, my dad was born in 52 and he said that when he was 8 years old the scariest thing he could imagine was a soviet soldier.
He told me about how he was watching a TV program like popular science or the like and it showed a Russian machine and operator falling through the ice during an exploratory operation.
He also watched the whole Tommy the Turtle thing in school.
>>385288
>you're going to lose an eye.
Now we see the violence inherit in the system.
>>386260
Is that not a good way of explaining it? Communism doesn't uplift humanity, it sinks everyone down to the same shitty level. Some people benefit from that, most people don't, especially the most intelligent and productive members of society.
>>386381
>Some people benefit from that, most people don't
strictly speaking wouldnt it be the opposite seeing as most people are shitty rather than the most intelligent and productive members of society
>>386381
communism isn't an ideology as much as a popular scam
believing those totalitarian fucks actually followed it is just giving it unnecessary credit
Dead to capitalist pigs
>>386476
Communist grammar, everyone.
i lived in it for 7years
talked alot about it with my parents and grandparents
what do you want to know?
>>386494
How bad was it? Would you rather live in that society or a capitalist one?
>>386494
How great was it? Would you rather live in that society or a degenerate, ethnically neutered, propagandistic one?
>>386522
Oh, hello >>>/pol/
>inb4 buttblasted gommie
Fuck you, I hate them too.
>>386549
I hate /pol/ too retard
>>385900
If recall correctly it would be easier to identify the bodies later on.
>>386522
would it kill you to let us have a communism bashing thread without setting out to prove you're dedicated to being worse?
>>385873
They could have glassed the place.
>>386502
>>386537
my family was wasnt privileged (no party members) nor discriminated (no ex fascists/nobles)
society wasnt this fake as it is now
nobody cared how much money you have, if you wanted to work, you could and lived an acceptable life
society was a lot less hostile
you were an appreciated member of society aslong as you worked
today i recieved some bonus (laughable amount even for us) handed to us by government officials saying how great our gov. is (socialist flashback)
it wasnt bad unless you were part of the discriminated part, even then you could get along
(my granny's father was a merchant, so she couldnt go to uni, she became an accountant instead)
it wasnt great because freedom as we know now was against the law
my country was called the happiest barrack
there were no food shortages, no empty shelves
bread was bread after 3 days instead of plastic unedible abomination, your cloth werent chinese
too bad it was unsustainable
duno if this is understandable for ppl who never experienced it
>>386494
You probably left the tread...
How was religion organized? Was there no religion at all? What did people do on friday/saturday/sunday?
>>385332
>cord
chord
>>386631
practicing religion was discouraged but not punished
the state targeted the church itself, not the believers
during stalinism this meant violence against monks and priests (prison, workcamps, violent interrogations)
after that, they were fine with infiltratetion
the bishops agreed to become agents, filing reports about their county, their priests, about eachother (most of them anyway)
this was to make sure, they cant agitate against socialism, its hardly believable but its true as its documentated
(as you can see during evul communism radical islam wouldnt be centered around mosques...)
as for the avarage joe
if you really wanted to, you went to church, it was something not be proud of
my grandad married his wife in 2 different churches despite his boss telling him it wouldnt be advised
all in all religion existed just like anywhere else, in a secular way, watched closely by the state police
i have some great memories with xmas and yea little jesus brought the presents not little lenin
>>386522
I hate this meme. Have you ever been to Eastern Europe? Let me enlighten you - post communist countries are extremely racist, traditionalist and conservative.
>>387113
That's a direct effect of being poor
>>386522
Commies hate SJW just as much as conservatives pretty much.
I don't think you know what you're talking about.
>>385912
>but did a lot of "duck and cover" drills in school.
how effective would that be in case of a real bomb being used?
because hiding under tables and shit to save your life seems too far-fetched for me, the best you could wish was not to get hit by glasses i guess..
>>387152
Identity politics in general are liberal bourgeoisie BS.
>>387167
Which would be a real problem in a nuclear attack.
The cold war, and the Anti-Nuclear Movement created this image of Nuclear weapons as super kill everything buttons, but that's not the case. Sure, being in the center of the blast, you're pretty fucked. But outside that, it's a big explosion, so yeah, you're dealing with the same problems as a more "conventional" attack. Glass, flying debris, and perhaps structural failure.
>>387169
This. SJWs are what happens when people realize there are problems in society, but are unable or unwilling to face what they actually are. So they throw all their energy into new, invented campaigns, constantly. Sure, none of their campaigns in the past fixed the central causes of injustice in society, but this time, if we all acknowledge Samus is transgendered, our problems will go away.
My dad and his whole family grew up in communist Yugoslavia. From the sounds of it he just lived a relatively normal life.
Aside form having a few funny stories about the stupidity of some communist policies, It doesn't sound like his life was much different as a result.
I'd imagine living in the USSR in that time wouldn't have been too different.
Our kids will ask us what it was like to live during terrorism and the war on terror.
Not that I think communism could work, but the USSR was a totalitarian dictatorship, not actual communism.
Bolshevick revolutionaries who were actually communists were executed for pointing out how fucking far from communist the state was.
Most elderly Russians have fond memories of the USSR. And how could you blame them? Free education, free medicine, life is easy - relatively. You grow up believing in an idea, practicing it, reminded about it, and suddenly everything shatters. "New rules!" someone shouts; crime skyrockets; everyone tries to flee the would-be-utopia; you end up standing on a chair with a soaped noose in front of you.
Most post gommie states suicides were by elderly people.
But depends who you ask, some people will tell you it was shit. Corruption, gulags, culling of rights (entirely depends on the era, in the 70s coca cola was introduced to the USSR).
Life was livable, but ultimately always a notch, or several, below the West. 70s was the peak of the USSR.
>>382309
My god that's happening now in America
>>387701
yugoslavia was noticeably different - it was not even a member of the eastern pact
My dad doesn't care about world politics. He's an exsmall business owner and he tends to ramble about 2008 and obama.
My mother side likes talking about family business history and we have her lineage traced back to 1778, my fathers side to the late 18th century.
My dad tells me about having to do the stupid duck and cover drills in school as if it would actually save you.
>>387869
To be fair those have a chance to save people 3-6 miles away from the blast depending on geography.
>>382167
My parents would have been too young to remember the cold war really.
But my grandfather was essentially a communist who fully supported Lenin and felt Stalin betrayed the revolution. He never had an education beyond age 12 because everyone in his family had to work hard to support the household from a young age. He absolutely hated America, Britain, France, the free state, essentially anywhere on the firmly capitalist side of the cold war. When education, healthcare, and steady employment are precious luxuries it's not hard to see how someone would have a favourable view of socialism.
>>382346
BLAT
L
A
T
>>386572
I heard that it was mostly a way to soothe the population, because simply telling them that there was absolutely nothing they could do if they were in the vicinity of a nuclear detonation obviously wouldn't fly.
>>382167
They say life was better. While there were less freedoms, there was safety. There was work for everybody and minority were kept in check. People were moral and educated. The stores didn't have much diversity, people could afford to buy the food they need.
>>382167
Both parents from military family, enjoyed it. Got to live all around Soviet Union but mostly around Abkhazia. One of grandpa was ww2 veteran and got sent to gulag, Stalin die and he runs home to black Sea, gets caught many years later but don't know what to do so he is set free.
>>387846
no it aint retard
Mongolfag here, my parents always loved the soviet union and thought of the nation as good older brother.
>>382281
Which war was that?
For the most part, my dad is pretty knowledgeable when it comes to history, but you can tell at times that he took in some of the anti-communist propaganda.
One of the things that got me when he said something along the lines of "those damn Russians didn't do anything of worth in WWII." He went on a whole tirade about the US being the sole reason the USSR was able to take Berlin.
>>391494
The lend lease counts for a lot desu
My dad went on holiday with my mom to Croatia after Tito died. His description of a convenience store described the rest of the country. Little quantity, run down and poor.
In Norwegian, the word is; "stusselig".
Mom left Vietnam in the early 80s, she was maybe 12 when the North came in. Her family was lucky enough to be far from the fighting, and she never cared for politics and ideology. She's constantly nostalgic about it because she left her entire social life there and never really started a new one here. Dad came from Laos pretty much alone, he hates the communists with a passion but doesn't really go into details about what happened.
I never had it with my mom, my dad was in Egypt so for the longest time it was either Russia was good under Nasser or Russia was bad under Sadat.
>>387835
Actually Coca cola wasn't imported. Soviet people were drinking either Pepsi or their special lemonades and drinks like Tarkhun, Baikal, Sayany etc.
And Gulags were gone after 1956. The later half of sixties has introduced the psychiatric method: some oppositionaires were declared as sluggish schizophrenic. Some of them weren't really sane to begin with.
>>382167
I live in Denmark so the east block was pretty close, my parents went to East germany and Czechoslovakia on holiday, they thought that East germany was pretty dull but liked Czechoslovakia a lot.
My mother has visited Prague many times both before and after the cold war, and her main comment about Prague is that there are a lot more prostitutes now.
>>385288
>if you call me a tankie to my face you're going to lose an eye
The things we post on 4chan for a sack of potatoes
>>382167
My Dad tried to tell me once that the Soviet Union was almost entirely reliant on food from America for its people to survive because of the food shortages resulting from overpopulation and their communist economic system. I laughed so hard.
My family's from Czechoslovakia so yes, any time my parents talk about their childhood
>be my grandpa, coal miner
>accident in the mine leaves him injured - can't work
>thanks to socialism he gets surgery payed for and 'government job' (caretaker of a grade school)
>uses access to school to illicitly use their printing press
>prints shit onto shirts for people, including the local police department (this is in a city btw)
>gets payed in foreign cash
>can only use it at Tuzex: only place in the country you could buy foreign goods
>racks up enough black market cash for a foreign car: a fucking Fiat
>spends the rest of the '80s stunting hard and jamming the entire family into the car
Also my family (only some members thanks to travel visa restrictions) would take trips to East Germany, buy a bunch of stuff, and smuggle it over - the fact my grandpa's ID said he was a government employee made the border guards a lot more complacent
>>392052
Might as well dump some more anecdotes
>mom was a Pioneer, ascended to a leadership role cause she loved the camping aspect (grew up in a very industrial city, as I mentioned lots of coalfields nearby)
>went on a school trip to East Berlin
>had to stay in a shitty Russian hotel with group showers and bolted-on windows
>said it was much cleaner than Prague at the time
>would buy knock-off Converse
>jeans were major status symbols since only kids of party members had access
>had military-style drills in school
My grandparents continued to work at the school by the time I was born. The school had a nuclear fallout shelter that had small tunnels running to other parts of the city.
>grandpa would go siphon gasoline and sell it to truckers for extra cash
>his good friend from childhood village had a love of motorcycles, including Harley-Davidson: apparently the police kept a tab on him as a result
>would salvage abandoned Trabants to use their engines for his bikes
As >>382346 said, there was a lot of corruption (I've been told a story about going to a village party officials house with a bottle of wine, can't remember the context)...very strange, interesting time
i lived maybe 20 kilometers from USSR border. only interesting part was when the shit collapsed everyone prepared for either awesome last stand or shitload of russian refugees. neither never happened.
>>392174
neither ever*
You Finlander
My dad said it was actually quite unsettling. You always had the thought in the back of your mind that, at any given moment, the world could end.
>>382167
They told me that living in the U.S.S.R. was fucking great.
>>385288
Put your trip back on fifel
>>385288
>Not my utopia by any stretch, if you call me a tankie to my face, you're going to lose an eye.
If you try to fuck someone's eye for something so trivial you're likely gonna get stabbed in the liver and left for dead in an alleyway sometime in the future.
Lithuanian here, full on USSR.
My parents were living under communism until they were like 17, so basically all the childhood and teenage years.
They never say it was shit or anything, it was pretty alright for them (though it's different for kids I guess, everything's fine for them).
My mom said she was bullied constantly though because her father was in a leading position of a big construction company and he had access to different clothes, accessories and other goods that would be better than the worker's kids.
They had to take parts in soviet parades during commie celebrities. During the breaks in class, they had to form couples of two and walk circles around the school.
>>382167
Ze Cold War was great fun !
>>386438
fucking this
Communism, at least so far, is literally a scheme for a very powerful minority to have absolute control over everything. They are rich and fat while everyone else has to eat potatoes and cabbage to live.
I really can't understand why there are apologists for communist countries.
>>392036
But it's true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921
Pre-WWII and it was just for the one famine, but yes it happened.
>>395119
>Communism, at least so far, is literally a scheme for a very powerful minority to have absolute control over everything. They are rich and fat while everyone else has to eat potatoes and cabbage to live.
>I really can't understand why there are apologists for communist countries.
Because that's an absurdly simplistic analysis. That's like saying "capitalism is a system where everyone lives like dirt while fat cat capitalists have absolute control over everything (the economy, media, education, health care, etc., etc.)"
Under socialism illiteracy was practically eradicated, women in all parts of the country were emancipated (in Central Asia until then you'd be killed for the religious crime of unveiling your face), new cities were born, entire battalions' worth of teachers, professors, doctors, scientists, managers, etc. came into being, who certainly didn't "eat potatoes and cabbage to live."
Check out these two books:
* https://archive.org/details/IsTheRedFlagFlying
* https://archive.org/details/HumanRightsInTheSovietUnion
>>382167
My grandparents fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists. They were probably constantly afraid of being invaded, but by the time of my parents, it was more of an ambiguous threat that was always in the back of their heads.
>>395188
Capitalism did the same thing, only even more so, and without millions of people getting murdered
>>395280
>What is colonialism
>>395283
Under colonialism illiteracy was practically eradicated, women in all parts of the the world were emancipated (in India until then you'd be burned alive on your husbands funeral pyre), new cities were born, entire battalions' worth of teachers, professors, doctors, scientists, managers, etc. came into being, who certainly didn't "eat potatoes and cabbage to live."
>>382309
Jesus
>>385852
My guess Turkey
>>395294
And yet the amount of women in the Indian workforce was puny compared to the Soviet workforce, even in Central Asia. See Chapter IX of: https://archive.org/details/SovietWomen
Also there's no comparison between the vast slums and incredible poverty of rural India on one hand and the material progress of Soviet Central Asia on the other.
And the unveiling campaign in Soviet Central Asia was carried out by indigenous cadres, not by white men.
>>395294
>Under colonialism illiteracy was practically eradicated, women in all parts of the the world were emancipated
If you seriously think this then you are dumb. Illiteracy and the subjugation of women were certainly not done away with under colonialism. In fact the colonialists often relied on the reactionary clergy and feudal rulers (such as the sultans in northern Nigeria) to prop up colonial rule.
>>382518
Pakistan? Afghanistan?
>>382167
My father was very young during the Vietnam War, he told me he was traumatized when they showed on TV the pictures of that guy who got shot by a South Vietnamese officer with a revolver.
I live in a NATO country that didn't really do much during the Cold War because we were busy with out own problems, so the big bad guy USSR wasn't on daily news unlike in America.
>>387989
>My parents would have been too young to remember the cold war really.
Uhm, dude the Cold War ended in 1991. Unless your parents are 30 they sure as fuck remember what was going on during Soviet times.
>>385234
You realise Capucino Marxists like yourself would be the first to get the shit beaten out of you and your Apple products redistributed in the event of any red revolution, right?
>>395625
>pay debts!
>>382167
>Did you ever have *that* conversation with your parents, /his/? About what it was like to live in the Cold War and with the Soviet Union?
Yes, sort of. Except I'm from a commie state, so its the war against the USA more like.
>What did they tell you?
That they miss it, it was better, more security, they dont make 'em like they used to, etc. Normal parents stuff.
