Life in the Brezhnev years...personal accounts

For those who may have lived it, or anyone with an opinion on it. Good or bad. Elaborate, of course.

Discuss.

Soviet78 is an expert in soviet life 'personal' accounting.

Google some info, Brehznev years are covered in various sites, books, etc, altough very personal and close appreciations are harder to find.

Here in Argentina, I've read in a newspaper an interview with a former Soviet citizen which actually is a driving taxi in Buenos Aires. He came in 1991/92, and as most of the people that experienced the 1960-1970s USSR he called that a 'golden era' compared to the devastation that brought Yeltsin to Russia.

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Soviet78 is an expert in soviet life 'personal' accounting.

Yes, I definitely always look to Soviet78's posts, in a way, this post was geared towards him.

In my history class, we just had a lecture on USSR from Brezhnev to collapse. My professor had actually spent some time studying abroad in the USSR (he first went either during late Khrushchëv or Brezhnev), and he has been back to the USSR & post-Soviet Russia & other ex-Soviet republics many times since. He was and still is generally supportive of socialism, and out of all the professors that I have had, he has presented the most objective views on the USSR, in that his perspective is simultaneously sympathetic and critical. For instance, though he enjoyed his stay there, he has not necessarily always supported the Soviet model, which he has criticized in some lectures for its bureaucratic character and strong centralization, but that's for another time. From what I have gathered during the last lecture (and bear in mind that this is what my professor presented):

1) The USSR under Brezhnev was possibly the most stable period of the 20th century in the region.
2) The country had reached military parity with the United States, and it was a strong and influential state -- militarily, economically, and politically.
3) There was advancement in culture and education, and infrastructure was developed and maintained.
4) People were not afraid of unemployment, and goods were cheap. Standards of living were be increasing, and even though sometimes there were scarcity problems, people had money saved up (due to low costs of goods) so that they could buy and sell "unofficially" among each other, and this sort of thing was tolerated by the state.
5) Upward mobility -- generational. Many of the educated and officials of the time came from working-class backgrounds. Their grandparents had been peasants, their parents workers, and now they were college educated and had non-menial labor as work. It felt like things were definitely getting better for each generation. Even those in traditional working class jobs were better off than they would have in the past or in the capitalist states in similar periods of development, in other words, during the period of modernization wherein the state would stabilize, become industrialized, and have an expansive, functioning infrastructure.
6) On the flip side, the state had grown to be almost too stable and seems to have lost some of the radical, revolutionary atmosphere and culture of 1917 into the 1920's and the heroism of the Great Patriotic War and post-war reconstruction. It was becoming a "modern" state, albeit under different economic and political system and ideology than the Western states, but even so, like modern states, it was interested in preserving and perpetuating itself.*
7) Some people that my professor has spoken to when he was in the USSR have said that the events of the Prague Spring were a sign Brezhnev's conservatism and of the way he and his government would act to preserve the status. I can see where one might get that impression, but such an outlook kind of feels like a bit of a stretch. I could be wrong, but I typically don't always like to use one single event to generalize about an entire period or government. I don't know how my professor felt about that statement, but he relayed it to our class to give us an impression of how people in the USSR viewed that period in Soviet history.

Soviet78 is right to point out that "it was a golden era of peace and slowly growing prosperity" is a widely present sentiment when people who experienced the period feel about it. Many citizens of the former Soviet Union that my professor has spoken to definitely feel so as well, and the same is indicated by shared public opinion. Obviously opinions do differ, and some would point to the negative aspects and criticize it. It was nevertheless probably one of the more fondly remembered period in the USSR though.

* I know it's a bit weird to talk about the state as if it were alive, but once entrenched, those in charge of of the state apparatus -- particularly with a strong central government -- can almost exert a force on the functioning of the state and do a lot to preserve the existing structure.

the soviet union under brezhenev didn't achieve military parity with the US; as I understand it this was a fiction that suited the purposes of both sides in the cold war and so was maintained.

How funny, even being asked about PERSONAL accounts people are still discussing politics.

I grew up in Brezhnev's USSR and clearly remember:
a) the absence of street crime (in my hometown of 250,000 people there were less then 10 fatal knife attacks in all those years, and the severest crime the Militia had to deal with was moonshine-making);
b) our parents didn't know the fear of losing jobs or -- UNTHINKABLE -- repossession of flats for unpaid rent;
c) we only knew what "hunger" was from people who survived the War;
d) we didn't have to think twice to go to a Uni or not, the money wasn't the issue because higher education was free.

Aodaliya_Ren wrote:

a) the absence of street crime (in my hometown of 250,000 people there were less then 10 fatal knife attacks in all those years, and the severest crime the Militia had to deal with was moonshine-making);
b) our parents didn't know the fear of losing jobs or -- UNTHINKABLE -- repossession of flats for unpaid rent;
c) we only knew what "hunger" was from people who survived the War;
d) we didn't have to think twice to go to a Uni or not, the money wasn't the issue because higher education was free.

Great stuff. I can relate to that from my own country. I can only add that we had the priviledge of freely crossing any border whenever we wanted.

Not only that,but we also had the privilege of buying real Jeans in Trieste,in addition to real pornography and Western LPs all of which were available even at home.

EDIT:
Dissidents Liked Pretty Girls: Nudity, Pornography and Quality Press in Socialism
http://www.mediaresearch.cro.net/clanak ... =en&id=379

Loz wrote:

Not only that,but we also had the privilege of buying real Jeans in Trieste,in addition to real pornography and Western LPs all of which were available even at home.

... and I was never afraid of walking home alone at 10pm when i was a kid. Nowadays, I'm terrified because you never know who may lurk in the shadows.
... and we had the best healthcare system in the world. The Scandinavians copied social security and healtservices from us.

What was TV and radio like?

What kind of shows or programming was popular?

How often were movies shown?

What was educational radio and TV like?

To what extent was there straight up entertainment versus "practical" radio or tv (education, political, news etc)



Educate a western comrade

Aodaliya_Ren wrote:

How funny, even being asked about PERSONAL accounts people are still discussing politics.

I grew up in Brezhnev's USSR and clearly remember:
a) the absence of street crime (in my hometown of 250,000 people there were less then 10 fatal knife attacks in all those years, and the severest crime the Militia had to deal with was moonshine-making);
b) our parents didn't know the fear of losing jobs or -- UNTHINKABLE -- repossession of flats for unpaid rent;
c) we only knew what "hunger" was from people who survived the War;
d) we didn't have to think twice to go to a Uni or not, the money wasn't the issue because higher education was free.

Glad to see this thread was revived! Almost forgot about it...

Really enjoyed that answer, THANK YOU for that. It was pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Such situations that are a basic part of life in the west, which were HORRIFYING and unheard of concepts in the east...at one time. Such as standing outside a restaurant and not being able to eat. "SPARE A DIME ANYONE?? SPARE A DIME???"

I have a lot of 'hearsay' on this question. I'm sure elder soviet citizens will also agree.

In the USSR pre-gorbachev era, basically the way it works is. You go to school, have a job, can buy food, go on vacation and visit a summer cottage. Thank god you live in the USSR.

Aodaliya_Ren wrote:

How funny, even being asked about PERSONAL accounts people are still discussing politics.

I grew up in Brezhnev's USSR and clearly remember:
a) the absence of street crime (in my hometown of 250,000 people there were less then 10 fatal knife attacks in all those years, and the severest crime the Militia had to deal with was moonshine-making);
b) our parents didn't know the fear of losing jobs or -- UNTHINKABLE -- repossession of flats for unpaid rent;
c) we only knew what "hunger" was from people who survived the War;
d) we didn't have to think twice to go to a Uni or not, the money wasn't the issue because higher education was free.

Didn't Stalin introduce tuition fees? Was this reversed at some point?

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In the USSR pre-gorbachev era, basically the way it works is. You go to school, have a job, can buy food, go on vacation and visit a summer cottage. Thank god you live in the USSR.

That honestly sounds like almost a dream to me. I'd die for some simplicity such as what you describe, in my life. No building credit, no chance you can get yourself in debt and fall through the cracks in such a system, no insurance to deal with..none of it. No having to endure the stress of trying to get by in school while job hunting, and getting constantly turned down, when youre constitutionally guaranteed a job and go to jail if you're able bodied and DON'T work.

Simplicity, and stability, that's best for me.

Man In Grey wrote:

That honestly sounds like almost a dream to me. I'd die for some simplicity such as what you describe, in my life. No building credit, no chance you can get yourself in debt and fall through the cracks in such a system, no insurance to deal with..none of it. No having to endure the stress of trying to get by in school while job hunting, and getting constantly turned down, when youre constitutionally guaranteed a job and go to jail if you're able bodied and DON'T work.

Simplicity, and stability, that's best for me.

Indeed. Combine that with the higher pre-existing state of development in the US or Europe and it'd be a pretty damn good place to live.