Life in the USSR Soviet Union

File: rey5y5y54y4y.jpg (84KB, 720x478px) Image search: [Google]

84KB, 720x478px

>Business
Ministries, Worker Unions(Soviets) and Syndicates replaced companies and corporations, making everything owned by the state. There were no shareholders or stock markets as there were no shares in the system and the stocks were distributed by the state powers mentioned above. 'Private' property would include no more than a household with it's items and maybe a car if you're well off.

The government would have grocery stores implanted, as well as public baths, brothels and restaurants, no fast food though. In some places, in some time periods, food stamps were issued to most people, and good food was a commodity.


>Social Life
It was encouraged to SPEND all your salary instead of saving it and investing it into expensive shit. So people bought paintings, radios, trinkets and went on cheap vacations across the countryside rather than save up to buy a car. It would be suspicious if you could afford expensive shit if you made just about as much money as your neighbor, and said neighbor might report you, you'd be placed under investigation, you'd get your possessions confiscated and end up in jail.

Knowing you could end up in jail for nearly anything, people refrained from telling jokes, announcing going to church or gossiping about their bosses. Families were strict and there was little neighborly love, or friendships between colleagues, thus people married young.

>The system
Your way of going up in the world would be to get into politics, through hard work, nepotism and ass kissing you'd get into higher positions that could be considered 'boss-like', like administrators or supervisors. This'd get you prestige and effectively set you above your peers, it came with more money a lot of privileges. If you held enough favors with the right people, the local law could easily be bent to forgive your misdeeds. Snooping was highly rewarding as well, if you called out your colleagues and neighbors you received money and a better standing with the higher ups.
1/2

Occasionally people would bribe the government in order to sell things, also towards the end some free market was allowed because the central planning model had become an absolute failure with wasted resources and huge surpluses.

>>2613322
>public brothels
what was life like for a state prostitute?

File: image6.jpg (61KB, 450x313px) Image search: [Google]

61KB, 450x313px

2/2

>Justice
It was wise to keep your mouth shut and speak only when asked, avoiding controversy. Anything you said could be misconstrued to be a crime. Murder, rape, arson and other crimes like them would be just as bad as today, and communists didn't care for the rights of man, meaning you could face execution, or lifetime imprisonment, in which you'd be doomed with abuse(borderline torture), as well as sub par conditions. Prisons were filled with rodents and disease, cells wouldn't have heat during winter, and people cared little if an inmate got sick. Typically they'd work as labor camps where they'd literally work you to death.

Petty crimes like assault, theft and extortion were tolerated just a tad bit in some communities, typically rural areas and some suburbs where they'd fit the minorities. Places like that received little attention from the government, and thus criminal organizations and mobs, like the infamous Solntsevskaya Bratva would rise up. Crime was still sparse, and when it happened it generally had some form of approval from higher up.

>Culture
Newspapers, architecture, music, films, literature were all created within the state, meaning they'd fit propaganda into everything, especially into schools, where it was common for there to be a painting of the country's leader, and the kids were to sing the national anthem before class. Children would be sent to light labor, the equivalent of the boy/girl scouts in communist nations would be kids sent to tend to the gardens of the schools or collect trash from the streets and whatnot.

There were public baths, operas, brothels, frequent army parades, curfews, but those depend from case to case. I've laid out what I know from my family and older friends, which lived in communist Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Poland. It wasn't exactly like I've said everywhere, but I hope I painted a good picture.

>>2613339
This I don't know much about, I've heard the government was openly against prostitution, but many of it's organs that were in charge of hotels and such practiced it, and had enough influence to keep it cool. I've heard it was pretty professional, with pills and lube and everything, even heard stories of swing parties going around back then. I'd imagine the people in charge of hotels would effectively act as the pimps. There was also a tax in some places on people over the age of twenty and not married, and an additional tax on fertile people with no kids, meaning a lot of families formed out of necessity, so you'd see a lot of cheating going on where the taxes were in effect.

>>2612997
I recommend "Everyday Stalinism - Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s" by Sheila Fitzpatrick.