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Vacations in the Soviet Union

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Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#191

Post by t-3 »

martythemaniak wrote: post #73
EarthIsHome wrote: post #2

Happy May Day! Here's a Twitter thread [0] that has excerpts/paraphrases from an old Soviet pamphlet called "How Soviet Workers Spend Their Leisure." (rolled up version [1]) You can find a scanned version of the pamphlet here [2]. There were many of these pamphlets published. One day I will scan them and post them. There was one on Waterways & Transport in the USSR, one about Soviet theater, one about the food indust…

As always, the gap between reality and propaganda is hilarious. Soviet workers and their colonized subjects spent their leisure time filling in for the massive failures of the state to provide anything resembling their promises. Some excerpts from my childhood: * Family outing to the fields to harvest carrots to pickle for the winter. This would be bartered with other families who went to harvest other veggies, so th…

Not exactly different from my parents experiences growing up in the US, where "summer vacation" was a trip to uncle's farm to detassel corn or pick cotton, hunting to get meat, etc.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#192

Post by lovecg »

lb1lf wrote: post #159
flowerbreeze wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think more accurate would be to say it allowed freedom from expression, freedom from religion and freedom from assembly. Unless in the service of the communist party of course.

A former colleague of mine, born and raised in the USSR, liked to quip that there was only one minor difference in the way freedom of expression was implemented in the USSR and in the West. Both places guaranteed the freedom to express oneself, but only the West guaranteed your freedom also after you'd expressed yourself.

“In America we have freedoms. I can stand in front of the White House and shout, ‘President Truman is a moron!’”

“Big deal, it’s the same here. I can also stand in the middle of the Red Square and shout ‘President Truman is a moron’”.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#193

Post by yucatansunshine »

poisonarena wrote: post #136
samstave wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much amazing beauty in the world, including the largest country on the planet, Russia - and then especially areas in China, which I would LOVE to visit, but the governments of each country kinda suck, so its not a place I'll likely go (imagine mtn biking through some of the amazing landscapes of either) With that said, I'd love to hear Lex Fridman's opinion on all of this.

this has got to be the most reddit thing i have ever read

guarantee you it's a r/worldnews poster

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#194

Post by Forbo »

benmanns wrote: post #26
HideousKojima wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prison labor != Political prisoner labor

To some extent, the war on drugs is a war on minorities is a political war on the left.

The down voting of the parent is wholly unjustified. This is a factual reality that has already taken place and continues on to this day.

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#195

Post by thriftwy »

lnsru wrote: post #129
Aaronstotle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandparents and my father grew up in the Soviet Union. I always find it fascinating hearing about my grandparent's childhood and what it was like to grow up there. One anecdote for not all rosy: My father is permanently traumatized because he had to get his tonsils removed when he was young and they didn't give him any anesthetics.

Anesthetics were only for the higher caste kids of party members. Basically they had everything the westerners had :-) General population however had nothing.

This cannot be further from truth. High ranking party members had access to "special distribution" stores whose selection of goods available was inferior to what your local 7-11 offers (not to mention the modern Russian supermarket chains for that matter).

They could get some of the things westerners had, but with extremely low bandwidth.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#196

Post by janalsncm »

catiopatio wrote: post #154
atdrummond wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encourage you (barring safety concerns) to travel to countries whose governments are considered illiberal. Some of my most enlightening trips were to DPRK, Russia, China, Turkmenistan, Brunei. You learn a lot about how the western media tends to exaggerate for political ends.

No, you learn a lot about how illiberal governments treat foreign visitors from wealthy western countries, and how they leverage their power to control what you as a tourist see and hear. The first country you list is the DPRK, who are famed for carefully stage-managing any visit by western tourists. If you want an honest view of those places, you have to speak with people who aren’t risking their lives or livelihood…

North Korea is an exception, since it’s pretty hard to talk to actual locals.

Having lived in one of those illiberal countries for a while (China) I could clearly see how the US media distorted everything, reduced Chinese people to a monolith, downplayed or simply ignored all of the genuinely good things happening, and took every opportunity to highlight the negatives. It is to the point where every positive, interesting, or beautiful thing is reflexively shot down and dismissed.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#197

Post by systems_glitch »

pierat wrote: post #49

Sigh, that's not always easy with many of the people here with "unlimited PTO" without guaranteed minimums. Most of the unlimited clauses are based on manager approval. The base HR justification for unlimited PTO is to not have to pay out unused PTO when they leave. Naturally, it sounds good on face, but leads to less PTO taken due to inherent worries of "how much is too much", lack of manager approval, and the like.…

In two previous jobs I've had "unlimited PTO" and almost everyone in the office worked more than if they'd been given bank holidays. Pretty sure it's just a mgmt strategy that sounds awesome on paper to workers and is known to actually reduce time away from office.

That said, I personally made good use of it. Had a coworker or two ask about how I thought it was "fair" to the company. I knew the rate at which my (salaried) time was being billed to customers and didn't see it their way at all :P

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#198

Post by legitster »

ActorNightly wrote: post #135
0xDEF wrote: post #38

It's fascinating how the ideology of Marxism–Leninism (Communism) today is more popular than ever among young people in former capitalist heartlands like the US, Canada and UK. A simple European-style welfare state with universal healthcare is all you need to satisfy 90% of people but the elites in the US and the UK refuse to provide that.

>its more popular than ever among young people Its only popular as an aesthetic. On both left and right, most politically inclined people don't have the reasoning skills to talk about politics effectively, nor would the actually enjoy living under their hypothetical best system of government. Most political discourse is used as a signal to show what kind of person you are in conversation. And generally, there is a tr…

> Its only popular as an aesthetic

This is a good way to put it. I have friends who got very mixed up with the El Chapo Trap House content. It has certainly scrambled their brains and made them insufferable - but for all of the worship of dictators and crude jokes about guillotining dentists they now make, none of them really care enough about local politics to actually start attending caucuses, let alone create militias.

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#199

Post by century19 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #62

This is great. I've been interested in understanding how the Soviet economy worked for a long time. I've found only a handful of articles like this one. Unless you're willing to delve into hardcore economic academic papers (I am not) it's hard to get an actual informed perspective. Most Googling around will basically return you the rote response that it basically didn't work. Which, despite the many issues with the S…

BAM is an interesting case. One of the largest engineering projects of the 20th century, and they had to convince volunteers to join.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal%E2%80%93Amur_Mainline

Re: Vacations in the Soviet Union

#200

Post by xioxox »

nicbou wrote: post #158
nverno wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the legal repercussions if you don't use your time off to relax and restore?

You are forced to take vacations. What you do with them is beyond your employer's control.

I'm not forced to take vacations in Germany by my employer (large research institution). They roll over for a year, but then expire.
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