21–30 of 78 posts
Interesting and sad to see the ratio of women to men doing hard manual work in these photos, even road repairs are done by women. It's mind boggling how devastating the war was for the country.
As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union (during a later period), I found it really interesting to look at this photographs. One thing worth pointing out: Moscow was very different from the rest of the country. It had better housing and infrastructure, the shops were stocked far better than elsewhere in the country, it had more grandiose architecture and richer cultural life and so on. In many is ways it was the co…
So a Potemkin capital, as it were?
https://books.google.com/books/about/Dispersing_Population.h...
By the 1990s it was a forgotten cause: countries weren't willing to give up a few points of efficiency facing the fierce competition and the cold war was over.
(2) Russia was particularly extreme at that time because, under Communism, Russia was transforming from a mostly agrarian country with spots of advanced thinking (Russian Futurists, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) to an industrial powerhouse that could challenge the United States. Ironically if there was anything about the Stalin years it was that Russia was highly successful at capital accumulation and around that time many "non-aligned" and less developed countries like India were hoping the USSR could help them do the same.
Karl Marx was mainly interested in the advanced industrial "core" but Lenin was more interested in "peripheral" countries that were exploited by the "core". The USSR was more about winning the international competition than it was about advancing the working class and the military threat from Germany, US and other countries meant the USSR had to develop as rapidly as possible so it reproduced an imperialist system internally with a division of labor that advanced industry around Moscow and a few other centers at the expense of the countryside, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Dekulakization
If you're interested in the spatial division of the world you really need to read
https://www.amazon.com/Modern-World-System-I-Immanuel-Waller...
and the rest of the four volume set it is a part of.
"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world." Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases. Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither c…
"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world." Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases. Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither c…
In my experience as an American, most of the parades I'm personally familiar with are organized by local groups rather than the government. Maybe you can read some ideology into the American Legion marching with flags, but it's more an exercise in giving the local high school band a chance to march, the Shriners an excuse to break out their clown cars, and maybe the whole thing is an advertisement for the 4H or FFA f…
"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world." Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases. Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither c…
I'm not sure what kind of special torture you'd employ to make people display that kind of enthusiasm :)
"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world." Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases. Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither c…
By the age of 6, I was required to carry a standard paper lantern on the November 7th celebration of the Great October* Socialist Revolution, with my parents fully aware that presence and absence lists were maintained by the teachers, who would forward them to the school cadre bureaucrats keeping dossiers on the kids, who could alert the secret police to take a closer look at the repeat offenders, and who would definitely play a big role in allowing you later to enter high school or not.
My grandpa was subject to hearings and threats because his son (my uncle) had bad marks in the compulsory Russian language lessons and the spooks were convinced that he was bad at it on purpose, by being secretly taught animosity against the Soviet Union at home.
I wonder if you ever experienced this sort of paranoia and coercion from your government. In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, this was the norm even during the late 1980s.
* Yeah, the October/November mismatch fits, because in 1917, then-Russia was following the Julian calendar and only later switched to Gregorian. Hence the difference of 18 days which was reflected in the timing of that parade.
Interesting and sad to see the ratio of women to men doing hard manual work in these photos, even road repairs are done by women. It's mind boggling how devastating the war was for the country.
Ah, is that why... I noticed this too but assumed it was due to some communist ideal of gender equality leading to more women tradespeople, wishful thinking I guess
As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union (during a later period), I found it really interesting to look at this photographs. One thing worth pointing out: Moscow was very different from the rest of the country. It had better housing and infrastructure, the shops were stocked far better than elsewhere in the country, it had more grandiose architecture and richer cultural life and so on. In many is ways it was the co…
Moscow plus Leningrad plus Vladivostok. The rest fought for the crumbs.
Not exactly. While it is true that Moscow had (has) more than any other city in the union - capitals of the republics had more that russian province, for example.
You'd rather live in Dushanbe (where I was born) rather then in russian city of the same population.
Interesting and sad to see the ratio of women to men doing hard manual work in these photos, even road repairs are done by women. It's mind boggling how devastating the war was for the country.
Ah, is that why... I noticed this too but assumed it was due to some communist ideal of gender equality leading to more women tradespeople, wishful thinking I guess