Gorbachev and perestroika in the USSR. Year 1986-87

1986 in the History of the USSR

Beginning is in my previous hubGorbachev and perestroika 1985.

In 1986 the foreign policy of Mikhail Gorbachev was known to the whole world. In 1985 and later in 1986 there were meetings of Gorbachev with Ronald Reagan. His attempts to reduce the number of nuclear war heads were welcomed both by the United States and by the Soviet Union. In this year Gorbachev declared that the policy of military counterfeit has no future. The relations with the United States certainly became warmer and some American films appeared on TV.

A new phenomenon appeared in USSR with Gorbachev – his wife Raisa Gorbacheva. Her appearance on TV caused lots of controversial rumors. She was the first wife of a soviet state leader who escorted openly her husband in all trips. More than that she had her own agenda and her visits abroad were discussed even more than those of Gorbachev. She tried to look European to wear modern closes and to act accordingly, but instead she caused irritation of people in the USSR and pretty soon we started to think that she, not Gorbachev, makes the policy and rules the country.

On the 26^th of April 1986 Chernobyl exploded. That catastrophe was later called “a test for openness which was failed by the Soviet Union”. The first information about Chernobyl was published only next day; the first information about “2 people dead and some radiation outburst” was published only 3 days after it. People were evacuated only after several days and majority of people had no idea of what was happening. Panic has started after the radiation came to Kiev and was exceeding normal in 80 times. Statistic said that within first month died 28 people, 125000 died within next 10 years, 135000 were evacuated to other places while 3000000 stayed in the polluted areas in Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia. The radiation cloud went over the Europe. You can see yourself how a dilapidated city Pripyat looks and make a virtual tour http://maps.yandex.ru/-/CBQIVX6B I was impressed even more than I wanted to.

People started to speak more openly about censorship in culture and a lot of films prohibited in the previous years appeared on the screens. New approaches in economy appeared as well. The government declared a war with illegal labor activities. If you had a greenhouse to grow up tomatoes for sale, it was considered an illegal labor activity. Greenhouses with heating were totally prohibited. People who made handmade items were accused in “receiving income which is significantly more than materials used and labor applied”. In some cases such a labor activity could bring to a sentence up to 5 years. Authorities wanted to implement a law to determine basics of self-employed business but at the same time to forbid a private property on the means of production.

In the year 1986 a program of building houses and apartments for population was adopted. This year and next couple of years became known for massive building of multistoried buildings. The Party wanted to provide each family with an own apartment in the term till 2000.

A first foreign TV soap opera was shown in the USSR. “Simply Maria” (“Simplemente Maria”) from Mexico possessed hearts of millions of peoples. An other film which shook the country was an action film “The Octopus” (La Piovra ) with Michele Placido starring. It described mafia in Italy and an honest commissar who tried to fight with it.

1987 in the Soviet history

In the previous years of Soviet history many cities and towns in the USSR were named after some significant soviet or party leaders. In 1987 they started to rename these cities returning their former names. So all cities like Brezhnev became back Naberezhnye Chelny, Stalinsk – Novokuznetsk etc.

In 1987 it was decided to legalize a self-employed business. Party committee said that a private business is “not our way” but in a sphere of service, public catering and goods production co-operatives were permitted. First joint ventures appeared but they were not numerous because of strict legislation demands. Just to create any JV one needed to get approval in a dozen of ministries including KGB. So the process of JV creation could take from 6 to 9 months. It was much easier to become a self-employed businessman. Lots of them appeared in building industry, transportation and trade. Those who started business in consumer goods production were on the wave of success. People who had a shortage of closes were ready to buy anything.

The new times required new fashions and population of the country surprisingly came to know that black, grey and white are not the only colors in the Universe.

First private cafes and restaurants appeared in Moscow. The number of produced goods grew up but their quality was still poor.

The words “Perestroika” and “glasnost” were probably known at this time to the whole world. Gorbachev became extremely popular. The basic idea which he is cherishing now is that the Socialism can not exist any longer like this, but the capitalism also has to be changed. Perestroika was supposed to create a new type of social system.

In 1987 the USSR was shocked by a small airplane that landed directly on a Red Square.

A young men from Germany Mathias Rust landed his small Cessna in the very heart of the capital of the USSR. The main reason of his successful flight was the fact that in 1983 Soviet air defense system shot Korean passenger liner over the Far East and 269 people were killed. Even now the situation around that liner is still not clear. So none wanted to take responsibility and to order to shoot Mathias. Mathias was lucky; he was not even sentenced to any term. He was sent back to Germany and still lives a normal life. He said he just wanted to talk with Gorbachev about perestroika.

Perestroika in the USSR. Why Russians do not like Gorbachov? Year 1985

USSR in 1985

Some people like him, others – don’t. Some people say that Gorbachev broke the USSR and ruined the huge and a powerful country, others – that he brought peace and broke the walls of misunderstanding. My own opinion is that Mikhail Gorbachev did not break the USSR he rather tried to control the inevitable demolition of the country.

The first cracks of the soviet regime became visible in the 80TH. Brezhnev was not a young and full of energy leader. He became old, slow and suffered numerous illnesses. His appearance on TV screens was minimal, but still the Communist Partyconferences were broadcasted and people noticed that Brezhnev slowly turns into a walking ruin. Numerous jokes became popular about his appearance and a manner of speech. May be somewhere on the level of subliminal consciousness, the population of the USSR started to feel that his power has gone. His abilities were limited and his presence at demonstrations in the Red Square was commented like “Why, is he still capable to walk up himself on the stairs of the tribune?”

Not only simple people understood it. Party functionaries were actively discussing in a narrow circle a possible name of the ancestor of Brezhnev. Gorbachev was not treated seriously at that time. He was already known in the party surrounding for his agricultural success in the south of the country, he was active and had numerous merits, but he was young. So when Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982 the Party stood against a difficult problem of finding someone to substitute him. As a result Andropov was chosen, a former head of the KGB of the USSR. The Communist Party probably expected him to return an influence of the party on the population. May be they expected him to be something like little Stalin with ability and connections to renew order in the country and to return an absolute obedience of people.

But the process of decay of socialism in the USSR has already started. Andropov actually tried to do his best in his own manner. He sent a police and KGB agents to theatres, cinemas and they checked people in a daytime. Why are you watching a film if you have to be at your working place now? A lot of people were questioned, reports were recorded. That was an attempt to maintain the economy of the country from default – to make all people work. Besides it was an attempt to support the power of a system. But such measures were not adequate, not continuous and all the idea of making an order in that way was doomed.

People started to whisper under Brezhnev rule and finally to speak more or less openly after his death about problems which country had. People asked themselves why we know only those things which are written in newspapers? Why the airline or train catastrophe is kept in secret from the population of the country? Why the people who live close to Semipalatinsk and other nuclear test sites suffer strange diseases? If we do not know about such evident things what else is kept behind the thick doors of Party committees? Besides each and every person wanted a better life and the population saw that Party members of the upper level live a different life. They make trips abroad, they have prestigious (at that time) cars. Why?

No-one knows what would happen if Andropov stayed longer at the wheel of the country. But he and his ancestor Chernenko died quickly and the party recalled about the young and prospective Mikhail Gorbachev.

1985. Gorbachev became a head of the Communist Party at a very hard time in the USSR. The country was exhausted by a long and expensive nuclear program and by attempts to overtake America in the number of nuclear heads. An expensive space program and other non profit programs were held for many years and demanded many human and material resources.

At that time Gorbachev actually had little choice. He could try to rule with an iron fist of tyranny or to let the reins go. If the country faced the war or if there was a natural calamity of national importance, then he would probably have a chance to unite the population under the slogan of fighting against a direct threat. Just remember the WWII. People who supported army, civil population of the country worked mostly for the idea. The country was united facing the threat of loosing Moscow as a capital of the country. People could be forced to do anything to save the country. It was possible in the 1941-1945 but not in the 1985. It was also not his manner of doing politics.

The second option was to try to control and to direct the process of country transformation. As a result a new word appeared - ”perestroika”. Perestroika changed not only the country, it changed everything.

In 1985 everyone liked Gorbachev. He gave people hope to change their lives. “We cannot live that life anymore. We should change it. We need “perestroika”. One by one the heads of ministries are changed. Gorbachev wants to see new faces and new approaches in the administration of the country.

His first years of governing were known by the campaign against alcohol. Probably history was not Gorbachev`s strongest side and he paid no attention to the United States on the 30 th and to the “dry law” which was a total failure in America.

First of all sale of vodka and wine was limited. Shops with vodka were opened only from 2 p.m. to 07 p.m. If you drink in the morning how can you work? There was a limit of 2 bottles of vodka per person. At the same time winery production was limited. As a result country had a shortage of vodka. Can you imagine Russian people without vodka? The truth is that not all Russians are alcoholics, anyway they drink. Not all need vodka just to doze away. Some people had weddings, birthdays or had to meet guests. Population in the USSR used to lack of majority of consumer goods, but lack of vodka became a huge problem. Queues near wine shops were huge. At 2 p.m. shops were opened and hundreds of thirsty people fought to enter first in the shop to buy their 2 legitimate bottles. Vodka wars were common in all big cities and small towns. There were people crippled, injured or jammed by crowd to death. Local authorities inspired by the orders from above did everything to stop people from drinking vodka. Films were censored and episodes with drinking were cut. In Crimea (the place of grape growing) thousands of acres of elite grapes were cut and plowed. The country lost the best winery materials and wine producing industry was totally destroyed.

If you had a wedding you had a big problem. First you could not buyvodka, second – if you had vodka you were not allowed to put it on the tables!! Weddings in those years were absolutely fascinating. No-one drank vodka but all were drunk. How is that? Oh, we can be inventive if necessary. Vodka was in bottles with mineral water, cognac in tea pots. Guests were asked if they wanted water or special water. Can you imagine that?

Moonshine production in villages and towns was flourishing. If people had no vodka they were ready to buy a cheaper substitute. This campaign gave Gorbachev a name of “Mineral Secretary” and a “Lemonade Joe”. People said “that is good that Gorbachev is only a sober person and fights against vodka. Just imagine if he were an impotent..”

World war two. Death camps and strugle for life.

We all know something about the WWII. Most people know in general that the war was and that we won. But many things about the war are not known. Each year less and less people can give an insider look at the events, which happened many years ago.

The letter below is a letter of a man who had his own war. It is not a letter of an old and seems helpless person, but a letter of a man who used to fight for a freedom and survival.

The text below does not belong to me. It belongs to a man whose house I bought some years ago. I found this letter in a rubbish.

May be it is not interesting to the majority of people or has no plot as such. In fact it is a documentary letter which I translated from Ukrainian and brushed up just a little bit. I may be wrong with the spelling of towns and cities in Germany because sometimes just could not read a handwriting of an author.

------------------------------------------------

To MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS

From Dudka Oleksandr

Born in Sumy, at June,16, 1921

Written request

I ask to issue a certificate or to give me a copy of a certificate which I received after repatriation and after a service in the Soviet Army. I was called for military service in a 118 artillery brigade of the Soviet Army while I was in Germany after repatriation from the American part of occupied Germany. I need this reference for social security board. I am a person with limited physical abilities and my trauma was received at labor. I am alone and have minimal retirements.

I was demobilized from the Soviet Army in the August, 10, 1946 after the order of the Supreme Council of the USSR. Please read below when I was taken to Germany and when I was taken from Germany back.

In spring 1942 german soldiers took me to Germany from Village Bilopillya, Sumy region to Wuppertal. From Wuppertal to Feldberg to a military plant. I did not want to make artillery shells and escaped but could not make further Landenberg. It was raining all day, I was wet and asked one local man to stay for a night. He agreed and took me to a police station. In the morning they transported me to Essen in a prison.

From Essen they sent me to a factory producing artillery shell boxes. After one month of work I made one more attempt to escape to Ukraine because my mother, two sisters, a junior brother and a nephew were in Ukraine. One day they took us to another factory which supplied planks to make boxes. When we came back I jumped out of the truck and escaped. In a daytime I was hiding in bushes. I managed to get into a cargo train. It goes and goes and still within city limits but when it stopped I happened to be on some factory. I was getting out of Essen more than 2 days. I saw fields covered with barbed wire. When they caught me again they took me to Munster.

That prison had such a rule – each newcomer got 20 strokes with a stick. Polish people were forced to hit us and we were forced to hit them. The execution was done by “Nikolaychik” an emigrant of the first wave who served in the Gestapo.

From Munster they sent me to Rinkerode to a farmer’s family. I do not remember his name. Two other Ukrainians worked here Danil and Lidia. We had a lot of work but they fed us well. In autumn the farmer got an order to collect all men and to send them to coal mines.

So they sent me to Gladbeck. In Gladbeck they beat anyone who tried to escape so much that people usually died in a couple of days. It was done by the guard of the mine. We had no strength to bear it. They did not give us time to sleep. If the train cars came – we unloaded, and nobody cared that after it you had to go down in a mine to dig coal. I thought that I have nothing to lose. I was hoping for a good because of a big forest growing near the mine. They escorted us from a camp to the mine late in the evening when it was already dark. I separated and hid behind a big coal pile.

When all the people entered the room with lockers I went to the forest. I saw that some men took bicycles and went to search me. So I knew they follow me and every time they passed me by I was frozen still. I heard German language and waited till they go further and then run again. Two of them were riding bikes and others were walking by foot. Soon they started to cry something each other and I understood that they are quitting searches.

I do not remember how much time was necessary to come back to Rinkerode to my farmer. He fed me and gave me some work to do, but in the evening a police came and took me to Munster in Gestapo. „Nikolaychyk” (this was his nickname) was ill . He did not feel well and forgot to order me 20 strokes. He just said that I had to work, not to escape.

From Munster they took me by a passenger train to Gelsenkirchen. The difference from other trains was that it had bars on the windows. The work was to unload white and black soda on a glass factory. We had respirators not to suffocate. The mine, escapes, prison and black soda broke my health so I asked to work with carpenter to make boxes. Those 20 hits which they did not give me in Munster were generously given in Gelsenkirchen. I can not even say how many times I was beaten. They also gave us less bread. We all waited for bombing. Searchlights, artillery hits and I run along the street. The German cry “kelller” (cellar) but I do not care and run as far as I could from a glass factory.

I was not heading to the East (I had no hope to reach it). Instead I took a direction to the South. I found tomatoes, potatoes and cabbages in gardens. I also managed to board a passenger train heading South. In this way I went far fromRure. I saw more fields and less factory chimneys

I wanted to have fewer problems so I went myself to arbeitzam. I said that I missed my train that carried people to Germany. So I appeared in Solingen. I do not know if they believed me or not but they did not send me to a Gestapo. Instead they sent me to a factory which made wooden barracks for concentration camps. It was not bad till we had some job. We were paid a little bit, they brought us dinner to the factory and we had a supper in a camp. The chief in our brigade of carpenters was a German man. We gave him some money and he bought food for us. It was all not bad till all barracks were finished. After that they transferred me to a press workshop. We made discs for cargo lorries. My job was to take hot iron ingot with pliers move it into a press. A heat was unbearable. As soon as you put one ingot in a press you had to run to bring another one. If there is a hell somewhere it was there- between the gas stove and a press. People could not make long there. Soon they got tuberculosis. In the same workshop they had big acid baths to treat axles of railway cars with acid. I heard in a camp that there was a supervisor who was offending one of our people so much that the last embraced that supervises and pushed him to the acid bath. Both died.

As long as I had strength I was not bad but then I understood that another week and I will not be able to escape. It was not difficult because our camp was not guarded well. Later I came to a village Dunn. It is just 10 kilometers from Wermelskirchen and a little bit more from Ramstad. Now my burger was an old man Otto Bokhakir. He had a coal deposit, 10 cows, a horse, pigs, a wheat field and a beet field. A man from Poland worked there. His name was Yusef Lyaskovski. Our work was to load and distribute coal and turf among buyers, to milk cows, to mow grass, to weed beets. The farmer fed us well and all was good. But I wanted to see my countryman which lived and worked in Felbert. I asked the farmer to let me go for a couple of days. He did not mind but when I came back I was taken to a police and they dropped me on for leaving. I was so angry about it and escaped from him. Later on I was so pity I did it.

Police caught me on a third day and transported to Hessen. Those soviet and polish people who were here remember that prison for the whole their life. For a month they fed us only once in three days. Later they transported me to Frankfurt- am-Mein and soon to Meints-Wajcenau to a penal camp at a cement plant. The work was hard and dusty. We loaded barges and railway wagons. We slept in a basement without windows, locked. I did not even think about escape but during a break I saw a loophole in a fence and asked for a permission to collect apples in a garden or to ask for some apples. Just go along the street and see a guard from our camp that was going home for a dinner. I did not escape from him and he brought me back to a chief of the camp. Al I remember that he was beating me and I tried to protect my eyes. I became a weak worker after such “teaching”, so the commission discarded me from this place and a chief sent me to an arbeitzam- a labor stock exchange.

My last farmer took me from there. His name was Ludwig Jung and he brought me to a village Jumsheim in a district Alkam. Ramstad, Mainzand Krojenach were close to that village.

I worked for him all spring, summer, and winter and in spring 1945 Americans came. I had an old bicycle and went along Rein, passed Cologne, Dusseldorf, Freiburg and came to Wuppertal where they collected people in a camp to repatriate home.

In summer 1945 Americans came to our camp and offered to go home. They put 30 people in a railway wagon. Food rations were already packed there. I went to the Soviet occupation zone. Then I was in a big camp with soviet officers who dealt with repatriates. Once a car came to the camp. They wanted to find specialists. They need also football players and people of other professions. I knew carpeting and they took me to town Ratenov near Potsdam. I worked there in the 188th artillery brigade as a carpenter. I also was called in this city for a military service and had an oath in the September, 27, 1945. I was demobilized of October 1946. Later I returned back to Glushchinets, Bilopillya district, Sumy region and was questioned by police. A village administration gave me a reference that I was forcibly removed to Germany. If you need you can find files of interrogation in ministry of Internal affairs in Sumy or in regional archives.

Another repatriant who was interrogated before me advised not to mention about those times otherwise they will interrogate me too long. So you will find in those files only the beginning of my trips in Germany and the end of them. I am sorry.

Please send me a copy of reference from village administration in Glushchanets (now village Pesky) that I was forcibly removed to Germany, when they moved me there and when I returned home. You should have it. I need that reference for social security board in Cherkassy city.

My address:

Ukraine, Cherkassy, 257009

Provulok XXXXXXXXXX 36

Dudka Oleksandr Lukych

Stalin and Famine in the USSR in 1932-1933

Starting from autumn 1932 the Soviets declared a war against peasants. More than 55 thousand people were sentenced to 10 years in prison and concentration camps according the law “About 5 ears of corn”. (If you take from the field more, than 5 ears of corn you will be sentenced). Special product collection teams supported by local communists took from peasants away almost all food stuff. Incredible famine spread in 1932 – 1933 all over Ukraine, lower part of Volga river, and numerous regions in the south of Russia. Cannibalism, dead villages were so frequent that did not surprise anyone at all.

Results of food expropriation were a real catastrophe. Around 5-7 million of people died only in Ukraine.

Why was it possible? Grounds of famine in 1932-1933

Famine of 1932-1933 is as important for all Ukrainians as a holocaust is important for Jews. It became a tragedy on the national importance. It broke the nation and left deep social and psychological scars in the heart of Ukrainians.

History has no a united approach to the background of this catastrophe. In general it was a result of several factors. Western scientists say that the main cause of it was a desire of Stalin to eliminate Ukrainian national movements and the desire of Ukraine to live separately from the USSR with help of hunger, starvation and death of a nation.

Others find an economic ground of a famine in Ukraine. The country needed food and the Communist Party used all methods to feed the country.

The most horrible fact is that famine could be avoided. Harvest of grain in 1932 was higher than in 1931. There was enough food for the country, but the government confiscated food for own consumption. Stalin approved high plans of collecting harvest in 1932. It was 44 % higher than in a previous year. This decision and cruelty of its execution doomed millions of people (mostly in Ukraine).

Food confiscation

The government did not care about the suffering of people. In August 1932 communists adopted legislative grounds to confiscate grain from peasants and collective farms. At the same time another law was adopted about the death penalty for stealing of collective property. Under some circumstances capital punishment could be substituted by 10 years of imprisonment.

Internal passports were implemented to limit the ability of people to travel around the country looking for food (by the way we still have 2 different passports – internal and separately a passport for travelling abroad). In November 1932 Moscow published a law prohibiting to give grain to peasants till the planned amount harvest is collected.

Of course people threatened by a possibility to stay without food started to hide their own food stuff, but food confiscation teams consisting of communists and active citizens were moving all over Ukraine and Southern Russia searching for hidden supplies. They searched the walls, tore away floors and took everything they could find. Even people swollen from hunger were not an exception. If someone was not hungry, authority might think that he was hiding food somewhere. Later on one of party members explained why they did it: “We believed that Stalin is a wise leader.. We were cheated because we wanted to be cheated. We believed in communism so much, that we were ready to commit any crime if it was decorated by a little piece of a communist ideology”.

In the beginning of 1933, famine, which started in 1932 was in full swing. It was calculated that a family of peasants consisting of 5 people had around 80 kilos of grain to live till the next harvest. That is 1,7 kg of grain per person per month. People in villages had to eat cats, dogs, rats, bark of trees and leaves, dried acacia beans, straw – anything they could find.

Cannibalism was not rare. Historians say that in families men died first, then children and finally women. Often people drove crazy, losing their human nature. But the orders of the Party were more important and communists kept collecting food. They did not care for death of whole villages, not just some people.

Stalin and members of government had their own vision of the events in the country. One of Stalins assistant M. Khataevich proudly said: “ There is a severe fight between peasants and the Soviets. This is a death fight. This year became a test of our power and peoples endurance. Famine told them who is the boss here. Famine took thousands of lives but our system will exist forever. We won the war!”

While Ukraine and Caucasus were dying from hunger, most parts of Russia did not even know about it. That gives an understanding of the real causes of hunger- to suppress the Ukrainian nation and to make peasants unite in kolkhozes. The aim of a socialism was the elimination of an individual land owning and famine was the best argument to create kolkhozes in Ukraine.

A very important side of famine was a total denial of this fact in the Soviet Union. If the information about it was widely spread it would damage the image of the Soviet Union both inside of the country and abroad. That is why the topic of famine 1932-1933 was forbidden for decades in the USSR.

Some mass media source abroad informed about the horrible situation with famine, but they often did not even know the real scale of the tragedy. It was hard to believe that the Soviet Union exported wheat, rejected any help from abroad and, at the same, time people massively died from starvation. J Bernard Show and ex premier of France Edward Errio visited the Soviet union but they were shown only what they were allowed to see. They were excited by the achievements of the Soviet country and described satisfied and fed up peasants in villages. U. Duranti, a Moscow correspondent of “New York times” also denied the existence of famine in The USSR. They say he wanted to flatter Stalin and actually he succeeded because he was awarded a Pulitzer prize in literature “For an objective, sober evaluation and exclusively clear description of the life in the USSR” in his reports.

Governments of western countries knew about a real situation with famine. Their position was in general similar to that declared in the documents of the ministry of foreign affairs of Great Britain namely: “We have a certain amount of information about a famine in the South of Russia, but we do not want to make the information public as it may offend the Soviet Government and negatively influence our relations with Soviets”. Besides many western intellectuals expressed sympathy to the Soviet Union in a period of Big Depression and denied any criticism of the USSR.

Memories of witnesses

“The border between Ukraine and Poland was marked by a Korchyk River in Rovno region in 1932. Relatives from Poland tried to help those who stayed in Ukraine and made little rafts with food. The river flow took these rafts to the border of Ukraine but people seldom could use this help. Soviet border control was checking out the river bank regularly. Together with Soviet Army troops they watched the border line day and night. Those who tried to approach the river were shot. Many people including children and women were killed. “

“Our village died of starvation, many people ... Sometimes people ate dogs and cats. People became crazy from hunger and ate even human flesh. It was a terrible time in the Ukraine. Famine was worse than war. .”

Marchenko Maria Feodorovna, Sushkovka, Cherkassy region

“In 1933, my sister died ... she was just three years old. She cried and was not capricious. She just quietly asked to eat..”.

Mykola Piskun, Sivashskoye, Kherson region

“When I was 12, I was convicted to 5 years of hard work just for taking some ears of wheat. Mom and sister were swollen and I saw how she died. We were saved by mice. We found mice and place where they store grain for winter. We dug them in and took some grain from holes....”

Peter Olizka, Petropavlovka, Dnipropetrovsk

“They took everything. If found, all was taken away. This was the decision of the Party and the government. If people hid something, they could be exiled to Siberia.People gave everything even without being threatened by a weapon. Because they feared that they can be exiled”.

Yekaterina Panchenko, village Sushkovka, Kharkov region

"There was a distillery in Babai village and big tanks with production waste were near it. Hungry people tried to eat draff and died of colic right there. The corpses were taken to the cemetery and buried like animals ... distillery was working making alcohol out of corn while people had nothing to eat! "

The woman has not identified himself, born in 1924 .,village Babai Kharkiv region

Hunger began in 1932. The crop was good that year, but all collected crop was taken by state... People could not go to work and died like flies. Sometimes 20 people in a day…. We had none even to bury the bodies.

Ivan Pristupny, 1916 p., Egorovka, Odessa region

The most terrible crime times of Stalinism - the artificial famine of 1932-1933. There was a very high yield of grain, but the people who worked on collective farms had no bread at all. The state took all bread to Moscow and Leningrad. The peasants in “Ukraine were left without food, but the Russian workers did not starve. Many people went to Russia bartering clothes for bread.

Tatiana Gorbachev, Severinovka, Sumy region

In our village 500 souls died, and in the next - somewhere 750 souls. People ate grass, if cow died –ate it. My father was the chairman of the village council, he gave instructions to give people a glass of buckwheat, and soldiers arrested him the next day.

Victor Miholevsky, Litvinovka, Cherkasy region

The fear of being shot, the fear of Siberia, the Holodomor – all this will live long in our hearts. Especially - Famine! Some current officials do not believe it was possible, but this was real.

Berezhnoy Fedor, Kirovograd region

What was it like to live in the USSR?

What was it like to live in the USSR?

I’ve read some hubs relating to a modern history and sometimes the hub authors or commenters wrote their comments about a Soviet regime. I guess it is difficult to judge other country’s life basing just on the scientific researches of American authors. I am not pretending to make a full scale research. Rather – to tell in short about our life at a Brezhnev time.

I was born in 1968, and remember the last years of Soviet history.

Life in the USSR was well predicted and well organized. Children went to kindergarten at the age of 4-5 years and stayed there till the age of 7. At 7 a child went to general school with 8 or 10 years of study. From school you could go to a Vocational technical school or an Institute. If the marks were not good enough and you had no desire to continue studying you went to technical vocational school after the 8^th class. If a child had good marks, was apt to study in most cases he tried after the 10^thclass to enter an Institute or a University to get a higher education.

A diploma of higher education was prestigious and employees with diploma were wanted. Not all could enter higher educational establishments at the first attempt. Medical universities, leading republican or Moscow universities always had the highest competition.

After the University you became a “young specialist” and in fact could easily choose an enterprise to work for. The main criterion was how fast you could expect to obtain an apartment from that enterprise. All big factories, plants, institutes participated in a building of multi-storied buildings for their employees. In general you could expect that as a young specialist you will have an apartment let’s say in 3-6 years of work for a company. FREE of charge!

We had an early marriage. An unmarried girl at the age of 25 was already “old” and everyone said “What is wrong with her not to have kids till that age?”. We did not need time and years to make a career. Why, I have a paid job!

An ideological aspect of life was present almost everywhere starting from big slogans on the buildings ”Long live the Communist party”, “Lenin is alive forever” and others. That was a normal thing that was the way of life and the way of thinking.

A bureaucracy was strong that time but if it was about leaving for a short trip abroad, the bureaucracy was severe. Therefore we, the soviet people could judge about life in other countries just by TV broadcasts and soviet newspapers and magazines. Can you imagine the total censorship of all mass –media sources? Yes, it was. If the article or a broadcast was about a capitalist country than it was about its worst part: “ Pure Negroes in African countries (sorry but the term Afro-American was not known to us at that time) suffer from malicious white capitalists”, “workers fight to defend their rights”, “militarized American society uses the money of taxpayers to buy another dozen of nuclear bombs”, “Capitalist countries are on the edge of economic abyss” and all like that. Much later in the time of Gorbachev one of the most popular jokes was: The Capitalism stands on the edge of an abyss… and looks down: ”What the hell is that Socialism doing down there ?”.

The life abroad was widely described as a continuous striving of simple people to survive. If any TV broadcast from the USA was shown it has shown dull faces of people and we thought, “of course they do not smile there in America, they have such a hard life unlike us”.

Anyone who had to go abroad passed a strict system of sifting. My father was an engineer, my mother worked at primary school as a teacher but among all of our friends and just acquaintances we had only one person who visited Bulgaria and told us how differently they live (mind it was also a socialist country). It was almost impossible to visit a capitalist country.

Let’s say you had a good reason to go abroad. To start with you had to obtain a reference from the head of the local communist party cell. You had to be politically stable, to be active members of komsomol of party organizations. Then you had to obtain a permission to leave the country from local department of visas and registration. To get that you had to pass an exam and to learn almost by heart a small book “100 questions and answers for those leaving abroad”. The book was about typical questions that could be asked abroad about the life in the Soviet Union and the correct answers to these questions. They could refuse to leave the country. We passed the exam to a person from the KGB. If it was a group (in most cases it was a group), each group was escorted by one or two KGB representatives during all stay of a group abroad. They tried to control everything.

Those who came back from abroad could say in a whisper that in fact not all is so bad in those “rotten capitalist countries”. But such people telling the truth were so obsolete and they never said it too loud.

So people were deliberately misled and we were happy to live in a “biggest socialist country in the world in which all people are free and equal”. Absence of knowledge made us happy. Besides we had a communist party leading us.

There were some people trying to tell the truth , but they were called dissidents and the system tried to do everything to get rid of them.

Can I say that most of people had a hard life? Probably not. The life was not economically difficult especially if you had a place to live. At the same time we missed a lot of usual things necessary for living. Some clothes, consumer goods and home appliances were hard to buy. One had to have “connections” to get anything. Queues were a routine. For example people came to know that a furniture shop will sell tomorrow some bedroom sets made in Lithuania. No one knew how many of these sets would be sold. But people made a queue starting from the evening, stood there all night long, checked every hour the list of the people in a queue and if someone did not respond crossed him out of the queue list.

In general you could find goods in shops, but they could be of poor quality and you had no much choice. The population in general had money but could not buy anything because of absence of choice and lack of quality goods.

The government tried to distribute produced goods all over the USSR, so it was normal to buy cosmetics from the Baltic republics, or textile from Belarus. My mother was born in Belarus so every summer we went there to visit grandma and to buy me some clothes to go to school. Not because there was no anything in Ukraine, but because it was made better and had better materials. Gasoline was cheaper than the bottled water and the Soviet Union was proud of this.

Books were a huge problem. Interesting books could be purchased only if you had a friend or a relative in a bookstore. Otherwise you had to enroll to a wait-list for the next edition. Actually a lot of people did not even care for the books themselves, but it was prestigious to have a library. Shops with book exchange were a common thing. For example you could bring a volume of Agatha Christie and ask in exchange a book of Fenimore Cooper.

All publishing was under strict control of the KGB. Everything printed was to be checked. If it was “Uncle Toms Cabin” about slaves in the United States – it is OK, but Sakharov had no chance. My first trip abroad was in 1988. I was in Poland. I brought from there a full suitcase of books printed in Russia. No-one cared about them in Poland but for us it was a real treasure.

It was very hard to make a copy of anything. In the 80-th we already had big copying machines used to copy architectural and engineering projects in A3 format. I was attending music school and my father paid bribes asking to make a copy of musical scores. If the copying was not authorized, you could not do it.

Comparing that life and life in our days I can say that there was more order in the country. The communist party in the USSR was a powerful instrument of keeping order. There was a 24 hours person on duty in a regional party committee whom you could call and tell about any disorder. For example, passengers of a local bus line were told that the bus is broken and can’t go on schedule. Just one phone call to a party committee and just one threat to the director of the coach station and all was fixed.

All leading positions in the country were mostly for party members only. There were only rare exceptions from that rule. It was difficult to enter the Communist party and party members were not the majority of the country still the influence of the party was huge. To be excluded from the party was the end of any career for any person.

So it was. The most interesting that we truly believed in Brezhnev, in the Communist party as a leading force, in peaceful policy of our socialist country. May be it is difficult to believe but people in general liked their life and we never felt ourselves under “pressure of totalitarian regime”. We just could not imagine that life can be different from what we had.

The end of Brezhnev epoch was a tremendous event for the whole country. Did you see how North Korean citizens cry at a funeral of their leader? Well, we did not have it to THAT extend, but still it was a catastrophe. My classmates-girls also cried, boys thought- how shall we live now without Brezhnev? We believed that he is able to protect our country from “malicious Americans” which want to start a nuclear World War. In every school, factory, university they arranged TV sets in big halls to watch the on-line the funeral of Leonid Brezhnev.

Is there anything to miss in the soviet times? Yes. For me it is definitely a system of health protection which was absolutely free. Of course you could give some tips to nurses or doctors but just tips, not more. A free medicine was guaranteed by the Constitution and that was a great benefit.

Would I like to live in Soviet times? Probably not. “A virus” of freedom is already in every person. My kids grew up in another country and just like me in 1980they can not imagine now that life can be different. But unlike me they have an option to see the other world and to compare themselves where the life is better.

Continued here: Perestroika in 1985. Perestroika in 1986-87. Perestroika in 1988. Perestroika in 1989.