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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn Photos: What Was Life Really Like In The U.S.S.R.? (8 pics)
https://www.rferl.org/a/photographs-shot-by-soviet-engineer-show-the-harsh-reality-of-life-in-the-ussr/30675553.htmlValeriy Reshetnyak led a double life during the Soviet era. Officially, he was an engineer in Kyiv. But in his spare time, he photographed ordinary people in the Soviet Union.
"None of my coworkers knew what I was doing. It was a kind of dissent, says Reshetnyak.
He knew that his photos would not be printed or exhibited anywhere while the Soviet system was firmly in place.
I naively thought that one day people would look at my photos and reflect on their lives, but I was wrong," Reshetnyak says.
A village teacher returning home from school in the Sumy Oblast.
On the left is the 'elite' passenger transport. Only the head of the collective farm or local Communist Party 'princes' could ride in such sledges. Ordinary people were only allowed to use the sleds at critical moments like carrying a patient to the hospital.
Children were constantly prepared for war -- this was the basis of Soviet ideological education.
All of the people in this photo apparently survived the famine of 1932-33. During the Soviet era, the Holodomor was spoken about only among ones closest companions. My father and a colleague told me how they were almost killed and eaten by a local cannibal.
A father with his two sons and wife. The lives of village women were harsher than that of men. Both the responsibilities of the household, and for the work in the fields, lay on the womens shoulders.
The last inhabitants of a liquidated village in Belarus.
Most of the workers came from villages and didnt have their own housing. Soviet organizations built cheap housing for them
Locals waiting outside a government office in Lviv for a reception with local officials.
irisblue
(32,829 posts)gademocrat7
(10,623 posts)They show the bleak harshness many endured.
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)Dates and location would also help put the scenes into perspective.
TheRickles
(1,999 posts)Esp. about the people in the photos and what they're doing, but the dates of the photos are only hinted at. His best photos were described as being taken "from 1977-1990", yet some of these look like they're from much earlier, maybe from the '50s.
Ilsa
(61,675 posts)with her toddler in a public facility reminds me of the comfort stations in the public camps and parks built by the CCC during the New Deal, circa 1933, except her dress is shorter.
Danascot
(4,664 posts)TomVilmer
(1,832 posts)http://www.american-pictures.com/gallery/
Since I myself have been visiting Russia for years, I could paint a quite different impression. Though I never liked their system, now or then, I found many nice people there living a good life.
In a big world it is easy to focus on the bad - or the good. As a friend has done with the images above...
misanthrope
(7,405 posts)Thanks
BComplex
(7,982 posts)The land of plenty.
TomVilmer
(1,832 posts)I get sad when I see such weird generalizations as "What Was Life Really Like In The U.S.S.R.?". That area stretched ten time zones and a myriad of different cultures over 70 years - every area making their very own interpretation of what a Soviet society could be. The Baltic countries and East Germany was way richer than Russia. The wealth was actually more diverse between states than inside them.
Then and now the poverty in Russia is quite equally spread out - with the very exception of the oligarchs. And yes, you could make USSR photos like the ones shown, but without exact area and date they are meaningless.
We all know other photos with more wealth from the US. So, here are some selected photos of "What Was Life Really Like In The U.S.S.R.":
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http://www.maxsher.com/work/a-remote-barely-audible-evening-waltz/
ananda
(28,782 posts)How the Soviets survived it is amazing.
But look where they are now ... under a severely
oppressive oligarchical system so brutal and corrupt
it makes our system look better, and ours is very
very bad.
misanthrope
(7,405 posts)had the lords of the Gilded Age had their way completely unfettered?
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Very bleak. I honestly think I would have killed myself if I had to live like that. I would just see no point in living.