Russia

I was there...

in the early 70s.
Think grey, grim and police state. Claustrophobic. Everyone watching everyone else.
Queues for food and basics.
Clothes grey and basic. Nothing fashionable to wear. People scared to talk.

Look at the film, The Russia House. Read Le Carre's early books about spying and Russia. Later than your time but a good idea of how people were watched and hounded.

Telling details.

Remembered the babies!
In the winter when young babies had to go outside all you saw was a mother with her arms outstretched, grasping a huge roll of grey woollen blankets. Tied round the bottom quarter would be a pink ribbon or a blue ribbon. If you walked past a mum sitting down with one of these bundles, and could peer in, all you saw was the top of the tiny head half way down the bundle. Manmade fibres and thick polyester quilt lining stuff only reached the Red Army in the 1970s. Everyone else struggled in thick wool and shivered. My baby daughter had a Canadian snowsuit and people were horrified and would rush up to scold me for taking her out without the grey blankets. They were so amazed at how snug she was in her light weight, down, quilted one piece.

Russian tea. Everywhere the modern type samovar, lots of hot water for tea, on the trains and in hotels, good Russian tea (very different taste from Indian or Ceylon) served black with sugar and lemon in a tall glass. As it was boiling hot the glass was always in a pretty metal or wooden holder with handle called a stakan, I think that is the English spelling.

Desert Author said:

pdr,

Thanks for all of your helpful information. I have one question, did you ever see any people of other races, other than Caucasian, and if so, was there any discrimination? I wouldn't think so because of the communist ideology that everyone is the same.

jeff

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It would be possible to see some other races in Moscow as there were students from Africa and Latin America at Patrice Lumumba University
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba_University

There was no official discrimination and people were quite open to different races, but there was a bit of low-level, domestic discomfort. For example, African students who studied in the Lumumba institute often married Russians, but I do not remember any Russian family who was particularly ecstatic about such marriages - but neither do I remember active resentment or racism. The discomfort had to do more with the ungrammatical Russian than with skin color. Antisemitism was always a bigger problem than racism, IMHO.

This also differed from city to city. People are more xenophobic in small / rural places; this is true everywhere. In Vorkuta, which is a former GULAG city, I have met people of every race, color and nationality imaginable, and there was absolutely no discrimination.

This is all quite different now, as there is quite a lot of racism towards Caucasians (i.e. people from the Caucasus) due to the Chechnya conflict.

Please feel free to PM me with specific questions or ask them here if you want.

Ah, No.

You forget this was the home of Communism and the hot bed of indoctrination of foreigners. Moscow was full of foreign student and official guests of the govt, especially from Africa and S. America. Anyone wishing to learn about Communism was welcomed.

pdr said:

You forget this was the home of Communism and the hot bed of indoctrination of foreigners. Moscow was full of foreign student and official guests of the govt, especially from Africa and S. America. Anyone wishing to learn about Communism was welcomed.

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Pdr, assuming your "no" was directed at me, which part of my statement are you contradicting?

Wow. Wrote a bunch and this thing timed out. Okay, a second try. This time I'll copy in case it happens again.

My qualification is that I'm married to a Russian and have been around this culture for almost 17 years now.

There is prejudice. Nothing officially existed. Nothing officially bad ever existed. (For instance, there were no laws against prostitutes because no prostitutes existed in communist paradise) But my husband and especially my mother in law are very likely to point out racial characteristics. Lots of the prejudice was directed at the provinces. Moscow was a bit of a snooty town. People often disdained anyone from the southern provinces like Georgia and Chechnya. That is not a new development.

Resources and manufacturing were purposefully kept apart, so that the provinces had to rely on the rest of the USSR for success. So steel might be made in one province, the chassis in another, and the body of the car in yet another and it would be put together in a different place altogether.

Apartments were genrally small, about 800 square feet. One, maybe two bedrooms. Lots of couch or wall beds. They were very good at economizing space.

By law, women were equal to men, except they didn't have to do the required two years in the military that the men had to do. They had the same opportunities in education and career. They had the same pay. Daycares were fantastic (By funding terms. Pretty authoritarian, but that is part of the culture), after school programs were wonderful, and the children went to summer camps for free.

However, abuse was common and accepted. My mother in law actually divorced her husband (in late 60s) because she wouldn't put up with the abuse, and her mother disowned her for two years. Divorce was very, very taboo. A woman was expected to live with it. This had not improved, but seems to have gotten worse.

Because of this workers equality, the economy was built for a two income family. Most people only had one child, but my MIL was the single mom now of two boys. Money was very tight for them.

To compound the problem, teachers required bribes. One year, the teacher took my husband aside, informed him he had an F for the year, and wrote it down in his grade book.

This kind of corruption, and forms both milder and more severe, ran top to bottom. My MIL had her boys go into cooking school, because then they could bring home food and produce. It was not an official perk, but everyone did things like that. And the higher up, the worse this practice was. In fact, the corruption of the government structure (and in the Soviet Union every industry was part of the government structure) is the foundation of the Russian mafia of today.

They did have fashion, though. The 60s were more posperous than the 70s. The corruption was really bad by the 70s.

No Christmas was allowed, but New Years celebrations annexed the Christmas traditions.

Anyway, if you have any questions or want more details just ask.

Hope this helps.

Huh?

My reply was to the OP!
A little late, but I was answering his question. As I reinforced what you had just written I couldn't see any problems writing a 'no'!