How many people on here actually have memories of the Soviet Union's existence

[DasFapital]

Just curious. USSR technically still existed for the first six months of my life but obviously I don't remember. This website just strikes me as having a younger crowd.

[PhoenixAsh]

I can vividly remember the reagan/chorbachev years....though I was already born during Brezhnev. I can remember some very vague things about the chernenko era....but not anything concrete.

[Devrim]

Yes, I am old enough to remember it as an adult.

Devrim

[Arlekino]

I do remember very well Soviet Union, I grow up in Soviet Lithuania and travelled by train few other countries like, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, I was been on Lenin's mausoleum, it was long queue to see him.
I was educated at Soviet school, and worked in Soviet Union as always I am nostalgic.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

I remember Gorbachev/Reagan/Thatcher. I was 10 years old in 1991. It's funny but, even at that age, I remember looking at Thatcher and taking an immediate dislike to her.

I vaguely remember the fall of the wall, poll tax riots, Thatchers resignation. I remember wanting John Major to win the general election in 1992 because I thought he was a "nice man".

:blushing:

sorry....

[Blake's Baby]

I'm the same age as Devrim. I well remember the Brezhnev years - from the outside of course.

[Sasha]

I remember as a kid in my pj's watching the fall of the berlin wall, because of how important it seemed to my parents its one of the few remaining childhood memories I have (my brain for some reason can store learned facts without problems but stores experiences as reconstructed "stories", far different on how most people describe their memories, my "memories" hardly ever have a visual or sound or smell component), I have some clearer memories of watching the siege of the duma in 1993 and a bit of the 1991 coup attempt, cant say wheter i remember the images from the live broadcast or that they after watching them again later in my life somehow got connected to a vague "memory" though...

[Regicollis]

I'm born in '84 and I remember my parents telling me about the USSR and the GDR. I also remember being woken up and placed in front of the television to see the wall fall. I was too young to understand exactly what was happening but I understood that it was important. I can also remember when the USSR split up and I was amazed with the maps being different (so I must have been used to maps with the USSR on them).

[brigadista]

when i was a kid i had a budgie named after Yuri Gagarin:):)

[Drosophila]

I was been on Lenin's mausoleum, it was long queue to see him.

Is it true that if you look like Lenin you get to go to the front of the line?

[Arlekino]

Is it true that if you look like Lenin you get to go to the front of the line?

I don't know about that.

One interesting fact I remember on Gorbochov time when on tv station some breaking news told that Soviet Army military leaving from Afghanistan.
On cold era time the was lot of talking about Samanta Smith she came visit Russia and meet Andropov. She wrote letter to Andropov asking for peace and Andropov invited to visit Russia. Anybody heard about her Samanta Smith?

[MuscularTophFan]

I was born in 1992 a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I say good riddance. The fall of the Berlin wall was one of the greatest victories for socialism ever.

[Aurora]

One interesting fact I remember on Gorbochov time when on tv station some breaking news told that Soviet Army military leaving from Afghanistan.
On cold era time the was lot of talking about Samanta Smith she came visit Russia and meet Andropov. She wrote letter to Andropov asking for peace and Andropov invited to visit Russia. Anybody heard about her Samanta Smith?
Ya i read an article about her not so long ago, there's footage of her on youtube i think where she told the news anchor that the Russians aren't so different from us.

I was born in 1992 a few months after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I say good riddance. The fall of the Berlin wall was one of the greatest victories for socialism ever.
Not really the thread for it, but, the collapse of the SU was the single greatest defeat of socialism there has ever been throwing the workers movement down to a level it hasn't been at since the early days of capitalism even today we are nowhere near recovered, it plunged millions of people into poverty and encouraged the capitalists to smash the reforms won by workers worldwide over the years. To say this is a victory is delusional, theres a recent thread on this topic in history i believe, check it out.

[MuscularTophFan]

Not really the thread for it, but, the collapse of the SU was the single greatest defeat of socialism there has ever been throwing the workers movement down to a level it hasn't been at since the early days of capitalism
Yeah no. One of the biggest defeats of socialism was when Fransico Franco took Barcelona.



even today we are nowhere near recovered, it plunged millions of people into poverty
Not sure what your talking about. The Soviet Union was imperialistic and had colonies in Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia and sucked the resources out of the countries they occupied and hauled it back to Moscow/Mother Russia. I can tell you that the Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia have much higher standards of living similar to western European countries after reverting from their Soviet style authoritarian states just as they had been before they where absorbed into Soviet satellite states. As for Russia it has regressed more negatively with the lose of it's Soviet colonies and currently an autocratic regime under Putin.



and encouraged the capitalists to smash the reforms won by workers worldwide over the years. To say this is a victory is delusional, theres a recent thread on this topic in history i believe, check it out.
Soviet Union did impressive damage for socialism. Soviet Union is the reason we can't talk about socialism positively in American politics. Soviet Union bastardized the word socialism and both on the right and the left still believe the propaganda the Soviet Union spewed about it. Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky where the biggest enemies of socialism of all time.

[Sir Comradical]

I was born in 1990, so no.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Yes, I was born in the 1970s and Remember the Regan era pretty well - though obviously had little independent views on it. My Dad was a draftee and was against US militarism and nationalism in a vague liberal sort of way and taught me not to demonize "the enemy" because of his experiences in Vietnam and the way people were demonized and dehumanized to justify killing them for "no reason". So I think he taught me not to demonize Russians and the USSR and I remember him basically saying "different people should be allowed to have any kind of government they want". So while he has always been a liberal, I think he was influenced a lot by anti-imperialist sentiments of the anti-war movement which he participated in as a vet.

I remember this because his views clashed so strongly with the attitudes of kids at school where Russians were like "Injuns" were to kids in the 1950s. I saw no need to demonize Russians so much - I mean they had nothing on the real Evil Empire in my life at that time - the Galactic Empire!

I remember nuclear bomb drills and the end of Apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the Soviet Union. Teachers said that Yeltsin was "George Washington". I remember people being excited mostly because the threat of nuclear war was over. I'm sure older people experienced the sort of US triumphalism more than I did as a middle-schooler at this time, but the feeling of "peace" ended really quickly in my memories as suddenly there was the Iraq War which came to dominate "tween" political consiousness.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I was born in 1970. So, yeah.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

I was fairly young when the SU collapsed, so not really. All I can really recall from that time is eating Play-Doh.

My earliest memory of politics is probably when Clinton's re-election campaign started. I was in ... 1st grade or 2nd, something like that. My school had a mock vote to see who us little kids would elect. Clinton won by a huge margin, which was obviously just a reflection of who our parents liked. This was in the deep south, too.


Yeah no. One of the biggest defeats of socialism was when Fransico Franco took Barcelona.


Not sure what your talking about. The Soviet Union was imperialistic and had colonies in Eastern Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia, and Mongolia and sucked the resources out of the countries they occupied and hauled it back to Moscow/Mother Russia. I can tell you that the Baltic states, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia have much higher standards of living similar to western European countries after reverting from their Soviet style authoritarian states just as they had been before they where absorbed into Soviet satellite states. As for Russia it has regressed more negatively with the lose of it's Soviet colonies and currently an autocratic regime under Putin.


Soviet Union did impressive damage for socialism. Soviet Union is the reason we can't talk about socialism positively in American politics. Soviet Union bastardized the word socialism and both on the right and the left still believe the propaganda the Soviet Union spewed about it. Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky where the biggest enemies of socialism of all time.

Oh dear

[human strike]

In Soviet Russia existence remembers you.

[Raúl Duke]

I was born in 89, the year the Berlin Wall fell...

I don't remember the USSR...

My childhood was during the apex of the US, now I got the bad luck to be going to college during one of the worst economic times in US history in an age where a college degree, besides being more expensive/leading to debt then before, ain't the shit it was during my parents' time.

My parents remembered the era, I would hear about nuclear preparence drills at schools back in the 60s in NYC which my dad knew was bullshit since hiding under your desk will not save you from a nuclear blast. He remembered Reagen enough to develop a negative opinion on him and especially the whole "moral majority" stuff.

[Manic Impressive]

I was conceived in Yugoslavia ;);)

[electrostal]

How many people here have actually been to the USSR at one point?

[Devrim]

I'm the same age as Devrim. I well remember the Brezhnev years - from the outside of course.

My partner remembers it from the inside. There is a picture of her somewhere doing Spartakiad as a child.

http://belleile.cz/auction/uploaded/aaa6ad3d7fe65ee67e31ca4de6309617.jpg

(note this is a random Internet picture of it, not my girlfriend.)

Devrim

[homegrown terror]

i have memories of wondering why sharing toys with your friends was "good" but sharing on a large scale was "evil soviet communism." i was born in 83 so that's about the most i remember. didn't really have a political "awakening" till a few years after it was gone.