Poverty, prostitutes and the long, slow death of the Soviet Union: Haunting pictures

[hetz]

If you're feeling the pinch in our age of austerity, you might want to hark back to life in the last years of the Soviet Union.
Shop shelves were often bare, long lines for food were a regular sight and some children just didn't have that youthful glint in their eyes you might expect.

As was the essence of communism, the USSR's economic system was highly centralised and based on inflexible five-year plans rather than market forces. Years of military expansion also hindered growth.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to liberalise politics in the one-party state during the 1980s in an attempt to drive the economic revival.
But this only succeeded in encouraging states in the soviet bloc to make increasing demands for independence.
The unrest grew to such an extent that the USSR finally collapsed on Boxing Day 1991, shortly after these pictures were taken.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2255693/Last-pictures-life-iron-curtain-collapse-USSR.html

[piet11111]

So the bourgeoisie wants us to remember the absolute shit that the last days of the USSR was just to put into perspective what capitalism does to us today ?

Somehow i find it hard to believe they are trying to argue that these are the last days of capitalism and that we are doing marginally better then the USSR in its final days.

Just FYI i am stinkin drunk and i still manage to be pissed off by the implied message that "as bad as things are today things where much worse under communism".

[TheGodlessUtopian]

So the bourgeoisie wants us to remember the absolute shit that the last days of the USSR was just to put into perspective what capitalism does to us today ?

Somehow i find it hard to believe they are trying to argue that these are the last days of capitalism and that we are doing marginally better then the USSR in its final days.

Just FYI i am stinkin drunk and i still manage to be pissed off by the implied message that "as bad as things are today things where much worse under communism".

Especially when it is these same people who are always going on about how "communism" is dead and never coming back; which I have always found laughable, that one would say this constantly while making your career off of bashing it. The utter hypocrisy.

[Arlekino]

Oh dear again Daily Mail against Soviet Union. I wish I could take my voice to the Daily Mail reporters and would shout shut up I born in USSR I know better than you about Soviet Union. Well from small silly truth mainstream media can make such big truth.

[hetz]

Yeah but late 80s/early 90s USSR was really shit.

[Arlekino]

yes but the right wing media blaming communism or socialism as always.

[piet11111]

Yeah but late 80s/early 90s USSR was really shit.

It was better then what came after but clearly that is not the part the daily mail wants us to remember.

[ed miliband]

good photos. looked like an absolutely terrible place.

[Yuppie Grinder]

The bourgeoisie are all sitting around in a boardroom adjusting their monocles, smoking cigars and stroking their cats discussing what to tell those foolish workers next to keep them thinking Marxism-Leninism isn't in their best interest.

[zoot_allures]

Many of those pictures don't look to me like a people "ground down after a century of desperate poverty". I hardly see a "desperate struggle to survive" in that picture of the hospital, or the one of exchanging vodka bottles for cash, or the ones of busking. Really, if those pictures are the worst examples you can find of life in the USSR at that time, to me that would speak for how well they're handling a major crisis.

And let's not forget that the paradise of free enterprise that came later also brought rampant homelessness, drug addiction, unemployment, and racial hatred; disease epidemics and destruction of healthcare; a massive amount of organized crime, etc etc. Not to defend the USSR, but let's have a bit of perspective.

Also, I like how your quote describes the "essence of communism" as "highly centralised and based on inflexible five-year plans". Where did you find that intro? I assume you didn't write it, and it's not the one in the Daily Fail article.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Oh. My. God. People were busking for money?!?!?! :rolleyes:

[Bronco]

Yeah the Mail's always sensationalist, really good pics though

[Hiero]

Yeah the Mail's always sensationalist, really good pics though

Yes, some of the captions were off though. Cans for food? They look like cans for oil or milk.

Having a chat with a guy whos parents were from USSR and despise Stalin and Lenin, even they he said know that the USSR was not that bad. He said no one was starving, without education, housing and medical care.

[Zealot]

Thanks for the laugh but I could show them pictures of Capitalism in the advanced countries at its peak and it still looks worse than this.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

He said no one was starving, without education, housing and medical care.

Aside from those in the gulags, or those who lay with a bullet in their head in the ground. But they're not real people right, so they don't count?

[Hiero]

Aside from those in the gulags, or those who lay with a bullet in their head in the ground. But they're not real people right, so they don't count?

You have proven to be a real idiot with this one. For one this opinion was not my opinion, but the opinion of people who actualy lived in the USSR. Secondly they hated Stalin and Lenin, living after that period they know more about the Gulags then you ever could. Thirdly, being my parents age, they lived after Stalin, after the gulags and purges, in a time where millions were starving elsewhere in the third world, hence their point about medical, employment, food etc. These people were not pro-USSR, they are just not mindless drones like yourself.

So shut the fuck up. Fucking think next time before posting you fucking drone.