If I want to learn more about life under communism in the USSR, where should I go?

[Anonymous]

Perhaps Georgia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan. I liked Tbilisi the most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh and of course you should go to Berlin I think.
Germany is not engulfed in all encompassing communism hatred like the Baltics or Poland so it will give you are less biased picture

Gee... the people who lived under the system hate it, but you think people need a "less biased picture."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up In Soviet Union, but the most western part of it.
Every time somebody goes on and on how bad life was, I'm looking at them as if they are doing or saying it for attention. For my parents, grandparents, myself, my friends and most of my countrymen life was beautiful from 1945-1988.
There are a few museums left in the Baltics. The Baltics were also very eager to take everything down as fast as possible.

I also grew up in the most Western part of Soviet Union. From the text above I'd say it's pretty clear you are an ethnic Russian.

Of course, people were doing the same things they always do, under any regime - working, spending time with friends, falling in love, decorating their apartments etc. However, Soviet life in those occupied countries was not experienced as some beautiful era by 'most countrymen' in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.

And yes, we took down the monuments celebrating occupying forces as soon as we could. That does not mean there are no museums left

[Anonymous]

NP. I was born in the USSR, and have gone back many times in adulthood to different parts of the region (not just where I'm from).

I'm not sure there's anywhere that is going to give you the "feel" of the USSR today.

Even if we just focus on aesthetics, so much has changed in 30 years.

Communal apartments basically no longer exist, for example. The vast majority have been retrofitted to be single family apartments with their own (single) bathrooms.

There are cars everywhere now, and far fewer people relying solely on public transportation or communal transit.

You might still see the big Soviet squares, but there's also new construction in most of the big cities. So you might be able to stand in one square and only see big Soviet buildings, everything beyond has been updated.

Also, the clothes and shoes. One of the defining parts of the Soviet aesthetic was a lack of choices when it came to clothes and shoes. Only the elite were able to travel abroad, which meant that everyone else was wearing one of the very limited selection of shirts/pants/skirts. The selection of shoes was even smaller.

None of that is true anymore. Globalization, open borders, travel by even working and middle class residents, all of this means you see much more diversity of clothing now.

[Anonymous]

^^ Me again.

Also, just throwing my support behind my (apparently) Baltic friend above. Celebrating a Soviet aesthetic is celebrating a pretty terrible imperial/colonial history.

It's like going to DRC and wanting to see the plantations of the colonial overlords. There is much much amazing history/architecture in the region, much better than the pieces built between (roughly) 1922 and 1991.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh and of course you should go to Berlin I think.
Germany is not engulfed in all encompassing communism hatred like the Baltics or Poland so it will give you are less biased picture

Gee... the people who lived under the system hate it, but you think people need a "less biased picture."

I lived under the system

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Slightly later period (1985-1999) but I highly recommend watching The Trauma Zone documentary (used to be on YouTube and hopefully still there)
Also remember that this period in history is highly politicized. Eastern Europe is trying to break free from their socialist past and their museums will certainly be politically exaggerated, just as it is now en Vogue in say Russia to romanticize the past. You need to get a balanced view by getting acquainted with both sides.
It’s sad that Russia is perceived as too dangerous/bad form to travel RN, but the Leningrad siege museum in St Pete would be totally worth visiting.

Perceived!

I'll pass on becoming another Brittney Griner, thanks.

Just don’t bring your drug paraphernalia and you’ll be ok I promise

LOL. If the Russian authorities want to, they’ll “find” all sorts of paraphernalia on you.

They don’t want you if you are a lowly tourist

Gretchen please stop trying to make "fetch" happen.

You are overestimating your importance in life

Too funny! That's essentially what PP is telling you. They don't stream "Mean Girls" in Russia?

Well we brought up on true classics and some some American bubble gum lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d suggest Orwell’s 1984 and some of the books by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and Gulag Archipelago come to mind).

Damn you are deep!

[Anonymous]

there's a museum near my office called the Victims of Communism. i haven't been, but it looks like a small private museum.

[Anonymous]

Bucharest still looks much like it did under Soviet rule. We had a guide there who shared stories- both good and bad- about life under communist rule. Obviously his experience and opinion but I could see his points that highlighted the positive parts of communism as well as the real life struggles and fears.

[Anonymous]

For Eastern Europe, I would read Milan Kundera— really good depiction of what life was like in thr 1960s.

There was also a great article that came out about 20 years ago about how the stasi had infiltrated the East German leftist poet scene. It was amazing. Maybe someone can find it.

For a Russia, I think the book mastering the art of Soviet cooking: a memoir is maybe the best thing I’ve ever read on the good and bad of living under Soviet communism in Russia.

The movie Burnt by the Sun is an amazing movie about the Stalinist purges that I think dealt gives it the right flavor.

There is also an old memoir by a dissident about growing up in Stalinist Russia, if you can find a translation, see this article here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229008534989

And the book about the publication of Dr zhivago has a lot of detail about the lives of the intelligentsia weunder the first half of Soviet rule.

In general,Soviet life was very different in the 70s-80s than it was in the 50’s or in the 30’s, or during the war.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For Eastern Europe, I would read Milan Kundera— really good depiction of what life was like in thr 1960s.

There was also a great article that came out about 20 years ago about how the stasi had infiltrated the East German leftist poet scene. It was amazing. Maybe someone can find it.

For a Russia, I think the book mastering the art of Soviet cooking: a memoir is maybe the best thing I’ve ever read on the good and bad of living under Soviet communism in Russia.

The movie Burnt by the Sun is an amazing movie about the Stalinist purges that I think dealt gives it the right flavor.

There is also an old memoir by a dissident about growing up in Stalinist Russia, if you can find a translation, see this article here:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229008534989

And the book about the publication of Dr zhivago has a lot of detail about the lives of the intelligentsia weunder the first half of Soviet rule.

In general,Soviet life was very different in the 70s-80s than it was in the 50’s or in the 30’s, or during the war.

The movie "The Lives of Others" was also fantastic, about the 80s in East Germany. It won the best foreign film Oscar for 2006.

[Anonymous]

The DDR Museum in Berlin is good, but maybe not exactly what you're looking for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP with a question: I really enjoy photoessays and stories about the subdivided gilded age apartments that were communal apartments during communism and still exist in some places, as well as the new, then-modern apartment blocks built at the height of communism.

Not that I am going to be able to visit anytime soon, but is there anything similar to NYC’s tenement museum but in Russia or Eastern Europe?

Not Eastern Europe, but I found the Museum of Communism in Prague fascinating: https://muzeumkomunismu.cz/en/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Check out Bald and Bankrupt youtube channel. He is into all this stuff, but not so much the museums, more the buildings and monuments.
I grew up In Soviet Union, but the most western part of it.
Every time somebody goes on and on how bad life was, I'm looking at them as if they are doing or saying it for attention. For my parents, grandparents, myself, my friends and most of my countrymen life was beautiful from 1945-1988.
There are a few museums left in the Baltics.The Baltics were also very eager to take everything down as fast as possible.

You are more of an exception in terms of your attitude. Many Soviet Jews came to the US as refugees/asylees and they have come to believe in their own stories they told to immigration authorities so they are happy to curse the old country and say how horrible it was.

Well, if the PP is not Jewish, their experience might be quite different.