Myth Busting: Free Medicine, You Say?

0 42ce7 a4f1853f XL 500x323 Myth Busting: Free Medicine, You Say?

Mid 1980s. Image cour­tesy of Life magazine.

When­ever there is a heated argu­ment whether things were bet­ter dur­ing the USSR times, this state­ment invari­ably pops up as a mighty ace: At least they had free med­ical care in the Soviet Union! This is sup­posed to bring the oppo­nent to the knees and make them beg mercy and for­give­ness for betray­ing the Great Octo­ber achievements.

Well well well. Let’s have a close look at what really was free then.

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City of UFA: Then and Now

blue on pushkina 500x312 City of UFA: Then and Now

A merchant’s house. Early twenties.

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A her­itage build­ing now

The city of Ufa, the cap­i­tal of Bashkiria, is a town with the pop­u­la­tion of just over a mil­lion, at about 1500 km dis­tance from Moscow. It is beau­ti­fully set at the con­flu­ence of the Belaya and Ufa rivers, on low hills to the west of South­ern Urals. The city was founded in 1574 at the orders of Ivan the Ter­ri­ble, and the name mean­ing “small” in Tur­kic. It is a well kept city with lots of green­ery, wide alleys, parks and plen­ti­ful his­toric buildings.

Today’s post is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our usual for­mat, as the mod­ern pic­tures of the city are, well, mod­ern and not of the Soviet epoch. It is still nice to see, how­ever, how the city has been chang­ing over the past hun­dred years  —  and the old pho­tographs are still full of life and very easy on the eye.

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Best of Winter 2009 – 2010

Mil­i­tary Dis­charge Hand­made Scrap Book and Comics Album

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You’re in the army now

The com­pul­sory two years of mil­i­tary ser­vice was a rite of pas­sage for every Soviet guy. When one turned eigh­teen — unless for sick­ness or injury — it was time to be called in for the mil­i­tary life — two years in the bar­racks. The guys usu­ally bonded well and dur­ing their spare time cre­ated so called “Dis­charge Albums” — like scrap­books, they were full of pho­tos, songs lyrics, quick notes from the bud­dies etc.

Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbe­liev­able Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

kurilov2 Best of Winter 2009 2010

The only per­son to escape the Iron Cur­tain by swimming.

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

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The Fearsome Threesome – Lenin and His Lovebirds

437px Lenin in Paris Poster Lenin v Parizhe Youtkhevitch Yutkevich Claude Jade 364x500 The Fearsome Threesome – Lenin and His Lovebirds

Paris, city of love, brought them all together. A Russ­ian movie of 1981.

The offi­cial his­tory often misses a very impor­tant and inter­est­ing point in the course of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion – not every­body knows that Vladimir Lenin, a for­mi­da­ble mind behind the Great Octo­ber Patri­otic Rev­o­lu­tion and the leader of all com­mu­nists, had less than straight­for­ward love life – apart from a wife, he had a mis­tress – and not only that, these two women knew each other and got on very well!

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We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

If we were to pick one  the most con­fus­ing ques­tion from the his­tory of the USSR, no doubt it would have to be the Christ­mas date issue. Despite the fact that the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church branches out of the Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity, the tra­di­tional day to observe Christ­mas is dif­fer­ent to the rest of the Chris­t­ian world. The Russ­ian Christ­mas day is cel­e­brated on the 7th of Jan­u­ary, not Decem­ber 25th, and it is not easy to explain why it is so.

The xpla­na­tion comes from the two dif­fer­ent cal­en­ders. In the Tsarist Rus­sia Christ­mas was cel­e­brated on Decem­ber 25th, althouth there was a dif­fer­ence in days — as the Gre­go­rian cal­en­dar was accepted after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917 — on 24 Jan­u­ary 1918 the new Soviet gov­ern­ment  issued a decree that Wednes­day, 31 Jan­u­ary 1918 was to be fol­lowed by Thurs­day, 14 Feb­ru­ary 1918. But the Church, due to its open con­flict with the newly pro­nounced state, decided to keep the day where it was — and so ever since Christ­mas is cel­e­brated in early Jan­u­ary. Go figure.

Nev­er­the­less, the team of Realussr is delighted to announce our very first fes­tive sea­son together — we are a very young blog yet we have ambi­tions to grow and pros­per. We were only born in June/July this year, yet we see a won­der­ful life ahead of us. And today we present you with a present — a col­lec­tion of Soviet Christmas/New Year’s Eve post­cards. Please click on the flash bit below, zoom in and explore.  A bunch of warm wishes from all of us! Thank you.

If you would like to learn more please do not hes­i­tate to click the fancy carousel. Thanks for being with us.

Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

serov1918 provozlashenie sov vlasti 376x500 Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

The Announce­ment of the Soviet Gov­ern­ment. By Vladimir Serov, 1918.

The Soviet Union was offi­cially cre­ated in 1922, how­ever, if there was a date which could be con­sid­ered as a birth­day of the USSR, that would have had to be Novem­ber 7th of 1917  — this was the day when in St Peters­burg the Bol­she­viks — the organ­ised mil­i­tary rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, who later became the Com­mu­nist Party of the USSR — came to power. The Russ­ian Pro­vi­sional Gov­ern­ment which were the head of the coun­try after the Tsar Nicholas II had resigned, was over­thrown and the Sovi­ets, tak­ing the gov­ern­ment build­ings one by one, had finally cap­tured the town.

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