Tag Archives: deficit

Wrap Your Baby in Old Newspapers — the 70 Years of Deficit of Everything.

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1111 500x375 Wrap Your Baby in Old Newspapers the 70 Years of Deficit of Everything.

A typ­i­cal Soviet shop with bare shelves.

One of the main criti­sisms of the Soviet Union now, from an every day per­spec­tive, was the huge deficit of every­thing. The planned econ­omy failed to sup­ply a con­stant flow of goods nec­es­sary for the well being of peo­ple. It was not the mat­ter of inca­pac­ity — no, the means cer­tainly allowed to build space shut­tles or cre­ate extra strong tanks.  The short­age for goods was cre­ated arti­fi­cially — due to the rea­sons of the strange Soviet ideology.

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Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet ‘Tiananmen’

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1962 maslo1 500x332 Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet Tiananmen

Meat, but­ter, pay rise!

Novocherkassk is a small town in the South of Rus­sia, also known as the unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of the Cos­sacks, the Slavic mil­i­tary com­mu­nity. Unfor­tu­nately this town was the place of a huge tragedy, when in 1962 the civil­ian demon­stra­tion was opened fire on.

The tur­moil started on June, 1 when the Soviet gov­ern­ment announced the gro­cery price increase of about 30 per cent. The riot began at the pro­gres­sive elec­tro loco­mo­tive fac­tory: just before the price increase, the salary had been low­ered, which already was below the liv­ing min­i­mum (about a hun­dred rub­bles). The work­ers demanded an expla­na­tion, and threat­ened to strike. Faced with an ulti­ma­tum, the CEO Kurochkin mounted the plat­form and demanded that peo­ple went back to work. ‘If you do not have enough money for meat, buy the liver pie’ answered Kurochkin with the snarl.

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More pictures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud

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RU38 500x333 More pictures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud

Moscow, 1960s

This is our fourth post devoted to Marc Riboud, an out­stand­ing French pho­tog­ra­pher, who trav­eled exten­sively through­out the Soviet Union.  His images cap­tured an array of every­day life episodes from the lives of the Soviet peo­ple.  As always, click on the mag­ni­fy­ing glass icon to see the pho­tos in detail.

Please fol­low us on twit­ter and stay tuned.  Oh, and thanks for being such a won­der­ful crowd!

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Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 3 of 3

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A good exam­ple of how the ideas to make a new car were born is the story of the fac­tory “Com­mu­nar”. The Min­is­ter of Car Man­u­fac­tur­ing made a call to the fac­tory where design­ers thought over the scheme of a new Ukrain­ian car and lit­er­ally said: “I heard you were going to make a spring sus­pen­sion from the “Volk­swa­gen” but I actu­ally like the Ital­ian Fiat-600”. Shortly the fac­tory com­menced the pro­duc­tion of ZAZ-965 –nearly the exact copy of the Fiat.

zaz9651 500x248 Soviet Cars: History of the Copy and Paste Industry Part 3 of 3

ZAZ-965

By the way, the next model of ZAZ was the replica of Ger­man NSU Prinz 4. This car was remem­bered by the nick­names “Soap Box” and “Big-eared”.

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Sexy Soviet Underwear. Not!

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svetlichnaya1 Sexy Soviet Underwear. Not!

Late 1960s. Actress Svet­lana Svetlich­naja is doing a wee strip dance for a movie. This was prob­a­bly the most R-rated scene of the Soviet cinematography.

Due to a series of not so for­tu­itous events ( the Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, the First World War, the over­all run­down of the young Soviet coun­try) women never had their needs attended to prop­erly. Under­wear was made, first and fore­most, for the work­ing class with no pref­er­en­tial treat­ment for the females so women had no choice other than to wear those sex­less gar­ments.  This is prob­a­bly the sad­dest part of the Soviet history.

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Soviet Cars: History of the Copy-and-Paste Industry — Part 2 of 3

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In early 1930s with­out any licens­ing arrange­ments the Soviet engi­neers copied the first lim­ou­sine car  for the Com­mu­nist party exec­u­tives. In 1932 six lim­ou­sines were copied off the Amer­i­can Buick 90L. How­ever,  later the fac­tory pro­duc­tion line was switched to pro­duc­ing cater­pil­lar tractors,so the lim­ou­sine busi­ness was shifted to Moscow Stalin Factory.

101 6 500x361 Soviet Cars: History of the Copy and Paste Industry Part 2 of 3

ZIS-101

The car, based on the engine of the Buick and the body copied off the Cadil­lac, was given another non-poetic name, ZIS — 101.  It also had Buick radi­a­tor bars.

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