Tag Archives: money

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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An Old Curiosity Shop: The Museum of Soviet Life

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Ear­lier this year, a unique in its pecu­liar­ity museum was opened in Novosi­birsk, the Siber­ian cap­i­tal of Rus­sia. Pri­vately owned, this museum offers an insight into the days long gone, yet long­ing to be remem­bered: a col­lec­tion of the Soviet every­day arti­facts; sim­ple things that still matter.

Please wel­come our new author Maria Yukhi­menko, who has vis­ited this place and and pre­pared this report exclu­sively for the realussr readers.

DSC 0208 499x334 An Old Curiosity Shop: The Museum of Soviet Life

The USSR Museum: the facade.

The museum occu­pies a 1917 villa and is opened by appoint­ment only. The story goes that a long time ago this build­ing was used as an NKVD head­quar­ters (the KGB pre­de­ces­sor, that is). Well, it cer­tainly feels like it – the atmos­phere is gloomy enough: dark rooms, high stud ceil­ings, squeaky wooden floors.

How­ever, it turns out to have quite a bit of character…

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