People lived for 20-30 years. Everyday

Soviet Russia of the pre-war era represents unique material for the study of culture, life and Everyday life ordinary people. This routine can be observed especially clearly in Moscow, as the capital of this vast country, and therefore the standard for all other cities. First, it’s worth figuring out who these Muscovites were in the 1930s.

After forced collectivization and the beginning of the accelerated industrialization of the country, crowds of yesterday's peasants poured into the cities. These peasants brought their culture with them to the cities, which did not fit well in the urban environment. The townspeople, that small layer that managed to survive the revolutionary hurricane, remained in the minority in the face of new settlers. Of course, these newly minted proletarians were not very cultured.

The density and overcrowding in Moscow was terrifying. But this did not stop more and more new waves of people from arriving in the city. Due to them, the population of Moscow quickly grew to 4137 thousand in 1939. The influx of marginal elements into the cities brought to life that increase in crime, which official propaganda was usually silent about. The rampant hooliganism and drunkenness, it seems, would allow us to doubt the moral qualities of the proletarians, which were attributed to them by the theorists of Marxism-Leninism.

However, not only increased crime characterized the period of the 30s, but also positive aspects - such as an increase in the level of literacy among the population, an increase in the number of hospitals, the opening of new theaters and museums for the general public. Since 1939, constant television broadcasting has been organized. However, all this was leveled out against the background of a general decline in the standard of living in Moscow and other cities in the pre-war years.

Life was extremely harsh and unpretentious. Many houses lacked heating and running water due to poor maintenance. In the 30s, a card system for food distribution was in effect in Moscow and throughout the country. Huge queues for food were a common sight in Moscow at that time.

In addition, the 30s were the height of Stalin’s repressions. People were afraid to speak the truth openly, because the Soviet terror machine saw a political motive in everything, even minor offenses, a “threat to socialist society.”

However, at the same time there was the work of such writers as Bulgakov and Akhmatova. At the same time, official propaganda painted images of a happy, optimistic life.

There are things that are completely obvious to any person who more or less knows the subject. It would seem that...
But, at some point, you are surprised to discover that there is already a fully developed parallel reality that has little in common with true reality.
Lately I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in online communities whose subject of interest is history, including the history of the Soviet period, and here’s an interesting mythology I noticed - thanks to some not entirely literate people who have gained fame online as historians, a myth has developed about the supposed abundance of goods in the 30s of the last century, especially the second half of the 30s. Like, there was a shortage, but all this happened already in the 60-80s... Nonsense, of course. But the problem is that a whole generation has already grown up not reading books, not studying documents, but willingly believing pseudo-prophets who spoke about a happy, but slandered life in the 30s of the last century. The trouble is that we are talking about young people, and there are already few of those who lived at that time, and not even online at all.

In order to fill this gap, I bring to your attention the diary entries of the Taganrog historian and teacher Pavel Petrovich Filevsky, dating back to the 30s (and then people kept LJ in paper form). I already published them once, but now we’ll decorate the post with photographs of Taganrog from that very period.

There is a high mortality rate in the city, apparently from malnutrition.
In addition, there is absolutely no coal or kerosene. Several ".. schools were closed: The water in the water heating was released so that the pipes would not burst. But the schools could be closed, which could not be done with hospitals. Some hospitals also have water heating and they also had to drain the water, leaving them unheated at 12 degrees. The dead are taken several at a time to the cemetery and buried in a common grave. Coffins are very expensive, for 20 rubles a coffin is made of planks with a thin bottom, from which the deceased will fall through. You can have a somewhat bearable coffin by delivering the material , but boards are worth their weight in gold, you won’t find them. On the streets they are always cutting down the city’s decoration - trees for firewood.

Today at the bazaar, worker speculators sold the excess bread from their ration at 70 kopecks per pound themselves, receiving it for about 5 kopecks. They are bought almost exclusively by peasants from villages. That is why workers are seeking an increase in rations. This is an income of 1300 percent without any labor costs.

There is a lot of talk about the event. At school 3, where children left school~ with posters insulting the Soviet regime, walked through the fish market, shouting indignation about hunger and the privileges of the few. It was impossible to judge everyone, so they singled out a few and held a show and strict trial of the children. The children, being asked what prompted them to make a criminal demonstration, answered that hunger. They were decided to be expelled.

At a metallurgical plant, workers beat Caucasians, mainly Ossetians, the quarrel was over girls. The case was given the character of “great power chauvinism.” Asians are a cunning people and try to put themselves in the position of the Jews, which they succeed with the assistance of the latter. Russian workers were put on trial and some were sentenced to forced labor for two years. But this is not enough. In defiance of the Russians, they were ordered:
so that Ossetian women can be placed in positions where skilled workers are needed, even if they do not have the necessary qualifications.

In the state department store they sell sugar for three rubles per kilo, but whoever buys sugar is obliged to take a box of red, completely worthless pepper for 35 kopecks for each kilo. In the Dynamo store, also a state enterprise, they sell athletes (dudes) for six rubles, also with an obligation to buy for 1-50 dog muzzle. In general, in this way, they are selling something that no one needs..

Now I met a detachment of pioneers walking along Petrovskaya Street singing military songs. The boys are in panties, these are pads on the private parts, like acrobats, and the girls are a little more covered.

1933

Terrible things come from the village. Cases of cannibalism are talked about very often in the city. they say that they brought the half-eaten corpse of a child to the outpatient clinic, and that the parents were allegedly arrested. Relatives of the “Red Partisan” Karpenko, who lived on the ground floor, arrived from near the Shcherbakov farm and said that their relatives ate their children. Relatives from the Kiev province wrote to the policeman Khorunzhem about cannibalism and the flight of the population, and entire villages remain empty, the Ostrovskys’ relatives from the Kiev province also report, the Sidorovs receive terrible descriptions of hunger strikes from the Zinkovsky district. The nearby villages are deserts. On the outskirts of the city, I myself was amazed at the complete absence of dogs. It turns out that the dogs all died because there was nothing to feed them.

The original architecture now is chests, not houses, and if they have concrete balconies, then the impression is of a chest of drawers with half-drawn drawers and ugly wide and low windows (horizontal, not vertical). This is to make the rooms lower, since low rooms require less fuel for heating.

1935

How lousy the city is! Dirt on the streets, dirt in the yards. There are courtyards that are a complete water closet and not somewhere on the outskirts, but in the very center on Petrovskaya Street, where a whole series of institutions and shops are located, the so-called gum. The entire walking public, and at times in the evenings there is a whole cloud of them, goes to defecate through the open gates into the huge courtyard, the other part after a small departure to Italian Lane and the next day in the morning the sidewalk up to Sarmatova’s garden is literally flooded and then the gate to Grecheskaya Street is dirty .
and there are several such places along Petrovskaya Street. the yards are watered with excrement.

In the tsarist regime, bureaucracy was mercilessly condemned, but if Famusov had stood up and looked at the current bureaucracy, he would have bowed to the ground to the current officials. the world has never seen such a paper kingdom as it does now; In connection with this, the development of the administrative order - the Soviet state is a police station. It all starts with the police (the same as the police, only much worse) and everything ends there, and the passport system has imposed police shackles on all citizens. Without police, that is. the police, you can’t retreat a single step, before there was a Pale of Settlement, now it has covered everything, especially the Russian population. Nationalists are in a better position.

Try to go into a big city - there are a lot of obstacles, and deportation is a common occurrence everywhere without trial, without investigation." but only on the basis of the police, who will simply refuse to issue you a passport without explanation. Socialism, more than any movement, stands for equality. Where do we have it? There has never been such inequality as now. Some enjoy all the benefits, live in state-owned luxury apartments, eat like Lukulov, while others barely feed on disgusting bread at a very high price of 20 kopecks per kilo, and these are not beggars, but workers, i.e. predominantly Soviet citizens. For some, constant business trips, although they travel for themselves in luxurious and free carriages and for free, and for others, shabby carriages with a fare to Rostov of 3 rubles, 50 kopecks. Some have cars at their service, I for example, in 18 years of Soviet power, I never drove a car, but others;" having arrived in the city, they do not find any way of transportation, recently there have appeared from among the poor people - entrepreneurs who carry luggage into the city in wheelbarrows, and the passenger follows him, asking where he can stay, since hotels are only for those who have business trips are real or fictitious. Inequality even in nutrition: lunches in canteens of organizations on a special menu. What a plant director may require will not be given to an engineer or technician; what an accountant may require will not be given to a bookkeeper.

And it’s scary to even talk about wages, there are such fluctuations, some people get 50 rubles a month, and it’s extremely poor, others get 2000 rubles and that’s socialism. Some pensioners receive 17 rubles, others 300, not to mention exceptional pensions. Through such inequality, envy and ill will are deliberately created, pitting one citizen against another, especially among workers.

Inequality is also reflected in treatment: all bosses are communists, exceptions are rare, or they are special specialists or through patronage they say “you” to each other in order to develop a special privileged caste. But by what right do they say “you” to their employees and even to women who do not dare to say “you” to their superiors? The same rudeness occurs in schools. Teachers say “you” to young people and even 17- and 18-year-old girls. Western Europe has developed one common language of communication, although at least from the outside it can smooth out the insult of inequality, and the communists still emphasize it.

In the old days, a dowry played a big role in marriage; now there is no place to get a dowry, but there is something else. All kinds. a woman who has living space from a trust and zhakta can always count on her husband and even have a choice. The lack of living space often prevents you from getting a job, because until you have an apartment, you will not be registered, and you will not be given a job. Therefore, men are looking for a woman with a room, and the owner of the apartment is the most interesting bride.

ZO September

When you walk down the street, you involuntarily pay attention to the current privileged class. These are all extremely well-fed people. The skin is shiny, and most characteristically, thick omentum protrudes on the back of the head, hiding the neck and buttocks.
as huge as women's; Probably in order to show off they wear a shirt and pants. .

Elections to the Supreme Council are scheduled for December 12. Council of Nationalities. Has parliamentarism really taken such an absurd form in Western Europe? I think not: there are still political parties there, each of which nominates its own candidate, but what about us? For example, in Taganrog, the communists, the arbiters of our destinies, nominated two people to the Supreme Council - the Jew Pugachevsky and the worker Izotov, both not Taganrog residents. You cannot write anyone into the ballot, which means they have already been selected. Election meetings are underway. What are they for? Two rather impudent Jews have already come to me twice asking why I don’t go to meetings. What do they care? If I didn’t understand something, I wouldn’t have gone. And I can listen to Pugachevsky’s praises in the local newspaper, where he is praised for imprisoning priests in the GPU and destroying churches. And this is in Russia, where there are still millions of Believers, such a speech by a Jew, of course, would have passed almost unanimously. Will some brave souls not go to the polls or hide the ballot in their pocket and submit the envelope without the ballot? I say “brave souls” because no one believes that the vote will be secret. If they want to trace who submitted what, then, of course, they will find out. But suddenly, on November 26, a scandal erupted throughout the city: Pugachevsky was not only removed from the candidacy, but removed from his post and at the same time a new candidate from Rostov was ready, and in the city there was endless praise for this Dalsky. This means that the candidate was nominated in addition to Taganrog, and the newspapers should praise him as ordered. Who is a citizen of the so-called USSR considered to be? Let's see what happens next.

1938

The terrible time continues, arrests endlessly. They take on an episodic character: they arrest Germans, then Poles, just one name is enough. What the reason is, nothing is known. We live as if on a desert island. There is terrible panic, they speak quietly. Correspondence has been so reduced that postmen are out of work. Searches can reveal correspondence, even if it is the most innocent, It will still cast a shadow, so letters, both old and new, are destroyed, addresses are not written down and are kept in memory, it is scary to keep notes and diaries, because you not only risk yourself, but also You put others in danger by mentioning their names.
I don’t know what to do, but I would like to leave behind a true story: I know many have destroyed notes and memories, but the life of the province is no less important than the capital. It is very difficult to hide in the cramped conditions in which everyone lives. There is no person who sleeps peacefully at night, even children are nervous, with every knock, barking, dogs wake up and wake up their parents, they take hundreds of them a night, and once they take someone, how he sank into the water, what is his fate, where they send him to no one, nothing is known. They are often sent to one place and the family to another, and neither family members nor strangers know. They pick you up and send you away with what you found them in, no delivery, no food, no linen, no clothes.

Neither the Inquisition nor the oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible. neither the lead prisons of Venice can compare with what is being done.

Due to the high cost, my pension has been increased: my pension has been increased by 10 rubles per month, that is, instead of 40 rubles, 50 kopecks, but with the increase in pension, the rent for living space also increases and I will pay 6 rubles more, and so the pension has been increased by 4 rubles, and food prices have not only increased, but they have not increased at all; No. It’s difficult to get hold of so-called white bread, at 1-50 per kilo; gray bread, at 90, is also not always available. Rye for 75 kopecks is terrible; Here in the South they don’t know how to bake it at all, and factory work in bulk is a lump of clay, and sometimes sour! more. For tea you have to take bagels for 26 kopecks or franzol, which costs up to 1 ruble 4 kopecks each. Meat 12 rubles a kilo! fish 3-20 pike per kilo; there is no fish at all, they stopped selling it, and no one knows why, milk is 2-50 liters, in a word, horror and the increase in pension is 4 rubles in total.

What a horror this “free treatment” is, doctors are essentially absenteeism inspectors, swooped in, asked questions in the ambulance, the patient gives answers such as to get an exemption from work, the doctor must be called again tomorrow, otherwise he won’t come, and who will go and call like that As usual, everyone in the family works. Further, there are no medicines in pharmacies, and those that are incredibly expensive, the pharmacy does not have utensils. The doctor is not interested in the success of the treatment, and conscientious ones, as everywhere else, are rare. Yes, finally, they are overwhelmed with unbearable loads: they are forced to study history communist party, the rules of a gas attack, but no one requires you to expand your knowledge and follow the medical literature. For a sick wife, we have to prescribe medicines from Rostov, and since there is not much there either, then from St. Petersburg, it’s good that this can be done through relatives, we live right in a barbaric country.

The May celebrations have passed. The usual processions, repeated from year to year, only one thing does not repeat itself - drunkenness.
Every year it grows: for three days they drink, everyone drinks, they drink enormously. Even students gather together in groups with one of their friends, often with girls, of course from high school. These days, the ambulance is exhausted, because with the coarsening of morals, drunkenness is accompanied by stabbings, drunken husbands stab their wives and mistresses, and now the difference between a wife and a mistress is almost impossible to establish. The influx of various Caucasians into Taganrog, distinguished by their ardor, increases the reprisal with a knife. Vodka was freely sold in Dubki; The police, exhausted in the fight against rashness, appealed to the city council to prohibit this violation of decorum, but their request was not granted.

Today is the Election. At 12 o'clock two people came to me to take me to the elections, but you can come before 12 o'clock at night. It is impossible not to go to the Elections. They will bring it home to the patient. The vote is, of course, a foregone conclusion. At least earlier
there was some semblance of a closed ballot. You could take the ticket with the candidate’s name out of the envelope and throw an empty envelope into the ballot box. Obviously, that’s what they did: you couldn’t conduct your candidate, but by dropping an empty envelope you could express your protest; Now they give tickets white, blue and red. One is for the city council, another is for the regional council, and the third is for the district council.
You walk through the line of observers and you can’t hide a single one all the way to the ballot box and you lower it. Here's the closed vote.

Tomorrow is Soviet New Year. The shops are completely empty.
There’s not even vodka or cigarettes, but what’s worse is that there’s no bread. The majority say that there’s no bread because we have a planned economy and that Taganrog, according to the plan, ate its bread, and that from January 1st there will be bread. I absolutely do not allow such stupidity or such cruelty. Christmas trees are being dragged through the streets. For what and for whom? The Christmas tree has a traditional connection with the Christmas holidays, and without these traditions it is senseless apeism, especially now, when by tomorrow they sell no more than ten pieces of candy “by the piece” and simple mint gingerbread cookies. Do they really think to give children pleasure when they put glass balls on the Christmas tree and light candles, but there is nothing to treat them with even sweet tea, because sugar is a precious commodity and bread is rare. Oh, the horror of what rich, abundant, well-fed, hospitable Russia has been reduced to. May the culprits of grief for hungry people and orphaned families left without fathers, who remember their children among the snows and fir trees of the North, be cursed!

There was a large but closed meeting of teachers and the police, isn’t it a strange combination, but this is now common, because the police, putting hooligans in the detention center until they sober up, often find them schoolchildren and, oh, horror, female students. The police asked the teachers for help, and the latter asked the police for help; both of them appealed to the family. And who for twenty years has only been thinking about how to tear students away from their families, with various entertainment at school, especially on major holidays, from home Christmas trees, and also by staging performances in schools. Aren't the pioneers' palaces designed for separation from family, and the camps? the children were never with their parents. Yes, finally, the created way of life, when mother and father work, when they see children, they never see each other, they even spend their nights away from home - there is no family, marriages rarely last more than a year, and to what kind of family are the police and school?

Revolutionary events split the intelligentsia and the creative community into those who left their homeland and those who, having accepted the revolution, actively participated in the creation of a new culture.

In September 1918, the reorganization of the public education system began. Tuition fees were abolished, a labor school of two levels was organized with a training period of 5 years and 4 years. In 1920, an emergency commission to eliminate illiteracy was created. In 1930, universal primary education was introduced.

The technical revolution in production required an increase in the number of competent specialists. For this reason, in 1933-1937. To improve the educational level of workers, systems of workers' schools and vocational courses have been created. Technical and agricultural universities were opened, and on-the-job education became widespread.

In 1925, the USSR Academy of Sciences was transferred from Leningrad to Moscow. In 1929, the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences was established, headed by N.I. Vavilov. Branches of the Academy of Sciences were created in the union republics and regions of the RSFSR (more than 850 research institutes were created).

The party leadership paid great attention to the defense industries and scientific developments in this area. Numerous design bureaus and research institutes developed new models of tanks (A.A. Morozov, M.I. Komkin, Zh.Ya. Kotin), aircraft (A.I. Tupolev, S.V. Ilyushin, N.N. Polikarpov, A.S. Yakovlev), artillery pieces, systems and mortars (V.G. Grabin, F.F. Petrov), small arms (V.A. Degtyarev, F.V. Tokarev).

Soviet scientists who worked in fundamental and theoretical fields of science achieved great success: physics - P.L. Kapitsa, atomic nucleus - I.V. Kurchatov, G.N. Flerov and others), semiconductor physicists - A.F. Ioffe.

In the mid-1930s, the “grand style”, characteristic of countries with a totalitarian regime, established itself in the culture of the USSR. Its main features were scale, pomp, and hyperbolic optimism. It was expressed in mass processions, parades and celebrations, where the achievements of the people under the leadership of the CPSU were glorified.

Has been revised Russian history, which began to be presented as a series of continuous victories, the successor of which was the Communist Party.

Particular attention was paid to cinematography. A galaxy of talented film directors and actors created works that had a strong impact on the consciousness and behavior of the entire society. Members of the Central Committee personally watched all new films and acted as their censors.

The new union of writers, painting and sculpture were under the strictest supervision of the party. Cultural figures were provided with exceptional benefits, as were party leaders; the dependence of art on the state was formed.

69. Foreign policy of the USSR in the 20-30s

Foreign policy of the USSR in the 20-30s. developed in the direction of establishing official diplomatic relations with other states and illegal attempts to transport revolutionary ideas. With the advent of understanding the impossibility of immediately implementing a world revolution, more attention began to be paid to strengthening the external stability of the regime.

In the early 20s. The USSR achieved the lifting of the economic blockade. The decree of the Council of People's Commissars on concessions dated November 23, 1920 played a positive role. The signing of trade agreements with England, Germany, Norway, Italy, Denmark and Czechoslovakia meant the actual recognition of the Soviet state. In 1924 alone, diplomatic relations were established with thirteen capitalist countries. The first Soviet People's Commissars for Foreign Affairs were G.V. Chicherin and M.M. Litvinov.

The policy of the Soviet state changed in accordance with the changing political situation in the world. In 1933, after the National Socialist dictatorship came to power in Germany, the Soviet Union began to show interest in creating a system of collective security in Europe.

In 1934, the USSR was admitted to the League of Nations. In 1935, the USSR concluded an agreement with France on mutual assistance in the event of aggression in Europe. Hitler saw this as an anti-German move and used it to seize the Rhineland. In 1936, German intervention in Italy and Spain began. The USSR provided support to the Spanish Republicans, sending equipment and specialists. Fascism began to spread across Europe.

In March 1938, Germany captured Austria. In September 1938, a conference was held in Munich with the participation of Germany, England, France and Italy, the general decision of which gave the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia to Germany. The USSR condemned this decision.

Germany invades Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The tense situation remained in the Far East. In 1938-1939 Armed clashes occurred with units of the Japanese Kwantung Army on Lake Khasan, the Khalkhin Gol River and on the territory of Mongolia. The USSR achieved territorial concessions.

Having made several unsuccessful attempts to create a system of collective security in Europe, the Soviet government set a course for rapprochement with Germany. The main purpose of this policy was to avoid premature military conflict.

In August 1939, a non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR (Molotov-Ribbentrop) and a secret protocol on the delimitation of spheres of influence were signed. Poland went to Germany, the USSR - the Baltic states, Eastern Poland, Finland, Western Ukraine, Northern Bukovina. Diplomatic relations with England and France were severed.

On September 1, 1939, with the German attack on Poland, The Second World War .

On November 30, 1939, the Soviet-Finnish war began, which caused enormous financial, military and political damage to the country.

Contrary to the horror stories that are now written about that time, it was in the pre-war years that there existed a symphony of power and people that is not often encountered in life. The people, inspired by the great idea of ​​​​building the first just society in the history of mankind without oppressors and the oppressed, showed miracles of heroism and selflessness. And the state in those years, now portrayed by our liberal historians and publicists as a monstrous repressive machine, responded to the people by caring for them.

Free medicine and education, sanatoriums and rest homes, pioneer camps, kindergartens, libraries, clubs became a mass phenomenon and were available to everyone. It is no coincidence that during the war, according to eyewitnesses, people dreamed of only one thing: for everything to become the same as before the war.

This is what, for example, the US Ambassador wrote about that time in 1937-1938. Joseph E. Davis:

“With a group of American journalists, I visited five cities, where I inspected the largest enterprises: a tractor plant (12 thousand workers), an electric motor plant (38 thousand workers), Dneproges, an aluminum plant (3 thousand workers), which is considered the largest in the world, Zaporizhstal (35 thousand workers), a hospital (18 doctors and 120 nurses), nurseries and kindergartens, the Rostselmash plant (16 thousand workers), the Palace of Pioneers (a building with 280 rooms for 320 teachers and 27 thousand children). The last of these institutions represents one of the most interesting phenomena in the Soviet Union. Similar palaces are being built in all major cities and are intended to bring to life the Stalinist slogan about children as the most valuable asset of the country. Here children discover and develop their talents...”

And everyone was sure that his talent would not wither or go to waste, that he had every opportunity to realize any dream in all areas of life. The doors of secondary and higher schools opened for the children of workers and peasants. Social elevators worked at full capacity, lifting yesterday's workers and peasants to the heights of power, opening up to them the horizons of science, the wisdom of technology, and the stage of the stage. “In the everyday life of great construction projects” a new country, unprecedented in the world, was rising - “a country of heroes, a country of dreamers, a country of scientists.”

And in order to destroy any possibility of exploitation of a person - be it a private owner or the state - the very first decrees in the USSR introduced an eight-hour working day. In addition, a six-hour working day was established for teenagers, the work of children under 14 years of age was prohibited, labor protection was established, and vocational training for youth was introduced at the expense of the state. While the United States and Western countries were suffocating in the grip of the Great Depression, in the Soviet Union in 1936, 5 million workers had a six-hour or more reduced workday, almost 9% of industrial workers took a day off after four days of work, 10% of workers, Those employed in continuous production received two days off after three eight-hour working days.

The wages of workers and office workers, as well as the personal income of collective farmers, more than doubled. Adults probably don’t remember anymore, and young people don’t even know that during the Great Patriotic War, some collective farmers donated planes and tanks to the front, built with personal savings that they managed to accumulate in the not so long time that passed after the “criminal” collectivization. How did they do this?

The fact is that the number of compulsory workdays for “free slaves” in the thirties was 60-100 (depending on the region). After this, the collective farmer could work for himself - on his plot or in a production cooperative, of which there were a huge number throughout the USSR. As the creator of the Russian Project website, publicist Pavel Krasnov, writes, “... In the Stalinist USSR, those who wanted to show personal initiative had every opportunity to do this in the cooperative movement. It was only impossible to use hired labor, contractual-cooperative labor - as much as you wanted.

There was a powerful cooperative movement in the country; almost 2 million people constantly worked in cooperatives, producing 6% of the gross industrial output of the USSR: 40% of all furniture, 70% of all metal utensils, 35% of outerwear, almost 100% of toys.

In addition, the country had 100 cooperative design bureaus, 22 experimental laboratories, and two research institutes. This does not include part-time cooperative rural artels. In the 1930s, up to 30 million people worked there.

It was possible to engage in individual work - for example, to have your own darkroom, paying taxes on it, doctors could have a private practice, and so on. Cooperatives usually involved highly qualified professionals in their field, organized into effective structures, which explains their high contribution to the production of the USSR.

All this was liquidated by Khrushchev at an accelerated pace since 1956 - the property of cooperatives and private entrepreneurs was confiscated, even private farms and private livestock.”

Let us add that at the same time, in 1956, the number of compulsory workdays was increased to three hundred. The results were not long in coming - the first problems with the products immediately appeared.

In the thirties, piecework wages were also widely used. Additional bonuses were practiced for the safety of mechanisms, savings in electricity, fuel, raw materials, materials. Bonuses were introduced for exceeding the plan, reducing costs, and producing products of improved quality. A well-thought-out system for training qualified industrial workers and Agriculture. During the years of the second five-year plan alone, about 6 million people were trained instead of the 5 million provided for by the plan.

Finally, in the USSR, for the first time in the world, unemployment was eliminated - the most difficult and insoluble in the conditions of market capitalism social problem. The right to work, enshrined in the USSR Constitution, became real for everyone. Already in 1930, during the first five-year plan, labor exchanges ceased to exist.

Along with the industrialization of the country, with the construction of new plants and factories, housing construction was also carried out. State and cooperative enterprises and organizations, collective farms and the population commissioned 67.3 million square meters of usable residential area in the second five-year plan. With the help of the state and collective farms, rural workers built 800 thousand houses.

Investments of state and cooperative organizations in housing construction, together with individual ones, increased 1.8 times compared to the first five-year plan. Apartments, as we remember, were provided free of charge at the lowest rent in the world. And, probably, few people know that during the second five-year plan almost as much money was invested in housing, communal and cultural construction, and in healthcare in the rapidly developing Soviet Union as in heavy industry.

In 1935, the best metro in the world in terms of technical equipment and artistic design went into operation. In the summer of 1937, the Moscow-Volga canal was put into operation, solving the problem of water supply to the capital and improving its transport connections.

In the 1930s, not only did dozens of new cities grow in the country, but water supply was built in 42 cities, sewage systems were built in 38, the transport network developed, new tram lines were launched, the bus fleet expanded, and trolleybuses began to be introduced.

During the pre-war five-year plans in the country, for the first time in world practice, social forms of popular consumption, which, in addition to wages, were used by every Soviet family. Funds from them were used for the construction and maintenance of housing, cultural and social institutions, free education and medical care, for various pensions and benefits. Expenditures on social security and social insurance increased threefold compared to the first five-year plan.

The network of sanatoriums and rest homes quickly expanded, vouchers to which, purchased with social insurance funds, were distributed by trade unions among workers and employees free of charge or on preferential terms. During the second five-year period alone, 8.4 million people rested and were treated in rest homes and sanatoriums; expenses for maintaining children in nurseries and kindergartens increased 10.7 times compared to the first five-year plan. Average life expectancy has increased.

Such a state could not help but be perceived by the people as their own, national, dear, for which it is not a pity to give one’s life, for which one wants to perform feats... As the embodiment of that revolutionary dream of the promised country, where the great idea of ​​​​people's happiness was visibly, before their eyes, brought to life. It was customary to mock Stalin’s words “Life has become better, life has become more fun” during perestroika and post-perestroika years, but they reflected real changes in the social and economic life of Soviet society.

These changes could not go unnoticed in the West. We have already become accustomed to the fact that Soviet propaganda cannot be trusted, that the truth about how things are in our country is told only in the West. Well, let's see how the capitalists assessed the successes of the Soviet state.

Thus, Gibbson Jarvie, chairman of the United Dominion Bank, stated in October 1932:

“I want to make it clear that I am not a communist or a Bolshevik, I am a definite capitalist and individualist... Russia is moving forward while too many of our factories are idle and approximately 3 million of our people are desperately looking for work. The Five Year Plan was ridiculed and predicted to fail. But you can consider it certain that under the terms of the five-year plan more has been done than planned

... In all the industrial cities that I have visited, new areas are springing up, built according to a definite plan, with wide streets, decorated with trees and squares, with houses of the most modern type, schools, hospitals, workers' clubs and the inevitable nurseries and kindergartens where people are cared for about children of working mothers...

Don't try to underestimate Russian plans and don't make the mistake of hoping that the Soviet government might fail... Today's Russia is a country with a soul and an ideal. Russia is a country of amazing activity. I believe that Russia’s aspirations are healthy... Perhaps the most important thing is that all the youth and workers in Russia have one thing that, unfortunately, is lacking in capitalist countries today, namely hope.”

And here is what Forward magazine (England) wrote in the same 1932:

“The enormous work that is happening in the USSR is striking. New factories, new schools, new cinema, new clubs, new huge houses - new buildings everywhere. Many of them have already been completed, others are still surrounded by forests. It is difficult to tell the English reader what has been done in the last two years and what is being done next. You have to see it all to believe it.

Our own achievements that we accomplished during the war are only a trifle compared to what is being done in the USSR. Americans admit that even during the period of the most rapid creative fever in the Western states there was nothing similar to the current feverish creative activity in the USSR. Over the past two years, so many changes have occurred in the USSR that you refuse to even imagine what will happen in this country in another 10 years.

Throw out of your head the fantastic horror stories told by English newspapers, which so stubbornly and absurdly lie about the USSR. Also throw out of your head all that half-hearted truth and impressions based on misunderstanding, which are put into practice by amateurish intellectuals who look patronizingly at the USSR through the eyes of the middle class, but do not have the slightest idea of ​​what is happening there: the USSR is building a new society on healthy basics

To realize this goal, one must take risks, one must work with enthusiasm, with such energy as the world has never known before, one must struggle with the enormous difficulties that are inevitable when trying to build socialism in a vast country isolated from the rest of the world. Having visited this country for the second time in two years, I got the impression that it is moving along the path of solid progress, planning and building, and all this on a scale that is a clear challenge to the hostile capitalist world.

The American “Nation” echoed the forward:

“Four years of the Five Year Plan have brought with it some truly remarkable achievements. The Soviet Union worked with wartime intensity on the creative task of building basic life. The face of the country is literally changing beyond recognition: this is true of Moscow with its hundreds of newly paved streets and squares, new buildings, new suburbs and a cordon of new factories on its outskirts. This is also true of smaller cities.

New cities arose in the steppes and deserts, at least 50 cities with populations ranging from 50 to 250 thousand people. All have emerged in the last four years, each being the center of a new enterprise or series of enterprises built to exploit domestic resources. Hundreds of new power plants and a number of giants, like Dneprostroy, constantly embody Lenin’s formula: “Socialism is Soviet power plus electrification.”

The Soviet Union organized the mass production of an endless variety of items that Russia had never produced before: tractors, combines, high-quality steels, synthetic rubber, ball bearings, powerful diesel engines, 50 thousand kilowatt turbines, telephone equipment, electric mining machines, airplanes , cars, bicycles and several hundred new types of cars.

For the first time in history, Russia is extracting aluminum, magnesite, apatite, iodine, potash and many other valuable products. The guiding points of the Soviet plains are no longer crosses and church domes, but grain elevators and silos. Collective farms build houses, barns, and pigsties. Electricity penetrates the village, radio and newspapers have conquered it. Workers learn to operate the latest machines. Farm boys produce and maintain farm machinery that is larger and more complex than anything America has ever seen. Russia is beginning to “think with machines.” Russia is rapidly moving from the age of wood to the age of iron, steel, concrete and motors.”

This is how proud British and Americans spoke about the USSR in the 30s, envying the Soviet people - our parents.

From the book by Nellie Goreslavskaya “Joseph Stalin. The Father of Nations and His Children", Moscow, Book World, 2011, pages 52-58.

REMINDER: Labels may be inaccurate and sometimes completely unclear. Let's try together to bring them into divine form. And the author does not bear any responsibility for them.
Arrival of participants international congress soil scientists in Moscow. Russia, 1930

Opening of the international congress of soil scientists. In the background is a portrait of Lenin on the wall. Russia, 1930.

Participants of the International Congress of Soil Scientists visit the Moscow Kremlin. Russia, 1930.

A group of people during the 14th anniversary of the revolution on Red Square in Moscow on November 7, 1931.

The streets of Moscow are being built at a hasty pace. Moscow, 1931

The Kremlin (with a flag), and in the foreground is the Lenin Mausoleum. Moscow, Russia, 1932.

A beggar in rags on one of the streets of Moscow, 1932

Two men on the roof overlooking the center of Moscow and the Kremlin. 1932.

Boarding the tram. 1932

Women with children somewhere in poor areas of Moscow. 1932

A man with a briefcase sits on a chair against the background of an artificial romantic landscape, waiting for a picture from a street photographer. Moscow, 1932.

Workers visit one of the many museums in Moscow. 1932

Bolsheviks and the Church. 1932

View of pedestrians, cars, buses and trams on Sverdlov Square (formerly Teatralnaya Square) in Moscow. Photo taken from the top of the Bolshoi Theater 1932

This photograph was taken during the big parade on Red Square in Moscow, 1932.

Market in Moscow. Russia, 1933.

Top view of the May Day parade on Red Square. Moscow, USSR, 1933

Units of the Russian army lined up on Red Square during the May Day parade. Moscow, USSR, 1933

Moscow during the celebration of the October Revolution, 1933.

Tanks on Red Square in Moscow during the celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. Russia, 1933.

An impressive parade on Red Square in Moscow in honor of the 17th anniversary of the October Revolution. Russia, 1933.

A large parade on Red Square in Moscow during the celebration of the October Revolution of 1917. Russia, 1933.

The final part of the parade on Red Square in Moscow on the occasion of the 17th anniversary of the October Revolution was a parade of armored vehicles. Russia, 1933.

Hair extensions and wigs for sale. Moscow, 1933.

Professor Schmidt is the leader of the Arctic expedition on the icebreaker "Sibiryakov". At the North Station (?) in Moscow he gives interviews to journalists. 1933

Red Square with a Soviet policeman and traffic controller. Moscow, 1935

Metro tunnel in Moscow. 1935.

Panorama of Okhotny Ryad: metro station in the center of Moscow. On the left is a building under construction and a mountain of rubble in the foreground. Moscow, 1935.

Panorama of Okhotny Ryad: metro station in the center of Moscow, the square is filled with horses and carts. Moscow, 1935.

Semicircular subway platform and tunnel. Moscow, Russia 1935

Underground metro stations. Moscow, 1935.

A game of chess between Salomon Flor and Vyacheslav Vasilieviches Rogozhin (right) during a chess tournament in Moscow, 1936

Chess player Jose Raul Capablanca in a match against Ryumin at a chess tournament in Moscow in 1936.

Representatives of various ethnic minorities in the "new" Soviet parliament. Moscow, 1938

View of Red Square, where the sports parade is taking place. Moscow, Russia, 1938