What was more in the life of Soviet citizens — pluses or minuses? People remember the USSR in different ways. Alone with nostalgia. Others - with pronounced hostility. For the third, this is just an abbreviation of history books. About life in the USSR, the pros and cons of education, medicine, the country's economy, which broke up in 1991, is described in this article.
Ideology
In the early nineties, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a huge number of suicides were observed in the country. Among the people who committed suicide, there were both famous personalities and ordinary people. The life and career of Yulia Drunina, a poetess whose poems were included in school anthologies, ended with a tragic death. In the first days after the collapse, the world's largest country committed suicide. The fact is that in 1991 there wasn’t just the collapse of a huge state. The ideals on which more than one generation in the USSR grew up were destroyed.
The pros and cons of life in a country that no longer exists are discussed quite often today. There is an opinion that people who were happy in the Soviet Union suffered from pernicious naivety, unwillingness to face the truth. Is it so?
What is the ideology of the USSR? The pros and cons of the theory that has been imposed on millions of people are still debated. Soviet ideology is Marxism, replicated in the country for seventy years. These are utopian ideas that have inspired every citizen since childhood.
In 1936, all the people who inhabited the territory of the USSR were perceived as one single family. It was not customary to divide citizens into Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusians, Uzbeks. Consequently, nationalism was not so pronounced. This ends in the life of citizens of the USSR pluses. The disadvantages of ideology are primarily that there is no universal happiness. This is an illusion that many could not get rid of in the early nineties.
Collectivization in the USSR: Pros and Cons
In the late twenties, the long and painful process of transforming small-scale individual farms into large-scale social production began. The course towards collectivization was proclaimed in December 1927. By then, firm bread prices had already been set. There was a significant increase in urban population. This, in turn, increased the need for bread.
Cows, horses, ramparts, and most importantly, land were taken from the peasants. The one who did not give away the property voluntarily went to Siberia. Such was the policy of the USSR. The pros and cons of the results of collectivization is a topic that you can talk endlessly. Moreover, the main subject of discussion will be hunger, the "red" terror. The advantages of collectivization are, perhaps, in a special atmosphere of equality, the pursuit of a common goal, selflessness and labor - all that was sung in the films of the 50-60s.
Victims of Bolshevism
In 1931, a severe drought hit the country. However, despite the harvest, the planned norms for the collection of agricultural products have not been canceled. They were carried out and even exceeded. In villages and small towns, famine began. The seizure of land deprived the peasants of the incentive to work. In addition, the harvest was confiscated. About six million wealthy peasants were gathered from their lands - that is, people who knew how and wanted to work. Food exports meanwhile increased.
About forty million people in the USSR suffered and died of hunger. A lot of articles have been written about the pros and cons of life in the Soviet era, many of them. But is it worth talking about the advantages of collectivization, industrialization and other components of the economy, if in the early thirties in small and large cities a huge number of street children appeared? These were the children of dispossessed kulaks and peasants who died of hunger.
Repression
First there was the "Red Terror" - a set of punitive measures directed against opponents of Bolshevik ideas, as well as representatives of certain social strata, namely police officers, clergymen, gendarmes, officials of the tsarist government, landowners, entrepreneurs. In 1921, a new wave of political repression began. More than eight hundred people were arrested. Shot - about a hundred. More than eighty of those arrested went to camps, from which few managed to return.
Stalinist repression is a separate issue. In 1937, the so-called Great Terror began, in which hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were shot. The total number of victims of Bolshevism, according to some historians, is more than five million people. After Stalin's death, the arrests did not stop. In the 50s, persecution of dissidents began. They no longer sent to the camps. Arrested persons were placed in psychiatric hospitals.
USSR economy: pros and cons
Almost all resources were state property. Prices were determined regardless of supply and demand, and the decision to manufacture products was the prerogative of the planning body of the State Committee. It is widely believed that the USSR by the end of its existence has completely outlived itself from an economic point of view. According to this version, it was the production crisis that caused the collapse of the state.
One of the disadvantages of the economy is imbalance. Investments were distributed in various industries through the channels of the Gossnab and Gosplan. In the 80s, the same strategies were applied that were relevant to the 50s. There was a deficit, a reduction in costs was required.
The slogan "Economics must be economics" became a directive that determined the success of the use of party attitudes. The bonuses and salaries of some specialists depended on this. As a result, the requirements of GOSTs decreased. A huge amount of substandard goods appeared in stores. But this was not always the case, namely in the 80s. The implements produced in Stalin's times served for decades.
Industrialization
What is industrialization? This is a process of rapid buildup of industrial potential, launched with the goal of reducing economic lags from developed capitalist countries. Of course, they did not argue about the pros and cons of industrialization in the USSR. Achievements in building up industry were considered a great feat in the Soviet Union.
One of the features of centralization is planning. Already in 1932, the five-year plan was announced ahead of schedule. It was possible to achieve this in just four years and three months. The heavy industry, according to Stalin, exceeded the plan by 8%. The main disadvantage of industrialization was that the experience of foreign countries was not taken into account at all in the development of infrastructure.
Foreign policy
Initially, it was based on the idea of a world revolution. In the first years of its existence, the young Soviet state had the goal of signing peace agreements with Germany and other states, and gaining international recognition. In 1922 there was a breakthrough in diplomatic isolation. One cannot speak of the general pros and cons of Soviet foreign policy. At each stage of the existence of the Soviet Union there were characteristic features.
The Cold War is a term used in political science and refers to a historical period that lasted almost half a century. In short, this is a confrontation between the USSR and the USA. In the international legal sense, this confrontation cannot be called a war. It was, rather, an ideological struggle, which was a consequence of the contradictions between the socialist and capitalist models.
The fall of the iron curtain
Even in the first perestroika years, there were no serious changes in foreign policy. The Soviet Union continued to fight with Afghanistan and toughly defend its position in negotiations with the States. Changes occurred in 1987. The main events in the politics of the late 80s - the withdrawal of troops from Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Ordinary citizens suffered primarily from the strange foreign policy of the USSR. Most of them did not even have a superficial idea of what was happening behind the Iron Curtain. This caused a strange love for everything American, which first arose among the so-called dudes, back in the 50s, and acquired a wide scale in the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR.
The medicine
There are many opponents of the assertion that the Soviet Union lived well. But they are unlikely to name at least one drawback of the healthcare system in the USSR. The main feature of Soviet medicine was its preventive orientation, which made it possible to prevent many serious diseases and diagnose them at an early stage.
In the Soviet era, many state institutions were created that worked for the health needs. These were not only hospitals, but also sanatoriums, hospitals. The healthcare system required huge financial investments. And she got them.
The indisputable advantage of medicine in the USSR was the simplicity of obtaining medical care. There were no policies, the need for an appointment. Each citizen had the right to receive qualified help, moreover, free of charge.
Education
The main event in the public life of the twenties is the order to eradicate illiteracy. During these years, there was an active creation of state institutions. The literacy program was targeted at citizens aged 16 to 50. Any person could receive primary education, regardless of social status.
War and revolution brought huge losses. Among the dead were scientists, workers of various skill levels. By order of Stalin, a restructuring of the humanities system was carried out. In high and high school, the teaching of history was resumed. By the beginning of the thirties, considerable success had been achieved in the fight against illiteracy. In 1941, the number of teachers in the country exceeded 1200 people.
Important attention in Soviet times was given to the system of preschool education. It covered children from birth to the age of seven. The drawback of Soviet schools was perhaps the imposition of ideas based on Marxism. But few suffered from this. According to the recollections of people who spent their childhood and youth in the USSR, it was then, surrounded by illusions and imaginary ideas, that they were happy.
Culture
In the first decade of the existence of the Soviet Union, a set of measures was taken to restructure the ideological and cultural life of society. This process began after the October Revolution. To the question of what were the pros and cons of the cultural revolution in the USSR, representatives of different social strata will answer in different ways.
The clergy in such transformations are unlikely to see positive aspects. The church was separated from the state, from the school. From the education system, items that have something to do with religion have been removed. The main task of the cultural revolution was the introduction to the masses of the foundations of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Changes, of course, affected universities.
Soviet education was of high quality, it is difficult to doubt it. Its drawback was the presence of objects and disciplines that are directly related to official ideology. Such sciences were given paramount importance. Students or graduate students could not write a single work without including quotes from the founders of Marxism-Leninism.