Tatiana Menaker
Posted on 04/30/2019 7:34:03 PM PDT by daniel1212
I have hysterical laugh when I read this BS of Stalinist propagandist Finnegan who writes about single mother in Russia with free housing, health care and propaganda painting of happy Soviet woman entering new apartment with Stalin’s portrait instead of icon. I WAS the SINGLE MOTHER’S DAUGHTER in the Soviet Union.
I was born and lived in communal apartment in Leningrad near Vladimir Putin’s house. 7 families shared one toilet, one kitchen and one bathroom which did not work. We washed themselves in communal banya (bathhouse) once a week after staying in line at least 2 hours. We lived 3 persons in one room. (Actually Putin’s room also with 3 people was smaller than mine) In some other rooms it was 4 even 5 people. Kitchen was constantly overcrowded and scandals were so bad that police was invited. Our apartment was not the worst one. My friend lived in apartment with 29 families per one kitchen and one toilet. Can you imagine to have a baby when you do not even access to the sink on the kitchen?
When I was born, my mother was forced back to work in 8 weeks. She bribed the doctor and received medical papers that she needs to stay with me 16 weeks. She wanted to breastfeed me. She was leaving the house at 6;30 in the morning and returning back at 6:40 at night if she was not delayed at mandatory Party meeting. Her best luck as a single mother that her own mother was alive and being 72 when I was born. She could stay in lines for food during the day and cook.
As a single mother she had support from the government. 5 rubles per month. The price of two emaciated chickens on the market.
My mother was a unique woman. She worked as an engineer galvanic at huge military factory “Bolshevick”, which was producing navy guns. She was inventor and used to receive money for her inventions, generally making twice more than regular people did. Still her life was hell. She was waiting in line for her apartment more than 20 years and finally for two of us she received a studio in a size of American bathroom with kitchenette of such size that two people could not enter. Only one. Bathroom was of the size of broom closet. On the far end of the city with no transportation besides one bus which was traveling once in hour.
Apartment did not have a phone line. My mother was put on the waiting list. She received her telephone in 18 years when she already lived with me in America where she received her apartment in a few months and telephone in 3 days without working in the US even 1 day. She worked in the Soviet Union 42 years of her life with war in Stalingrad and building guns in Siberia.
When some sick with delirious socialist paradise imagination idiots spread Stalinist propaganda on Quora from materials paid by Propaganda Department of Communist Party Central Committee, they always can ask people who lived there and remember every day of it.
BTW as a single mother of three in America I have educated my children in the best universities in the US, built 3 story house in San Francisco and even managed to additions to my diploma in Marxist Leninist Philosophy from Leningrad university ( I was neighbor and schoolmate of Vladimir Putin) to graduate from San Francisco State University at the age over 50.
Life of single mother is very tough in any country, but may be only life in the socialist country in Africa for single mother would be worse than it was in the Soviet Union. Capitalism is more humane than socialism.
Another story:
CNN thinks that socialism is cool. My grandparents from the USSR would disagree. Alex Berezow, Opinion columninidt It is frustrating to me that many Americans are ignorant of this history. While the crimes of the Nazis are well known, the crimes of the Soviets are not.
That explains how (likely a social media intern at) CNN can tweet about how cool socialism is. It also explains how one Buzzfeed editor wished for “full communism” for Christmas, and another Buzzfeed reporter dismissed the victims of communism as a “white nationalist talking point.” - https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/02/21/cnn-thinks-socialism-cool-my-grandparents-ussr-would-disagree/349830002/
Then there was this story in 1982 in the NYT: "SOVIET FOOD SHORTAGES: GRUMBLING AND EXCUSES" - https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/15/world/soviet-food-shortages-grumbling-and-excuses.html
Yet inn a different opinion piece PAUL SCHLESINGER JR.OCT. 11, 1981 writes in "THROUGH RED-COLORED GLASSES:"
Professor Hollander quotes lavishly and well; ''Political Pilgrims'' is a splendid anthology of human cred ulity. Here is Anna Louise Strong, the ever hopeful American apologist for Communism, on Stalin: His ''method of running a committee reminded mesomewhat of J ane Addams ... or of Lillian D. Wald. ... They had the same kind of democratically efficient technique, but they used more high pressure than Stalin did.'' Or the political scientist Edward Friedman on t he Chairman: ''Mao was almost invariably responding in auniquely crea tive and profoundly ethical way to deep political crises.''...
the left-wing intellectual feels that any society based on state ownership, whatever its superficial flaws, is essentially good; any society based on private ownership, whatever its superficial attractions, is essentially corrupt. Poverty represents a shameful failure in capitalism; but when associated with egalitarianism and the subordination of material to spiritual needs, it expresses a simple, uncorrupted way of life. Manual labor is demeaning under capitalism, ennobling under Communism. Child labor is abominable in the United States, but in Cuba the sight of children working 15 hours a week in the fields is symbolic of high and unified purpose. As Angela Davis once said, ''The job of cutting cane had become qualitatively different since the revolution.'' Contextual redefinition, Professor Hollander writes, also produces ''euphoric response to objects, sights, or institutions in themselves unremarkable and also to be found in the visitors' own societies.'' - https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/11/books/through-red-colored-glasses.html
Bfl
Sounds a lot like obama’s “Julia” or whatever her name was.
No.
moscow doesn't believe in tears, pt 2
haven't watched them myself.
Powerful story. There’s a local hairstylist who was a psychologist in the Soviet Union in her younger years. Only the rich could afford her services (not state paid). Living in her own home, running her own business in the US, she now marvels that she used to start her day in Russia with Vodka. Everyday, every morning, starting her day with Vodka. “We all did.” The emotional pain is never discussed in these Utopian descriptions of the charmed life of Soviet era Russia.
About 20 years ago, I was doing home health nursing not far from Chicago. There were agencies referred to as “Polish Caregivers”, though most were Russian. These caregivers, for about $700/week, would love with the patient 24/7, with one weekend a month off. Their agency would get about $200/week of the $700. Anyway, many of those caregivers were doctors and lawyers, back in Russia, who had been making $150/month back home. Naturally, they sent almost all their money back home. They got room and board included in their caregiver job, of course.
Would you rather be free, determine the course of your own life, with the hope of being able to do something special in the world, but with the risk of failure and the responsibility to provide for yourself?
OR
Would you rather live in a bubble, in which you were somewhat ‘protected’, but could never truly achieve anything as an individual, could not chart your own course in life, could not form your own opinions if they differed from what was accepted by those in charge, but you would be fed a basic meal and guaranteed a place to live in the bubble?
I know a place with free housing, free food, and free medical. It’s called prison.
“I know a place with free housing, free food, and free medical. It’s called prison.”
You’re spot on. Socialists are selling the equivalent of prison, as an alternative to being responsible for yourself.
When DemocRats have reduced the quality of life in the USA to something like you describe, they will have attained their utopia. We will all be equally miserable. The glorious government will mismanage every aspect of life and we will be serfs. They have a lot of momentum, what with the new generation of mindless drones entering adulthood (think AOC and her ilk). I hope there is still a way to save this country, but I have my doubts.
Life was equally miserable for all in USSR but single mothers had more perks from the state that’s for sure.
And as proxy servants of the devil, the Left also attacks faith in the one true and living God of Scripture, and its moral world-view, and require assent to its deceptive ideology and worship of the state instead, in fundamentally changing America. A certain former President addressed liberal deception and the manner of freedom it eventually leads to:
‘’Simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly,’’ Mr. Reagan said as he discussed the nuclear freeze issue. ‘’It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.’’
The President argued, in effect, that his national security goals were parallel to with the nation’s founding spiritual values. He echoed a debating point of the past in praising as a ‘’profound truth,’’ a young father whom Mr. Reagan said he once heard discussing Communism with his daughters.
‘’I would rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under Communism and one day die no longer believing in God.’’
There was strong applause as Mr. Reagan the President delivered this line with dramatic emphasis, and an undertone of cheers could be heard in the hall, too.
‘’Let us pray for the salvation of all those who live in that totalitarian darkness,’’ the President Mr. Reagan said, adding that Americans also must not forget that Communists ‘’are the focus of evil in the modern world.’’
He then criticized unidentified people, individuals who, he said, would have the nation accept Communists ‘’at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses.’’ - https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/09/us/reagan-denounces-ideology-of-soviet-as-focus-of-evil.html
Wow. Sobering bookmark into insanity.
Our Millenials need to hear from people like this woman, every day of their lives.
The shining city on a hill is going dark.
They lived it and hated it.
The only people who seem to LOVE communism in the US are from very comfortable backgrounds.
You might find an occasional stupid poor person who wants communism, but its rare.
Like environmentalism, it's mostly a rich white person's virtue-signaling conceit.
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