Posted on 05/08/2026 11:07:27 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Content evoking the Soviet era is becoming increasingly common on social media...
"Nostalgic content aimed at young people — showing Soviet-era interiors or images of panel apartment blocks, paired with audio and instructions on how they should be viewed — would have seemed bizarre 15 years ago. Now it has become a trend," says Marleen Mihhailova, a junior researcher in semiotics at University of Tartu...
What motivated Mihhailova to study the topic, however, was specifically an interest in young people's nostalgia, since they have no firsthand experience of the Soviet period.
She interviewed 10 young people born after 1990, half of whom spoke Estonian at home and half Russian...
On the one hand, people recognize that certain activities, styles or consumer items have disappeared from everyday use. On the other, recalling shared memories creates a sense of belonging and warmth.
"Nostalgia becomes especially relevant in uncertain times, such as the present," the junior researcher notes.
To a large extent, nostalgic posts contain criticism of modern life.
Looking back at the past highlights values such as slowness, privacy and durability, contrasting them with today's speed, stress and consumer society.
For example, people compare modern IKEA furniture with handmade Soviet-era items...
In a recent conference presentation, she cited the example of tube marmalade.
"I noticed that several social media groups were simultaneously sharing photos of marmalade and Kosmos extract...It turned out that a new tube marmalade product from the Polli Horticultural Research Center had indirectly triggered the wave of memories.
Tube marmalade. Screenshot from a Facebook post. Source: EESTI NSV.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.err.ee ...
That is a fact.
The Soviet Union had a problem with homelessness, I used to use it as an example of how even the soviets couldn’t stop some males from wanting to live outdoors and live as alcoholics, in other words homelessness went far beyond not having an apartment if even the soviets couldn’t stop men from doing it.
who suffered horrendous casualties, had not fought the Germans so well and had not destroyed the best of the German war machine.
And if the Soviets didn’t help to feed the German war machine from 1939 to June 21, 1941.
I knew a man who grew up in an apartment building in the Soviet Union. All the apartments on his floor had one bathroom similar to the small one in my mobile homes. One small sink, a toilet and a shower. He said that naked people would walk down the main corridor with a towel over their shoulder at all hours.
In the US he was a successful engineer working for the American division of an Israeli defense company. He hated the Soviet Union so much that when his wife wanted to go back to visit family in the Russian Republic, he refused to go. He told me, “I had nightmares that something would happen and I’d be stuck there.” His wife described it as creepy. “Everything requires a bribe.” They delayed and delayed stamping her passport and finally complained about the low pay, so she realized she had bribe them.
Congratulations?
The Russian people suffered horribly under ninety years of evil communism. Yet will always wonder how many current Americans would have not come to exist if the Russians, who suffered horrendous casualties, had not fought the Germans so well and had not destroyed the best of the German war machine. If America had to attack Europe against a relatively intact German army,wonder how many of our grandfathers and fathers would have never returned to procreate.
That is an interesting insight.
I am really glad both got out and could have a productive life free from those prior concerns.
My dad wanted me to go to Russia with him and find his mom’s village and I said no thanks.
Of course another question would have been, what if everyone just stayed out of it and let the Nazis and Bolsheviks bash each others brains in?
Of course another question would have been, what if everyone just stayed out of it and let the Nazis and Bolsheviks bash each others brains in?
There is also the question of if the Soviets developed an atom bomb before us. No war, no Manhattan project...
The Soviet Union had a problem with homelessness, I used to use it as an example of how even the soviets couldn’t stop some males from wanting to live outdoors and live as alcoholics, in other words homelessness went far beyond not having an apartment if even the soviets couldn’t stop men from doing it.
Of course it would have been better if France and Britain (and subsequently the US), stayed out of WWI, and just kept it between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. Would it really have mattered who won between them?
The general rule was 101th kilometer. The law said you had to drive the homeless this far from a major city and then you could just throw him out.
That was done often, but not always, because the Militzia didn’t want to take these long drives and instead they made the homeless hide when there was some international event.
The general rule was 101th kilometer. The law said you had to drive the homeless this far from a major city and then you could just throw him out.
That was done often, but not always, because the Militzia didn’t want to take these long drives and instead they made the homeless hide when there was some international event.
Nice thought but US industrialists helped stalin create his industrial base in the 1930s. Vast quantities of US arms flowed into the soviet union during WWII to help Stalin win the war in the east. Stalin’s men fought bravely. But they could not have won without American weapons and supplies.
In addition, the US fought the Germans in the West and the Japanese in the East.
And the Japs wanted no part in helping Hitler against the Soviets.
Commie rule was horrible shit. Less so in Estonia, because we managed to fool the russian orcs a bit and put Estonians in charge.
Still. My mother frequented the gatherings of free spirits in the 60s and then found the doctor, whose flat they visited, was put into prison for 5 years.
The reason was that he had old poetry books from independence time and he had underlined the word “Freedom”. That underlining bumped the sentence from 2 to 5.
Like what the homeless were before the name change from hoboes/winos or vagrants, to the “homeless”, they were the invisible men living outside at the railroad areas or other self created camps and zones, flop houses and such in the shadows, the winos who were kept away from the citizens and drove away as vagrants if they started getting in the way of the regular people.
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