Posted on 01/01/2013 4:46:39 PM PST by MinorityRepublican
Edited on 01/01/2013 4:56:50 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Hard times: Eighteen-year-old prostitute Katya scours the street for work as a police car drives past in Moscow in 1991 shortly before the collapse of the USSR
These shocking pictures may look like something out of the Great Depression - but in fact they show life in the last years of the Soviet Union, less than three decades ago.
Shop shelves were often bare, it was normal to have to join a long queue if you wanted to buy groceries and many of the people looked ground down after a century of desperate poverty.
The dismal state of the USSR's economy, during a time of rapidly improving living standards in the West, was a result of its dogmatic Communist political system, which stifled free enterprise and stopped the country moving on from its feudal past.
As these images show, by the 1980s that system was close to collapse, as Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalising reforms did little more than open the door to ever louder clamours for change - and on Boxing Day 1991, just a few years after these photos were taken, the Soviet Union was finally dissolved.
She is fine dang what a cutie. Also this is coming soon to Main Street USA
Coming to a country near you soon.
Things weren’t much better in the soviet union in he best of times.
That cop car sure aint a Crown Vic
and we’re allowing this to happen here
they’re doing everything they can to transfer the country’s wealth to asia as fast as they can... while making us a debtor nation for decades
The Russians have always been ruled by Thugs and gangsters. And so it is again.
Some very good pictures/photographs there. Faces of brave people is what I see. Orderly, too. They’ve lived this way their whole lives. I hope they fared well and are doing better now.
The softies in this country are in for a wake up call like no other when that stuff starts here.
There is much to learn and study about the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are clues there to our future.
One point to consider is that NO ONE wanted to put the USSR back together again. NO ONE will want to put the USA back together either..............................
Back in the ‘90s I worked with a gal just over from Russia (striking blonde). She told of the following:
1) Home deliveries of milk were uncertain - it depended upon whther the milkman/company paid off the mafia to allow them to deliver.
2) When you bought broccoli, half of it was dirt - no squeaky clean stuff like you see here.
3) Stand alone drink dispensers of sweet tea had a tin cup on a chain. You used part of your drink to rinse out the cup before you drank - no cups dispensed, only the tea.
4) Her mom came with her. The first time they entered a supermarket, her mom started screaming. Manager, et al came over to see what was the matter. Mom was overwhelmed at all the food available and freaked out..
How long before we are there?
Mark
An accurate and very important point, to which I will add that quite a few rich Rat opportunists (Soros, Clintons) sprung into action with plans to loot Russia and Eastern Europe, for what was left.
They will do the same to America.
A great read on this is David Remnick’s “Lenin’s Tomb. The Last Days Of The Soviet Empire’’.
I know someone who used to go to the former USSR in the 90s. He brought back such stories.......of...
treating diphtheria for the 1st time (he’s a doctor)
old women who had to choose between heat/rent and food
hot water coming from 1 central source in a big city
people not knowing what Tylenol was
people never having seen Band aids but knowing what they were
big cities with dirt roads
...and on and on.
Ask the guy wearing the 1997 t-shirt, he knows what’s gonna happen
Interesting observation, something I had never thought about. Do you suppose our States would become countries?
Reminds me of the movie, ‘Moscow On The Hudson.” Robin Williams’ character goes into the supermarket, asks the manager where’s the line for coffee. Manager says, ‘no line, coffee’s in aisle three.” Williams, in disbelief, starts reading off all the coffee brands, finally collapsing on the floor in an anxiety attack.
Why did even the hardest-core liberal in America think that was a system that "worked"?
Yes most leftists that believe this crap were from middle and upper clases, but didn't they SEE how the average Soviet lived?
Even during our great depression you didn't see people like this. And this was the Soviet Union "heyday". Not like things looked any different in 1971 or 1951.
long lines and empty shelves in the worker’s paradise of the ussr? impossible.
next thing we’ll hear is that the north korean communists are having problems.
The Daily Mail is perpetuating a very subtle but big journalistic lie with this article, that this was the tail end of the failing Soviet Union, but otherwise it was okay. No. Things sucked there bad for seventy years, and the new Brit version of centralized government/collectivism won’t be any better.
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