--- Mark S <bunyak1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >Nonsense. It is because most things were almost
> free.
> >
> A person who lived in the Soviet Union would be able
> to answer better but my
> experience in the FSU in 1992 forces me to agree
> with Chris. I was a lowly
> exchange student but I lived like a king there. I
> ate at restaurants and
> drank champansky every night. I traveled around the
> western Soviet Union,
> from Piter to Yalta, on the weekends. I got my hair
> styled whenever I felt
> like it. I bought some fantastic pieces of modern
> art. Traditional crafts
> were for sale everywhere. All of this was cheap
> like borscht. Any Russian
> with the means could have done all this.
They did and could do it.
The problem with people like Brad and Sachs is that they have/had absolutely no idea about what life was actually like in the Soviet Union. What they have/had is vague ideas culled from a mixture of Cold War ideology, approximate economic models obtained by Soviet-watchings economists (who were observing a closed country that classed economic data as a state secret -- no warning bells from that, anyone?) and a thin layer of self-interested English-speaking Russians. 4.8% of the Russian population speaks English. Plus maybe "I spent a week in Leningrad once in 1982. The food was really awful."
There's also the strange idea that if you don't have access to fancy consumer goods at an easily affordable price, you therefore have "nothing to buy." Except radios, TVs, washing machines, stereos, typewriters, cars (gotta save for that one), LPs, cassette tapes, clothes, BOOKS (Russian apartments are lined with them), plane tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, food, taxi fare, liquor, children's toys, cigarettes, musical instruments, theater and ballet tickets (another big item in Russia), trips to the movies, etc. etc. etc.
I personally don't know anyone over 40 who doesn't miss the Soviet way of life. OK, one person, but she has an unusual life history.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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