As for the oppression bit, the satellite states of the USSR were fairly ruthlessly kept in check, lots of very bad things happened there, more than we will probably ever know about and there are definitely examples of scientists that were forced to work on projects that they did not want to work on, such as Theremin.
I think that relatively to other professions, engineering was actually prestigious. I was on awe of my uncle and father who were engineers and wanted to be like them. American kids today want to either play professional sports, be lawyers, CEO, or doctors. In ex USSR engineering was a relatively good profession to have without having to necessarily be involved too much into the party politics.
The perks were no more coercieve than having health insurance tied to the job + mortgage payments in America.
> As for the oppression bit, the satellite states of the USSR were fairly ruthlessly kept in check, lots of very bad things happened there, more than we will probably ever know about and there are definitely examples of scientists that were forced to work on projects that they did not want to work on, such as Theremin.
That is true and that is a serious problem. We are yet to have the equivalent of Nuremberg trials for ex Soviet Union apartchiks and those who co-operated with them.
I am not excusing them on a absolute moral ground. On a relative moral ground, I would like Americans to stop thinking their empire is less coersive and repressive. It treated many countries around the world very brutally, it installed ruthless fascist dictators all through South America and Asia. They are still fighting wars in the Middle East and "brave" drone pilots in Langley, VA are risking their lives daily driving to work so they can play video-games and with a push of a joystick putton assasinate individual we'll never know or hear about in a country we are not even at war with...
So yes, I am for critisizing imperialism and oppression, but I am for doing so for all the imperialism and oppression not just the ones that the popular propaganda machine wants to critisize.
We're in agreement there.
> They are still fighting wars in the Middle East and "brave" drone pilots in Langley, VA are risking their lives daily driving to work so they can play video-games and with a push of a joystick putton assasinate individual we'll never know or hear about in a country we are not even at war with...
And that's a huge problem, and a very bad step to take. The bigger the distance between the opponents the bigger the chance of both fuck-ups and a de-humanizing effect.
> So yes, I am for critisizing imperialism and oppression, but I am for doing so for all the imperialism and oppression not just the ones that the popular propaganda machine wants to critisize.
Trying to get people to open their eyes to the faults of the country that they dearly love is a very uphill battle.
But if you think about Woz as "I inspired many to become engineers for engineering's sake" then you'd be surprised by sheer amount of engineering talent in eastern countries (I'm a central european myself) that got inspired by different tutors, mentors, tinkerers... Not to mention underfunded Soviet engineers that managed to build these wonderful machines of war - that could compete with US machinery.
AFAIK Engineering was always encouraged in east - It was "Liberal Arts" that were oppressed and eastern management stinks - even more than western does.
I understand that we love to paint everything in ex-Soviet Union with wide black brush stokes, but speaking from personal experience that is just inaccurate.
That did not include engineers only. It was true for everyone. But that doesn't mean people were crying on the streets and committing suicide.
Engineers that never participated or cared to participate in dissent or political activities didn't have it bad. No homes with 2 car garages but a decent standard of living. A good apartment, healthcare, 1+ month seaside resort vacation, health care, education for your children. All those thing were included.
> Did Soviet engineers and scientists enjoy a fairly reasonable standard of living? Many did. But the comparison to the US and health care is ludicrous on its face.
They had a significantly better health even if they became unemployed than someone in US would have if they became unemployed (which is none at all).
> But the comparison to the US and health care is ludicrous on its face.
Why is it ridiculous? I will take ex Soviet health care rather than no health care or healthcare that results in you having to sell your house and live on the streets. They had good doctors and stressed preventive care just as much as emergency care (which is the case in US nowadays for many who cannot afford health insurance).
You can bash the political system all you want. I am with you with that. But I don't think you know what you are talking about when it comes to other stuff.
If you don't mind me asking, have you lived there or are you just taking an wild guess?
> Did Soviet engineers and scientists enjoy a fairly reasonable standard of living? Many did.
I thought that is the whole point of this discussion thread...
You'd say that the days of having to misrepresent the situation 'on the other side' of the iron curtain were long over but it's far from that.
Let me try to give an outsiders perspective:
- crime:
- nearly non-existent, except when perpetrated by officials
- not quite as good as the top schools in the west for
many subjects but *very* good in some, such as math,
engineering and such
- non-existent. For everybody, no matter how low on the
totem pole there was a job, even if it meant bad pay
and long hours. But bad pay and long hours are to be
found in plenty of places, the USA and Canada are no
exception to this
- free. And of a reasonable standard. Ok, you wouldn't
be able to get some fancy surgery so your life
expectancy wasn't quite up to it from that point
of view, but on the whole I would say it was simpler,
more humane and in many ways better than some of the
more extreme cases in the west (Terri Schiavo anybody?)
- difficult to gauge. People that I knew when living in
the east block compared to the west before the fall
of the wall and the 'iron curtain' were on the whole
as happy or happier than those that I knew in the west.
Friendships were real and lasted a lifetime in many
cases, family ties were fairly closely knit and
children were on the whole loved and safe, much safer
than those 'free' children in the west. Again,
officials would occasionally mess things up for the
people but in this respect people did form a block.
- Even though the punishments were severe there was a
lively underground in the form of samizdat (sp?) and
'culture houses' were movies from the west were shown
to friends. And not just the Hollywood movies, also
those from other countries. So the people there had a
limited view of what was going on in the rest of the
world through the official channels, which mostly
read like 'good news' and 'motivational' stories.
(I recall one front page article about a girl
that had broken the record in nursing her kid or
something to that effect), it was seriously delayed
but between the drip feed of information from
travelers, radio free europe, the bbc world service
and a whole pile of other channels people were
remarkably well informed.
- about the same as in the west 25 years earlier. So
colour tv's were fairly common but so were b&w sets
relatively few people with a quality car, plenty
of two-strokes (trabant, wartburg, syrena, polonez
zil, dacia and other brands that you may have never
heard of) Plenty of stuff only available by waiting
for years, lots of stuff that you'd take for granted
in the west inexplicably unavailable, not unexceptional
for 'hamstering' behaviour of a few individuals to
cause shortages in for instance toilet paper, light
bulbs and stockings. Very lively black market. For the
most part people had fairly healthy food on the table,
but they were structurally short on things like fruit
and fresh vegetables out of season.
- your job is, unless you are a lucky person and you're
in some prestigious place probably terribly boring
tons of layers of bureaucracy slow everything down to
a crawl. Procuring the simplest of items required to
do your job require endless forms and always at least
three signatures and two stamps. Promotion is hardly
ever, and when it happens it tends to ignore your
proficiency in favor of someone with better connections.
On the whole the 'general workforce' takes work for
granted and produces enough to get by but stellar
performances are the exception. If you want to advance
there is a path, but it leads through the 'party', and
if you're good at something then doors can be opened
provided you dance to the tune. If you're in to sports
then you can go quite far too.
- there is a low-key paranoia that pervades society,
don't let you guard down in front of strangers,
you never know if they're taking names or informing.
Everybody knows somebody that knows somebody that
disappeared, but hardly anybody knows somebody that
disappeared (and why), but it definitely does happen.
That is what I miss. We used to spend more time together. It is not that we didn't work hard, we did, but there was just more time to spend with the family and friends. Then after the collapse for some reason people, even in my extended family, changed. They started hating each other more. There is less sencerity and closeness. It is hard to explain.
Interesting that you noticed that as well. I thought it only happened to my family....
I hope you find the picture on the whole accurate, it's from my no doubt faulty recollection, I hope I haven't romanticised or glossed over the bad parts. There are plenty more paragraphs that I could add about for instance the army, the jokes, the police, the drinking and so on, but I think it's enough like this.
Two points of comparison I can give:
(1) In America, members of my immediate family have political views that are in some way wacky or out of the mainstream, and we've never worried for a second about prison being a consequence.
(2) When we first came to America, we were literally on welfare and lived in a poor/ghetto neighborhood, until my parents learned enough English to get good jobs. Yet this was still a much higher standard of living than what we'd had in Poland, where both of my parents worked as engineers. Much larger apartment, more food, better clothes. No more ration cards for meat and chocolate. Stores that, instead of tiny and half-empty, are giant and piled high with goods. Oranges and bananas just lying around in stores as if they are everyday things, not rare exotic luxuries.
(3) On health care - there were many extremely well-trained and competent doctors in Poland. But availability of equipment and medicine was very extremely poor and hospitals were not well maintained by US standards. Also, medical knowledge among typical doctors, especially on rare diseases or chronic conditions, seemed far behind the US.
(4) I've been back to Poland a few times since the fall of communism. Conditions have very visibly and vastly improved. Apartments are still tiny, but there's plenty of stores piled with goods, bustling cafes and restaurants, and so forth. Construction going on everywhere. Cars are now mostly quality European, America, Japanese and Korean brands. No more Communist-era junkers. Poland now meets the usual European standard of fresh produce that is substantially better quality than what you can get in the typical US supermarket. Western media is everywhere. Many of the cities look quite lively and vibrant. The city that I think most bears the scars of past suffering is Warsaw - it was completely destroyed by the Nazis (particularly including any historic or cultural buildings) and rebuilt by the Communists. Check out the Palace of Culture and Science for another marvel of Soviet engineering: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Palace_of_Culture_and_Sc....
(5) In the US, where I work in the computer industry, I believe I have a higher standard of living overall than probably even the top party leaders in Communist-era Poland.
(6) Math and science education was quite good compared to the US, at the elementary and secondary level, but not at the college level. I think this is a European cultural thing, not a Communist thing, it remains true today, and is true in most European countries. American math & science education in elementary school and high school is a joke, excepting special magnet schools or AP classes.
(7) My impression is that the Communist era is somewhat more romanticized in Russia than in other former Eastern Bloc countries. Particularly the more Western-oriented countries like Poland, Czech and Hungary see that period as one of being imperialist vassal states.
Overall, there's no way, not even the slightest chance, that I'd trade the "free" health care and "non-existent" unemployment for the freedom and wealth of America, or even for the way Poland is now.
Yes, they had sharashkas up until 1953. There is no excuse for that, but implying that all engineering was done there is just ridiculuous. It is like saying everyone was stupid and any work that was done was just because someone put a gun to their head. That kind of a message is disingenuous at best and smells like propaganda at worse.
Nevermind the fact that Typhoon was commissioned 30 years later after sharashkas were closed. So it doesn't even apply to the article at hand.
However, if you are implying some kind of American moral superiority then look at how Americans used Nazi rocket engineers. Also, they appropriated and used most of the research done by the Japanese at Unit 731 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731. There were no Nuremberg trials for those (except some trials in Russia) and some of those working there ended up as heads of big pharma in Japan after the war.
You said engineers were not prisoners. This was not the case, and I provided a counterexample. That's all. I have no idea where you found anything in my post about American moral superiority. As for Soviet scientific progress, I also made no other points in my original post — but I will take the opportunity to do so now.
Yes, they had sharashkas up until 1953.
The Wikipedia article states that. Do you really believe that Khruschev, just because he chose to oust Stalin, gave up on such a convenient source of scientific labor? Keep in mind that history in the Soviet Union was always a complete fabrication dictated by the latest Party ideology. While I don't question that many forced labor camps closed, I seriously doubt that those closings were universal.
I would be willing to bet you that engineers working on the Typhoon class submarines were not prisoners. In general engineering was an esteemed and respected profession. Think lawyers and doctors in US. These are all general statement relating to the situation in Soviet Union based on a personal experience.
Your comment made it sound like "no, that is _wrong_ most engineers were prisoners".
That is just simply wrong. There we some engineers who were also prisoners. But most of them were not.
Those engineers that worked on building submarines were doing very well. That was a very prestigious job. Again think about someone being a stock broker or a corporate lawyer in US.
> The Wikipedia article states that. Do you really believe that Khruschev, just because he chose to oust Stalin, gave up on such a convenient source of scientific labor?
Alright the history of the Soviet Union might have been obscured and covered in secrets but you forgot one important thing -- the Soviet Union fell apart. It lasted only 70 years and people from the 50s are still alive. So no matter how much the Soviets tried to rewrite the history, as long as there are still millions of eye witnesses it is just not possible.
> I have no idea where you found anything in my post about American moral superiority.
You are right, you didn't say it. I put those words in your mouth because I thought you implied it. The reason I thought that is that your perception of the situation in the ex-Soviet Union, especially as far as the naval engineering goes, is completely wrong. Being that you refuse to admit that it is wrong, leads me to believe that you are just drumming up the same boring Cold War propaganda that we've heard before from the Americans -- stuff like "in Soviet Union everyone was in a Gulag", ... , "any progress was made just because people were prisoners and forced to work",... and so on.
I am not excusing or romanticizing the ex Soviet empire. I am glad it fell, I didn't like. I want to be able to write whatever crap I want online without the fear of someone knocking on my door and so on. BUT painting everything with a broad black brush is just wrong. Life in the Soviet Union was not hell, people were not crying on the streets, everyone had their basic needs taken care of, crime was law and so on. No matter how much we want to hate it, we cannot re-write that, because that as well would just as dishonest and wrong.
> It's surprisingly easy to meet a budget in a totalitarian state...
That is true, but not because engineers are working in a Gulag. It is because of how a central-planning economy works.
Now of course you can argue that the whole country was one big Gulag and there is truth to that, but engineers working on these submarines probably were much, much better off than peasants in some corner of Siberia...