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.