Ok I think I now got the problem , the problem for many of you here is the tendency to "overkill". What i find especially funny about that is that you overkill even after someone who has real actual proof not just wikipedia articles and a bunch of anecdotes says differently.
Yes there were devices that were made badly and yes the part about the manufacturing dates is also true , but do I really have to photograph my old tv in the basement and give you the full year by year work hours to prove that also good stuff was produced in the USSR ? It just so happens to be that electronics is my thing and we have had that TV , made in 1989 by the way (a year of much turmoil) and it went on for 15 years everyday with no problems.How about that why is nobody talking about that ?
Let me tell you why because the good stuff never makes the news much like your presidential campaign only scandal after scandal because the media buys into that.
I could go into much detail it's just that then this thread would turn into a book , as I have repaired stuff from the USSR I can tell you much like nowdays back then there were better parts and worse ones , for example there was a tube amp by the name "priboi" I managed to get two such units , one had the "K" military style capacitors in the power supply the other was a different year and was supplied with the Armenian "G" caps , the G caps were literally the worst capacitors in the world , I could make a better one by rolling my chocolate tinfoil and applying some cooking oil to it.That's how bad they were , they leaked , they almost never held their rated capacitance longer than few years and god forbid if your room was warm...the Russians called then "Gavno" meaning crap literally as for their first letter G.
And so what ? Don't you have cheap crap quality stuff in the USA? For the less lucky ones who cannot afford the good stuff? I bet you do , and what does it prove , can I now say the USA is nothing but crap , would that sound as an intellectual approach ? Then I want to ask you why are you skipping the details and just focusing on what you want to focus , that is not an intellectual discussion, that is merely a constant childish battle between "No it's good" and " Yes it's bad".
I am more than fine if you folks want to talk about the shortcomings of the soviet system and I can give much proof myself as I have a real life experience of that which somewhat still lingers in the air in some areas, but I just cannot stand when someone tells an anecdote and then someone else doubles down on that anecdote with some half truths and heavily biased personal opinion.
As for the cars , I own a LADA personally , it;'s called VAZ since it was not an export model , I got it from my grandfather and restored it, not to it's original condition but simply to a condition I find satisfying , since the original body was very rusty and it was impossible to make it original , also there is no reason to because LADA was the second most mass produced car in human history right there after vw beetle , so there's plenty of good examples still around in museums and personal collections.
In order to get a car you had to stand in line and in some cases it was long , but the information given here that you were specially checked for a car is pure bullshit, you were checked before you were born so there was no need to double check you for the case of a car , think logically...
Many older folks whom I know bought a second hand car , yes the absurd fact is that they cost higher than new ones because of the shortage of production but since money wasn't that hard to get many folks simply went the easier road to save up more and buy a used one than a new one.
Also your stupid examples fall apart when some folks told me that their car was stolen and they sometimes got it back only after a few years since back in the 60's there were no computer databases and so a clever thief could get away with something like that and this just goes to prove that those background checks you are talking about is an absurd western fallacy.
If someone got some harder time to get one and his checking was longer it's because he was suspicious.And who the hell came up with that telephone conspiracy? We all had stationary phones in our houses there was nothing special about that , sure it wasn't wise to talk about politics over it and nobody did that but there is no logic behind that "in order to get a phone one must be checked etc " No really folks is this some kind of a kindergarten brigade here or what ?
You are literally showing pure stupidity and it sometimes even feels like it's done on purpose.
@zoobyshoe the bureaucracy was large yes , in part of because there needed to be all those checks on individuals going on and that requires some big workforce which then itself is checked by an even higher force in the KGB of which the KGB itself is checked so in a sense everyone checks everyone else and this is part of the reason why the system could eliminate any dissidents so efficiently.
But why are we going back to the grass soup analogies ? I really for a little while though you had opened your eyes a bit...
Do you realize that the Russian peasants were eating grass soup literally before the 1917 revolution ? Do you realize that the conditions under Czar were very bad , much like the conditions in China were not good for peasants before the Communist revolution and the same goes for many Central Asia lands that were under the British colony rule , the Russian peasants were really better off later in the Soviet years than they were back in the old factories , sure they could have been even better off if Russia would have developed a path towards something atleast resembling a market economy and some freedoms but you are very incorrect about the analogies you put forward.
The true side is that food production was declining as the USSR went along and especially in the 80's and that is simply because as to what I said earlier , the planned economy proved to be ineffective in the long term.Also I don't like your attitude towards the way you talk about dissidents , yes you too
@mheslep , I'm not saying they didn't tell the truth , but the way you always talk about them is that "oh look , this man went away from Russia , denounced it and then his sons became US citizens" there is an underlying sense in such statements which I can clearly smell from afar which says that "oh look, this is what your own people think about your country"
No it's not , the Russians fall and rise with their country and they love their country and just because someone who is too afraid or a weaker person decides to run away that doesn't reflect on the reality of how things are.
What about Snowden , why don't you call him a great man like you talk about the Soviet dissidents ? Why don't you say oh, look this great American hero who now hides in Russia and is probably used by the FSB more than a whore is used by her clients ?
Does Snowden reflect the US citizens? The liberals like him... How about Lee Harvey Oswald ? He went to the USSR and then went back to kill the president.
You only like to talk about the other side and always use that as an example to belittle the very people who worked hard and built their country.
True heroes are those who stay with what they believe in , they don't run , they don't hide , they don't travel away to write a book , we have plenty of such heroes here who fought for this land despite all the bad stuff that may have happened to the land and to themselves.Even the KGB respected such people as they saw that they have something similar to themselves into their hearts - courage to do what ordinary people are afraid to.Running is not courage.
A lady from my country criticized the soviet government all her life , she had problems due to her actions but she is fine and still alive and her sons and grandsons live here and build their lives.I'm not saying I hate anyone who decides to defect or run away , I'm just saying there is no need to praise them as some sort of above all else heroes and somehow think that they have revealed something which no one knew before.
My grandfather fought in the army in the second world war as did many of my relatives and folks from both Russia and my country , and even though our political ideas later had a direct disagreement and the soviet government oppressed us , we still fought for our ideals and respected those who laid there lives for the motherland no matter whether it's Russia or Latvia or the Czech Republic , so I have zero tolerance for traitors and those who criticize our way of life because someone who ran away told them how bad everything is.
I'm not speaking about folks like Solzhenitsyn here as he too went through much in his life and I can understand his feeling about it and I agree on many cases.
All I want to say is that there are people who say , oh look Stalin was a bad dictator because he killed so many in the war, no Stalin was a bad dictator but he did not kill many in the war , the correct way of saying this would be "Many died in the war" because they were first of all fighting for their motherland and only then when your motherland is safe from harm you get to judge it's leaders and policies.Only cowards talk about policies while silently escaping the trenches to save their own life and put their comrades and fellow soldiers in harms way.
Same as those who give oath to serve the US army don't just say , oh I refuse to fight for America because I don't like Trump or Hillary , first you defend your country and then you open your mouth about what policy you dislike.
We have men here, who work on to find the dead bodies of unidentified soldiers and when they find someone they don't care whether he has German Luftwaffe badges on his skeleton or Soviet Red Army ones or my own countries - Latvian flag on his chest , they respect everyone the same way and respectfully deliver the bodies to their relatives if ones can be found.Even if he was the enemy.This is what Americans are so lacking , this is what I personally don't like about how you come across in the way you talk , disrespectful, even though the USSR did the majority of the bloody work in defeating Nazi Germany for which by the way I think you should be thankful , because remember the USSR is not only it's policies and "grass soup" and crap this and crap that , it's also the people who lived their lives and sacrificed themselves for a better world and a better tomorrow , it's not fair when you only attach such slogans to the ones who have died on your side of the front...
and it's also not fair when all you can see about the rest of the world is how bad they live and how good you think or find yourselves in how you live.
before any of you respond take your time and think about that.
I respectfully apologize if someone here is not guilty of my assigned crimes and shortcomings to his persona , and I also hope that my ranting has made the day better or atleast more clear.
@Vanadium, that is really unheard of , If I'm correct you are from Scotland? It is rather unseen of that anyone in the west whether far west or near west wants to have a communist car , given that the Trabant is literally the most communistic of all the commie cars there are , Cars like LADA and Gaz Volga atleast came off with bits of luxury to them but the Trabant was more like a plastic scooter on 4 wheels.That being said I like them myself in a weird way , when I was in Germany I specially bought one mini model Trabant , very real in it's detail.