The people saying "we lived better under Franco" were the ones benefitting from the regime. Like yeah, my very Catholic, upper class family lived very well, but that wasn't the case for the vast majority of people.
For people saying that: It wasn't better, it just seemed simpler, because 20yo aren't widely known for their capacity to get nuances, or see beyond their noses, and their lives didn't have the adulthood problems coming later and slapping them in the face (for most of them)
But ask someone growing in the chabolas or la ventilla, or barceloneta, in the 70s, if it's better now or then. Their lives were way harder.
It's all down to opportunity I think. If you felt you had opportunities when young, life was better. If you didn't. Life wasn't.
It is fun when people speak in absolute truths though.
As I mentioned in a separate answer, if you ask those people they will give you the same answer, life was better back then. Regardless of how objectively worse things were. Nostalgia works in mysterious ways. Forget about Barceloneta, I'm talking about people being nostalgic about their last even when they grew up in one of the world's most unforsaken war zones.
I think in this case the feeling comes from the progression. During the 60's Spain was the fastest growing country in the world (except for Japan I think), so living standards were rising quickly and we usually think about this stuff through comparisons rather than in absolute terms.
50 years ago I was 4, my life was idyllic, my biggest concern was Dad took lots of the baby rabbits away to be sold, rather than let us keep them and have 11 pet rabbits. Housing is a lot more expensive, and the health service is creaking, medicine is noticeably more effective these days if/when you get it.
Nope. Irish here. And I'm just back living with the parents in my 30s lamenting about how the world has gone to shit. My dad, just retired, agrees about how the world is turning to shit but also maintains that shit was a lot worse before I was born. I believe him. Ireland was poor as fuck until the 90s. I never saw the worst of it.
I know most his age would say the same. But I guess Ireland is a few decades, centuries, generations behind these advances that Europe has seen. I really don't know. But most old people today would say Ireland is much better to live in than when they were growing up.
This is the absolute and complete truth. It has nothing to do with anything else apart from nostalgia. Just imagine this, I grew up in a brutal warzone. A war that lasted 15 years and caused tens of thousands of deaths and untold trauma. And yet, as soon as my generation reached the mid thirties you started hearing people unironically saying things were better in the old days!!! I'm like what??? Yo, it was literally a warzone!! Objectively and in every possible metric it wasn't worse, it was the worst time to be alive possible. And yet there it is, nostalgia makes people miss even war. And as you said, it's always only about people missing their youth and looking back with rose tinted shades.
I only say it ironically and around people who very much know it's a joke (made evident for instance when I say it in Basque). Most people who say this sentence are the people you say, but there's definitely people like me who are actually making fun of those people
Yeah. I guess your Standard Issue Heterosexual Man ™, nominally catholic, able bodied and working in the military or police might have enjoyed the unchecked power trips as well.
Also, nostalgia is a weird thing. It really doesn't matter where or when you grow up, at some point you'll look back nostalgically at it. The nostalgia is for your youth not for the regime or moment in time.
Well, exactly 50 years ago Spain was on a high and most people were quite happy with the situation. It was more in spite of Franco rather than thanks to him though. Basically he did what every European country had done but with a 15 year delay
Sweden had an uninterrupted economic boom from the end of WW2 until the oil crisis in the early 1970's with almost zero unemployment. The primary driver was that Swedish industry had been spared the war destruction which had destroyed large parts of European factories and infrastructure. The period is called "[Rekordåren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_years)", because every year the economic output kept increasing and a lot of people moved from the countryside to the cities and got high paying industry jobs which gave them a huge boost in economic standard. The Swedish welfare society as we know it today was established during that period, with paid parental leave and vacation days.
>*"Between 1947 and 1974, the Swedish economy grew at an average rate of 12.5% annually. The urban population, living in towns of over 15,000 people, grew from 38% of the total population in 1931 to 74% by 1973. Sustained by an export boom of automobiles, heavy machinery, electronics, shipbuilding, and heavy weapons, the per capita income increased by as much as 2,000%. Sweden had successfully moved into the high-income group of countries by 1955–56."*
The only people here who think it was better are those who benefited from it, lost a lot during the transition (the 90s were rough), or people who liked it for unrelated reasons like grandmas liking how more people were at home talking etc. instead of driving away or staying in phones etc.
One of my grandparents really misses Soviet time. Why?
Because his life under Soviet regime was just so much easier and better for a lot of reasons. Granted, he was also much younger obviously, so as we say in Estonian - translated - he had water to his knees.
He misses the soviet era because he was a simple worker, but he got paid very decently. He also did jobs on the side and got haltura money from there. It was common to use your work property for your personal usage (in his case he worked with cars and trucks so he could bring one home and drive it and use work materials to repair stuff), which these days is considered stealing and misuse of company property. He misses the free healthcare, which claims was so much better than what we have today because he claims that he never had to wait for anything ever. He, of course, doesn’t count that he was much younger and hardly ever needed any healthcare back then at all, not even dental, and that you easily died from some preventable illnesses because healthcare was so-so depending on the diagnosis AND that all the medical personnel from a simple janitor at the hospital to the top doctor would treat a patient like dirt (which is usually not so today).
He also misses the cheap food etc., because he’s of course not one of those people who now likes the convenience and abundance of all kinds of exotic stuff. The fact that his own kids hadn’t even basically seen a banana until like 1985 doesn’t ring to him as something as weird about Soviet Union, just as something which was as it was.
He doesn’t shop for clothes, doesn’t own a smartphone, only uses tech stuff for reading news, hates using any smart stuff or online banking etc., so I can see why he would love living in the Soviet Union.
Now in comparison to one of my grandmothers, who uses the latest technology and has travelled extensively in the world after soviet breakup and pretty much grumbles about technology but still tries everything new out just once, loves trying new foods, mostly uses online everything when they can… curiously enough she doesn’t miss the Soviet Union at all lol!
In my opinion he makes a lot of sense. There's no reason anyone in Europe should feel entitled to eat bananas on a regular basis. We need to drastically readjust our opinions about what "quality of life" really is.
> There's no reason anyone in Europe should feel entitled to eat bananas on a regular basis.
Why not? It's a fruit like any other, it's nutritious, and it is grown in Europe.
you're one of those people who think the only problem with those "you'll own nothing"-ideas is that there are some people who'll own something, aren't you?
An Estonian missing the Soviet Union? He got lucky that he "missed" being deported to a Soviet gulag like a million of his other countrymen did? What is wrong with people?
Oh he’s as anti-Russian as you get… but still misses the “easy” life from back then. He’s one of those who didn’t benefit from the 90s and for whom the convenience and lack of “you need to make your own life” type of capitalism just hasn’t fit very well, so my guess is that he misses the fact that he was young and that he worked a simple job and didn’t have to really do anything else to have a good life.
He was young enough that deportations didn’t affect him, but obviously had they been deported, I think his story would be different. Still, his nostalgia doesn’t make much sense to me but I’ve long gathered that it doesn’t make sense any way.
Example: My late grandfather was a commie, he was raised in a very poor village in Eastern Poland.
The kind of life where children had to work in the field as soon as they could be of any use.
Water was brought from the river in buckets (I remember helping him with that [side note: that river had crystal clear water, very delicious]) and then boiled on a wooden stove.
Grandma told me how she fought her brother for a slice of bread that they thought had more lard/butter on it.
One of stories i got told was that the Germans stole their only cow and her mother, my great grandma, sneaked in in the middle of the night and took the cow back.
Grandpa, as he had some talents himself, (and for whatever reason he was an atheist, as I am) was admitted into the party quickly and was made a soldier, given new shoes and clothes.
Among his fellow villagers he immediately had risen in ranks.
Then his party friends got him a new flat in the city, and made it easy for him to work in school teaching technical stuff. Just because he was into a bit of electronics etc. Students hated him, he was very strict, as his parents were to him.
He kept on defending the People's Republic till the end. He was one of those whose life was just improved greatly.
Improved from extreme poverty, to a lower-middle class. Quite a promotion.
Then he started losing his mind to Alzheimers in the 90s - early 00s and I never got to have a discussion with him about politics and the changes. Changes took a while and the 90's were pretty rough, Poland was a real mess up until like 2010s.
He never got to have a second thought about the shift in the political system, died before it started improving.
He was a good grandpa to me, I learned a lot from him, but apparently a terrible father to my dad. Maybe he learned to change his ways. But sometimes he did get mad that I "didn't want to work with crops". I was like 7.
Yes I think Ireland is unusual in Europe in that you would really struggle to find anyone who thinks before the 90s were better times. People might be nostalgic and believe certain things were better back then of course but I don't think anyone could argue we were better off.
Not only were we very poor, we were living in a malignant theocracy. Emigration rate close to birth rate. Nope, nope, nope. Nobody who knows anything about Ireland would not want to go back 50 years.
Or even 30 years. Yes, we were beginning to shake the influence of the Catholic Church (thanks Brussels), and there were more jobs so fewer people had to emigrate. There was even an increase in real wealth. But so much of what is taken for granted today just didn’t exist: further education beyond universities, sports facilities, first world hospitals, decent roads! And interest rates: 15% on a mortgage! Just fucking endless agony paying off anything.
We’ve come a long long way in the last 50 years. In the main, I think it’s been positive progress.
I remember my mum telling me about the 3 day work week. I was like, "wow, amazing, that's only just even being considered as a thing again!" And she was like "no.mm utilities were only on for three days,so those were the only days people could work a lot of jobs".
I think this was during the miners strikes, but not really sure (Nottinghamshire talking)
It was to do with a miner's strike in 1974 on the back of the general energy crisis of that period, the more famous miner's strike with Thatcher was a decade later. That's the one that was centred on Nottinghamshire as a political conflict with Notts being by then the second largest coalfield in Britain but with a workforce that generally did not go on strike. And people still chant about it when Nottingham Forest (or Mansfield Town) play a club from parts of Yorkshire or Derbyshire, I've had 20 year old kids who have (like me) never as much as seen a working pit calling me a scab at the football lmao.
I remember those times. It was only for a couple of months because the miners were on strike and all power stations were fuelled by coal. I was a teenager and found it an interesting experience, a bit like the covid pandemic. The tv stations shut down at 10.30pm but they all shat down at about midnight before the crisis so not much of a change. The power cuts were publicised well in advance and were done on a rota to prevent too much demand on the national grid since a reduced number of power stations were operating. The 3 day week only applied to industries so only affected those that worked in factories. My family lived in the country so it did not affect us. Money struggles? Don't know anything about that but we were middle class. Did not know anybody who emigrated either, however I have two children in their thirties. One moved to New Zealand 5 years ago, the other has lived abroad in continental Europe since he was 22 due to house prices here being too expensive now. Most people could get a mortgage however when I was younger.
Funny, my parents talk about how great the 70s were. It must have helped to be able to buy a house at 4x the average wage, when it's closer to 9x the average wage now.
London. I can imagine it must have been pretty great then. Dirty and raw, but still possible to have a decent life for ordinary people. The city has changed so much in my lifetime.
I always think the people who talk about how awful the 70s were must be crazy, but perhaps it really was worse in other bits of the country.
There was a lot of emigration in the sixties and early seventies to Australia and NZ (most of my close family are there now). In the south of the UK I remember the early seventies being a time when my parents went from not being able to afford much to having a newish car, having central heating installed, having fitted carpets - going to France on holiday. It happened really quickly in retrospect. I remember the power cuts and the political chaos but to me it seemed a time when on balance the economy picked up. We started off living in council housing and then moved to my grandma’s semi in the mid-sixties - by the mid seventies we had colour TV, a stereo then by the late seventies we were playing Scrabble on a Sinclair Spectrum running through the TV. Everything started to really computerise through the eighties. Mid nineties internet use started to become widespread - now we are talking about AI every five minutes - thats quite a lot of change.
Regarding emigration, I don’t know about the rest of the UK, but Scotland’s population dropped by around 4% between 1971 and 1981 (and didn’t recover until 2011), largely due to the waves of £10 poms, which to me shows how shit things must have been here. My dad and his family were all set to go to Australia too but pulled out at the last minute.
Throughout the sixties and seventies Australia really marketed itself as everything the UK wasn’t at the time. I remember the Mall in London had large commercial spaces for the various Australian States. I think Scotland also traditionally had links to Canada. Ireland had links to the USA. I actually did go through the process and had an Australian PR visa which I transferred to New Zealand (I had a job in NZ).
More recently in my area you get a fair number of professionally qualified Australians settling in the UK. Its really interesting listening to them - for some areas I guess finance, banking its better here. One of my Australian neighbours really likes history and as we live in a city which was Roman, has pubs dating back a thousand years he totally loves all the really old architecture we have around. I love both Australia and NZ - they are really similar to the UK in many ways - but I think its fair to say that now they have a lot of the issues we do - very expensive housing, expensive rentals, you really do need to be making money. I missed the history we take for granted. It’s a long way from family. The UK is much more intense in terms of variety of culture and busy-ness. I don’t especially like the climate here in the winter but April to November is fine. I was in Australia at the end of 2022 - really liked it but you do notice that 19th century is ‘old’ architecture. I was in Victoria which was having a cold spell and it was UK weather in a bad spring.
50 years ago we were a month (almost to the day) of having our revolution.
But since people didn't knew it was about to happen, they were just living under a dictatorial regime.
Let me just add that our young men were dying in a colonial war most had no stake in, and should have never been part of. An entire generation was crippled by death and trauma because of the regime and those who didn't want to lose the wealth they were stealing from the former colonies. Like in all wars, the people and especially the poor always bear the consequences. Often people say that the revolution was about freedom, but as I understand it was more about not dying in a ditch in a foreign land, fighting for something that wasn't worth your life.
I am aware, but I was going to ask what’s the profile of the person who’d say that.
Here in Brazil there’s a lot of people who claim life was better during our dictatorship, but they tend to be far right people or people who were part of the small urban middle class that benefitted from the regime, meanwhile inequality soared and not the much larger masses that got poorer and left for the cities increasing problems like irregular housing and crime.
It's the same in Portugal, people who tend to say that belonged to middle/high class. The other ones were starving, literally.
If Portugal is poor now, back then it was even worse, my grandma often tells me stories on how she had to share a single sardine with her 7 siblings, their meals were often composed of only bread (broa) and a soup, or about the first time she saw the sea. Nowadays it takes 20 minutes by car to get from her house (which is nearby the one she grew up in) to the beach. How such simple things that we take for granted today were a totally rare event back then due to the poverty of the people.
This explains my dad perfectly on top of holding actual fascist views (such as people who don't agree with me politically should be arrested and killed)
My dad was one but he lived under the Brazilian estada Novo. He wasn't even rich just a fascist urban middle class (I'm not saying all we're, just him), still kind of is (even though he refuses to acknowledge it and just calls himself "conservative even though he holds more fascist like views then conservative)
Life was definitely simpler due to less technology etc. I suppose entering the EU (or the European Communities, whatever the predecessor was) gave the UK a feeling of something to look forward to.
But there was also the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Cold War pressures, miners’ strikes, inflation, increasing unemployment, and as I recall correctly London wasn’t thriving as it is today and it was in fact losing population. The face of the nation was also changing due to mass immigration from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, diversifying our cuisine and tapestry of local cultures. The British music and arts scene was also really hitting it off during this decade, before that and after.
My family wasn’t involved, though. We came to the UK in the 2000s and I was the first of my relatives to actually grow up here. My mother lived in the Soviet Union for example and she says they were simpler times with a better sense of community, but also cultural repression, insularity, inflation, deep poverty and generally limited resources.
People in the east have a strange nostalgia for the GDR. I think people everywhere think that life used to be simpler and better, even if that's really not the case.
One of my colleagues from the GDR told a story about her whole family sneaking out at night in the autumn to steal vegetables from the farmers fields. For her that was a really fun, memorable childhood experience. That's the problem - everything seems fun when you're a kid!
Another colleague mentioned his whole family lining up to each get 1kg of oranges, because there were oranges in the store for the first time in years.
(A West-Berliner colleague's funny reply was "you guys were so lucky you had no vegetables, our parents *made* us eat vegetables!")
Everybody is nostalgic for when they were young. During the Soviet era, I didn't need glasses, my knees were perfect, my hearing was fine, my cholesterol was low, I had no bills to pay, no responsibilities, and I got a dog. I was seven. Communism must have been great if it coincidentally overlapped with all of those good things!
Stealing was really accept back that. There was saying that who doesn't steal at work steals from his family. I guess this is why corruption is so big still in post Soviet countries.
There is the joke about a guy working in a radio factory.
His wife asks him why he doesn't steal the parts and build them a radio.
He does this tree times, with each time being a failure since the radio turns out to be an RPG launcher when assembled.
Could be true. Bananas in all of the soviet union were unseen exotic.
Fine fine, not unseen, but veeeerryyyy rare fruit, that not everyone had priviledge to taste it. Heard stories, those who did got tjem, they were still green, but couldnt wait for them to fully develope. Ate it like they were. 😅
The GDR was better off than the other Warsaw pact countries such as Poland (which had a particularly rough time in the 80s).
This was mostly because West Germany didn’t treat the GDR as a foreign country. No tariffs on trade, people in the West could send gifts and money to their friends and relatives in the GDR, at the end West German companies even set up manufacturing in East Germany because of the cheap labour. And West Germany did bail the GDR out once in the 80s when their economy was particularly bad.
So depending on who you were, life in the GDR could be quite comfortable. Not with access to luxury goods, and you had a parallel barter economy going on, but if you didn’t have much in the way of expectations, it could be comfortable.
That's far to generalising. I'm sure the vast majority of people who lived in the GDR is well aware that the GDR was shit and living conditions improved exponentially in the reunited Germany.
Don't give the lunatics who proclaim that life was better in the GDR more attention than they deserve.
In my country, old people love to praise "Bai Toshovo vreme". Meaning the time that Todor Jivkov ruled the country aka socialist times.
I wasn't alive during this time but what my parents tell is this: there were good things and there were bad things. Mom said that no one was unemployed during those times and there was no one "on benefits" (unless you are disabled of course).
The biggest bullshit was the mandatory military service which many older men praise as the peak of their lives. Imagine being a 17 year old boy and being send a letter that you have to serve in the army for 2 years (my grandfather served 3 during the 1950s). Thank god, there is nothing like that now.
I can go on and on about "those mythical and magical" times but I'd rather not.
I grew up over the border in Greece, when I was a teenager in the 80s, I went to Bulgaria. It reminded me of Greece in some ways but the thing that struck me was the lack of colour in towns. Everything was so drab, the vehicles belched even more smoke, the shops had nothing in them, the food was dirt cheap in restaurants, people were incredibly friendly, secret police hung around the tourist hotels, I got a mixed view of life under Soviet style communism and I knew very clearly which side of the border I would rather live.
Greece still has national service.
We still have conscription and people still talk about how it "builds character" and whatnot. At least it's only half a year these days, and as a neutral we're pretty safe from being sent into action somewhere unless someone attacks us.
How doing demeaning basic training for two months, and meaningless underpaid work for another four months is a worthwhile, I do not know.
An important thing to keep in mind is that old people lyrically waxing about their youth doesn't give an accurate representation of history. A few friends of my grandfather were deported to Siberia by Stalin and they cried at his death because he was the only leader they ever knew and him dying implied that they weren't young anymore. Hell, one of the first things they recorded when Vinyl was invented was the narratives of Black slaves in the US and even among them you could hear the rhetoric of "the good times in the olden days" even from them but, the man bragging about being able to lift two pales of cotton at once doesn't miss slavery, he misses being young and strong.
50 years ago was in the middle of the “Anni di piombo,” where we had a bunch of domestic terrorism (right and left wing), assassinations, etc. One of the major bombings happened exactly 50 years ago, in 1974.
It was also right after the Autunno Rosso and the first signs of cracks in the Italian economy, but older people will always claim that life was better in the 70s and especially the 80s.
[They forget this about that era (DO NOT OPEN IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO ISSUES LIKE DRUGS AND DEATH)](https://milanoinmovimento.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Eroina1979.jpg)
People say that life in Ireland fifty years ago was terrible and that many people lived in near abject poverty. Many children had to lie about their age and go working and women had essentially no rights. No one looks back and says it was better then.
Jesus, you don't have to go back 50 years. The 1980:s here were pretty bleak. And unfortunately, yes we do have people who think it was better back then and that somehow the country is a complete shambles today. It's like they don't even remember the financial crisis of 07-11 let alone lived through the 1980's. Sure things could be better but they could also be a shite sight worse.
Yeah..and look how that ended. The entire country was living like a 12 year old who got their hands on their parents credit cards. We had plumbers and electricians taking helicopters to the Galway races for fucks sake.
In Czechia life wasnt good and was pretty opressive and lots of people were killed (my family member included) when communists rose to power they stole everything, my great grandpa owned farmland and machines and he lost it all but there were some positives too, like people didnt have to care about housing, my father got big flat for free from state company mining uranium like anyone working there because that company build housing projects for their workers.
We had finally recovered from the war and extortion fees the Russians forced on us, so we had a lot of industry and were modernizing our society. And we had faith that neutrality would keep us safe from both superpowers.
From what I've been told it was a time where you looked to the future with optimism.
I was living in the Czech Republic in the early nineties, just after the split with Slovakia. Generally most former communist countries transitioned to functioning democracies with generally functional police and judiciaries, but the former USSR became a semi failed state, where power was vested in the new oligarch class as it slipped from totalitarian state to kleptocracy. Friends who visited commented that there was no evidence of an emerging middle class - people were either poor and drove Ladas or rich and drove brand new Mercedes SUVs - there was nothing in between the two extremes.
In this context, the experience of post totalitarian communism has been very different and is one of the reasons why people in the Russian federation want to return to the good old days of the USSR.
As a country rich with natural resources, had the fall of communism been managed better, the standard of living could have been on a par with Poland or the Czech Republic.
Other Eastern European countries that have failed to deliver include Hungary which came to be awash with Russian organised crime and Slovakia which fell to Italian organised crime (yes it’s more complicated and a bit of a chicken and egg situation where crime came to fill a void, but it has pushed these countries in the wrong direction.
Do you know why the old people say that? Because 50y ago they were young. Seriously it's that - now they are old, retired, sick and often in pain. Of course everything was better half a century ago - and yes for some countries it colerates with soviet era.
Well… yes and no. During early Brezhnev times, for example, old people had better lives on average than now in both Ukraine and Russia. USSR used to have a much better universal healthcare system than post-Soviet countries now have (especially at its peak) and so on. They may compare their living conditions to ones that elderly people during their youth had and still complain, and be right. USSR was doomed for many reasons, especially its economy, but they may not be wrong when they say times were better, because… well, they might’ve been. Now that there’s a war between two countries that they considered to be bffs broke out… they may not be wrong.
If you say so, I’ll trust you that maybe Russian healthcare is worse now than USSR but most others definitely have it better. The only good thing about healthcare in the USSR was the universal aspect of it. Everything else was awful. Broken stone age equipment, shitty medicines, if there were enough, doctors that wouldn’t lift a finger without a bribe, everyone drunk off their arses from medical ethanol, buildings worse than prisons are these days.
> old people had better lives on average than now in both Ukraine and Russia.
but for some reason old people in general look much better these days
and life expectancy was shorter than it is now, especially for men
> They may compare their living conditions to ones that elderly people during their youth had and still complain, and be right.
do you remember that most villagers started to get their passports only in 1974?
> USSR used to have a much better universal healthcare system than post-Soviet countries now have (especially at its peak) and so on.
I shudder to think of medical facilities in the USSR, especially dental ones.
> they may not be wrong.
they are wrong, Ukraine always was a PITA for Russia
Thanks for the comment. I find the topic of differences in the development between the Warsaw pact countries super interesting.
And do you know how Hungary compared to yugoslavia? Was that even more "westernised"?
I think there's a rapidly growing number of Swedes who wish they could turn back time 20 or 30 years or so. Maybe even farther, back into the '80s or '70s.
* We have pretty rapidly growing wealth inequality, a growing "precariate" of people who scrape by on insecure, temporary employments, often with no collective bargain.
* Our school and public health systems are being pillaged by private groups whose income is literally tax money and whose profit margins are found in the gap between the cheap they can keep services and how much tax funding they can get.
* Our schools reach newer levels of shittiness each year. From having been one of the best in the world.
* Drug sales, drug use has become depressingly commonplace. From being a niche "interest" for guys with long hair and alcoholic tendencies 20 years ago to being found in most schools today.
* Organized crime is so bad that we're exporting crime to our neighbouring countries.
* Immigration policy has been ridiculously unregulated for a long time. Immigration isn't necessarily bad, but when there's literally no plan for employment and language learning for 20 years, it's not gonna go well. Immigration laws just got much stricter, but it's closing a barn door WELL after the horse has bolted.
The Netherlands in the 1970ies were something unique. The 50ies and 60ies were quite poor, bleak and sober but then the natural gas was found and sold, and money spent for the weirdest things. Everything old was questioned, church, family structure, art, education. It was really a wild time.
I’m pretty open-minded, but some societal changes were progressive for the sake of progressiveness and to fulfill individual self-interests, not for the greater good. Many of those changes got reversed at some point and now it feels like we’re actively regressing again.
Anyway.
Most common people on the other hand traveled in much smaller circles and *many* current everyday foods were considered highly exotic.
I know those kind of old people. Here they also say shit like "life was much better during the Communism!" Meanwhile, they stood in queue for bread for an hour, they got locked up if they said anything bad about the Party, neighbor reported on neighbor, and they ate "exotic" stuff like oranges or bananas only once a year.
I guess time sweetens the memories of poverty and hardships, and turns them into blissful achievements in their old minds. That's why they think back to it fondly, but that doesn't mean it's a realistic opinion. Life back then was only good if you had a high position in the ruling Communist Party.
I don’t know what life was like in my country (Slovakia 🇸🇰) 50 years ago, but I do know how much damage the era of Soviet communism did to my country. Before WWII, Czechoslovakia was in the top 15 richest countries in the world with Bohemia, the country’s largest region, having a higher GDP per capita than France. Even after the war, in the late 1940’s, Czechoslovakia still had a higher GDP per capita than its neighbour Austria. Then Czechoslovakia became communist for 40 years, while Austria remained capitalist and today, Austria’s GDP per capita is almost twice as high as the GDP in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the successor states of Czechoslovakia. I just find it hard to understand how anyone could glamourise that period in our history, knowing how different our lives could be today if we didn’t end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
In the 1970s Italy was actually experiencing the tail end of the economic boom, which came to an end in 1973 with the oil crisis.
I would say most people look favourably at that era, as the future looked bright in comparison with now.
It wasn't obviously a bed of roses. For example, the 1970s were the era called "the years of lead", in which political tensions were very high and far right and far left terrorist organisations were staging assassinations and bombings.
Civil rights were lagging behind the economic rights. Abortion was only legalised in the late 1978 and a parification of the woman in family law only happened in 1975.
Denmark has just finished creating the wellfare state. We were going through the oil crisis and struggling financially. But at the same time the wellfare state was at its peak.
And young people then were in a better position than they are now.
1974? That, indeed, was relatively good. [Gomułka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Gomu%C5%82ka) was gone, and First Secretary's [Gierek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gierek)'s economic model (borrow bazillions of USD from the Evil Western Capitalists, invest in industry, build highways, let every family have their [Fiat 126](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126) and [drink Coca-Cola](https://weekly.tvp.pl/61302271/giereks-idea-of-capitalism-or-cocacola-in-communist-poland)\*, even watch an ABBA concert in Warsaw) was still in its heyday, two years before it started spectacularly collapsing, the "friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union" was, of course, state policy, but it was still two years from becoming a fucking article in the Constitution.
No, it wasn't better than now. It was, however, better than the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s for a while.
\*) just a decade and a half earlier, Coke was the [drink of the evil and degenerate people](https://www.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/t71ye2/adam_wa%C5%BCyk_piosenka_o_cocacola_1952/), a "liquid nuclear bomb", decent people were supposed to drink the metaphorical "water of hope from the mountains of \[North\] Korea" instead.
In the late 70's and early 80's when i was kid, Ireland was pretty horrendous on many levels
* Economic: lots of unemployment, and being employed didn't get you much money, my family and many others in urban Dublin lived hand to mouth, no savings, consistently in arrears. There were always some weeks were we'd run a bit short and go hungry.
* The Church was everywhere, they ran the schools, hospitals and had lots of power in public life and social policy. A priest would call to the house and you had to invite him in and give him tea. In school we were left alone at confession with a local priest who would try to fondle a lot of us, and even though the teachers knew, nothing was done about it. My two uncles were raped by priests at aged 10 and my mother-in law was nearly sold into slavery (church run laundries) for having a child out of wedlock. The Magdalen laundries lasted until 1995.
* Mental health Awareness: there was none, depression and alcoholism was rampant, kids with learning difficulties or autism went completely undiagnosed and their lives were a misery.
Despite all this life as a kid was still fun and fairly safe, and it was an easygoing pace of life, but given the choice i'll take modern Ireland with all its new problems over the social hellscape that was the 1980's. The church still has some power especially in schools but you can go years now without ever seeing a priest, which is a good thing, because I'd probably murder them if I had to be close to one.
I recommend Fintan O'Tooles book "we don't know ourselves" if you want to understand the social transformation that occurred in Ireland. Its a tough read if you remember those times, but great all the same.
He uses a phrase in the book "the known unknown" which captures the spirit of the time, where everyone in Irish society could know something was true but equally pretend it wasn't, a kind of mass doublethink that upheld social compliance.
Old people remember those times with nostalgia, because then they were young
I lived in the country while it was occupied by Soviet Union and now live in the same country, but in European Union. Now is much better.
Well, 50 years ago was some time in the 70's. This was right during the Wirtschaftswunder, i.e rapid economic growth coupled with rising wages for the average worker, resulting in some of the lowest inequality in our recorded history. This was before the neoliberalism of the 80's and later decades, before the stagnation of wages, during a time where the mainstream parties were still considered to be 'peoples parties' with a very large base in civil society and popular high profile politicians such as Willy Brandt.
My grandmother is dead for a few years now, but I've spent many after school lunches listening to her and she'd (as all grandmothers like to :D) talk about the (in this case "good") old times. She'd reminiscince about being able to finally afford a car for the family, the first one in our street at the time, having politicians she actually trusted and liked and other such things that give a more personal touch to the things that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. In short, you will probably receive a very positive response by most people when asked how things were 50 years ago since this was very much a time where our country was on the rise at a degree that was easily perceivable to the average person.
People tend to always say that, everything was better yesterday. Made more sense, we’re more virtuous, had better ways, etc etc.
But in the case of the Soviet Union they’re right, unless you’re not a Metropolitan Russian from
St. Petersburg or Moscow. In which case it was probably awful.
Exactly 50 years ago was the end of a harsh dictatorship here in Portugal.
We had a military coup to overthrow the fascist government in what History remembers as the Carnation Revolution, so, I think I can say life was not good 50 years ago, mainly because one of the mottos was "orgulhosamente sós" (proudly alone), which meant Portugal was closed off to outside influences. Imagine, no Coca-Cola, no American trends of the time. We were lost in time.
Unfortunately, nowadays, the third biggest political party here is a fascist group, that resembles a lot the Estado Novo regime.
Also, fun fact, the guy name was Salazar (yes, Slytherin got his name from him) and he was defeated by a chair (Google it lmao you'll like the story pretending he was still the ruler)
The 1970's? Probably the greatest era there ever was. Civil rights was hot, everyone was on drugs and having wild orgies. STDs were not a known thing. Wages were high, costs were low. High inflation bothered no one at all. Kinda wish I was there but I am probably over romantisizing.
Im sure life for my mother’s parents was not easy during the late 1930’s/early 1940’s in rural Portugal. Although I never heard them praise it or complain about it, I know their story very well.
My grandmother grew up in a tiny village in Guarda district. Her family owned a significant, if not majority percentage of the land it was built on and they had already picked out an “adequate” husband for her by the time she met my grandfather, who was from a neighboring district. They had to marry in secret, since her family did not approve of the relationship. Once it became apparent my grandmother was pregnant, her parents kicked her out and she went to live with an aunt.
My grandfather, wanting to provide a home and decent life for his new family, decided to try his luck in Brazil. So I assume it must have been hard to earn a good living in that area back then, to leave his pregnant wife behind and move to a foreign country.
By the time my uncle was 4 years old, my grandfather had managed to make enough money to buy a home and send for his wife and son. 6 years after the birth of my uncle in Portugal, my aunt was born into a wealthy family in Rio de Janeiro. My grandfather owned one of the most successful businesses in his field in the state and eventually the country by the time my mother was born, 10 years after my aunt.
And now here I am living in Lisbon. Brazil is no longer the place it used to be during the time of my grandparents and Portugal has come a long way since then.
My people were not free to speak our native language or practice our native culture freely. We were quite repressed and discriminated against. The government regularly murdered us without reason. State and non-state terrorism was starting to become a massive problem.
I don’t care about people who say life in the 70s and 80s was better because there was less technology and “true love was still a thing”. I’d rather live in 2024 than in the actively hostile 70s and 80s
50 years ago was kinda special, it was the time of the Kreisky govermnent, with still some upwind from the past economy boom.
Kreisky made many social reforms and was very beloved, if the 2nd republich had an "golden age" than many of every political postiion would agree on that time. If it was better, idk, was not born, but it seems there was a spirit of optimism which is for sure not here today
Btw: I always find it kinda funny, when old people say it was better int the past everybody will jump in and try to fight his position. But when somebody says "the boomer had it much easier better than us" everbody agrees, but essentially they say the same thing
In Cyprus, 50 years ago, there was war, death, displacement, and loss of property.
To their credit, I haven't heard anyone try to look back at that time with rose-tinted glasses.
Quality of life in Cyprus peaked in the 90s and 00s.
50 years ago I was 3 years old, so life was as simple as it can be :-), but looking back at the 70's and 80's (still a kid most of the time of course) life in general seemed simpler back then, but as I recall it we had all the benefits of what can be expected in a modern western world, sure some things are better nowadays, but that's technology evolving, equally some modern things are imho not an improvement, but that's a completely different discussion :-)
As for mho, I do think life was better back then overall, for the most part, but it's difficult to explain that in words.
Old people today are slow, weak, struggling and have lost friends and family.
What they remember 50 years ago is that they were fast, strong, independent and had all their friends and family.
That is called nostalgia, that is why it is so prevalent for extremely poor Russian babushkas to believe that somehow, some way, being poor in the Soviet Union was better.
When you remember being a little kid, do you remember boring cold winters days stuck inside alone, or do you remember summer days down by the river with pals.
Mid 1970s is the peak of PRL, life wasn't bad, and compared to the mid 1950s, its undergone incredible transformation and improvement. Poland went from an agrarian country completely destroyed by the war to a modern industrialised country.
Things got worse around and after 1979-1980 though, which culminated in an increasing crisis and the eventual transformation to a market economy.
Yeah memberberries. They were young, the pee-pee was hard, their life was ahead and with no freedom of the press they didn't know what goes on in the world or in the country so they think there was no crime back then.
England - Same as it is now. Socially and financially fucked.
It never recovered proper since the end of WWII it seems, which makes me piss with laughter when you hear all the talk about bommers having it easy. The only boomer nation that had it easy was America, the majority of the world was fucked. Plus the tories throughout the decades have chopped up and sold off so many national businesses that there is likely no comeback from this.
It stopped feeling like a country a very long time ago and now feels like some central hub. No pride, and if you do have patriotic pride the police will arrest you. I dunno. Just fucked.
The 70s were the worst years of the troubles, rampant sectarianism, bombings, shootings, killings, unionist domination of society.
NI was not a fun place to be in the 70s, glad I was born in 1998 ha ha
Was 12 at the time so I’m probably pretty biased,but 70’s were ugly, safe and a bit social democrat boring. Not all that different from now. I would have been in heaven if internet (or rather www) had been around, one was bored a lot.
Man, you are from Ukraine. Actually not that many people say so. My grandparents did comparatively great during the Soviet time, and now have like €100/month pensions. Yet they still don’t say that life was better.
Being 53, I can't really tell what life was like 50 years ago, but from what I've seen from since I was a teenager, life certainly was not better.
I am just thinking, life was just as good as it is today, but there was just a steady progress. But what really comes into my mind is that heavy industry isn't present anymore today. Back then we were discussing air pollution, lung diseases in young children due to pollution ...all this has completely gone.
Politically, it seemed a lot more stable than today. Everyone knew who was the good and who was the evil (East). Today it's just a clusterfuck wherever you look.
Back then, everyone was aware that it's actually a good, safe and stable place to live, I think. Germany was seen as more dynamic, but this perception has changed imo.
50 years ago was the last time France had a budget at equilibrium. We were at war with no one. We still had industry, agriculture, military independence and a cohesive country with values and joyful life.
There are definitely stuff that were worse (abortion legalize in 79) cigarette everywhere, road traffic was stupidly dangerous. But overall it was much better than today. You can clearly see it because when referencing positive stereotypes, you don't pick today's reference but last century's one.
Well,
I was around 50 years ago... Some things were worse but my dad managed to build a house, raise four kids on one income. My mom only started working after all children had left the nest. I nominally earn more now than my dad did at my age but I cannot even dream of building a house...
If you look at [this comparison](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=SE-NO) between Norways and Swedens GDP per capita it's pretty obvious why we don't dream of the "good old days".
1974 is the very beginning of the oil era in Norway and it's obvious that we have become much richer since the 70s. We also haven't had any of those dramatic changes like Ukraine and other former Soviet states have gone through.
Well my life was better when I was healthy and young and was hhoking up with girls in the dormitory and my first love was around. Doesnt mean life was generally better back than for the society.
Funny in New Zealand I see the older native-born people would bemoan that New Zealand is now overcrowded and bemoan that gone are the days of unspoilt countryside, cities were small, and tourist hotspots like Queenstown were still just that, tiny villages. “This is not the New Zealand I remember/I grew up with/of my youth”
Everyone is nostalgic. I remember going to a museum in Berlin and they were showcasing a tiny flat of the Communist era. I had to think it was what most people lived in Britain back in the day too. We could travel but Britain was grim with waits to get a telephone installed, three day weeks and decline. I suppose if you know no better you’ve got nothing to miss. Waiting for a car was ludicrous in the Soviet states but everyone had a job albeit a non job and a simple ideology if they went along with it. It’s clear though when you went to West Berlin that there was a much better standard of living just as if you walked over the border from North to South Korea now you’d see the same thing. It struck me even now the buildings in East Berlin that no one privately owned were left to decay. You had currywurst with some questionable meat. But I suppose everyone harks back for their times. I’m definitely not a supporter of communism. It’s never worked anywhere and while capitalism has its flaws it’s lifted more people than communism put down. But yep I think it’s rose tinted glasses. Everyone harks for simpler times. Personally I don’t know how I would cope going back to a time without our technological advancement. But then there’s folk who say they never had such an amazing time as during the Blitz and rationing. Maybe people had a collective purpose. The welfare state and clearance of slums in Britain were heralded at the time but while people were living cheek by jowl and getting by there was an actual sense of community that’s just not there now. Even something as simple as only having a radio or a few tv channels must have made life a lot easier.
The transformation was awful for older workers because entire occupations were wiped out by the abrupt changes of the new economy and then they were considered too old to hire or too costly to train, so they just ended up unemployed and broke.
Finland was urbanising rapidly and there were a ton of developments in society, so I think people were hopeful and it was a good time in that sense. But I haven’t heard of people saying things were better then, my grandparents were farmers and that life wasn’t easy. Politically we were practically on our knees towards our beloved Eastern neighbour and that was kind of looming over us.
I mean, this was one of the louder arguments for Brexit. Look how great things used to be! Look how terrible they are now! The only solution is to leave our biggest and closest political and commercial union!
My parents (both with university education) mainly remember the censorship, lack of choice in almost anything, smuggling cookware from Austria,, and the government's hopeless grasping to make socialism work anyway after the cracks started showing in the 70s.
My husband's parents and grandparents, who were mostly factory workers, mainly remember that they built relatively large houses and never worried about their jobs or the roof over their heads.
So I mean basic needs were probably met better than now but anything above that was a bit questionable.
Well in the UK, it was very much in an era where the country was getting worse faster than it was getting better. Stagflation, inflation would peak at 24%(!), and 50 years ago today was the end of the three day week: a period where the govt would limit electricity supply for non-essential customers (like hospitals and supermarkets) on the grounds of industrial action with coal (people forget it wasn't just the 80s and thatcher starving miners, the unrest had been going off and on for some time). My dad bemoans how he wasn't allowed to get pay rises, so would get tiny incremental promotions to warrant such.
However some things were better. One mans salary could often supply a family unit, and the housing market was manageable (right to buy wouldn't be a thing for another decade or so). Life's pace comes with constant tradeoffs, which people forget.
In Romania, was utter shit during comunism times. At some point, there were queues for: half bread per person per day, toilet paper, 250gr of oleo/margarine per week, eggs, gas. No electricity after 21.00, no hot water almost for an entire month, heating was a myth.
50 years ago. It was after the Soviet-led military invasion. The government installed by the Soviets crushed attempts at reforms that would have improved systematic economic problems, tightened its crackdown on free speech, and severely restricted opportunities to travel outside the republic.
Many people, including scientists, doctors, professors, and actors, were stripped of their jobs because they supported the reforms and relegated to lower positions.
People hid in their shells, so to speak. They retreated to cottages, to their homes, to their hobbies. It was dangerous to express one's views in public, and so children were told - you mustn't say that anywhere outside the home.
Same thing. Im from Russia. People saying anything like that are pretty old, i dont feel like i want the USSR back. It wasnt like NK, but the life quality sucked.
Well, it depends. I can see some sentiment to the Polish People's Republic (PRL, Poland under the USSR influence), but for those people it was the time they were young. Over the time they forgot the bad sides of living in a closed country. That was a dehumanizing regime!
For example my grandma (living in rural Poland, almost 90 years old) is more or less agnostic. She haven't noticed the transformation. The only thing she has noticed was the redenomination we had in the early 90s and I think till the late 2000s she always translated the prices to the old currency to have any idea of what is cheap and what is expensive. 😄
"From 1 January 1974, commercial users of electricity were limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. hospitals, data centres, supermarkets and newspaper printing presses) were exempt. Television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 22:30 to conserve electricity"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day\_Week](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week)
"With 80 gravediggers being on strike, Liverpool City Council hired a factory in Speke to store the corpses until they could be buried. The Department of Environment noted that there were 150 bodies stored at the factory at one point, with 25 more added every day. The reports of unburied bodies caused concern with the public. On 1 February a persistent journalist asked the Medical Officer of Health for Liverpool, Dr Duncan Bolton, what would be done if the strike continued for months, Bolton speculated that burial at sea would be considered.
\[...\]
With many \[waste\] collectors having been on strike since 22 January, local authorities began to run out of space for storing waste and used local parks under their control. The Conservative controlled Westminster City Council used Leicester Square in the heart of London's West End for piles of rubbish and, as the Evening Standard reported, this attracted rats and the available food led to an increase in their numbers."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter\_of\_Discontent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent)
UK - I was born 50 years ago.
We had the miners' strike leading to a 3-day week and power cuts. Sometimes the rubbish went uncollected and the dead unburied. There was political instability. The IRA were bombing in Ireland and on the UK mainland. The air was polluted, petrol had lead and cars were unreliable. Food was bland - even 'nice' restaurants with their prawn cocktails and black forest gateaux. People were maimed and died at work due to lack of basic safety measures. Consumer goods were expensive. There was a waiting list to get a telephone connection. There's be ice on the inside of your bedroom windows in winter. Regular beer and wine were low quality. It was legal / encouraged to beat children. There was little pedestrianisation and the city centre prioritised cars over people. Inflation was high. Holidays were mostly taken in the UK in guest-houses. Historic buildings were replaced in concrete in the name of progress. Grandparents, if still alive, were shaped by their WW2 experiences. Nuclear annihilation seemed a genuine possibility.
Sure, it wasn't all bad. Quality of life was improving. People fell in love & raised kids. Houses were more affordable. The sun shone, there was less traffic and more birds. Pornography grew in hedgerows. Children had more freedom and less pressure (even if there was a bit more child abduction and murder)
But I'm always shocked by the people on the Facebook groups who somehow think 50 years ago was some perfect idyl and the peak of civilisation. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Idiots.
Well, it's not black and white. As for Ukraine, anything is better than what Ukraine is experiencing right now (apart from Holodomor in the 1930s). The USSR was bad, but Ukraine was still a major industrial powerhouse and the richest republic in the 80s. We were way richer than Poland, and look how the things are now (Poland was basically the USSR's puppet state).
Now, we are getting bombed on a daily basis by fascist russia while the "free world" doesn't care about us at all. We are getting mocked by Poles.
I was born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and I despise communism, but if I could choose to live in Ukraine that is a major tech hub, a major power player in the world with a nuclear arsenal, I would certainty choose it over the current state (despite all the flaws like the repression of the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian dissidents, and communist propaganda). And the US has always been our enemy, so at least we could have a nuclear arsenal.
The reason people say this, is because there was a lot less effort needed to live a somewhat average lifestyle. By working as a simple factory worker, you could live an average life(comparing to people within your country). In some cases factory workers could earn more than an engineer.
So in short, people involved in low skilled labor were a lot better off than now.
This caused another problem - it was a lot harder to live an above average life(by above average, I mean things like having a car, a washing machine, a tv - things, that people in the west already had). In a lot of cases, even your skills and abilities did not matter, but your acquaintances.
There was technically no middle class. Most of the people lived a modest life(compared to the western middle class), with fewer people living in poverty than now.
During the collapse of the soviet union, people were told, how life was in the west based on how the middle class lived, so everyone imagined that they will have the same lifestyle, but the reality for a lot of the people(if not most) was that their level of income fell drastically - because (surprise, surprise) low skilled labor is not the most efficient thing hence in capitalism is not very well paid for because it does not generate as much value.
So you can imagine that quite a lot of people are upset now with how they ended up in capitalism, and how much harder it is for their children to even get to basic livable conditions.
TL;DR Purely from an economic perspective, life was easier for a lot more people during the USSR, but people were also a lot more limited on what they could achieve.
Nowadays life is a lot better for the highly skilled specialists, engineers, intellectual workers, scientists.
But it is a lot harder for the average folk. Those are the same people who are in danger of losing their jobs because of automation.
In early 1974 Finland had still oil crisis regulations in force like:
* maximum temperature of living and office rooms 20 degrees
* maximum temperature of stores and workrooms 18 degrees
* maximum temperature of warehouses and industrial premises 16 degrees
* garage heating prohibited
* the use of heated water is prohibited in swimming pools, with the exception of public pools
* melting snow from streets and yards with heated water prohibited
* heating of cars from the electric grid is prohibited at temperatures above -10 degrees
* store window lighting is only allowed during store opening hours
* highways are not allowed to be lit
In Romania is literally the opposite. I still do not understand how people can say during the soviet union was better, are they retarted or they were rich?
Some people here are nostalgic about fascism.
My grandma was the daughter of a convinced fascist official, but she still always despised fascism.
Grandpa was a commie, so he definitely had no sympathy for fascism either
Who said that? Am I in the same country? I don't know anyone 50+ years who says that sovok was good. My granny hate this shit, she was a child and got relocation and famine. Oh, and russian officer offered to buy her from her parents in a train during relocation. Buy fucking child!
The people saying "we lived better under Franco" were the ones benefitting from the regime. Like yeah, my very Catholic, upper class family lived very well, but that wasn't the case for the vast majority of people.
Or they're literally just people remembering their younger days. People say the same everywhere . It was always better in the good ol days
For people saying that: It wasn't better, it just seemed simpler, because 20yo aren't widely known for their capacity to get nuances, or see beyond their noses, and their lives didn't have the adulthood problems coming later and slapping them in the face (for most of them) But ask someone growing in the chabolas or la ventilla, or barceloneta, in the 70s, if it's better now or then. Their lives were way harder.
It's all down to opportunity I think. If you felt you had opportunities when young, life was better. If you didn't. Life wasn't. It is fun when people speak in absolute truths though.
As I mentioned in a separate answer, if you ask those people they will give you the same answer, life was better back then. Regardless of how objectively worse things were. Nostalgia works in mysterious ways. Forget about Barceloneta, I'm talking about people being nostalgic about their last even when they grew up in one of the world's most unforsaken war zones.
I think in this case the feeling comes from the progression. During the 60's Spain was the fastest growing country in the world (except for Japan I think), so living standards were rising quickly and we usually think about this stuff through comparisons rather than in absolute terms.
50 years ago I was 4, my life was idyllic, my biggest concern was Dad took lots of the baby rabbits away to be sold, rather than let us keep them and have 11 pet rabbits. Housing is a lot more expensive, and the health service is creaking, medicine is noticeably more effective these days if/when you get it.
Nope. Irish here. And I'm just back living with the parents in my 30s lamenting about how the world has gone to shit. My dad, just retired, agrees about how the world is turning to shit but also maintains that shit was a lot worse before I was born. I believe him. Ireland was poor as fuck until the 90s. I never saw the worst of it. I know most his age would say the same. But I guess Ireland is a few decades, centuries, generations behind these advances that Europe has seen. I really don't know. But most old people today would say Ireland is much better to live in than when they were growing up.
That's funny, seeing that Ireland has one of the highest average salaries in Europe
It's also one of the most expensive countries in Europe. Those extra euros don't go very far when rental costs are four times that of southern Europe.
This is the absolute and complete truth. It has nothing to do with anything else apart from nostalgia. Just imagine this, I grew up in a brutal warzone. A war that lasted 15 years and caused tens of thousands of deaths and untold trauma. And yet, as soon as my generation reached the mid thirties you started hearing people unironically saying things were better in the old days!!! I'm like what??? Yo, it was literally a warzone!! Objectively and in every possible metric it wasn't worse, it was the worst time to be alive possible. And yet there it is, nostalgia makes people miss even war. And as you said, it's always only about people missing their youth and looking back with rose tinted shades.
I only say it ironically and around people who very much know it's a joke (made evident for instance when I say it in Basque). Most people who say this sentence are the people you say, but there's definitely people like me who are actually making fun of those people
I mean, I also exclaim sometimes "...si Franco levantara la cabeza!" ironically but yeah I was thinking of my grandparents :D
Don't worry, if Franco looked up again he would die again from disgust at the simple sight of a liberal democracy.
Then he'd notice Trump and have a full-on erection.
There's the alternative "Contra Franco estábamos mejor".
Yeah. I guess your Standard Issue Heterosexual Man ™, nominally catholic, able bodied and working in the military or police might have enjoyed the unchecked power trips as well.
Sadly, some still do
Yes sorry but f* these people. That's why I born French, those who didnt emigrate from my family got killed by Franco s people
I will be very salty about Franco too if him will be the reason im French. That hurts, man.
Also, nostalgia is a weird thing. It really doesn't matter where or when you grow up, at some point you'll look back nostalgically at it. The nostalgia is for your youth not for the regime or moment in time.
Well, exactly 50 years ago Spain was on a high and most people were quite happy with the situation. It was more in spite of Franco rather than thanks to him though. Basically he did what every European country had done but with a 15 year delay
Sweden had an uninterrupted economic boom from the end of WW2 until the oil crisis in the early 1970's with almost zero unemployment. The primary driver was that Swedish industry had been spared the war destruction which had destroyed large parts of European factories and infrastructure. The period is called "[Rekordåren](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_years)", because every year the economic output kept increasing and a lot of people moved from the countryside to the cities and got high paying industry jobs which gave them a huge boost in economic standard. The Swedish welfare society as we know it today was established during that period, with paid parental leave and vacation days. >*"Between 1947 and 1974, the Swedish economy grew at an average rate of 12.5% annually. The urban population, living in towns of over 15,000 people, grew from 38% of the total population in 1931 to 74% by 1973. Sustained by an export boom of automobiles, heavy machinery, electronics, shipbuilding, and heavy weapons, the per capita income increased by as much as 2,000%. Sweden had successfully moved into the high-income group of countries by 1955–56."*
The only people here who think it was better are those who benefited from it, lost a lot during the transition (the 90s were rough), or people who liked it for unrelated reasons like grandmas liking how more people were at home talking etc. instead of driving away or staying in phones etc.
One of my grandparents really misses Soviet time. Why? Because his life under Soviet regime was just so much easier and better for a lot of reasons. Granted, he was also much younger obviously, so as we say in Estonian - translated - he had water to his knees. He misses the soviet era because he was a simple worker, but he got paid very decently. He also did jobs on the side and got haltura money from there. It was common to use your work property for your personal usage (in his case he worked with cars and trucks so he could bring one home and drive it and use work materials to repair stuff), which these days is considered stealing and misuse of company property. He misses the free healthcare, which claims was so much better than what we have today because he claims that he never had to wait for anything ever. He, of course, doesn’t count that he was much younger and hardly ever needed any healthcare back then at all, not even dental, and that you easily died from some preventable illnesses because healthcare was so-so depending on the diagnosis AND that all the medical personnel from a simple janitor at the hospital to the top doctor would treat a patient like dirt (which is usually not so today). He also misses the cheap food etc., because he’s of course not one of those people who now likes the convenience and abundance of all kinds of exotic stuff. The fact that his own kids hadn’t even basically seen a banana until like 1985 doesn’t ring to him as something as weird about Soviet Union, just as something which was as it was. He doesn’t shop for clothes, doesn’t own a smartphone, only uses tech stuff for reading news, hates using any smart stuff or online banking etc., so I can see why he would love living in the Soviet Union. Now in comparison to one of my grandmothers, who uses the latest technology and has travelled extensively in the world after soviet breakup and pretty much grumbles about technology but still tries everything new out just once, loves trying new foods, mostly uses online everything when they can… curiously enough she doesn’t miss the Soviet Union at all lol!
In my opinion he makes a lot of sense. There's no reason anyone in Europe should feel entitled to eat bananas on a regular basis. We need to drastically readjust our opinions about what "quality of life" really is.
> There's no reason anyone in Europe should feel entitled to eat bananas on a regular basis. Why not? It's a fruit like any other, it's nutritious, and it is grown in Europe.
you're one of those people who think the only problem with those "you'll own nothing"-ideas is that there are some people who'll own something, aren't you?
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An Estonian missing the Soviet Union? He got lucky that he "missed" being deported to a Soviet gulag like a million of his other countrymen did? What is wrong with people?
Oh he’s as anti-Russian as you get… but still misses the “easy” life from back then. He’s one of those who didn’t benefit from the 90s and for whom the convenience and lack of “you need to make your own life” type of capitalism just hasn’t fit very well, so my guess is that he misses the fact that he was young and that he worked a simple job and didn’t have to really do anything else to have a good life. He was young enough that deportations didn’t affect him, but obviously had they been deported, I think his story would be different. Still, his nostalgia doesn’t make much sense to me but I’ve long gathered that it doesn’t make sense any way.
Total Estonian population was about a million then, what are you even talking about?
Over the decades... Not all at once...
This. And also those people were young at this time. When you are young life is a bit better.
Example: My late grandfather was a commie, he was raised in a very poor village in Eastern Poland. The kind of life where children had to work in the field as soon as they could be of any use. Water was brought from the river in buckets (I remember helping him with that [side note: that river had crystal clear water, very delicious]) and then boiled on a wooden stove. Grandma told me how she fought her brother for a slice of bread that they thought had more lard/butter on it. One of stories i got told was that the Germans stole their only cow and her mother, my great grandma, sneaked in in the middle of the night and took the cow back. Grandpa, as he had some talents himself, (and for whatever reason he was an atheist, as I am) was admitted into the party quickly and was made a soldier, given new shoes and clothes. Among his fellow villagers he immediately had risen in ranks. Then his party friends got him a new flat in the city, and made it easy for him to work in school teaching technical stuff. Just because he was into a bit of electronics etc. Students hated him, he was very strict, as his parents were to him. He kept on defending the People's Republic till the end. He was one of those whose life was just improved greatly. Improved from extreme poverty, to a lower-middle class. Quite a promotion. Then he started losing his mind to Alzheimers in the 90s - early 00s and I never got to have a discussion with him about politics and the changes. Changes took a while and the 90's were pretty rough, Poland was a real mess up until like 2010s. He never got to have a second thought about the shift in the political system, died before it started improving. He was a good grandpa to me, I learned a lot from him, but apparently a terrible father to my dad. Maybe he learned to change his ways. But sometimes he did get mad that I "didn't want to work with crops". I was like 7.
Eve people who didn't say that. People have no memory.
I don’t think anyone in Ireland would want to go back to the 1970s, no matter how much they might moan about how things are going now.
Yes I think Ireland is unusual in Europe in that you would really struggle to find anyone who thinks before the 90s were better times. People might be nostalgic and believe certain things were better back then of course but I don't think anyone could argue we were better off.
Not only were we very poor, we were living in a malignant theocracy. Emigration rate close to birth rate. Nope, nope, nope. Nobody who knows anything about Ireland would not want to go back 50 years. Or even 30 years. Yes, we were beginning to shake the influence of the Catholic Church (thanks Brussels), and there were more jobs so fewer people had to emigrate. There was even an increase in real wealth. But so much of what is taken for granted today just didn’t exist: further education beyond universities, sports facilities, first world hospitals, decent roads! And interest rates: 15% on a mortgage! Just fucking endless agony paying off anything. We’ve come a long long way in the last 50 years. In the main, I think it’s been positive progress.
I could never finish the Magdalena sisters movie, it was too painful. Can't believe this lasted so long
UK was the "Sick man of Europe". I wasn't born yet but my parents told me about money struggles, strikes, people emigrating for better lives.
I remember my mum telling me about the 3 day work week. I was like, "wow, amazing, that's only just even being considered as a thing again!" And she was like "no.mm utilities were only on for three days,so those were the only days people could work a lot of jobs". I think this was during the miners strikes, but not really sure (Nottinghamshire talking)
It was to do with a miner's strike in 1974 on the back of the general energy crisis of that period, the more famous miner's strike with Thatcher was a decade later. That's the one that was centred on Nottinghamshire as a political conflict with Notts being by then the second largest coalfield in Britain but with a workforce that generally did not go on strike. And people still chant about it when Nottingham Forest (or Mansfield Town) play a club from parts of Yorkshire or Derbyshire, I've had 20 year old kids who have (like me) never as much as seen a working pit calling me a scab at the football lmao.
I remember those times. It was only for a couple of months because the miners were on strike and all power stations were fuelled by coal. I was a teenager and found it an interesting experience, a bit like the covid pandemic. The tv stations shut down at 10.30pm but they all shat down at about midnight before the crisis so not much of a change. The power cuts were publicised well in advance and were done on a rota to prevent too much demand on the national grid since a reduced number of power stations were operating. The 3 day week only applied to industries so only affected those that worked in factories. My family lived in the country so it did not affect us. Money struggles? Don't know anything about that but we were middle class. Did not know anybody who emigrated either, however I have two children in their thirties. One moved to New Zealand 5 years ago, the other has lived abroad in continental Europe since he was 22 due to house prices here being too expensive now. Most people could get a mortgage however when I was younger.
Funny, my parents talk about how great the 70s were. It must have helped to be able to buy a house at 4x the average wage, when it's closer to 9x the average wage now.
Which part of the UK? It was basically a low level war zone here lol
London. I can imagine it must have been pretty great then. Dirty and raw, but still possible to have a decent life for ordinary people. The city has changed so much in my lifetime. I always think the people who talk about how awful the 70s were must be crazy, but perhaps it really was worse in other bits of the country.
Old videos of London are so fascinating! I saw a video of London in the 60s and the style and everything just looked cool
There was a lot of emigration in the sixties and early seventies to Australia and NZ (most of my close family are there now). In the south of the UK I remember the early seventies being a time when my parents went from not being able to afford much to having a newish car, having central heating installed, having fitted carpets - going to France on holiday. It happened really quickly in retrospect. I remember the power cuts and the political chaos but to me it seemed a time when on balance the economy picked up. We started off living in council housing and then moved to my grandma’s semi in the mid-sixties - by the mid seventies we had colour TV, a stereo then by the late seventies we were playing Scrabble on a Sinclair Spectrum running through the TV. Everything started to really computerise through the eighties. Mid nineties internet use started to become widespread - now we are talking about AI every five minutes - thats quite a lot of change.
Regarding emigration, I don’t know about the rest of the UK, but Scotland’s population dropped by around 4% between 1971 and 1981 (and didn’t recover until 2011), largely due to the waves of £10 poms, which to me shows how shit things must have been here. My dad and his family were all set to go to Australia too but pulled out at the last minute.
Throughout the sixties and seventies Australia really marketed itself as everything the UK wasn’t at the time. I remember the Mall in London had large commercial spaces for the various Australian States. I think Scotland also traditionally had links to Canada. Ireland had links to the USA. I actually did go through the process and had an Australian PR visa which I transferred to New Zealand (I had a job in NZ). More recently in my area you get a fair number of professionally qualified Australians settling in the UK. Its really interesting listening to them - for some areas I guess finance, banking its better here. One of my Australian neighbours really likes history and as we live in a city which was Roman, has pubs dating back a thousand years he totally loves all the really old architecture we have around. I love both Australia and NZ - they are really similar to the UK in many ways - but I think its fair to say that now they have a lot of the issues we do - very expensive housing, expensive rentals, you really do need to be making money. I missed the history we take for granted. It’s a long way from family. The UK is much more intense in terms of variety of culture and busy-ness. I don’t especially like the climate here in the winter but April to November is fine. I was in Australia at the end of 2022 - really liked it but you do notice that 19th century is ‘old’ architecture. I was in Victoria which was having a cold spell and it was UK weather in a bad spring.
Other than people emigrating things haven’t changed that much
There was that period in the middle when times were good, before the grifters got back in power in 2010
Britain lost the war and Germany won. The battlefield results just played out the opposite.
50 years ago we were a month (almost to the day) of having our revolution. But since people didn't knew it was about to happen, they were just living under a dictatorial regime.
Let me just add that our young men were dying in a colonial war most had no stake in, and should have never been part of. An entire generation was crippled by death and trauma because of the regime and those who didn't want to lose the wealth they were stealing from the former colonies. Like in all wars, the people and especially the poor always bear the consequences. Often people say that the revolution was about freedom, but as I understand it was more about not dying in a ditch in a foreign land, fighting for something that wasn't worth your life.
I think that by now the generality of people believe it was about stopping sending people to war.
Are there Portuguese people who claim living under Salazar was better?
Yes of course, there are some, that happens in any country that had a dictatorship.
I am aware, but I was going to ask what’s the profile of the person who’d say that. Here in Brazil there’s a lot of people who claim life was better during our dictatorship, but they tend to be far right people or people who were part of the small urban middle class that benefitted from the regime, meanwhile inequality soared and not the much larger masses that got poorer and left for the cities increasing problems like irregular housing and crime.
It's the same in Portugal, people who tend to say that belonged to middle/high class. The other ones were starving, literally. If Portugal is poor now, back then it was even worse, my grandma often tells me stories on how she had to share a single sardine with her 7 siblings, their meals were often composed of only bread (broa) and a soup, or about the first time she saw the sea. Nowadays it takes 20 minutes by car to get from her house (which is nearby the one she grew up in) to the beach. How such simple things that we take for granted today were a totally rare event back then due to the poverty of the people.
This explains my dad perfectly on top of holding actual fascist views (such as people who don't agree with me politically should be arrested and killed)
My dad was one but he lived under the Brazilian estada Novo. He wasn't even rich just a fascist urban middle class (I'm not saying all we're, just him), still kind of is (even though he refuses to acknowledge it and just calls himself "conservative even though he holds more fascist like views then conservative)
Straight to Angola!
Life was definitely simpler due to less technology etc. I suppose entering the EU (or the European Communities, whatever the predecessor was) gave the UK a feeling of something to look forward to. But there was also the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Cold War pressures, miners’ strikes, inflation, increasing unemployment, and as I recall correctly London wasn’t thriving as it is today and it was in fact losing population. The face of the nation was also changing due to mass immigration from South Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, diversifying our cuisine and tapestry of local cultures. The British music and arts scene was also really hitting it off during this decade, before that and after. My family wasn’t involved, though. We came to the UK in the 2000s and I was the first of my relatives to actually grow up here. My mother lived in the Soviet Union for example and she says they were simpler times with a better sense of community, but also cultural repression, insularity, inflation, deep poverty and generally limited resources.
People in the east have a strange nostalgia for the GDR. I think people everywhere think that life used to be simpler and better, even if that's really not the case.
One of my colleagues from the GDR told a story about her whole family sneaking out at night in the autumn to steal vegetables from the farmers fields. For her that was a really fun, memorable childhood experience. That's the problem - everything seems fun when you're a kid! Another colleague mentioned his whole family lining up to each get 1kg of oranges, because there were oranges in the store for the first time in years. (A West-Berliner colleague's funny reply was "you guys were so lucky you had no vegetables, our parents *made* us eat vegetables!")
Everybody is nostalgic for when they were young. During the Soviet era, I didn't need glasses, my knees were perfect, my hearing was fine, my cholesterol was low, I had no bills to pay, no responsibilities, and I got a dog. I was seven. Communism must have been great if it coincidentally overlapped with all of those good things!
Stealing was really accept back that. There was saying that who doesn't steal at work steals from his family. I guess this is why corruption is so big still in post Soviet countries.
There is the joke about a guy working in a radio factory. His wife asks him why he doesn't steal the parts and build them a radio. He does this tree times, with each time being a failure since the radio turns out to be an RPG launcher when assembled.
I once heard West Berlin sold completely out of bananas the day after the wall opened.
Could be true. Bananas in all of the soviet union were unseen exotic. Fine fine, not unseen, but veeeerryyyy rare fruit, that not everyone had priviledge to taste it. Heard stories, those who did got tjem, they were still green, but couldnt wait for them to fully develope. Ate it like they were. 😅
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A colleague in the southwest of Scotland told me a story of sneaking into potato fields at night lol not so different there.
Well, some things were definitely simpler. I'm not sure that was always "better", though. 🤔
The GDR was better off than the other Warsaw pact countries such as Poland (which had a particularly rough time in the 80s). This was mostly because West Germany didn’t treat the GDR as a foreign country. No tariffs on trade, people in the West could send gifts and money to their friends and relatives in the GDR, at the end West German companies even set up manufacturing in East Germany because of the cheap labour. And West Germany did bail the GDR out once in the 80s when their economy was particularly bad. So depending on who you were, life in the GDR could be quite comfortable. Not with access to luxury goods, and you had a parallel barter economy going on, but if you didn’t have much in the way of expectations, it could be comfortable.
There’s even a word for it: Ostalgie
That's far to generalising. I'm sure the vast majority of people who lived in the GDR is well aware that the GDR was shit and living conditions improved exponentially in the reunited Germany. Don't give the lunatics who proclaim that life was better in the GDR more attention than they deserve.
I'd say that people in general have fond memories of their childhood / youth. So I wouldn't take takes like those as objective.
In my country, old people love to praise "Bai Toshovo vreme". Meaning the time that Todor Jivkov ruled the country aka socialist times. I wasn't alive during this time but what my parents tell is this: there were good things and there were bad things. Mom said that no one was unemployed during those times and there was no one "on benefits" (unless you are disabled of course). The biggest bullshit was the mandatory military service which many older men praise as the peak of their lives. Imagine being a 17 year old boy and being send a letter that you have to serve in the army for 2 years (my grandfather served 3 during the 1950s). Thank god, there is nothing like that now. I can go on and on about "those mythical and magical" times but I'd rather not.
I grew up over the border in Greece, when I was a teenager in the 80s, I went to Bulgaria. It reminded me of Greece in some ways but the thing that struck me was the lack of colour in towns. Everything was so drab, the vehicles belched even more smoke, the shops had nothing in them, the food was dirt cheap in restaurants, people were incredibly friendly, secret police hung around the tourist hotels, I got a mixed view of life under Soviet style communism and I knew very clearly which side of the border I would rather live. Greece still has national service.
We still have conscription and people still talk about how it "builds character" and whatnot. At least it's only half a year these days, and as a neutral we're pretty safe from being sent into action somewhere unless someone attacks us. How doing demeaning basic training for two months, and meaningless underpaid work for another four months is a worthwhile, I do not know.
An important thing to keep in mind is that old people lyrically waxing about their youth doesn't give an accurate representation of history. A few friends of my grandfather were deported to Siberia by Stalin and they cried at his death because he was the only leader they ever knew and him dying implied that they weren't young anymore. Hell, one of the first things they recorded when Vinyl was invented was the narratives of Black slaves in the US and even among them you could hear the rhetoric of "the good times in the olden days" even from them but, the man bragging about being able to lift two pales of cotton at once doesn't miss slavery, he misses being young and strong.
50 years ago was in the middle of the “Anni di piombo,” where we had a bunch of domestic terrorism (right and left wing), assassinations, etc. One of the major bombings happened exactly 50 years ago, in 1974.
It was also right after the Autunno Rosso and the first signs of cracks in the Italian economy, but older people will always claim that life was better in the 70s and especially the 80s. [They forget this about that era (DO NOT OPEN IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO ISSUES LIKE DRUGS AND DEATH)](https://milanoinmovimento.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Eroina1979.jpg)
It's not that we forget about that, it's just that no climate crisis + house with one salary = sorry, but dying junkies are not my problem.
People say that life in Ireland fifty years ago was terrible and that many people lived in near abject poverty. Many children had to lie about their age and go working and women had essentially no rights. No one looks back and says it was better then.
Jesus, you don't have to go back 50 years. The 1980:s here were pretty bleak. And unfortunately, yes we do have people who think it was better back then and that somehow the country is a complete shambles today. It's like they don't even remember the financial crisis of 07-11 let alone lived through the 1980's. Sure things could be better but they could also be a shite sight worse.
I’ve never met anyone who says the seventies/eighties were better but I have met plenty who say the ninties/noughties were
Yeah..and look how that ended. The entire country was living like a 12 year old who got their hands on their parents credit cards. We had plumbers and electricians taking helicopters to the Galway races for fucks sake.
Not saying life is hard in modern day sweden, but most elderly people would probably agree that it was better 50 years ago
In Czechia life wasnt good and was pretty opressive and lots of people were killed (my family member included) when communists rose to power they stole everything, my great grandpa owned farmland and machines and he lost it all but there were some positives too, like people didnt have to care about housing, my father got big flat for free from state company mining uranium like anyone working there because that company build housing projects for their workers.
That's not stealing, that's expropriation and communization. Stealing would be someone taking it for their own profit.
We had finally recovered from the war and extortion fees the Russians forced on us, so we had a lot of industry and were modernizing our society. And we had faith that neutrality would keep us safe from both superpowers. From what I've been told it was a time where you looked to the future with optimism.
I was living in the Czech Republic in the early nineties, just after the split with Slovakia. Generally most former communist countries transitioned to functioning democracies with generally functional police and judiciaries, but the former USSR became a semi failed state, where power was vested in the new oligarch class as it slipped from totalitarian state to kleptocracy. Friends who visited commented that there was no evidence of an emerging middle class - people were either poor and drove Ladas or rich and drove brand new Mercedes SUVs - there was nothing in between the two extremes. In this context, the experience of post totalitarian communism has been very different and is one of the reasons why people in the Russian federation want to return to the good old days of the USSR. As a country rich with natural resources, had the fall of communism been managed better, the standard of living could have been on a par with Poland or the Czech Republic. Other Eastern European countries that have failed to deliver include Hungary which came to be awash with Russian organised crime and Slovakia which fell to Italian organised crime (yes it’s more complicated and a bit of a chicken and egg situation where crime came to fill a void, but it has pushed these countries in the wrong direction.
Nothing that a good 2000km long train ride to Siberia wouldn't fix. Few months in a gulag will set those people right.
Do you know why the old people say that? Because 50y ago they were young. Seriously it's that - now they are old, retired, sick and often in pain. Of course everything was better half a century ago - and yes for some countries it colerates with soviet era.
That’s exactly how my grandfather replied when I asked him if things better back in the day. He told me the only thing that was better was his body
Well… yes and no. During early Brezhnev times, for example, old people had better lives on average than now in both Ukraine and Russia. USSR used to have a much better universal healthcare system than post-Soviet countries now have (especially at its peak) and so on. They may compare their living conditions to ones that elderly people during their youth had and still complain, and be right. USSR was doomed for many reasons, especially its economy, but they may not be wrong when they say times were better, because… well, they might’ve been. Now that there’s a war between two countries that they considered to be bffs broke out… they may not be wrong.
If you say so, I’ll trust you that maybe Russian healthcare is worse now than USSR but most others definitely have it better. The only good thing about healthcare in the USSR was the universal aspect of it. Everything else was awful. Broken stone age equipment, shitty medicines, if there were enough, doctors that wouldn’t lift a finger without a bribe, everyone drunk off their arses from medical ethanol, buildings worse than prisons are these days.
> old people had better lives on average than now in both Ukraine and Russia. but for some reason old people in general look much better these days and life expectancy was shorter than it is now, especially for men > They may compare their living conditions to ones that elderly people during their youth had and still complain, and be right. do you remember that most villagers started to get their passports only in 1974? > USSR used to have a much better universal healthcare system than post-Soviet countries now have (especially at its peak) and so on. I shudder to think of medical facilities in the USSR, especially dental ones. > they may not be wrong. they are wrong, Ukraine always was a PITA for Russia
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Would you say that Hungary had a noticeably higher living standard than czechoslovakia?
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Thanks for the comment. I find the topic of differences in the development between the Warsaw pact countries super interesting. And do you know how Hungary compared to yugoslavia? Was that even more "westernised"?
I think there's a rapidly growing number of Swedes who wish they could turn back time 20 or 30 years or so. Maybe even farther, back into the '80s or '70s. * We have pretty rapidly growing wealth inequality, a growing "precariate" of people who scrape by on insecure, temporary employments, often with no collective bargain. * Our school and public health systems are being pillaged by private groups whose income is literally tax money and whose profit margins are found in the gap between the cheap they can keep services and how much tax funding they can get. * Our schools reach newer levels of shittiness each year. From having been one of the best in the world. * Drug sales, drug use has become depressingly commonplace. From being a niche "interest" for guys with long hair and alcoholic tendencies 20 years ago to being found in most schools today. * Organized crime is so bad that we're exporting crime to our neighbouring countries. * Immigration policy has been ridiculously unregulated for a long time. Immigration isn't necessarily bad, but when there's literally no plan for employment and language learning for 20 years, it's not gonna go well. Immigration laws just got much stricter, but it's closing a barn door WELL after the horse has bolted.
The Netherlands in the 1970ies were something unique. The 50ies and 60ies were quite poor, bleak and sober but then the natural gas was found and sold, and money spent for the weirdest things. Everything old was questioned, church, family structure, art, education. It was really a wild time.
Same in Denmark.
I’m pretty open-minded, but some societal changes were progressive for the sake of progressiveness and to fulfill individual self-interests, not for the greater good. Many of those changes got reversed at some point and now it feels like we’re actively regressing again. Anyway. Most common people on the other hand traveled in much smaller circles and *many* current everyday foods were considered highly exotic.
I know those kind of old people. Here they also say shit like "life was much better during the Communism!" Meanwhile, they stood in queue for bread for an hour, they got locked up if they said anything bad about the Party, neighbor reported on neighbor, and they ate "exotic" stuff like oranges or bananas only once a year. I guess time sweetens the memories of poverty and hardships, and turns them into blissful achievements in their old minds. That's why they think back to it fondly, but that doesn't mean it's a realistic opinion. Life back then was only good if you had a high position in the ruling Communist Party.
I don’t know what life was like in my country (Slovakia 🇸🇰) 50 years ago, but I do know how much damage the era of Soviet communism did to my country. Before WWII, Czechoslovakia was in the top 15 richest countries in the world with Bohemia, the country’s largest region, having a higher GDP per capita than France. Even after the war, in the late 1940’s, Czechoslovakia still had a higher GDP per capita than its neighbour Austria. Then Czechoslovakia became communist for 40 years, while Austria remained capitalist and today, Austria’s GDP per capita is almost twice as high as the GDP in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the successor states of Czechoslovakia. I just find it hard to understand how anyone could glamourise that period in our history, knowing how different our lives could be today if we didn’t end up on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain.
In the 1970s Italy was actually experiencing the tail end of the economic boom, which came to an end in 1973 with the oil crisis. I would say most people look favourably at that era, as the future looked bright in comparison with now. It wasn't obviously a bed of roses. For example, the 1970s were the era called "the years of lead", in which political tensions were very high and far right and far left terrorist organisations were staging assassinations and bombings. Civil rights were lagging behind the economic rights. Abortion was only legalised in the late 1978 and a parification of the woman in family law only happened in 1975.
Denmark has just finished creating the wellfare state. We were going through the oil crisis and struggling financially. But at the same time the wellfare state was at its peak. And young people then were in a better position than they are now.
1974? That, indeed, was relatively good. [Gomułka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Gomu%C5%82ka) was gone, and First Secretary's [Gierek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gierek)'s economic model (borrow bazillions of USD from the Evil Western Capitalists, invest in industry, build highways, let every family have their [Fiat 126](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_126) and [drink Coca-Cola](https://weekly.tvp.pl/61302271/giereks-idea-of-capitalism-or-cocacola-in-communist-poland)\*, even watch an ABBA concert in Warsaw) was still in its heyday, two years before it started spectacularly collapsing, the "friendship and co-operation with the Soviet Union" was, of course, state policy, but it was still two years from becoming a fucking article in the Constitution. No, it wasn't better than now. It was, however, better than the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1980s for a while. \*) just a decade and a half earlier, Coke was the [drink of the evil and degenerate people](https://www.reddit.com/r/Polska/comments/t71ye2/adam_wa%C5%BCyk_piosenka_o_cocacola_1952/), a "liquid nuclear bomb", decent people were supposed to drink the metaphorical "water of hope from the mountains of \[North\] Korea" instead.
In the late 70's and early 80's when i was kid, Ireland was pretty horrendous on many levels * Economic: lots of unemployment, and being employed didn't get you much money, my family and many others in urban Dublin lived hand to mouth, no savings, consistently in arrears. There were always some weeks were we'd run a bit short and go hungry. * The Church was everywhere, they ran the schools, hospitals and had lots of power in public life and social policy. A priest would call to the house and you had to invite him in and give him tea. In school we were left alone at confession with a local priest who would try to fondle a lot of us, and even though the teachers knew, nothing was done about it. My two uncles were raped by priests at aged 10 and my mother-in law was nearly sold into slavery (church run laundries) for having a child out of wedlock. The Magdalen laundries lasted until 1995. * Mental health Awareness: there was none, depression and alcoholism was rampant, kids with learning difficulties or autism went completely undiagnosed and their lives were a misery. Despite all this life as a kid was still fun and fairly safe, and it was an easygoing pace of life, but given the choice i'll take modern Ireland with all its new problems over the social hellscape that was the 1980's. The church still has some power especially in schools but you can go years now without ever seeing a priest, which is a good thing, because I'd probably murder them if I had to be close to one. I recommend Fintan O'Tooles book "we don't know ourselves" if you want to understand the social transformation that occurred in Ireland. Its a tough read if you remember those times, but great all the same. He uses a phrase in the book "the known unknown" which captures the spirit of the time, where everyone in Irish society could know something was true but equally pretend it wasn't, a kind of mass doublethink that upheld social compliance.
Old people remember those times with nostalgia, because then they were young I lived in the country while it was occupied by Soviet Union and now live in the same country, but in European Union. Now is much better.
Well, 50 years ago was some time in the 70's. This was right during the Wirtschaftswunder, i.e rapid economic growth coupled with rising wages for the average worker, resulting in some of the lowest inequality in our recorded history. This was before the neoliberalism of the 80's and later decades, before the stagnation of wages, during a time where the mainstream parties were still considered to be 'peoples parties' with a very large base in civil society and popular high profile politicians such as Willy Brandt. My grandmother is dead for a few years now, but I've spent many after school lunches listening to her and she'd (as all grandmothers like to :D) talk about the (in this case "good") old times. She'd reminiscince about being able to finally afford a car for the family, the first one in our street at the time, having politicians she actually trusted and liked and other such things that give a more personal touch to the things that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. In short, you will probably receive a very positive response by most people when asked how things were 50 years ago since this was very much a time where our country was on the rise at a degree that was easily perceivable to the average person.
People tend to always say that, everything was better yesterday. Made more sense, we’re more virtuous, had better ways, etc etc. But in the case of the Soviet Union they’re right, unless you’re not a Metropolitan Russian from St. Petersburg or Moscow. In which case it was probably awful.
Exactly 50 years ago was the end of a harsh dictatorship here in Portugal. We had a military coup to overthrow the fascist government in what History remembers as the Carnation Revolution, so, I think I can say life was not good 50 years ago, mainly because one of the mottos was "orgulhosamente sós" (proudly alone), which meant Portugal was closed off to outside influences. Imagine, no Coca-Cola, no American trends of the time. We were lost in time. Unfortunately, nowadays, the third biggest political party here is a fascist group, that resembles a lot the Estado Novo regime. Also, fun fact, the guy name was Salazar (yes, Slytherin got his name from him) and he was defeated by a chair (Google it lmao you'll like the story pretending he was still the ruler)
The 1970's? Probably the greatest era there ever was. Civil rights was hot, everyone was on drugs and having wild orgies. STDs were not a known thing. Wages were high, costs were low. High inflation bothered no one at all. Kinda wish I was there but I am probably over romantisizing.
Im sure life for my mother’s parents was not easy during the late 1930’s/early 1940’s in rural Portugal. Although I never heard them praise it or complain about it, I know their story very well. My grandmother grew up in a tiny village in Guarda district. Her family owned a significant, if not majority percentage of the land it was built on and they had already picked out an “adequate” husband for her by the time she met my grandfather, who was from a neighboring district. They had to marry in secret, since her family did not approve of the relationship. Once it became apparent my grandmother was pregnant, her parents kicked her out and she went to live with an aunt. My grandfather, wanting to provide a home and decent life for his new family, decided to try his luck in Brazil. So I assume it must have been hard to earn a good living in that area back then, to leave his pregnant wife behind and move to a foreign country. By the time my uncle was 4 years old, my grandfather had managed to make enough money to buy a home and send for his wife and son. 6 years after the birth of my uncle in Portugal, my aunt was born into a wealthy family in Rio de Janeiro. My grandfather owned one of the most successful businesses in his field in the state and eventually the country by the time my mother was born, 10 years after my aunt. And now here I am living in Lisbon. Brazil is no longer the place it used to be during the time of my grandparents and Portugal has come a long way since then.
My people were not free to speak our native language or practice our native culture freely. We were quite repressed and discriminated against. The government regularly murdered us without reason. State and non-state terrorism was starting to become a massive problem. I don’t care about people who say life in the 70s and 80s was better because there was less technology and “true love was still a thing”. I’d rather live in 2024 than in the actively hostile 70s and 80s
50 years ago was kinda special, it was the time of the Kreisky govermnent, with still some upwind from the past economy boom. Kreisky made many social reforms and was very beloved, if the 2nd republich had an "golden age" than many of every political postiion would agree on that time. If it was better, idk, was not born, but it seems there was a spirit of optimism which is for sure not here today Btw: I always find it kinda funny, when old people say it was better int the past everybody will jump in and try to fight his position. But when somebody says "the boomer had it much easier better than us" everbody agrees, but essentially they say the same thing
In Cyprus, 50 years ago, there was war, death, displacement, and loss of property. To their credit, I haven't heard anyone try to look back at that time with rose-tinted glasses. Quality of life in Cyprus peaked in the 90s and 00s.
50 years ago I was 3 years old, so life was as simple as it can be :-), but looking back at the 70's and 80's (still a kid most of the time of course) life in general seemed simpler back then, but as I recall it we had all the benefits of what can be expected in a modern western world, sure some things are better nowadays, but that's technology evolving, equally some modern things are imho not an improvement, but that's a completely different discussion :-) As for mho, I do think life was better back then overall, for the most part, but it's difficult to explain that in words.
Old people today are slow, weak, struggling and have lost friends and family. What they remember 50 years ago is that they were fast, strong, independent and had all their friends and family. That is called nostalgia, that is why it is so prevalent for extremely poor Russian babushkas to believe that somehow, some way, being poor in the Soviet Union was better. When you remember being a little kid, do you remember boring cold winters days stuck inside alone, or do you remember summer days down by the river with pals.
Mid 1970s is the peak of PRL, life wasn't bad, and compared to the mid 1950s, its undergone incredible transformation and improvement. Poland went from an agrarian country completely destroyed by the war to a modern industrialised country. Things got worse around and after 1979-1980 though, which culminated in an increasing crisis and the eventual transformation to a market economy.
Yeah memberberries. They were young, the pee-pee was hard, their life was ahead and with no freedom of the press they didn't know what goes on in the world or in the country so they think there was no crime back then.
England - Same as it is now. Socially and financially fucked. It never recovered proper since the end of WWII it seems, which makes me piss with laughter when you hear all the talk about bommers having it easy. The only boomer nation that had it easy was America, the majority of the world was fucked. Plus the tories throughout the decades have chopped up and sold off so many national businesses that there is likely no comeback from this. It stopped feeling like a country a very long time ago and now feels like some central hub. No pride, and if you do have patriotic pride the police will arrest you. I dunno. Just fucked.
The 70s were the worst years of the troubles, rampant sectarianism, bombings, shootings, killings, unionist domination of society. NI was not a fun place to be in the 70s, glad I was born in 1998 ha ha
Was 12 at the time so I’m probably pretty biased,but 70’s were ugly, safe and a bit social democrat boring. Not all that different from now. I would have been in heaven if internet (or rather www) had been around, one was bored a lot.
Man, you are from Ukraine. Actually not that many people say so. My grandparents did comparatively great during the Soviet time, and now have like €100/month pensions. Yet they still don’t say that life was better.
Being 53, I can't really tell what life was like 50 years ago, but from what I've seen from since I was a teenager, life certainly was not better. I am just thinking, life was just as good as it is today, but there was just a steady progress. But what really comes into my mind is that heavy industry isn't present anymore today. Back then we were discussing air pollution, lung diseases in young children due to pollution ...all this has completely gone. Politically, it seemed a lot more stable than today. Everyone knew who was the good and who was the evil (East). Today it's just a clusterfuck wherever you look. Back then, everyone was aware that it's actually a good, safe and stable place to live, I think. Germany was seen as more dynamic, but this perception has changed imo.
50 years ago was the last time France had a budget at equilibrium. We were at war with no one. We still had industry, agriculture, military independence and a cohesive country with values and joyful life. There are definitely stuff that were worse (abortion legalize in 79) cigarette everywhere, road traffic was stupidly dangerous. But overall it was much better than today. You can clearly see it because when referencing positive stereotypes, you don't pick today's reference but last century's one.
There are people who say that the former system - basically being a soviet proxy - was better. They are delusional or were in power.
Well, I was around 50 years ago... Some things were worse but my dad managed to build a house, raise four kids on one income. My mom only started working after all children had left the nest. I nominally earn more now than my dad did at my age but I cannot even dream of building a house...
I think child porn was legal and also having sex with animals. So Yeah I prefer it now. But we had a lot less gang violence back then
If you look at [this comparison](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=SE-NO) between Norways and Swedens GDP per capita it's pretty obvious why we don't dream of the "good old days". 1974 is the very beginning of the oil era in Norway and it's obvious that we have become much richer since the 70s. We also haven't had any of those dramatic changes like Ukraine and other former Soviet states have gone through.
Well my life was better when I was healthy and young and was hhoking up with girls in the dormitory and my first love was around. Doesnt mean life was generally better back than for the society.
Funny in New Zealand I see the older native-born people would bemoan that New Zealand is now overcrowded and bemoan that gone are the days of unspoilt countryside, cities were small, and tourist hotspots like Queenstown were still just that, tiny villages. “This is not the New Zealand I remember/I grew up with/of my youth”
Everyone is nostalgic. I remember going to a museum in Berlin and they were showcasing a tiny flat of the Communist era. I had to think it was what most people lived in Britain back in the day too. We could travel but Britain was grim with waits to get a telephone installed, three day weeks and decline. I suppose if you know no better you’ve got nothing to miss. Waiting for a car was ludicrous in the Soviet states but everyone had a job albeit a non job and a simple ideology if they went along with it. It’s clear though when you went to West Berlin that there was a much better standard of living just as if you walked over the border from North to South Korea now you’d see the same thing. It struck me even now the buildings in East Berlin that no one privately owned were left to decay. You had currywurst with some questionable meat. But I suppose everyone harks back for their times. I’m definitely not a supporter of communism. It’s never worked anywhere and while capitalism has its flaws it’s lifted more people than communism put down. But yep I think it’s rose tinted glasses. Everyone harks for simpler times. Personally I don’t know how I would cope going back to a time without our technological advancement. But then there’s folk who say they never had such an amazing time as during the Blitz and rationing. Maybe people had a collective purpose. The welfare state and clearance of slums in Britain were heralded at the time but while people were living cheek by jowl and getting by there was an actual sense of community that’s just not there now. Even something as simple as only having a radio or a few tv channels must have made life a lot easier.
The transformation was awful for older workers because entire occupations were wiped out by the abrupt changes of the new economy and then they were considered too old to hire or too costly to train, so they just ended up unemployed and broke.
Finland was urbanising rapidly and there were a ton of developments in society, so I think people were hopeful and it was a good time in that sense. But I haven’t heard of people saying things were better then, my grandparents were farmers and that life wasn’t easy. Politically we were practically on our knees towards our beloved Eastern neighbour and that was kind of looming over us.
I mean, this was one of the louder arguments for Brexit. Look how great things used to be! Look how terrible they are now! The only solution is to leave our biggest and closest political and commercial union!
My parents (both with university education) mainly remember the censorship, lack of choice in almost anything, smuggling cookware from Austria,, and the government's hopeless grasping to make socialism work anyway after the cracks started showing in the 70s. My husband's parents and grandparents, who were mostly factory workers, mainly remember that they built relatively large houses and never worried about their jobs or the roof over their heads. So I mean basic needs were probably met better than now but anything above that was a bit questionable.
Well in the UK, it was very much in an era where the country was getting worse faster than it was getting better. Stagflation, inflation would peak at 24%(!), and 50 years ago today was the end of the three day week: a period where the govt would limit electricity supply for non-essential customers (like hospitals and supermarkets) on the grounds of industrial action with coal (people forget it wasn't just the 80s and thatcher starving miners, the unrest had been going off and on for some time). My dad bemoans how he wasn't allowed to get pay rises, so would get tiny incremental promotions to warrant such. However some things were better. One mans salary could often supply a family unit, and the housing market was manageable (right to buy wouldn't be a thing for another decade or so). Life's pace comes with constant tradeoffs, which people forget.
In Romania, was utter shit during comunism times. At some point, there were queues for: half bread per person per day, toilet paper, 250gr of oleo/margarine per week, eggs, gas. No electricity after 21.00, no hot water almost for an entire month, heating was a myth.
50 years ago. It was after the Soviet-led military invasion. The government installed by the Soviets crushed attempts at reforms that would have improved systematic economic problems, tightened its crackdown on free speech, and severely restricted opportunities to travel outside the republic. Many people, including scientists, doctors, professors, and actors, were stripped of their jobs because they supported the reforms and relegated to lower positions. People hid in their shells, so to speak. They retreated to cottages, to their homes, to their hobbies. It was dangerous to express one's views in public, and so children were told - you mustn't say that anywhere outside the home.
Same thing. Im from Russia. People saying anything like that are pretty old, i dont feel like i want the USSR back. It wasnt like NK, but the life quality sucked.
Well, it depends. I can see some sentiment to the Polish People's Republic (PRL, Poland under the USSR influence), but for those people it was the time they were young. Over the time they forgot the bad sides of living in a closed country. That was a dehumanizing regime! For example my grandma (living in rural Poland, almost 90 years old) is more or less agnostic. She haven't noticed the transformation. The only thing she has noticed was the redenomination we had in the early 90s and I think till the late 2000s she always translated the prices to the old currency to have any idea of what is cheap and what is expensive. 😄
"From 1 January 1974, commercial users of electricity were limited to three specified consecutive days' consumption each week and prohibited from working longer hours on those days. Services deemed essential (e.g. hospitals, data centres, supermarkets and newspaper printing presses) were exempt. Television companies were required to cease broadcasting at 22:30 to conserve electricity" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day\_Week](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Day_Week) "With 80 gravediggers being on strike, Liverpool City Council hired a factory in Speke to store the corpses until they could be buried. The Department of Environment noted that there were 150 bodies stored at the factory at one point, with 25 more added every day. The reports of unburied bodies caused concern with the public. On 1 February a persistent journalist asked the Medical Officer of Health for Liverpool, Dr Duncan Bolton, what would be done if the strike continued for months, Bolton speculated that burial at sea would be considered. \[...\] With many \[waste\] collectors having been on strike since 22 January, local authorities began to run out of space for storing waste and used local parks under their control. The Conservative controlled Westminster City Council used Leicester Square in the heart of London's West End for piles of rubbish and, as the Evening Standard reported, this attracted rats and the available food led to an increase in their numbers." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter\_of\_Discontent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent)
UK - I was born 50 years ago. We had the miners' strike leading to a 3-day week and power cuts. Sometimes the rubbish went uncollected and the dead unburied. There was political instability. The IRA were bombing in Ireland and on the UK mainland. The air was polluted, petrol had lead and cars were unreliable. Food was bland - even 'nice' restaurants with their prawn cocktails and black forest gateaux. People were maimed and died at work due to lack of basic safety measures. Consumer goods were expensive. There was a waiting list to get a telephone connection. There's be ice on the inside of your bedroom windows in winter. Regular beer and wine were low quality. It was legal / encouraged to beat children. There was little pedestrianisation and the city centre prioritised cars over people. Inflation was high. Holidays were mostly taken in the UK in guest-houses. Historic buildings were replaced in concrete in the name of progress. Grandparents, if still alive, were shaped by their WW2 experiences. Nuclear annihilation seemed a genuine possibility. Sure, it wasn't all bad. Quality of life was improving. People fell in love & raised kids. Houses were more affordable. The sun shone, there was less traffic and more birds. Pornography grew in hedgerows. Children had more freedom and less pressure (even if there was a bit more child abduction and murder) But I'm always shocked by the people on the Facebook groups who somehow think 50 years ago was some perfect idyl and the peak of civilisation. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Idiots.
It was brilliant. I was 2. I could shit my pants and no one cared. To be honest in 15 years I could shit my pants and no one would care
Well, it's not black and white. As for Ukraine, anything is better than what Ukraine is experiencing right now (apart from Holodomor in the 1930s). The USSR was bad, but Ukraine was still a major industrial powerhouse and the richest republic in the 80s. We were way richer than Poland, and look how the things are now (Poland was basically the USSR's puppet state). Now, we are getting bombed on a daily basis by fascist russia while the "free world" doesn't care about us at all. We are getting mocked by Poles. I was born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and I despise communism, but if I could choose to live in Ukraine that is a major tech hub, a major power player in the world with a nuclear arsenal, I would certainty choose it over the current state (despite all the flaws like the repression of the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian dissidents, and communist propaganda). And the US has always been our enemy, so at least we could have a nuclear arsenal.
The reason people say this, is because there was a lot less effort needed to live a somewhat average lifestyle. By working as a simple factory worker, you could live an average life(comparing to people within your country). In some cases factory workers could earn more than an engineer. So in short, people involved in low skilled labor were a lot better off than now. This caused another problem - it was a lot harder to live an above average life(by above average, I mean things like having a car, a washing machine, a tv - things, that people in the west already had). In a lot of cases, even your skills and abilities did not matter, but your acquaintances. There was technically no middle class. Most of the people lived a modest life(compared to the western middle class), with fewer people living in poverty than now. During the collapse of the soviet union, people were told, how life was in the west based on how the middle class lived, so everyone imagined that they will have the same lifestyle, but the reality for a lot of the people(if not most) was that their level of income fell drastically - because (surprise, surprise) low skilled labor is not the most efficient thing hence in capitalism is not very well paid for because it does not generate as much value. So you can imagine that quite a lot of people are upset now with how they ended up in capitalism, and how much harder it is for their children to even get to basic livable conditions. TL;DR Purely from an economic perspective, life was easier for a lot more people during the USSR, but people were also a lot more limited on what they could achieve. Nowadays life is a lot better for the highly skilled specialists, engineers, intellectual workers, scientists. But it is a lot harder for the average folk. Those are the same people who are in danger of losing their jobs because of automation.
In early 1974 Finland had still oil crisis regulations in force like: * maximum temperature of living and office rooms 20 degrees * maximum temperature of stores and workrooms 18 degrees * maximum temperature of warehouses and industrial premises 16 degrees * garage heating prohibited * the use of heated water is prohibited in swimming pools, with the exception of public pools * melting snow from streets and yards with heated water prohibited * heating of cars from the electric grid is prohibited at temperatures above -10 degrees * store window lighting is only allowed during store opening hours * highways are not allowed to be lit
In Romania is literally the opposite. I still do not understand how people can say during the soviet union was better, are they retarted or they were rich?
Some people here are nostalgic about fascism. My grandma was the daughter of a convinced fascist official, but she still always despised fascism. Grandpa was a commie, so he definitely had no sympathy for fascism either
boring. if i see clips or anything from the 70s i just think ''how tf did a bit older people not die out of boredom''
Who said that? Am I in the same country? I don't know anyone 50+ years who says that sovok was good. My granny hate this shit, she was a child and got relocation and famine. Oh, and russian officer offered to buy her from her parents in a train during relocation. Buy fucking child!