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Facebook users recently shared a post in which the Soviet past is painted pink. At that time there were no taxes to pay, the apartments were free and “the police didn’t even have bananas.”
However, that’s not true. According to the historian D. Savin, in the days of the USSR, all free things had a price that was often too high.
Statement: In Soviet times, there was no need to pay taxes
Fake. Different fiscal policies were followed in different periods in the USSR.
“The Soviet system was created on the basis of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which provided maximum oppression to the so-called ‘bourgeois class’. So the tax really was. Sometimes quite a lot. In the 1920s and 1930s, this was particularly pronounced: peasants who did not want to join the collective farms were pressured by taxes so high that they eventually gave up and joined the collective farms.
Personal file photo / Dmitry Savin
Leonido Brezhnevo During the period of his mandate, the Constitution provided for the possibility of carrying out so-called “individual activities” if he did not employ contract workers. People who wanted to do so also had to pay very large taxes.
Also, there were other strange taxes. For example, people who did not have children had to pay extra for a long time. Tax without children, – the historian destroys the myth of the absence of taxes in the USSR.
The accusations that in the days of the USSR the payment of transport taxes was not required are not true. According to Komersant, the transport tax was collected from 1930 to 1988.
Even the bike owners had to pay for it.
Facebook photos / Lying on social media
Statement: The USSR distributed apartments for free to everyone
Partly true, but the apartments are so did not transfer ownership of those who “received” themThey could not be bought or sold, and residents paid for the “free” apartments themselves. for many years at a much lower salarythat would have been obtained under normal market economy conditions.
The historian emphasizes that the Soviets never hid that Citizens of the USSR received only a small part of their real salary. – only about a quarter, but in return they received from the state what they were taught as free education, free medicine and free apartments.
“Shortly after the arrival of the Bolsheviks to power, all the properties owned by the population were nationalized. Therefore, it can be said that the state gave departments, but you have to understand that the state itself took them away before, ”explains D. Savinas.
“First of all, it should be noted that the USSR has never divided apartments in its entire life. Living space was allocated. It could have been part of a common apartment, one bedroom. If you are lucky, there could be a separate apartment. The space standard Living space allocated by the USSR was generally 8 m2 per capita. This meant that 36 sq. km. m area could accommodate a family of 4 people, and this was normal.
People had no right to choose where they would live, they could only accept what was offered or refused. And here, in the queues, we had to wait for that living space after 10 to 15 years ”, says the historian.
VIDEO: Lithuania during the Soviet era, 1979. Construction of Vilnius.
“There was a phenomenon like a communal apartment. These were large, pre-revolutionary apartments, often quite large, sometimes 10 rooms, where each room was loaded with a family, often even two. I am not exaggerating. It used to be taken to the families to live, say, in the bathroom.
These were the inhumane conditions in which a real struggle for survival took place. This became one of the reasons why people began to complain to each other about the Soviet government, blaming things that were not there. When a neighbor was arrested and the whole family was exiled, the room was left empty, so there was an opportunity to improve their living conditions, ”says the historian.
AFP / “Scanpix” nuotr./Komunalinis butas Sankt Peterburge
“People do not understand a simple thing, it is the law of physics, that nothing comes out of nowhere and disappears nowhere. The state does not have a magic “locker” from which to get money, apartments, cars, “emphasizes the interlocutor.
Statement: the militiamen were not “gendarmes”, they did not even have “bananas”
It is not true that ordinary police officers were not armed with rubber sticks, the so-called “bananas”, but in case of riots, special forces and military were used: people were brutally beaten and killed only in the streets.
Photo by Vida Press / 50 years of the Prague Spring
According to Savin, for a long time in the Soviet Union, the militiamen were in fact poorly armed, and the special forces of armed militias appeared only during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev.
“The fact that the militiamen were armed with the arts does not mean that the government did not use force. This was perfectly demonstrated by the events in Novocherkassk in 1962. At that time, employee salaries were reduced and the city’s supply system was severely hampered: the quality of food in the canteens was very poor and the shops they lacked basic products. Then the neighbors began to demand justice, to go out into the streets. So there were really no “gendarmes” with “bananas”, military forces were brought into the city and nobody beat people, they just shot in the streets, “says the historian.
Unarmed protesters were also subjected to brutal violence in Lithuania. One of the best examples is Famous banana ball.
He constantly fought for the independence of Lithuania Lithuanian Freedom League In 1988 an organized rally took place. September 28 in Vilnius Gediminas Square (now Cathedral).
Its main objectives are to condemn the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and demand the repeal of the conspiracy of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which led to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
Photo from the Lithuanian Special Archive / Lithuanian Freedom League 1988 September 28 meeting. Vilnius, M. Gorkio Street (now – Pilies).
The militia and units of the internal army of the USSR were thrown before the participants of the rally. The brutal mitigation of the rally lasted 3 hours.
The peaceful participants of the demonstration and bystanders were accidentally kicked, beaten with fists and rubber sticks.
Statement: prices have not risen
Partly true: prices were regulated by the state, but that doesn’t mean they were the same for everyone
Savin emphasizes that the socialist economy was built completely differently from the market economy, which is normal for us now.
“The main currency of socialism was not money, but government. The economy was not built on the principle of liberties and needs, but on the principle of distribution of privileges. People with more privileges also received more gifts.
For example, in the 1930s, the Soviet ruble was the same, and NKVD officials bought it in specialized stores – cooperatives, where a simple ruble was equated with a golden one, so the prices became null and void. .
And there could have been a cooperative of common “mortals” nearby, where people had to buy at a real exchange rate for the ruble, “says the historian.
Photo by Scott Edelman / Wikipedia.org/ Romanians wait in a huge queue to buy oil (1986)
“The state set prices for everything and as a result there were quite distorted phenomena, for example, a 10-year-old car could cost twice as much as a new one.
After all, it was possible to buy a used one immediately, and here you have to wait many decades to buy a new one, ”says D. Savinas.
The post was prepared in 15 minutes. in collaboration with Facebook, which aims to stop the spread of misleading news on the social network. More about the program and its rules – here.
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