Yeah, what would I know about the construction of commieblocks, I just spent years living in them. I'm sure the teenage average redditors know much better than I do.
More people in the 20th century were murdered by their OWN governments than from any other cause. If people don't know what democide is, definitely read through the site I linked above. Yes, it is old school HTML but the message is important.
That guy isn't actually wrong, material theft was an incredibly huge problem as well. It's just irrelevant to the discussion, because stolen construction materials don't make the walls change angles.
I do like looking at brutalist architecture, for two reasons. One is that it gives me massive nostalgia - I grew up in a neighborhood composed of paneláky and I have some memories I made among these concrete behemoths that I'm fond of, and two, brutalist buildings can actually look kinda cool, in the same way pictures of postapocalyptic future can. I wouldn't want to live there, but I can appreciate the... strangeness, I suppose.
Also to be fair, commie buildings were ugly but at least their planners left plenty of vegetation between them. Modern construction in cities is just as ugly, even if it's usually higher quality, but it's always a concrete wasteland.
My grandmother participated in anti soviet espionage, going undercover in many Soviet block nations posing as a nurse to observe their (backasswards) medical standards
My father did missionary work helping Christians in TUSSR escape to America. I met one of the escapees the day after he arrived. We took him to a grocery store to get the basics. He had a headache from the variety and asked that we take him to a real grocery store instead of a "tourist one". In other words, he thought a regular, rural southern Harvest Foods was a propaganda store because it had so much stuff in it. Oh, and his grandparents died during Holodomor
I try to talk to commies and they always say that the horrors of communism are "CIA propaganda". I'm always like, "bitch, my family has been seeing this first hand since long before either of us were born"
But the one that I remember from the nineties was this:
There was a guy who came over to America after the end, who'd been a builder or carpenter by trade. He knew about grocery stores, those didn't phase him. What shocked him was a Menards. He was walking through the lumber yard just dumbstruck and asked a worker if everything there (pointing at the big, banded stacks of dimensional lumber) could be bought by just anyone.
The employee was like, sure, do you have a contractor account? And he's like "No", thinking that it's the same sort of situation as in Russia, that you needed connections and paperwork.
And the employee just cheerfully, like "Okay, well, we can go over to the service desk and set one up."
And that's when he broke down. The idea that just anyone, ANYONE can walk into a store and buy a truckload full of wood. A whole freaking truckload, delivered wherever you want it, and all you need is the money. No papers, no approvals, nothing, just slap the money on the table and done.
But the famous one was when Bush invited Yeltsin to visit Houston to see the progress on Space Station Freedom (what would become the ISS). After a tour of Houston, the delegation made a surprise stop at a Randall's grocery store.
Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs that it was that trip that broke his confidence in the Soviet Union.
The Yeltsin visit to Houston is well documented. The delegation was shocked at the level of sophistication in things as simple as checkout. Nobody in America in the 80's would blink at a credit card reader or a bar code scanner but they'd never seen anything like it.
FFS, Western building standards are hard-won and paid for in blood - almost every safety standard has some disaster behind it, some notable deficiency that cost money or cost lives or both.
Why would anyone think that a Soviet Union that insulated huge swathes of the government from meaningful interaction with it's own citizenry would be magically better at this than the West?
Yeah, what would I know about the construction of commieblocks, I just spent years living in them. I'm sure the teenage average redditors know much better than I do.
Sad to see that. Anyone defending ANYTHING communist related is entirely ignorant of modern history, willfully or not.
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
More people in the 20th century were murdered by their OWN governments than from any other cause. If people don't know what democide is, definitely read through the site I linked above. Yes, it is old school HTML but the message is important.
I will say that the USSR anthem was darn good. Not worth all the other stuff, but still one of the (if not the) best national anthems out there IMO.
Yeah it's pretty good. They even kept the melody after the USSR dissolved and just changed the lyrics.
They made good firearms.
That first response though, "uh, educate yourself, soviet laborers weren't drunk- they were thieves."
That guy isn't actually wrong, material theft was an incredibly huge problem as well. It's just irrelevant to the discussion, because stolen construction materials don't make the walls change angles.
Remains so in China.
It's not that they don't KNOW how to build, they just know how to cut corners and make it last just long enough for the checks to clear.
I've heard some 'former commies' say the free materials were considered partial compensation for having to be commies.
"If you're not stealing from your job, you're stealing from your family."
We Pretend to Work and They Pretend to Pay Us
Eh, there is no need to be drunk to fuck up wall angles.
Source: i live in a house with not a single right angle, built by a mostly sober man.
Do those people actually like those horribly looking buildings? I can't see a way were those grey blocks would appeal anyone.
I do like looking at brutalist architecture, for two reasons. One is that it gives me massive nostalgia - I grew up in a neighborhood composed of paneláky and I have some memories I made among these concrete behemoths that I'm fond of, and two, brutalist buildings can actually look kinda cool, in the same way pictures of postapocalyptic future can. I wouldn't want to live there, but I can appreciate the... strangeness, I suppose.
Also to be fair, commie buildings were ugly but at least their planners left plenty of vegetation between them. Modern construction in cities is just as ugly, even if it's usually higher quality, but it's always a concrete wasteland.
This very thing makes Moscow such a livable city, even though with 20+ million people it's the biggest city in Europe.
My grandmother participated in anti soviet espionage, going undercover in many Soviet block nations posing as a nurse to observe their (backasswards) medical standards
My father did missionary work helping Christians in TUSSR escape to America. I met one of the escapees the day after he arrived. We took him to a grocery store to get the basics. He had a headache from the variety and asked that we take him to a real grocery store instead of a "tourist one". In other words, he thought a regular, rural southern Harvest Foods was a propaganda store because it had so much stuff in it. Oh, and his grandparents died during Holodomor
I try to talk to commies and they always say that the horrors of communism are "CIA propaganda". I'm always like, "bitch, my family has been seeing this first hand since long before either of us were born"
I recall stories like that.
But the one that I remember from the nineties was this:
There was a guy who came over to America after the end, who'd been a builder or carpenter by trade. He knew about grocery stores, those didn't phase him. What shocked him was a Menards. He was walking through the lumber yard just dumbstruck and asked a worker if everything there (pointing at the big, banded stacks of dimensional lumber) could be bought by just anyone.
The employee was like, sure, do you have a contractor account? And he's like "No", thinking that it's the same sort of situation as in Russia, that you needed connections and paperwork.
And the employee just cheerfully, like "Okay, well, we can go over to the service desk and set one up."
And that's when he broke down. The idea that just anyone, ANYONE can walk into a store and buy a truckload full of wood. A whole freaking truckload, delivered wherever you want it, and all you need is the money. No papers, no approvals, nothing, just slap the money on the table and done.
But the famous one was when Bush invited Yeltsin to visit Houston to see the progress on Space Station Freedom (what would become the ISS). After a tour of Houston, the delegation made a surprise stop at a Randall's grocery store.
Yeltsin wrote in his memoirs that it was that trip that broke his confidence in the Soviet Union.
Some soyboy in a Che shirt, probably.
Seriously though, great post. I'll have to look thos accounts up.
The Yeltsin visit to Houston is well documented. The delegation was shocked at the level of sophistication in things as simple as checkout. Nobody in America in the 80's would blink at a credit card reader or a bar code scanner but they'd never seen anything like it.
The other is a story I heard locally.
The Cold War to them only existed in parts of their history books they never got to...
They ran out of steam between the US Civil War and the First World War, but somehow managed to cover the Holocaust and Vietnam...
Shock me?
No, I see the same sheep-parrot hybrids I left Reddit to avoid, performing the same hybrid baaa-squawk routine.
FFS, Western building standards are hard-won and paid for in blood - almost every safety standard has some disaster behind it, some notable deficiency that cost money or cost lives or both.
Why would anyone think that a Soviet Union that insulated huge swathes of the government from meaningful interaction with it's own citizenry would be magically better at this than the West?
Did they agree.... because that’s what would shock me