One thing worth pointing out: Moscow was very different from the rest of the country. It had better housing and infrastructure, the shops were stocked far better than elsewhere in the country, it had more grandiose architecture and richer cultural life and so on.
In many is ways it was the country's showcase city.
> MEAT. FISH.
That's some Edward Bernays-level trickery right there. /s
Dear Douglas Smith... and the website authors...
Thank you, heartfelt... for such an incredible work... for the effort, and you being a miracle...
To keep it in the infinite History of us... the Human...
Ineffably magnificent... no words may express it...
May you have even more success. stability, and peace...
Best, and kind regards...Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases.
Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither coreographed, planned, or meant give a positive image ?
How do you determine people's enthusiasm is planned and orchestrated by looking at them ?
Are all parades proof the country is actually the torture Truman show or just the countries you're being payed to spy on ?
It unveils the stark contrast between the carefully constructed façade
presented by the Soviet authorities and the harsh realities experienced by
ordinary citizens.
The thing to understand about the USSR is that Moscow was a flagship city of a continental-scale empire obsessed with projecting an image of power and growth. It had grand construction projects, cultural events, subway, good schools, paved streets. Sort of like Pyongyang, if North Korea was a global superpower. The thing that sucked about Moscow wasn't that it looked drab, it was that you could get disappeared to a gulag or outright murdered for political speech or merely pissing off a government official, and that the government managed almost every aspect of your life (including where you work and live).
Life was far more miserable in the rest of the USSR, including all the republics and satellite states that Moscow approached as sources of cheap resources and labor to prop up the capital. Famine and all.
bediger4000•2d ago