USSR: what Soviet people were proud of and what they were not told about

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On December 30, 1922, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, the heads of the delegations signed the Treaty on the formation of the USSR. Initially, only 4 union republics were part of the USSR: the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, and at the time of the collapse of the Union in 1991 there were 15 union republics. I had to pay, but it is impossible to deny the fact that the era of the USSR was a time of global changes in all sectors of the country's life. Today, about the achievements of a great country and about what its citizens preferred not to talk about.

1920s - 1930s: electrification of the whole country and great construction projects

The main achievement of the Land of Soviets in the 1920s was the electrification of the country, the fight against homelessness and the elimination of illiteracy. For all Soviet citizens, medical care and education became free of charge. A children's health camp "Artek" has opened in Crimea.

The 1930s went down in history as a time of great construction projects: the White Sea-Baltic Canal was built in record time, and units at the DneproGES were put into operation. The country has embarked on a course of industrialization. The developments of domestic scientists related to agriculture - the fight against drought, mechanization, chemicalization and increasing yields - gained wide scope. A new direction of science begins to develop - nuclear physics.

It was during these years that the first Soviet films "Battleship Potemkin" by Sergei Eisenstein, "Circus" and "Funny Fellows" by Grigory Alexandrov were shot, Sholokhov wrote his novel "Quiet Don", for which he later received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1920s - 1930s: a time of repression

The Bolsheviks began repressions against political opponents immediately after the October Revolution. But they continued in the 30s. At that time, the fight against "sabotage", sabotage, political crimes, most of which had been falsified, and the fight against kulaks were widespread. In the period from August 1937 to November 1938 alone, 390 thousand people were executed and 380 thousand were sent to the GULAGs. This time went down in history as a time of repression against ethnic minorities, in particular Germans, Latvians, Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians.

Interesting fact

The symbol of a happy childhood in the USSR is a smiling girl in the arms of Joseph Stalin. This is 6-year-old Gela Markizova, who came to the Kremlin with her father, one of the leaders of the delegation from Buryat-Mongolia.

True, then no one could have imagined that in a year the girl would have to change her surname, and the propaganda would give her face to the country's most famous pioneer Mamlakat Nahangova. And all because Geli's father was called a spy of Japanese intelligence and was shot, and she naturally became the daughter of an enemy of the people.

1940s - 1950s: the victory over fascism and the debunking of the personality cult

The 1940s were marked by a terrible war, the victory over fascism and the beginning of the restoration of the country. At this time, the best works of the Stalinist Empire style were built in Moscow: a complex of high-rise buildings in different districts of the capital, called "7 sisters" and new metro stations in the capital. It was at this time that the "cold war" and the arms race between the West and the USSR began. This prompted the creation of the best examples of Soviet military equipment.

On March 8, 1950, the USSR officially announced the presence of the atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly on the world's most destructive weapons. In 1953, the USSR also announced the successful test of a hydrogen bomb. In the period from 1954 to 1960, the virgin lands of Kazakhstan, the Urals, the Volga region, Siberia and the Far East were developed. In 1957 the atomic icebreaker "Lenin" was launched. It was at this time that, for the first time since 1908, Soviet scientists received several Nobel Prizes.

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev spoke at the XX Congress of the CPSU with a report "On the cult of the individual and its consequences", in which he debunked the cult of personality of the late "father of nations." In 1961, Stalin's body was taken out of the Mausoleum. Mass renaming began: Stalingrad became Volgograd, the capital of the Tajik SSR, Stalinabad, was renamed Dushanbe. Monuments to Stalin were dismantled everywhere, and many feature films were censored in order to get rid of the "intrusive image".

During these years, the glory of Russian ballet thunders all over the planet, and the Bolshoi Theater Tour became one of the most significant events in cultural life.

In 1958 the film "The Cranes Are Flying" by Mikhail Kalatozov received the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. And in the same year Nobel Prize for Literature awarded to Boris Pasternak for the novel "Doctor Zhivago". True, the poet was forced to refuse the prize, and the novel was never published in the USSR.

1950s: A Time of Failure Silence

They preferred not to tell Soviet citizens about their failures. So back in 1957, long before the Chernobyl accident, there was a larger-scale disaster associated with the proliferation of nuclear substances. The accident in Kyshtymsk left 11 thousand people homeless, about 270 thousand people were exposed to radioactive impact. For the first time, the tragedy was mentioned only in 1960, and its consequences became known only in the early 2000s.

1960s - 1970s: Leadership in Space and Hockey

The 1960s for the USSR became the time of leadership in the world of space technologies, which began with the flight into space of the first man - Yuri Gagarin. Even the spiteful critics of the USSR called this event "a genuine achievement of the Soviet era."

The 1960s are also the years of world recognition of the culture of the country of the Soviets. Mikhail Sholokhov receives the Nobel Prize in Literature. Violinist David Oistrakh not only gathers concert halls around the world, but also becomes a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, an honorary member of the National Academy of Sciences "Santa Cecilia" in Rome, a corresponding member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, the Beethoven Society, the Swedish Academy of Music in Stockholm, Honorary Doctor of Music of the University of Cambridge and holder of orders of several European countries. The names of Irina Arkhipova, Elena Obraztsova, Galina Vishnevskaya, Maya Plisetskaya, Tamara Sinyavskaya, Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov are thundering on the world opera stage. Andrei Tarkovsky's film "Ivan's Childhood" at the Venice Film Festival receives the "Golden Lion".

In the period from 1970 to 1973, the world's first soft landings on Venus of the Soviet space stations Venera-7, Venera-8, Venera-9 and Venera-10 take place. The main Komsomol construction project of the country begins - the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). The 1970s also became the triumph of Soviet hockey.

In 1977, the right of citizens of the USSR to free education at all levels (from primary to higher) was enshrined in Article 45 of the Constitution.

1960s - 1970s: environmental disasters and the era of stagnation

Someone considers the Brezhnev era a "golden age", recording on account of this time factories built, growth statistics, factories built, brilliant films and other unsurpassed achievements. The denouncers of the "stagnation" state the supply failures of the population, a shortage of goods, poor product quality and destructive environmental consequences of economic activity.

In particular, in the 1960s, due to irrigation, the Aral Sea, which at that time was the fourth largest lake in the world, began to dry up. From 1960 to 2007, its surface area of this reservoir decreased from 68, 90 thousand km. sq. up to 14, 1 thousand km. sq.

1977 was remembered by the citizens of the USSR for a series of terrorist attacks in Moscow. There were three explosions: in a Moscow metro carriage between Izmailovskaya and Pervomayskaya stations, in the sales area of a grocery store on Bolshaya Lubyanka and near a grocery store on Nikolskaya. As a result, 7 people were killed, 37 were injured. The main organizer and leader of the attacks was Stepan Zatikyan, an Armenian nationalist who was eager to "punish the Russians for the oppression of the Armenian people." The death sentence imposed on him was opposed by Soviet dissidents, in particular A. D. Sakharov.

1980s - 1990s: the beginning of the end of the country of the Soviets

The 1980s began with the Moscow Olympics. In 1981, the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" by Vladimir Menshov received an Oscar. It is known that later Ronald Reagan, preparing for a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, watched this film 8 times, trying to "understand the mysterious Russian soul."

In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev entered the political arena. The spirit of freedom, perestroika and glasnost is beginning to soar in the country. Few could have guessed that the country had entered the homestretch of its existence. On November 15, 1988, the Soviet spaceplane of the Buran reusable transport space system made its first and only flight, perhaps ending the era of Soviet achievements.