Shopping in the Soviet Union - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

Great video! Very informative.

Soviet joke:
Man walks up to a long queue outside a shop and asks someone:
"Is this the shop where there's no milk?"
The guy responds:
"No, this is the shop where there's no bread!"

I visited the USSR in 1981. The largest queue I saw was for large size bras. There were all sorts of men and women queuing around the block. I think it was Moscow, but it could have been Leningrad. There was a queue in a food market, for grapes, everyone waited for ages, then a small box was brought out and the excitement rose. A man, wearing a jacket with multiple medals, walked in off the street and straight to the front of the queue. A few words were exchanged with the person selling the grapes and the man was given them and walked out. Everyone just shrugged and the queue dissolved as they all walked off.

This is what happens when people zealous for bad ideas and who also have the least capabilities and qualifications foist their ideology upon a whole country. A travesty indeed!

I just want to say as an American self-exiled for 5 years presently, that when I watched the footage of how things were over there, it hammered home what I've known all these years. Just how UNNATURAL white people live, whether communist or capitalist. So divorced from Nature, the natural way to do things. 🙈 I compare this to the Native American way of living, for example, and I ask myself, "OMG, what have we done to ourselves? What is the way back?"

"According to are Marketing Plan, Comrade, the Bud is for you."

God bless capitalism and freedom

I think it’s worth noting that while there were massive lines, the same opportunities were give to literally everyone. Obv by the 1980s that’s kind of ridiculous but at the dawn of the Soviet Union that was groundbreaking for a majority of people.

Reminds me of when Trump was president. I guess shitty leaders will do that to ya.

The beauty of communist economy……. Starving everyone except the party elites.

I was in Czechoslovikia in 1980, two types/brands of cigarettes, regular and menthol. Simple.

I wonder, if you were covering the Nazi regime would you also hang Nazi propaganda posters on your wall? The USSR was a brutal hell for many people stop glamorizing it by prompting up your posters. Have some respect for the millions killed and even more lives and families destroyed.

Show this to all college students

I never understood the planned economy. What if the 5 year plan called for an increase in bread production but the grain harvest was bad on year 2. Would the government scrap the current plan or would they amend the existing one?

In about 1976 a young man from Russia managed to get to New York, where my buddies and I lived. He had been in town about two days and just started hanging out with us. What the hell else was he gonna do? Anyway, Sunday came around and we planned on watching NFL football all day as per custom. We were all in our early 20's so this this required massive amounts of groceries, beer and various other things. We went to the local supermarket to shop. When we waked in (through the magic self-opening door) he asked "why we come to warehouse?" We told him this is our local grocery store. It took a few moments for that to sink in. He began to understand the implications of that and started cursing, in Russian of course. He was furious! Imagine being 24 years old and in one moment you realize everything you've been told all your life was lies. He was weeping with anger. THAT is when I actually realized just how evil socialism is. Today the Mayor of Chicago proposed state run grocery stores because the supermarkets are leaving due to crime. Wow.

Absolutely correct description in this video. I grew up in the so called 15th Republic of the USSR. A country called Bulgaria that copied the Soviets 1 to 1 . I was a teenager in the 80s .I remember doom and gloom , desolation, depressing environment. Grey unappealing shops with very little in them ...and then there was the CORECOMs /Beriozka in the USSR/.little oasis of Western consumer goods where the Toblerones and the Kinder eggs looked like a dream. The ugliest guy in town could bed a super model provided he had USD, Deutsch Mark or one of those in the wallet😊😂

Thank God I was born in the West. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

It seems that Russia has always been totalitarian, from czars to communism

It's funny how in the old Soviet union had little product on the shelves and lots of currency in the pockets while in the US there were many products on the shelves yet little currency in the Pocket.

There was a Russian family our church sponsored (I don’t know the whole story) to come to the United States. They were part of a Pentecostal church over there (we weren’t Pentecostal but wanted to help). They were really nice people and grateful to be here (Seattle).
Two volunteers took the Mom and Dad to Safeway (this was March) and they were stunned to see so many vegetables and fruit in one place.
One volunteer took the man over to the meat department. The man stood still facing the meat case. The volunteer asked him why he was just standing there.
“I’m waiting to be told what I can have.”
The volunteer told him he could get anything he wanted at any time. The man cried.
I truly am thankful my relatives left the Volga region in 1917 and came to the US.

There is a huge difference between how things worked in the Soviet Union before the gradual introduction of capitalism about 1985 and after 1985. This propaganda video deliberately mixes up those two periods in the (correct) assumption that 98 % of viewers how no idea when what happened in Eastern Europe. In other words, most (not all things) you are blaming on socialism in this video are actually things that are the direct result of the introduction of capitalism in Soviet Union. This trick is widespread today.

I disagree with the choices in the West.
In most industries, we really only have a handful of conglomerates.
You pretty much have Kelloggs and General Mills for 80% of the cereal market.
There seems to be thousands of "brands" of cosmetics, but there are really only 7 conglomerates.

Almost anything hey where do I buy a Starship from

Today's banking and all companies reliant on computer and electric and health system is increasingly looking like the former USSR, all waiting, waiting, waiting and after hours you might not even have your question resolved.

E- commerce is trying to become a planned economy and its SOUL SUCKING

It's 'prah-cess' not 'proh-cess'!!!

What a nightmare! As a young overseas student living in France I visited Hungary with a Hungarian friend in 1981. Coming from Australia I was blown over by the empty shelves!

Capitalism is when you have 25 different flavors of diet cherry zero calorie Dr. pepper, and Socialism is when you have free healthcare for everyone, full employment, and little to no homelessness.

I think this vid reflects on the shopping in Russia. I was born in Hungary. This was part of the soviet union, but my country was open for western tourists. So we had the regular stores selling soviet made products and in top holiday resorts there were stores called "intertourist". There were western goods available for western money. This is how i could have seiko watch and benetton cloths.

Visited Moscow in 1974
Went to the tourist shop with the Intourist tour bus
Some stuff you couldn’t buy
Probably reserved for the party officials
The tourists guides were drooling and some of us bought stuff to give them

Wow. What a greatly inefficient system.

Dude stop. The lies are legion. How about mention the millions who literally couldn’t buy anything because they were declared “enemies of the state”. Freaking hockey fanatics

Speaking of propaganda, the presenter and producer are either lazy and ignorant or propagandists. The stock video and pictures of abundance are comical. I visited the corner Soviet Union three times in the 1980s; largest and medium-sized cities. The immense psychological trauma of being constantly under-nourished and anxious about your next meal is a great untold story. “Kings and Generals” are tank profiteers.

Надо обязательно сказать, что огромные средства СССР тратил на помощь странам соцлагеря и развивающимся странам Африки и Азии. Строил безвозмездно заводы, электростанции, плотины. Если бы СССР делал все это для себя, жизнь в стране была бы намного богаче. Сейчас все забыли об этой экономической помощи. В СССР было очень много недостатков, но было и много положительного.

I was shocked when i came to west and find people who thought soviets were better.
I understand the hypocrites who left but still praise the coutry they ran from but westerners who thought the ussr was better. Smfh

Fun fact, most signs in my city, translates "ЦУМ" (TSUM) to english like "CUM".

In short , people become lazy.... as seen in science priductivity index

All living creatures are consumers one way or the other.

Lets stop and think about this. Government regulating prices of goods. Rent controls, costs of prescriptions, gas prices? I remember waiting in lines for gasoline and buying on odd and even days dependent on your license plate. How about empty shelves? Going to Walmart and no toilet paper or paper towels. How about printing money just willie nillie? Haven't we learned from others mistakes?

USSR. A country where yesterday means tomorrow. It's a double entendre...... Our party and government (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) promoted it from the better side, but the reality in the USSR was exactly the opposite. Everyone who went there as a tourist, including my father, said that ordinary life there was much worse than it was at that time, for example, in Czechoslovakia. And this country of the USSR was given to us as a model for 40 years, and the communist comrades claimed that it was the only right path and a great future for the whole world. I am very happy that this Bolshevik experiment ended in 1989 in Czechoslovakia.

This video is a slap in the face of anyone defending the communism system

I had Polish friends who told me that in the soviet time, they always carried all their money with them. This for the case something might be available and they could instantly buy it. So people had money, but there was nothing to spend it on.

I got to spend the day shopping in East Berlin in 1982. The only thing that came in the Canada grocery store was Pepsi and everything else was in mason jars. At the department store all the teenagers were buying the same poster that was the same scheme as the popular West German poster oh, they had a hammer and sickle while the West German one was Atomkraft nein danke but otherwise, they were identical. At the GUM Department Store, the old woman drooled over a huge classic antique wood Clean Coal stove with a thermostatically controlled damper that would keep the oven cool and an iron that was an iron made of iron very heavy. It warms the whole house she said. 10 Deutsche marks a gram for the wonderful hashish in West Germany I asked the hippies I saw in East Berlin what was the cost and they replied they didn't know what that was. You know marijuana, I said. We don't know what that is, they lied. And West Berlin was too gaudy, subsidized, and a magnet for the rebellious youth and the burlesque and overflowing retail. The tallest tower in Europe, the antenna was able to serve much of East Germany which was illegal for East Germans to listen to. Radio Luxembourg was my favorite shortwave station which is now no longer. The song "Pop pop pop music pop pop pop Music" is a tune I heard there 50 years ago, and I remember like yesterday when I was young, I'm Wiser than that now.

So in the worst of Soviet times people lived better then they do in modern day North Korea

The description of the GUM stores in the USSR sounds like the old Best and Service Merchandise "catalog" stores in the US.

this guy always has the best outro's

I was startled to find even tiny inaccuracies in this truly magnificent channel. of which I am an immense admirer. Just one example Kolkhoz markets were not illegal but tolerated. They were fully legal.
This does not undermine the accurate general picture, so perhaps my concern is misplaced pedantry.