It's fucking wild. Like wage flattening was something that was talked about by Soviet academics and the Communist Party, but it wasn't until Gorbachev that it was actually attempted in earnest as one of his bloc's various hairbrained policy ideas, and was walked back as fast as his anti-alcohol campaign because of how horribly unpopular it was. IIRC Khrushchev may have also started the process, but stopped with only minor reforms after it yielded poor results (compared to Gorbachev, at least Khrushchev tended to back off - or was reined in by other officials - after his liberalization policies yielded poor results instead of doubling down and setting everything on fire like Gorbachev and his bloc were able to do).
Are you telling me Soviet history is well documented and if you want to make it really easy there's probably over 100 million former Soviet citizens you can talk to?
Can't be. I was assured that the Soviet Union made reading maps illegal* so no one could figure out how to leave, and that after the government was gone no one knew how to find their way home and just got lost in the woods, presumably with all their books and records which they probably thought were maps, the poor bastards.
* They definitely, 100% didn't consider Orienteering a major sport with competitions, and people definitely weren't taught navigation and survival skills as part of mandatory civic defense education aimed at preparing the population to better survive another invasion or, even worse, a possible nuclear attack by the US!
I saw that when it was posted lol. I was referencing a post from the old sub where someone found some weirdo chud claiming that his Soviet grandfather told him the USSR forbid people from learning how to read maps so they couldn't leave, when in actuality reading maps and navigating terrain was literally a big competitive sport in the Soviet Union and literally everyone was required to learn navigation among other survival skills as part of their civic defense preparedness education.
It's fucking wild. Like wage flattening was something that was talked about by Soviet academics and the Communist Party, but it wasn't until Gorbachev that it was actually attempted in earnest as one of his bloc's various hairbrained policy ideas, and was walked back as fast as his anti-alcohol campaign because of how horribly unpopular it was. IIRC Khrushchev may have also started the process, but stopped with only minor reforms after it yielded poor results (compared to Gorbachev, at least Khrushchev tended to back off - or was reined in by other officials - after his liberalization policies yielded poor results instead of doubling down and setting everything on fire like Gorbachev and his bloc were able to do).
Are you telling me Soviet history is well documented and if you want to make it really easy there's probably over 100 million former Soviet citizens you can talk to?
Can't be. I was assured that the Soviet Union made reading maps illegal* so no one could figure out how to leave, and that after the government was gone no one knew how to find their way home and just got lost in the woods, presumably with all their books and records which they probably thought were maps, the poor bastards.
* They definitely, 100% didn't consider Orienteering a major sport with competitions, and people definitely weren't taught navigation and survival skills as part of mandatory civic defense education aimed at preparing the population to better survive another invasion or, even worse, a possible nuclear attack by the US!
https://hexbear.net/post/99598
You might like this photo.
I saw that when it was posted lol. I was referencing a post from the old sub where someone found some weirdo chud claiming that his Soviet grandfather told him the USSR forbid people from learning how to read maps so they couldn't leave, when in actuality reading maps and navigating terrain was literally a big competitive sport in the Soviet Union and literally everyone was required to learn navigation among other survival skills as part of their civic defense preparedness education.
More for your enjoyment:
https://hexbear.net/post/99694