infecto
Lots of contention around the narrative. The original link
should be removed and replaced with the original source
that has what's seems to be accurate and different
narratives for the pictures. The linked site seems to
simply steal what is a pretty nice coverage of the
archive.https://www.rferl.org/a/the-manhoff-archive/283595
58.html
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Jgoauh
"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully
choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet
Union's ideology and power to the world."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 ?
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> wl
In my experience as an American, most of the parades
I'm personally familiar with are organized by local
groups rather than the government. Maybe you can read
some ideology into the American Legion marching with
flags, but it's more an exercise in giving the local
high school band a chance to march, the Shriners an
excuse to break out their clown cars, and maybe the
whole thing is an advertisement for the 4H or FFA
fair. That's not to say that the US doesn't have
parades in the genre the article talks about-the Army
250th Anniversary Parade probably counts. But not
every parade is a propaganda exercise.
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> balalalalalala
just like trump LOLOL
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usrnm
Interesting and sad to see the ratio of women to men doing
hard work in these photos, even road repairs are done by
women. It's mind boggling how devastating the war was for
the country.
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> branon
Ah, is that why... I noticed this too but assumed it
was due to some communist ideal of gender equality
leading to more women tradespeople, wishful thinking I
guess
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aix1
As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union (during a later
period), I found it really interesting to look at this
photographs.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.
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> sherr
Nothing has changed in that regard. Moscow still
receives much more monetary attention than any other
city in Russia.
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> nephihaha
Moscow plus Leningrad plus Vladivostok. The rest
fought for the crumbs.
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> IAmBroom
So a Potemkin capital, as it were?
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> > PaulHoule
(1) Most countries have a lot of concentration of
population, power, wealth in a capital city, for
instance Tokyo, Paris, London, etc. In the 1970s
it was generally understood that this causes
political instability and increases vulnerability
to thermonuclear weapons,
seehttps://books.google.com/books/about/Dispersing
_Population.h...By the 1990s it was a forgotten
cause: countries weren't willing to give up a few
points of efficiency facing the fierce competition
and the cold war was over.(2) Russia was
particularly extreme at that time because, under
Communism, Russia was transforming from a mostly
agrarian country with spots of advanced thinking
(Russian Futurists, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) to an
industrial powerhouse that could challenge the
United States. Ironically if there was anything
about the Stalin years it was that Russia was
highly successful at capital accumulation and
around that time many "non-aligned" and less
developed countries like India were hoping the
USSR could help them do the same.Karl Marx was
mainly interested in the advanced industrial
"core" but Lenin was more interested in
"peripheral" countries that were exploited by the
"core". The USSR was more about winning the
international competition than it was about
advancing the working class and the military
threat from Germany, US and other countries meant
the USSR had to develop as rapidly as possible so
it reproduced an imperialist system internally
with a division of labor that advanced industry
around Moscow and a few other centers at the
expense of the countryside,
seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Dekulakizat
ionIf you're interested in the spatial division of
the world you really need to
readhttps://www.amazon.com/Modern-World-System-I-I
mmanuel-Waller...and the rest of the four volume
set it is a part of.
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> > tokai
No, cause it wasn't a fake facade. Moscow was (and
is) petter on most parameters than the rest of the
country.
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adolph
It unveils the stark contrast between the carefully
constructed façade
presented by the Soviet authorities and the harsh
realities experienced by
ordinary citizens.
I guess without examples of the "carefully constructed
façade" its difficult to understand if there is a
contrast. To me, the photos just look like ordinary 1950s
street scenes. Waiting at Walgreens the other day I spent
the time examining the store's decorative antique photos;
aside from differences in culture and subject area, so
many details of vehicles, building construction, clothing
styles are remarkably similar.
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> zerobees
You're arguing with LLM-generated text and yes, I
don't think the photos actually show that. They don't
seem to be making any political point at all.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). Forget foreign travel, you even had
restrictions on domestic travel. People born in rural
areas couldn't move to Moscow unless they had
political connections of some sort.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.
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> balalalalalala
yes its same as america in 1950s except people dont
have to fight for netanyahu xDDDD
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balalalalalala
looks like moscow when i visit in 2017 xD same same except
maybe more people are less hungry than under Putin xDD
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obezyian
> store №20> MEAT. FISH.That's some Edward Bernays-level
trickery right there. /s
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> decimalenough
Reminds me of the old Soviet joke of somebody going to
the butcher and asking if they have fish. The butcher
responds we only have no meat here, you need to go to
the fish shop if you want no fish.
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bediger4000
Interesting article. Not a whole lot of crowing about US
free society, and negative comparisons, I presume because
of the US trending towards secret police and currently
having a favorable view of Russia.
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serious_angel
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...
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