The "Soviet" housing project that didn't work in the US/The Pruitt-Igoe

[Ooooops]

Unfortunately, in my experience, that doesn't seem to have changed. 

Yep...   

[OlgaH]

Ooooops, do you remember subbotniki? We had them every spring cleaning the yards,  planting flowers and trees.

BTW we still have them in Russia... when schoolchildren and students clean dog sh!t and garbage collected under the snow during the winter months.

[Ooooops]

Ooooops, do you remember subbotniki? We had them every spring cleaning the yards,  planting flowers and trees.

Sure do.   Community service without committing a crime to deserve it.   

[OlgaH]

Sure do.   Community service without committing a crime to deserve it.   

  sweet memories "сбор металлолома и макулатуры" Мы утащили чугунную кровать, старушка вынесла на время побелки".  Она до школы добежала: "Ёп... пионеры!" Пришлось кровать назад тащить 

[Boethius]

 I disagree.   There was a saying back then - "everything is communal, hence nobody's" which resulted in lots of vandalism of public property - graffiti, burnt mailboxes, using stairwells as toilets etc.

I never, ever saw this in Ukraine in Soviet times.  After the collapse, yes.  Common areas are often disasters.  Also now, don't leave your apartment vacant when you go on vacation, as it may be sold 2 or 3 times before you get back.

[Ooooops]

sweet memories "сбор металлолома и макулатуры"

 

[Ooooops]

I never, ever saw this in Ukraine in Soviet times.  After the collapse, yes. 

Depends on the neighborhood, I guess...   And the proximity to a "drinking hole".   

[Boethius]

Hubby worked all over Kyiv and said this just didn't happen, not even during so called "perestroika".  He also worked in villages, where about half the houses were empty, and no issues there, either.  When working, he could choose what house to stay in, all unlocked, he'd just tell someone he was there.  He did say that all the decorative medallions on the street lamps on Khreshchatyk were stolen.  He saw them on the gates in villages outside Kyiv.  So, eventually, they were replaced but soldered to the street lamps.

[Ooooops]

Hubby worked all over Kyiv and said this just didn't happen, not even during so called "perestroika".  He also worked in villages, where about half the houses were empty, and no issues there, either.

Can't say about Kiev, I've only been there couple of time.   As for the villages it's a very different mentality, much less "communal" than in big cities, especially in Ukraine. 

[Boethius]

In some ways, it was much more communal, at least in the villages I visited in Ukraine, which were mostly in Central Ukraine and the West.  Everyone had their own garden, and during so called "perestroika", some people even raised pigs, and the fur did fly in foraging for food for them.   But because at that time, they were all still on "kolhosps" they were, by definition, communal, and other than the party members, they all worked pretty much the same.


I liked visiting villages.  Usually, people didn't know I was a foreigner, and the "vibe" was different.  Hubby used to be sent out to a lot of villages to work, so when he'd pass through on a fishing trip, people would know him.  Even those he'd never met.

[Ooooops]

But because at that time, they were all still on "kolhosps" they were, by definition, communal, and other than the party members, they all worked pretty much the same.

It was by definition, yes, and people worked in communal fields and farms, but at the same time they all had their private veggie patches, live stock and such, just as you said.   Plus in small villages everybody is always in everybody's eye sight and can't vandalize things without being caught.   I spent every summer from age 6 till 17 in small village in Vologda region, so I'm very familiar with the subject.   

[Boethius]

There were some periods during which private gardens were completely forbidden, during the Khrushchev years, and at some times in the 1970's, and in some parts of Ukraine, in the early 1980's.


Almost all my family still live in villages.  Can't say it was, or is, an easy life.

[Ooooops]

There were some periods during which private gardens were completely forbidden, during the Khrushchev years, and at some times in the 1970's and early 1980's.

Really?   You mean in Ukraine?   May be, I don't know.   My grandparents bought summer home in this village in 1969 and never since that time there was any repressions on private gardens.   People just wouldn't be able to survive without their cows, chickens and veggies... 

[Boethius]

Yes, in Ukraine.  No private gardens until peasants received the right for passports, which was in the early 1970's, and then, in some parts,  they were allowed but then banned again in the early 1980's, before Gorbachev.   My relatives had problems at that time.

[calmissile]

Yes, in Ukraine.  No private gardens until peasants received the right for passports, which was in the early 1970's, and then, in some parts,  they were allowed but then banned again in the early 1980's, before Gorbachev.   My relatives had problems at that time.

As you know most of my previous time in Ukraine was spent in villages and former collective farms.  I was aware of the history that allowed the existing tenants to basically get the farms for free from the government at some point.  Also, following that is was important to 'privatize' the farms which in effect transfers owenership from the government to the new owners.

Currently (in the villages) we see private gardens at nearly every home.  I had never heard about it ever being illegal to have a private garden.  What was the reason for this 'law'?  What benefit was it to the government to have this restriction?

[Ooooops]

Yes, in Ukraine.  No private gardens until peasants received the right for passports, which was in the early 1970's, and then, in some parts,  they were allowed but then banned again in the early 1980's, before Gorbachev.   My relatives had problems at that time.

Khrushchev during the "Thaw" started giving passports to some peasants, but you are correct, most of them didn't get it till later...   Migration control, in it's pure form...

[Boethius]

Currently (in the villages) we see private gardens at nearly every home.  I had never heard about it ever being illegal to have a private garden.  What was the reason for this 'law'?  What benefit was it to the government to have this restriction?

To ensure that peasants worked for the collective farms.  Oooops talks about the Khrushchev thaw.  But Khrushchev also banned private plots.  My MIL remembers when every apple tree was cut down, every chicken removed from people, and that was in the city, where some people had yards.  In villages, all cows, goats, chickens, and pigs were confiscated.  Brezhnev changed the law.  They were allotted land later.  At first, it was only for personal use, and later, they could sell their produce.  But, they didn't get the land as their own until after the collapse of the USSR.

Khrushchev during the "Thaw" started giving passports to some peasants, but you are correct, most of them didn't get it till later...   Migration control, in it's pure form...

I know of peasants who, even with passports, couldn't escape.  The head of the kolhosp kept their passports.  One guy I knew had an ulcer, so was given his passport to go get medical treatment.  He had to beg for it, and promised to come back.  But, once he had the passport, he couldn't be stopped from leaving, and he ended up living in Kyiv.  Most of the navy was made up of escapees, for the same reason.

[mendeleyev]

Bo is right about bans in some years on private gardens. In some years gardening was considered in the same mindset as "hoarding."

That changed later and during some years the private potato crop was as big as, if not larger, than collective production and the government started including estimates of dacha production in the annual crop totals to bolster the numbers. To illustrate how badly the collective farming system sometimes operated, Voice of Russia Radio reported that in the height of the on-going grain crisis period, approximately 50% of all agricultural production was potato crops and over half of that was from private plots.

When the predecessors of the chain now known as Kroshka Kartoshka  started looking for potato sources they had to first turn to private sources and monasteries as the potatoes sent to market by farms were so inconsistent in size and quality that they were unsuited for fast food production.

Chains like KK, Rostik's and McDonalds literally sparked Russian farming into modernizing to 20th Century farming practices.

[mendeleyev]

PS...if anyone is planning on swinging by a Kroshka Kartoshka soon, please pick up a couple extra. I'll have mine topped with cheese, chili, ham and crab salad. Mrs. M likes hers with tuna salad on one half and crab salad on the other.   

[Ooooops]

When we just got that old house people in our village had 2-3 cows each, there were dozen of horses at the stables which were used for tending of collective live stock herd and also for plowing private potato patches and there were few other small villages just like this around within couple hour walk.   Then young people started leaving for near by cities to get jobs there, old people were dying out and when we went there last time with my husband in 2001 most of the village houses were turned into dachas for city folks...   And few villages around that are deeper in taiga are now just a ghost places, totally abandoned...   

[Boethius]

What year was that?  In Ukraine, people couldn't own their own cows until about the mid years of so called "perestroika".

[Ooooops]

What year was that?  In Ukraine, people couldn't own their own cows until about the mid years of so called "perestroika".

Like I've said - my grandparents bought this "dacha" in 1969 that's when I started going there for my summer school breaks. 

[mendeleyev]

Ooooops, that sounds about right and am I correct in guessing that your grandparents were part of the садоводческое товарищество experience? These situations granted certain families small plots on which they were allowed certain crops and livestock as an experiment to test such production against the popular community gardens of the time. The year those were made legal was 1955.

The dacha construction act, дачно-строительный кооператив, came in 1958 also as an experiment. The early years dachas were limited to single family buildings with no running water or electricity. Utilities were allowed later.

Interestingly, all three concepts were a success in garden production: community gardens, gardeners partnership, and dachas with gardens. Those successes were in stark contrast to the failing collective farm system.

[Ooooops]

Ooooops, that sounds about right and am I correct in guessing that your grandparents were part of the садоводческое товарищество experience?

No, they just bought a real house in a real village, closer to earth so to say after retiring from big city jobs.      That house was very old with big white Russian "pechka" taking almost half of living space where I liked to sleep.   I loved it!        Unfortunately it burnt down in mid-90s thanks to the drunk neighbor who fell asleep with a cigarette in his mouth in a near by barn...   

[mendeleyev]

My MIL has a similar house on the Volga River outside Volgograd. It had belonged to her parents and it is an old farmhouse, 2 floors, turned into a dacha. The garden is large and there are fruit trees but this one is not big enough to bother with livestock so we only use it for a garden and summer camp.

We had electricity and running water at one time but each winter vandals would come and break in to strip wiring and plumbing so after several consecutive years of that, the family decided that the water well and "outhouse" were good enough for summer months and that is how the family keeps it now. It is too hot to cook indoors anyway so we erect a makeshift kitchen on the porch each summer and that works fine.

I have a retired journalist friend who moved with his wife a couple hours outside Leningrad to a quiet village farmhouse. It is quaint and he put in a water well and septic system and they get along fine living close to the land with their wood stove and large garden.