Childhood in the USSR and modern Russia. Why there was a different childhood in the USSR The emergence of the city and its past

The slogan from the “Songs of Soviet Schoolchildren” by D. Saliman-Vladimirov to the words of V. Gusev “Thank you for our happy childhood, dear country” is in the soul, probably, of everyone who was born in the Soviet Union. Indeed, almost everyone whose childhood years fell on the 1970s and 1980s recall that time with warmth and tenderness. Not only cheap and delicious ice cream and games in the yard and on sports grounds, but also pioneering activities that were obligatory at that time - collecting waste paper and scrap metal, bonfires and contests. In fact, one of the reasons for the nostalgia that, according to sociological surveys, most Russians feel for the Soviet Union, is associated with good memories of carefree young years, which then, let me say, everyone had, including, as far as possible, at the orphans.

And there is something to compare the older and middle generation with - with the childhood of children and grandchildren, the dashing childhood of the 1990s and even partly "fat" zero. For the first time in many years, the country faced such a seemingly obsolete phenomenon as homelessness. Something that Soviet children could not have appeared - an absolute wild stratification in the financial situation, when some kids get used to luxury from childhood, while others, with living parents, are forced to vegetate, if not in complete poverty, then in very tangible poverty.

It hurts to see this, especially knowing what was guaranteed to every child, when market morality, where everything is bought and sold, has not yet triumphed in our country. In this article I will try to remind you why childhood in the USSR was so happy.

Practically every Soviet child, unlike post-Soviet ones, could find himself in a kindergarten if his parents wished, and even in a nursery if necessary. How good this is for the kids themselves is hard to say, although, no doubt, in this case they can get used to life in a team a little, but the fact that for parents this was a serious help is an indisputable fact, especially for mothers. Gender equality was guaranteed not only by the Constitution, but also by the opportunity for women to work on an equal footing with their husbands, and it is almost impossible to achieve this without kindergartens.

In the market era, nannies came to the rescue, but this pleasure is expensive - not every family can handle it. Yes, and unsafe - of course, the murder of a baby by an unhealthy, it seems, mentally nurse - is an extreme measure, but certain problems, albeit far from so terrible, periodically arise. So the concern of the Soviet state that the kids were always under the supervision of not only a nanny is really remembered with nostalgia.

Even if being in kindergartens does not cause such feelings. Someone then didn’t like foam in milk, someone was a harsh teacher, but I just want to wish the children of subsequent generations that they have the same most unpleasant memories of their early years.

The reality is that the crime chronicle is filled with reports of crimes against children. This was definitely not the case at that time, which we often remember with the kindest word. Simply because there was the mentioned high availability of places in children's institutions, and there was serious control, as in schools, in after-school groups. Well, there was a severe punishment - every bastard understood that he would face severe punishment of the law if he attacked a minor, up to and including exceptional punishment in some cases.

Even in the good old Soviet years, there was no absolute equality in access to a good education, but the degree of inequality was significantly lower than now. And there was it only for one single territorial reason - in large cities, as a rule, it was easier to find a qualified teacher at school and technical school, as well as as a tutor. In this regard, no significant progress has been made. And if they are, then in the direction of increasing disproportion due to the relocation of qualified teachers to the capital and other megacities. Teachers, like representatives of many other specialties, of course, are looking for a more financially profitable job, which, of course, is easier to find in Moscow or St. Petersburg than in a small place, which itself is far from being found on every map.

But now the actual property qualification was also trying to achieve those old problems, because many schools are commercial. Moreover, the payment for educational services, as they say now, by no means guarantees its quality, but it sets a quite visible financial threshold on the way to receiving it.

The introduction of the USE was largely justified by the fight against corruption in the education system and the desire to give more opportunities for children from the periphery to enter prestigious universities, primarily in Moscow and St. Petersburg. But a number of them are taken out of brackets, which in itself already indicates the absence of declared uniform requirements, and most importantly, no serious simplification of the task for non-resident applicants has occurred. After all, even before, many could come to work from the outback - it was important to have a place where to stay, and enough money to feed themselves, and maybe the whole young family. In the Soviet years, this was not easy - many students were forced to earn extra money. Now, especially in times of crisis, work for many boys and girls generally comes to the fore, and in many cases this is unlikely to benefit their studies. Those whose parents got rich during the years when the country was flying apart are increasingly choosing to study in Western Europe and the United States, which are overwhelmingly inaccessible to ordinary working people.

Now it's hard to even imagine that once, just a few decades ago, in many basements there were not shops, but sports schools for children and youth, one of which the author of these lines also went to. Classes in classical or, as it is now called, Greco-Roman wrestling did not make me a champion, but in addition to physical hardening, no doubt, they were useful spiritual hardening - they taught me to overcome difficulties, no matter how difficult they may seem at first.

In general, Soviet teenagers had an order of magnitude more opportunities to go in for sports than modern ones. The assortment of the then sports department stores was more modest than modern specialized supermarkets, but much cheaper. This means that it is much more accessible to the widest layer of parents. That is why it was easier to raise champions at that time - there were less costs and much higher competition, during which real nuggets appeared in a variety of sports.

But still, the main task of the sports sections was different - to give young men and women something to do after school hours and improve their health. Many veterans of Afghanistan later admitted that to a large extent they were helped by the sports uniform that they were able to get in the classroom at the stadiums and in the Youth Sports School.

Recognition of the superiority of the Soviet system of physical culture and sports, first of all, for the younger generation, is also seen in the current attempts to revive the TRP. This badge was better than any reference, evidence of good health.
But even those of the guys and girls who could not or did not want to do the sections could train on their own. At their service were sports grounds, and in winter skating rinks flooded in many yards.

In the winter months, whole families went cross-country skiing, and in the summer to swim in the sea or in the pond closest to the dacha. Generations of kids in the 1970s and 1980s need not be reminded that all this was either much cheaper than the market rate, or completely free.

Every Soviet child of the Stalin era knew that every spring his uncle would announce another price cut through the loudspeaker. Every child in capitalist Russia guesses that the cost of his clothes, shoes and toys will rise in a year in the first place, regardless of how many dollars a barrel of oil will give. Nothing personal - just such is the will of the invisible hand of the market: parents will deny themselves everything, but not children. Therefore, the prices of children's products are rising as fast as the children themselves, which in turn means that families need to buy all new suits, dresses, coats and jackets. What kind of capitalist will deny himself the pleasure of warming his hands on parental love. Therefore, the invisible hand of the market does not believe in tears, including a mother of many children, tearing herself up at three jobs.

Under the socialist order, about which many of us confess to sociologists in sympathy, everything was different. The legendary phrase "All the best for children!" implemented steadily. As a result, the most ordinary boy in the country of the Soviets could easily have a German railway, which now only a few wealthy collectors and their children can afford. Not a single Soviet girl could be afraid that she would look more modest than others at the holiday - equality, scolded by anti-Soviet “leveling”, here helped the mothers and fathers of young ladies.

Low prices for children's goods, of course, had negative consequences in the form of the notorious shortage, but their task - to provide every baby with everything necessary for any financial situation of his parents - was solved quite successfully. And it was precisely in relation to children's things that the article for speculation, which was in the Soviet Criminal Code, seemed quite fair and reasonable. Indeed, to speculate on the love of the mother and the feelings of the father, on the sentimentality of grandparents is somehow not good even by modern standards of capitalism, almost devoid of emotions.

Now much of the socialist reality seems to us for granted, for example, pioneer camps. Meanwhile, their very name suggests that children's recreation facilities arose in the Soviet era, together with a pioneer organization, which gave them the appropriate name. The Soviet state took care of the summer holidays with almost the same seriousness as the issues of national security. Partly because they are connected with each other - the well-being and defense of the country are due to a large extent to the education and health of the younger generation.

Then everyone, from the general secretary to the party organizer of a small enterprise and a collective farm, thought ahead of time about how to organize long summer holidays in such a way that the children would not sit in a dusty, gassed city, but would go to nature, if possible to the sea and that it would be available to literally every family with any income.

The shape of the pioneer camps seemed to be optimal - it allowed the parents to take a breather in order to go somewhere with the whole family in another summer month. Now more and more often children stay in the city, which not only does not contribute to their health and physical development, but also impoverishes them spiritually. The guys do not see anything further than their yard, or even further than their computer.

Especially, presumably, it was a shame for them later, in September, to listen to the stories of their peers about how they had a great summer. Children whose parents cannot take them on a trip to warm countries, or at least to a summer cottage, should be able to receive a guaranteed ticket from the state to the Crimea or Sochi, to a pioneer camp.

The revival of Artek, one of the main and world-famous children's health resorts of the times of the USSR, is a very good undertaking. But a whole network of children's and sports camps in resort areas is required so that there are no problems with vouchers, and their cost is minimal or completely equal to zero. Here the Soviet experience, when almost every enterprise had its own pioneer camp, and sometimes not even one, seems to be certainly useful.

Socialism had many advantages - here is confidence in the future, and the absence of stratification, and, accordingly, sharp contradictions in society, but still a calm and happy childhood in this series is the main advantage. Here, in the competition between two socio-political systems, as well as in education in general, Soviet Union could give odds to most developed Western countries, not to mention the weak and ever-developing, but so far not developed states. But in the 1990s Mother Russia almost abandoned this priceless legacy as a “legacy of totalitarianism.” Although what could be wrong in ensuring the interests of children, and hence the interests of society as a whole?

Here is the text I got. Unfortunately, I don’t know the author (the source is indicated, but apparently not the author), but he wrote about his life. Yes, splint, but only bright memories, but there was something else. But in fact, everything is already dirty, vulgar and disgusting. And after reading the memories of the childhood of this person, I thought, I also remember only light. Perhaps it was so, perhaps this is a property of human memory. Doesn't matter. The main warmth in the soul became after that. :-)

This is the song of the Soviet Empire of the USSR, my Motherland, great, powerful, loving, paternally harsh, the best country in the world.

I was born in 1959, when the nuclear age had already begun and the first satellites were launched. Our family occupied a twenty-meter room in a large five-story building made of light brick. The neighbor was the kindest old woman Agafya Leontievna, who survived the blockade. She became very attached to me, and I easily went into her clean little room to listen to fairy tales. On the wall in a lace pocket hung a medal for the defense of Leningrad. Her pension was small, 27 rubles. Translated into the current crafty money, maybe ten thousand. But she always had the Swallow candy in reserve for me.

The doors of the entrances of our house were glazed, flowers and lilac bushes grew on the lawns, and the street cleaner Aunt Tina watered the asphalt every morning with a hose. We were friends with her and she always allowed me to help clean the snow or sweep.

The world was big, joyful and mysterious. Not even 20 years have passed since the war, and its closeness was felt. Young people went to the Victory Day, all in awards, cheerful veterans. Children were constantly playing at war. We crawled across the lawns with sticks that replaced guns, hid in the bushes, tracking down the Fritz, learning to draw stars and fascist signs. Near the house stood a dead charred tree, and a little further, in a wasteland, the settled ruins of the house, which we hollowed out to corn blisters with iron rods from old beds, wanting to break into the basement. The ruins disappeared after several subbotniks.

Adult residents from neighboring houses and, of course, children came out for subbotniks. We really wanted to find a shell or a mine. It wasn't a joke. On the outskirts, in garden ditches, rusty shells from large-caliber shells were still lying around. Mortar charges were also encountered there, which, because of the tail stabilizers, were called flyers. The guys who went to the area of ​​​​the anti-tank ditch to "trophy" often remained crippled.

There were a lot of children in the yard, and we constantly played something: tags, 12 sticks, hali halo, corks. The girls had their games. For example, they arranged "secrets". It was done like this: a hole was dug in the ground and a flower or a beautiful candy wrapper was placed in it, which was covered with a piece of glass and covered with earth, and then this place was carefully cleared, and a “secret” appeared from under the ground. Well, and, of course, jump ropes, hopscotch, dolls.

It was a great joy when the dump truck brought sand. This usually happened once every two weeks. We pounced on the heap with our cars. They dug holes, laid roads, built houses. Mom shouted from the window: "Sasha, eat." Where is there ... I did not hear and buzzed in the sand turning the truck around until my brother came down after me.

In winter, the fun was different. A hill was set up and filled in a wasteland. A little later, a hockey rink appeared. Swings, carousels, ropes and gymnastic beams were in every yard. In addition, in our house there was a sports school.

The parents were constantly working. Father is at sea, and mother is in the atelier. The key to the apartment was left under the rug on the landing, and then they began to put it in the mailbox.

Nobody heard about robberies, murders, kidnappings of children. Then we did not know what could be different. We were in our own country and completely safe.

Never has a dirty word been uttered by anyone in front of children or women.

It's hard to believe now, but I heard swear words for the first time only at the age of seven. It was already in Kamchatka. I came home and told my mother about the grown-up guys who were saying a lot of new “interesting words”. Mom said that it was swearing and that if I spoke like that, she would die. The next day, I reached under the bed for a slipper and, to my horror, swore. It was winter, my mother worked in a sewing shop, far on the outskirts, and schoolchildren were taken to that side on an all-terrain vehicle. But I ran to her so that she wouldn't die.

There, in Kamchatka, I saw a drunk for the first time. It was in Petropavlovsk. Before that, we went to the cinema, and there the main character in a white shirt, staggering from numerous wounds, fiercely fired back from the bandits.

And then my mother and I saw a man in a white shirt swaying at the bus stop. I thought he was a wounded scout, but my mother said he was drunk. I remember I didn't believe it then.

We got to Kamchatka because of my father's business trip. At first he left, and then we: mom, brother and me. We flew to Khabarovsk on the latest and best Tu-104 aircraft in the world at that time.

I don't remember how long the flight lasted. My brother and I played chess, ate, fell asleep, woke up, played again, but now with words. Then they made their way through the storm front. Finally, the pilot looked out of the passage ahead and, lo and behold! - He called my brother and me to his cabin. The cabin was made of glass and was full of light. We moved among huge clouds that look flat from the ground. In the intervals between them beat a dazzling sun. The pilot slightly touched the steering wheel, and the plane entered the cloud. We were surrounded by solid white nothingness. Space and time vanished, leaving only the hum of the engines. And suddenly - again the sun and the infinite purity of the sky.

We returned to our seats amazed and were silent for a long time.

Why did the pilot do it? Just. From love and tenderness to childhood. I made it as if for myself, enjoying the delight of the guys.

Now in the news reports we no longer see, as in Soviet times, reports of scientific discoveries or the commissioning of rolling mills, nuclear icebreakers, and power plants. Incidents are being written more and more: a consignment of drugs was detained, a fire in a nursing home, gas explosions and - violence, violence, violence ... Oh, how low we have fallen during these years of spreading the word! Citizens of “young Russia”, with the complete indifference of the state authorities, strangle each other, blow up, poison and keep each other in the basements of their dachas in specially equipped dungeons. Cannibals receive 6 years in prison for crimes that cry to heaven. Bribe-takers pay off the stolen.

And then in society, natural, like air, unnoticed by anyone, familiar, kindness was poured. Often, adults addressed the child as “son” or “daughter”, and adolescents addressed the older one as “father”. Finally, to each other - "comrade". The sincere and endearing address "comrade" was widespread. It contained neither irony nor foreign malice.

At that time, I still many, many times came across the paternal and maternal love of strangers.

In Khabarovsk, we spent the night in a room for mother and child. In the same place, my mother bought me and my brother each a TU-104 badge. Here it is, this rectangular piece of metal: in the sky of cosmic dark blue, a golden airplane flies over the mountains.

Children's brightness of sensations is incomparable with anything. Usually, with age, it is lost and can only return after repentance, which scrapes off a touch of callousness and lies from the soul. And I am glad that it was then, in my childhood, that I saw my huge country from the height of the sky with clear eyes, encountered many kind people and found myself on the very edge of the earth near the Pacific Ocean.

We made the last part of the journey through the Seas of Japan and the Sea of ​​Okhotsk with access to the Pacific Ocean on the excellent passenger ship Petropavlovsk, which took us to a lost fishing village.

Recently, returning from Valaam, I got into a conversation with the Kamchatka priest.

- And does Petropavlovsk go now? - No.

- And "Nikolaevsk?" - No.

- And the "Soviet Union?" - No. There was such a ship, but now there is nothing.

"There was such a ship" ... A floating city, a colossus of 23 thousand registered tons with six decks, three restaurants and a pool in which I learned to swim.

There is no "Soviet Union". A lump came up in my throat, I could not speak. The strongest November wind cut through to the bone, the Saint Nicholas broke open a thick, palm-sized ice crust, Ladoga was covered with fog, and it seemed to me that I was standing on the deck of the Soviet Union. Behind the stern, a wide strip of water, seething from two propellers, goes into the distance. The ocean wave rolls slowly, and the ship rises smoothly, and then, as if reluctantly, falls. Huge yellow jellyfish sway near the surface and are carried away at a speed of 19 knots. Everything passes…

"Soviet Union" - a ship with history. During the war years, it belonged to the German Reich and was called "Hanse". Hitler's personal enemy, the commander of the S-13 Marinesko, preparing the "attack of the century", saw him through the periscope, but chose Wilhelm Gustlov. In 1945, during the evacuation of the Germans from East Prussia, Hansa hit a mine and sank at a depth of 20 meters, 9 miles from the coast. The ship was raised, repaired and handed over to us under an agreement on the division of the fleet.

“In order to have a firm foot at the sea,” the Generalissimo sent him and several other passenger ships to Far East. The region was rapidly developing, being mastered, and it needed its own passenger fleet.

Large-capacity ships of the Petropavlovsk class could not come close to the Kamchatka coast and stopped in the roadstead, and passengers were brought ashore by small vessels - barges and fishing boats, which were called "bugs".

I remember our arrival on the peninsula. About 50 meters away from us, a lot of black heads are bobbing on the water - these are seals. A plow is moored at the side of the ship. He, waddling in the waves, then rises 4-5 meters up, then falls sharply down. The boom of a ship's crane holds a net with luggage over it. Passengers have to go down a rather unreliable, shaking ladder. Scary. The already disturbing picture of the landing is complemented by a huge chest that escaped from the supervision of the sailors, which, because of the pitching, very quickly crawls along the deck, sometimes standing up on the lower edge and looking into the sea. Yes, this is our chest, given to us by neighbors for carrying luggage! By what miracle he caught up and overtook us - it is not clear. But now, with all the belongings contained in it, he could flop into the water. "Box!" Mom screamed over the sound of waves and wind. It sounded like a "man overboard" emergency command, and the chest was saved. Everything ended well.

After loading the luggage, the passengers disembarked onto the flounder rushing about in the waves. The strong hands of the sailors accepted us, and soon the barge was heading for the shore. What was ahead of us?

It turned out, however, that the empire was able to reproduce its universal structure in this, so remote, place. So, having moved 9 thousand kilometers, we did not notice big differences in the structure of life. Everything you need was: work, kindergarten, schools, hospital, cinema, local radio. And, most importantly, each of us joined some kind of team. Dad said that people here are simpler and better. With some disdain in the village, only seasonal workers were treated - workers who came "to make money."

Money in Kamchatka was not exactly despised, but somehow remained on the sidelines. In general, money often loses its meaning when people are required to display the highest qualities - love, self-sacrifice, and, conversely, gain strength when the best in people is weakened or completely trampled.

But the fishermen earned, however, well. And there wasn't much to spend. Life fully corresponded to the natural features of the Land and did not require significant changes. Natural can be called for those places an abundance of fish, which in different forms, it seems, was not bought, but simply was for everyone. Also crabs and caviar.

The relatively limited selection of goods led to ridiculous things. For example, in the bath, instead of beer, they sold champagne on tap. Or here's another - one day they brought in an outlandish thing, a book lottery, and the entire batch of tickets instantly sold out. I myself saw how in the sewing shop, at my mother's work, enthusiastic women tore one lottery envelope after another and threw them into a huge pile under their feet. The originality of the trade also consisted in the fact that the inhabitants bought everything in boxes, whether it was Korean thick-skinned apples or oranges.

Sometimes the motor ships "Petropavlovsk" or "Nikolaevsk" approached the coast, and it was possible at some hour from a remote village to get into a real floating comfortable city. And everything was already on sale.

And what education was on the outskirts of the USSR? Yes, exactly the same as in Leningrad! The same textbooks, the same counting sticks, notebooks, pencil cases, as in the whole country.

There were two schools in the small Kamchatka village of Oktyabrsky. One is for children from first to fourth grade, and the other is for children from fifth to tenth. The school for older children was two-story, made of stone. It was located on the outskirts of the village, and children were taken to it in the winter on an all-terrain vehicle. Of course, it's free. The students sang along the way. It's just a stroke. But what!

Our elementary school was a spacious hut with four classrooms and a large central common room. Each class was heated by a separate stove. We were taught by a young teacher, Inessa Arsenievna Zarubina. Her son, an excellent student, also studied in the class. In addition to Russian children, several Koreans studied. There was no division into friends and foes. I remember that I was surprised only by the very short name of one boy - Lee.

In the morning, before classes, everyone did their exercises, and for dinner they went to a nearby canteen.

The first month of study I "fell ill" In general, it was some kind of simulation. I read a sad little book about a dog. It ended with these words: "And then her nose began to crumble and she died." Soon I “felt” that it was somehow difficult for me to breathe and told my mother about it. She took me to the doctor, who listened to all the complaints, smiled aside at the symptom of “crumbling nose” that I had especially singled out, and said that I could probably lie down in the hospital for a week to be examined. After the hospital, the doctor prescribed an amazing medicine. He told me to buy a chocolate bar every day for 33 kopecks, which my mother carefully and performed until the New Year.

In the second or third month of our studies, we were admitted to the Oktyabryata and given a beautiful red star. It was a joyful day.

“You must be good guys,” said Inessa Arsenyevna. - You must help the elders, not leave each other in trouble and greet everyone.

Adults talked about help and mutual assistance from the cradle. But the fact that after the reception in the Oktyabryata it was necessary to greet everyone was news.

After the lessons we went for a walk around the village. Thick, sticky snow fell. The mischievous thought occurred to me not to shake it off, and very quickly the snow settled tightly on my earflaps, shoulders and chest. And from this white cocoon I sang along with my friends: “Fly up the bonfires, blue nights!”. Passers-by came across the meeting, and we all, without exception, said “Hello!”. And everyone smiled and greeted us in response: "Hello!". Something good happened to us then. Probably, the reception in the October Revolution by children's souls was perceived as an initiation into the Good.

Now, remembering those years and that my attitude to life and people, I begin to penetrate deeper into the words of Christ, “unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

November 7, 1967 in the village of Oktyabrsky, Ust-Bolsheretsky district, the Day of the Revolution was celebrated. For the holiday, parents, as always, gave me and my brother a ruble each. A ruble could buy ice cream, a few balloons, a badge, and watch a movie. But then we went to the cinema three times in a row. The first film was based on the Russian fairy tale "Marya the Artisan".

Now I understand that this is a kind of film masterpiece. He talked about the Thirteenth Vodokrut, who dragged the skilled Marya into his underwater kingdom, bewitched her, and she ceased to distinguish will from bondage. “That will, that bondage is all the same,” said Marya - Russia.

But Marya was saved by a soldier with a drum, who descended into the realm of evil. The drum was magical, and when a soldier beat it, the echo of other drums was heard in response: “Russian help Russian!”. The greedy Whistler was afraid not so much of the soldier as of this help. At first, he unsuccessfully tried to buy a drum, then steal it. And when this failed, he wanted to push the soldier into a boiling lake. But, in the end, only a wet place remained of Waterspin himself, and his green, Martian-like servant and spy Kwak turned into a frog.

This movie would be impossible to make now. Well, it is clear that they would not have given money for it, the actors would not have been found. But, most importantly, he is a ruff for the current government.

How strong, how rich is the Russian army soldier? He is strong in his truth, rich in faithful friendship.

What is “strong with truth” if money is the measure of all things, and relationships should be guided not by friendship, but by a “pragmatic” approach?

Or here is another dialogue:

Soldier: I, your swamp majesty, a Russian soldier, I can’t live in peace if the children are sad, and the mothers are languishing in captivity.

Vodokrut: What a restless people you are, it’s not for nothing that I love you all to drown!

No, it is impossible to imagine that something like this would have been staged and let through in free capitalist Russia.

Here is what Minister of Education Fursenko says, who, like Shakespeare's witches from Lady Macbeth, says evil is good, good is evil:

"The shortcoming of the Soviet education system was an attempt to form a human creator." “The task of the school is to grow a competent consumer.”

So, for the current state, the ideal citizen is a "literate consumer" or, in other words, a picky pig. And such a creature is brought up by advertising, and not by a reminder of the truth and a clear conscience.

I don't remember the second movie. And the third was about Malchish-Kibalchish.

The theme of self-sacrifice and betrayal. How close all this is to the Gospel!

The traitor Malchish-Plokhish blew up our warehouses and got a barrel of jam and a box of cookies for it. The bourgeois have seized Kibalchish and are trying to get him to betray him - they are torturing him, they want him to betray the Military Secret. But ours have already driven them away. Kibalchish died a glorious death for the Motherland - this is the Russian "happy end".

There is also a wonderful cartoon based on the same tale. There, the hands of the captive Malchish are stretched with heavy chains. He seems to be crucified.

Recently, the last scenes of this Gaidar's tale came to life in an unexpected way.

TV showed how the bourgeoisie honored Mikhail Gorbachev. A worn-out Western porn star was leading him by the arm, journalists were chatting with cameras, lazily clapping the hero with naphthalene rock dead, a goat-voiced television chef Makarevich was huddled to the side.

The new homeland, not sparing pieces of silver, fed Gorby with jam - he deserved it ...

As the sprout of a tree is contained in the thickness of the trunk, so childhood is preserved in a person. How much more was given by God through my Motherland that I did not even mention? You can’t count everything - these are fabulous Ukrainian huts, and a cart with sweet peas, on which I lay, throwing the reins, and the smart horse itself pulled where it was needed, and the hard hot earth-tyrlo, and muddy warm stakes, and the apiary, and huge pieces white peasant bread, and unimaginable depth of the starry sky, and a kindergarten, and fish oil, and fairy tales, and filmstrips, and a hemming stitch, and the Crimea, and the Sea of ​​Azov, and the Gulf of Finland, and Vuoksa.

Yes, we had our own happiness, our own freedom. Twelve thousand kilometers of freedom and peace from West to East. And so we didn't need "abroad". We already had all inclusive here.

A state can be characterized by how it treats its weak members. Modern capitalist Russia is a country for the strong, the rich, the healthy. She does not forgive any mistakes. If a person slips and begins to drink, he will be helped to turn into an alcoholic. Then they will help in the sale of the apartment, and he will die. If, out of gullibility, he took a loan and cannot pay it off, he will be left without housing, mentally upset and die. If he lost his job, then he will not be able to retrain, because this requires money, and they were not there before. If he becomes impoverished and there is nothing to feed his children, he will be tortured with threats to take them away. If you have accumulated, they will steal it, fool it, pull it out through inflation. If he falls ill, they would rather finish him off with fake medicines and exterminating medicine than cure him.

And people do not have time to sit out, take a break, lay low, come back to normal. Every month, healthy, sick, unemployed, half-crazy from this hot life, people receive a utility bill, which is often more than an allowance or pension: “Pay or get out! Pay! Free cheese only happens in a mousetrap!”

They speak harshly to the people: “Leaving a school (hospital) here is not economically profitable. Monotowns should be reoriented. Gasoline is already cheaper here than in America! You pay only 80% of the cost of utilities! The mines must be closed, no one needs coal! Foreign labor is needed!”

But it wasn't like that...

The mighty Soviet empire built wonderful ships and planes, made brilliant films, took care of everyone, but, above all, its little citizens. "All the best for the kids!" is not just a slogan, but a state strategy. The Union taught them and tried to educate them as fighters and workers.

Has that time gone forever? Is it possible that Marya the artisan will remain a prisoner of the Thirteenth Vodokrut?

I don't think. Painfully disgusting and greedy, this corrupt homosexual gentleman with his banking, shopping, burry pronunciation and oblique half-smiles, with juvenile justice, drugs and child trafficking. He is not a match for her. If Vodokrut does not run away to the West, then a wet place will remain from him here.

I wrote these lines as a testimony, and following the Apostle I can repeat that what is stated here is “what we heard, what we saw with our eyes, what we looked at and what our hands touched.”

In general, I don’t like any memories from my Soviet childhood, because all of it, Soviet and early post-Soviet, is sheer fear. Fear of loneliness. Fear in anticipation of a mother who leaves for work early in the morning and arrives late in the evening. At first, you are afraid in a manger - they leave you in them already a year, and this is luck, because someone is handed over to the state kosht as early as two months. You go from nursery to kindergarten and you are also afraid. You are still led by the hand to the younger and middle groups, sometimes you go to the older ones yourself. And at home you are left alone. At the age of three, you know how to turn on the stove, deftly wield a knife, open and close the front door yourself, wear the key around your neck. You know not to let strangers in, to go out into the backyard, to walk until dark, and to fall behind the company in the evening.

You are considered completely independent and even smart. And you remember only one thing - fear.

The Soviet child, with rare exceptions, lived in fear. Because any child first of all needed parents, or rather, a mother. Only a mother gives a sense of care and security. All children's independence, which the state imposed on families, turned into severe psychological trauma. Because it is extremely important for a child that his diaper be changed on time, his snot be wiped off in time, or the door opened in front of him. If there is no regular care, the child feels only one thing - insecurity. And fear.

It began even in the maternity hospital, when the baby was taken away from the mother for an average of three days - it was believed that so much time was required for a woman to recover from childbirth. In the maternity hospital, children were kept in a manger, small bags screamed for days on end. The children were brought up without breast milk- the maternity hospital did everything so that his mother would not have it. Because by three months she had to go to work. And the child? The child was placed in a nursery. There he was dressed in official clothes so that there would be less laundry at home, and they were placed in a large wooden arena, where he lay, crawled, and learned to walk along with others. There was constant screaming in the manger, the kids were wet and dirty. There were also nurseries around the clock, with a five-day stay.

If there was no nursery nearby, then the child was left alone. There are many memories in the literature about how mothers put the baby on the floor so that it would not fall, and tied it with a rope to the leg of the table so that it would not crawl away. There is such a story in The Zinc Boys.

The happiest stayed at home with their grandmothers, older brothers, sisters or hired nannies. Because of the cheapness, girls of 10-12 years old were often hired as nannies.

A five-day period was popular, where the child could be handed over on Monday morning and picked up on Friday evening. The more difficult a person's job, the more time his child was asked to spend in a round-the-clock nursery. From Monday to Friday, employees of the KGB, the prosecutor's office, Goznak often handed over their children to the kindergarten and nursery, responsible leaders of the primary and middle levels did this. Such nurseries still remain. There is a famous garden-resort near the Central Bank. There are several dozen round-the-clock kindergartens in Moscow, including nurseries.

Today, the need to send a child to such a kindergarten becomes a terrible tragedy for parents, but then it was the norm.

The USSR has always been proud that it has more kindergartens than in America. It was presented as an achievement of socialism. In fact, it was a huge failure, because the average American worker, until the late 1980s, could feed his family alone. And we have a mother of an infant was forced to work. And up to a certain time, it is also obliged: only in 1968, women were allowed to sit with children up to a year, and without benefits - before they had to work.

And the children were handed over to the garden, where they were taught to quickly make their bed with a blanket and a fluffy pillow, carefully hang clothes on the side of the bed, not fidget during sleep, finish eating porridge, obey the teachers and especially the nannies. In kindergartens, the teacher did not always, but had at least an initial special education, the nanny had none. The nannies received a penny and got a job in a kindergarten either in order to be close to their child, or for the sake of work experience, or to carry children's leftovers to pigs. Therefore, the contingent was formed specific, often - from random people. In the gardens one could sometimes hear swearing, the nannies smelled of fumes, in the kitchens there was a three-story swearing. From these kitchens a stream of fat-meaty aunts with trunks did not dry up - they stole shamelessly in the canteens. To get a job in a children's canteen in the USSR has always been considered a rare success, because these canteens were supplied uninterruptedly.

Children's cruelty flourished in the kindergarten. Educators did not particularly stop this, for many it was the norm. In addition, it was believed that the child had to go through the school of life. Staying in the garden from two months and five days was then explained, among other things, by the need to socialize the child.

In fact, the skills of coexistence in a randomly selected team of 30 people, the ability to eat useless semolina porridge by force and obey unquestioning boors were only useful to criminals.

I think that hardly every person has a number of the most intimate memories from the Soviet garden, associated with rudeness and violence. With my intolerance to cow protein, milk soup was poured down the collar. I also remember how a boyfriend came to our teacher during a walk and they immediately, on the site, whipped beer.

At school, of course, teachers behaved more decently. However, this was of little importance, because in the Soviet school they instilled not only and not so much culture or knowledge, but discipline and ideas.

Soviet teachers could hit a child on the back of the head, on the hands until the mid-2000s, until the teachers themselves were beaten for such pranks. Fortunately for them, only affordable. In the Soviet school, children were addressed with "you", often teachers gave them nicknames. The teacher who said “you” to the child got into the all-Union newspaper Pravda - he was such a rarity. The Soviet school did not allow children the right to privacy. It was impossible to raise a hand and ask to leave the class: it was necessary to clarify why.

Only children with mediocre intellectual or spiritual abilities, with a low level of culture in the family, could love the Soviet school. Children who were looking for themselves in a collective idea, a collective task, a collective work. The backbone of any totalitarian regime is a person without his own values, because he easily accepts corporate values. For example, he likes to pin the same stars on everyone, hang ties around their necks, so that everyone sings the same anthem.


Such a child happily participated in school rulers, general meetings, or bullying classmates. And he was usually very fond of the Soviet pioneer camps. A normal child from a caring family, unless he is a rare extrovert and energetic vampire, will never, of his own free will, go to live in one ward for several weeks - what a name! - with eleven other children, get up on the bugle, dine on the gong, walk in formation and go hungry all the time, because in the camps traditionally there was little and traditionally bad food. Children, with rare exceptions, were sent to the pioneer camp for only one purpose - to get away with it, to free up time for relaxation. They lived closely, often quarreled - the parents dreamed of taking a break from their children. Today, this prosaic motif is trying to give a romantic charm.

A separate topic today, almost forgotten, is the exploitation of child and youth labor by the Union. Few people remember that schoolchildren came to work off in the summer: they made repairs, washed windows, and cleaned the school park. Whom did they owe and what did they work out? What about potato trips? The fact that this was a huge crime against childhood and education is remembered by a few, the rest often remember the “potato” as a school of life, lessons of independence and hard work.


The province sent “for potatoes” from the fifth grade, megacities - from the eighth. Agricultural work for the first one and a half to two autumn months was mandatory for all schools, technical schools and almost all universities. Exceptions were made for schoolchildren only for Moscow and the capitals of the Union republics. Yes, and they were violated in the case of emergency harvesting. Any school in the USSR supplied the sponsored collective farms and state farms with labor for digging potatoes, picking or sorting carrots, cabbage. Can you imagine what kind of state farms they were, if fifth-graders had to take patronage over them?

“On potatoes” children lived from hand to mouth, overwrought themselves, climbed into the ground with their hands with fertilizers and pesticides, which were not spared in the USSR. They sometimes got pregnant there, became victims of violence - a former Soviet criminologist told me that during his career he went to rape “on potatoes” more than once.

Children from Central Asia were driven to pick cotton. There, from September to November, starting from the third grade, under the scorching sun, they dragged 20-kilogram bags to the tractor cart. “The power of a student is 60 kilowatts” - a Tajik joke of those years. This is the daily norm for 14-year-old students of schools. The receivers on the scales underestimated the indicators, in order to immediately beat off the surplus, they had to collect more. Millionaire state farms in Asia grew stronger on the sale of unrecorded cotton, on child labor. And the children returned with sick stomachs, eczema, acne, because the fields at that time were sprayed with a defoliant.

So there was no superconcern for children in the USSR - there was their exploitation.

And the kids weren't eating well. Semolina porridge from diapers, cow's milk - everything that is forbidden to give to children today. In one of the reports of the European branch of WHO, she read that more than 70% of Soviet infants in the 1970s were obese according to the paratrophy type: they were fat and short, as they ate exclusively carbohydrates. Teenagers lived on potatoes, cereals and pasta. From vegetables - cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, half-rotten in the fields. From proteins - sausages with "Tea" sausage and cyanotic chickens, which soon disappeared, as well as eggs, which disappeared a little later. According to the same WHO, Soviet children suffered en masse from anemia of all types and protein-calorie deficiency. Simply put, they were undernourished.

Many will say: well, we went “for potatoes”, we were alone at home, but it was safe in the cities. This is the scariest myth ever!

There were crimes against children. There were pedophiles. There were maniacs. I would even say more: there were no serial maniacs with 80 victims in post-Soviet Russia. And they were in the Union!

And there were domestic rapes of children. But there was no intolerant reaction to them from society. First, there were no media resources for publicizing the crimes. Secondly, they were hushed up - the rule about taking out rubbish from the hut in the Union was observed much more strictly than now. Third, society was more tolerant of pedophilia and nymphetomania.

I make such a provocative statement responsibly. Harassing schoolgirls on the street, slapping on the bottom, flirting - all this was no longer the norm, but was considered tolerable until the 2000s. Soviet society as a whole was more tolerant of crimes against children than it is today. The Criminal Code of the RSFSR in Art. 119-129 indicated that sexual intercourse with a person who had not reached puberty, as well as depraved acts with minors, were punishable by imprisonment for up to three years. Very often, for sex with minors, they were sentenced only to "chemistry", a colony-settlement. I know a man who served two years of "chemistry" for cohabitation with a minor - he was sent from Surgut to Tyumen, where he worked at a sheepskin and fur factory and could go out into the city. On this "chemistry" he found himself another schoolgirl girlfriend.

I also argue that in Soviet elite culture, in Soviet art, there was a distinct tendency to eroticize childhood. That could not but affect the culture of everyday life. In the cinema, on the picturesque canvases, naked children appeared in erotic poses. "The Girl and the Echo" and "The Abduction of the Savoy" remember? In painting, they were even less shy. Pure children's erotica was sometimes written by Bogdanov-Belsky, Deineka, Nikolai Chernyshev. Their pictures were printed on calendars. Photographer Nikolai Filippov filmed exclusively children's erotica: naked children in the sand, naked girls stretching at the ballet barre, boys and girls in bulging panties. It was official photography.

And there is no need to say that the population used to be clean and not corrupted by debauchery, so they did not see anything wrong with children's erotica and allowed 12-year-old girls to go to the beach naked. It is we who have now become more moral and have begun to condemn what seemed normal 50 years ago. Humanity is still taking steps towards condemning early sex, early marriage.

The country was not safe for a child. Rather, it was more dangerous than today, because the child spent much more time alone or with friends.

Rapists and molesters are not the main enemies of Soviet children. Much more of them died and were crippled in the course of self-cooking dinner, walking on rooftops, playing at a construction site, walking through landfills, catching up through pipes of heating mains, when finding and sawing shells, cartridges, playing with fire, swinging the swing "sun". Unfamiliar men tried to take me away from the yard twice, at the age of seven drunken shots at me and my girlfriend from the window, at eight I was almost stabbed by an old neighbor with a knitting needle. We lived on the usual outskirts of an ordinary regional center. And it was an ordinary Soviet childhood. Perhaps slightly spoiled by perestroika.

Many children in the USSR and in the 1990s died solely from homelessness. Moreover, even when the parents were at home, the children ran outside. Poor housing, crowded lives, tired mothers and often drunken fathers forced children to spend their lives on the street. Many simply did not have a warm relationship with their parents: children, like orphans, grew up without breasts, in nurseries and round-the-clock gardens, and were flogged for any reason.

Several generations of Soviet people grew up without trusting relationships, love and hugs.

Those who today say that they were safe in the Soviet Union simply did not meet so much horror. Perhaps they lived in good families, were brought up by mothers, grandmothers or nannies. Or maybe their psyche has forced out all the difficult memories, leaving in their heads only a creamy ice cream in a waffle cup.

Only an aberration of memory makes people who went through their Soviet childhood with a key around their necks regret their past and sincerely wish their own children the same fate.

However, there is another problem. Of the approximately 600 million people who lived in the USSR during its entire existence, there were a couple of million who were lucky enough to be born into well-fed families. They just didn't know how the rest of the country lived. And now they don't want to know. Even in the blockade, there were children who did not remember the war, but only remembered the fluffy snow, the blue sky and the delicious cake that they ate at the Krupskaya confectionery factory, where they lived in a closed area and where not a single employee died of starvation during the entire blockade.

Today, these children miss the Union with Stalin terribly and write books about how tasteless cake has become in Russia.

Sociologists' research shows that Soviet childhood is now in vogue. “I want to go back to the USSR. How good it was then - probably the best time in my life ”- more and more often this phrase can be heard not only from veterans whose biography is firmly connected with Soviet times, but also from those who have barely turned 30. People, who in 1991 were 13-15 years old, lovingly collect Soviet films and exchange memories of their pioneer childhood. Nostalgia for the Soviet past is becoming common among thirty-somethings…

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“We were lucky that our childhood and youth ended before the government bought FREEDOM from the youth in exchange for roller skates, mobile phones, star factories and cool crackers (by the way, soft for some reason) ... With her common consent ... For her own (seemingly) good ... "- this is a fragment from a text called "Generation 76-82." Those who are now somewhere in their thirties reprint it with great pleasure on the pages of their Internet diaries. He became a kind of manifesto of the generation.

From the "stupid scoop" to the "golden age"

It's funny that just a decade and a half ago, the same people who today fondly recall the symbols of a bygone era themselves rejected everything Soviet and sought to resemble their more conservative parents as little as possible.

The strange unconsciousness of youth extends to the more recent past. At the turn of the 80s and 90s, a significant part of young people dreamed of leaving altogether - emigration, even to a third world country, was considered more attractive than life in a collapsing Soviet state:

"Though a carcass, even a stuffed animal, only faster out of this mess."

“Soviet clothing is a nightmare, squalor, it is impossible to wear, some galoshes“ goodbye youth ”are worth something. Soviet technology was clearly not made by hand, but by something else: it does not work, it is not being repaired. Soviet products are sausage, 90% toilet paper, butter from margarine and beer on the water "...

Who would have dared to deny these axioms fifteen years ago?!

But, as you know, time is the best remedy for childhood illness of leftism. Having matured, young people have ceased to be so categorical. Now memories of Rubin TVs, Vega tape recorders, Krasnaya Moskva perfumes, plaid shirts, red coats, ice cream for 15 kopecks and soda in vending machines cause a slight sadness and regret that they will never be again.

The Soviet past is rapidly overgrown with touching legends and before our eyes turns into a wonderful myth about the golden age of mankind. Modern thirty-year-olds are so hungry for a fairy tale that they are ready to amputate their own memory.

At the end of the 1980s, few of them would have thought to admire Soviet pop songs or Soviet films - it was too primitive. It was more important to understand how to get rich quickly, get the maximum variety in sex, achieve success and recognition in the big city. Instead of VIA "Gems" and films about village life, the last Soviet teenagers wanted to watch Hollywood thrillers and listen to Scorpions and Queen.

But time has done its usual trick with them: having fully received what they dreamed of at the dawn of a foggy youth, modern thirty-year-olds began to dream of what they once so ruthlessly despised. And the old Soviet films about the war and the development of virgin lands suddenly acquired in their eyes a meaning that they once categorically refused to see.

Why did people who rejected everything Soviet suddenly become nostalgic for a time that they barely had time to catch? According to sociological research, there are two reasons. One of them lies on the surface: nostalgia for the Soviet Union is in many ways just nostalgia for childhood. Everyone tends to idealize childhood. The bad is forgotten, only bright memories remain about what a wonderful taste the ice cream had and how joyful the people looked at the demonstration.

However, it seems that for the current generation of thirty-year-olds, nostalgia has become a kind of religion that largely determines their attitude to life in general. They are proud that they had a chance to live in the Soviet Union, and believe that it is the Soviet experience that makes them incomparably better than today's youth, who have grown up after 1991:

“And yet, if I had a choice, I would have chosen the end of the 80s. I didn't understand anything back then. I was 17-19 years old. I didn’t know how to communicate, I didn’t want anything from life and didn’t understand at all how and why people live ... I didn’t get anything out of these years, but I could (I just understood this now). Perhaps that is why they are now my most favorite, chaotic, obscure times, ”writes roman_shebalin.

“How I want to go back to my childhood! In our childhood. Back when there were no video game consoles, roller skates, and Coca-Cola stands on every corner. When there were no nightclubs and everyone gathered for a rehearsal of a local rock band that played DDT and Chizh. When words cost more than money. When we were."

The reason for this "non-childish" nostalgia, apparently, is deeper than just longing for the past youth. Idealizing the Soviet past, today's thirty-year-olds unconsciously talk about what they don't like about the present.
From an unfree state to unfree people

“As kids, we drove cars without seat belts or airbags. Riding a horse-drawn cart on a warm summer day was an indescribable pleasure. Our cribs were painted with bright, high lead paints. There were no secret lids on medicine bottles, doors were often not locked, and cupboards were never locked. We drank water from a pump on the corner, not from plastic bottles. No one could have thought of riding a bike with a helmet on. Horror!" - it's all from the same "manifesto".

“We have become less free!” - this cry of despair sounds in many records. Here is another quote:

“I remember that time, and the main feeling is a feeling of complete freedom. Life was not subject to such a rigid schedule as it is now, and there was much more free time. Parents had a vacation for a month, and if someone was sick, they calmly took sick leave, and did not go to work barely alive. You could go wherever you want, and no one will forbid you. There were no combination locks and intercoms, there were no guards at every entrance, in every store. The airport was an interesting place to start the journey, and not part of the maximum security zone, as it is now. In general, there were almost no signs like “No passage”, “Only for personnel”, “Forbidden”.

There is a strange metamorphosis of memories. In the Soviet Union, the menacing inscriptions "No entry!" was much more than now. But our memory of childhood carefully erases them, and the memory of what we saw a couple of days ago completes these notorious tablets.

Objectively, Soviet society was much less free than today's. And not only politically. A person's life moved along a strictly scheduled route: a district kindergarten - a district school - an institute / army - distribution work. Variations were minimal.

The same is with life. Everyone ate the same meatballs, rode the same bikes and took out to the same Zarnitsa. Long hair, leather jackets with studs, even basic jeans - all this could attract the attention of the police, or at least the condemning glances of the old women at the entrance. Now, wear whatever you want, and if you don’t look like an illegal Uzbek, the police don’t give a damn about you, and the grandmothers don’t care either, especially since you almost never see them along with the benches at the entrances.

Everyone could become a revolutionary by being rude to the foreman or coming to school without a pioneer tie. We now live in one of the freest societies in the history of mankind. Again, this is not about politics, but rather about culture and lifestyle. The state intervenes to a minimum in the private life of a person. The notorious "vertical of power", which permeates the political process through and through, never crosses the threshold of the apartment. And the society itself has not yet managed to develop sufficiently firm norms and cannot tell the citizen what is possible and what is not.

Where does this sense of unfreedom come from? Most likely, it comes from within. The current thirty-year-olds themselves drive themselves into a very rigid framework. You need to work and earn money, you need to look decent, you need to behave seriously, you need to have a mobile phone with bluetooth, you need to eat food without GM additives, you need to read Minaev and Coelho. Need, need, need!

For thirty-year-olds, real freedom is not freedom of speech or assembly, but, above all, the opportunity to live calmly, without straining and have a lot of free time. But they were expected to become the first generation free from the "scoop", a generation of energetic builders of capitalism. This is what it looked like in the early 90s. Young people enthusiastically took up business, career, enthusiastically plunged into the world of consumer joys. But gradually the enthusiasm waned. At some stage, they simply “burned out”.

Today, for most of them, work and career remain the main life guidelines. However, there is no longer that drive that was an integral part of their life in the 90s. Most people still evaluate success in life as: "The larger the apartment, the more expensive the car, the more successful the person." But many things have already been bought, impressions received, ambitions satisfied. Life is boring!
KGB in my head

If you conduct a content analysis, most likely it turns out that the frequency of the use of the word “security” has increased hundreds of times over the past twenty years. In the USSR there was an all-powerful organization - the State Security Committee. They were afraid of her, jokes were told about her. But the very idea of ​​security was not so intrusive.

But now this word is the key at all levels - from high politics to your own apartment. We are surrounded by secret passwords everywhere. Enter the entrance - code, open the apartment - several locks, turn on the computer - password, upload your own email - password again ...

But no one imposes these rules, people choose them themselves. And they sadly recall their childhood: “We left the house in the morning and played all day, returning when the street lights were lit - where they were. All day no one could find out where we were. There were no mobile phones! It is hard to imagine. We cut arms and legs, broke bones and knocked out teeth, and no one sued anyone. Anything happened. We were the only ones to blame and no one else. Remember? We fought to the bone and walked around with bruises, getting used to not paying attention to it.

Garbage toys against Chinese sabers

Children's toys and games are the whole world. For many, he leaves a much more vivid memory than adult fun like a Toyota car or the position of head of a department.

Millions of Soviet children had a favorite bear - short, faded, unconvincing. But it was he who was entrusted with the most important secrets, it was he who played the role of a home psychoanalyst when we were ill. And with what rapture we played "red" and "white", armed with rifles carved from sticks!

Let's quote the diary of user tim_timych again: “What was it like climbing through garages, collecting rubbish that no one needed, among which sometimes there were such pearls as gas masks, from which rubber bands for slingshots could be cut. And the found bottle of acetone was enthusiastically burned at the stake, where lead was melted from discarded car batteries for buckshot, langa and just like that, having nothing to do, for the sake of interest, to stare at the molten metal.

The market economy has given rise to a simple principle: everything that is in demand must be commercialized. Remember how they played knights in yard companies? How were shields and swords made from rubbish found in a landfill? Now plastic armor and weapons are sold in any kiosk: if you want - a pirate saber, if you want - a Scythian akinak. It's worth every penny: to buy a set of a legionnaire or a cowboy, it is enough to save several times on Coca-Cola.

Fireworks and firecrackers are sold ready-made, and there is no need to conduct chemical experiments behind garages. And teddy bears made in China can be bought in bags. Only less and less among them is the same cross-eared freak - the beloved and the only one ...

Looking at their children, today's young people have ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, it’s enviable: to go to a kiosk and for some pennies buy an exact copy of the Scorpion submachine gun with a magazine and an ammunition load of a thousand bullets - but for this the boy of the 80s, without hesitation, would agree to sell his soul or endure each rubbish day! But there is no unique flavor in it. It does not involve one's own labor (when a pale analogue of such a thing was made with one's own hands), the exclusivity of the case is not associated with it (if it was a gift, for example, brought from abroad).

And in the end, this weapon is gathering dust somewhere under the bed: it doesn’t matter - dad will buy a new one tomorrow. Dad will not get poor, he makes good money.

But sorry for the child.

Friends stayed in the USSR

Another reason for nostalgia is the legend of pure and open relationships between people. Here alta_luna recalls:

“The kind of friendship that my young parents had with other young couples has never happened before in their lives. I remember interesting things - men are on business trips, women are waiting.

In another diary we read: “We had friends. We left the house and found them. We rode bikes, struck matches in spring streams, sat on a bench, on a fence or in a school yard and chatted about whatever we wanted. When we needed someone, we knocked on the door, rang the bell, or just walked in and saw them. Remember? Without asking! Sami!"

Thirty-year-olds suffer from fewer and fewer friends. They just don't have enough time. To see an old friend, you have to make an appointment almost a month in advance.

And the meetings themselves are becoming shorter and more formal: everyone is busy, everyone has things to do. The ability to contact a person at any time and cancel or change previous agreements provokes the optionality:

“Sorry, the plans have changed, let’s not at 5 today, but at 8, or better tomorrow at 5. But better, let’s call tomorrow along the way and agree.”

No time.

Most thirty-year-olds are dissatisfied with their lives, but do not see real opportunities to change it. To change something, it takes time, but it just doesn’t exist. One has only to stop the rapid run for a minute, as soon as you are thrown to the side of the road. And thirty-year-olds cannot afford this.

“Soon 30. There is no time. Tachycardia, pulse 90 beats / min instead of the prescribed 70. I drink the medicine without reading the instructions, I trust the doctor. There is no time to read the operating instructions for the purchased machine, only individual items. The loan agreement was signed at the bank, running through his eyes. I just made sure that my name and code were there, there was no time for employees either. When was the last time you drank beer with friends? I don't remember, over a year ago. Friends are a luxury. Only for teenagers. I talk to my mom when she calls. This is not good, you should do it yourself more often. I come home, my wife and children are sleeping. I will kiss my daughter, I will stand over my son, I will hug my wife. On the weekends, I turn on the TV, meditate on the screen, simultaneously flipping through all the channels, there’s no time to watch one, and it’s already uninteresting. What book would I like to read? It seems, "Anna Karenina", half remained. I don't get it, it's too big. Does not work. There is no time, I'm running. I'm running. I’m running,” complains about life contas.

A revolution in the name of the bicycle?

“Lately, I often think about what a great country we pissed off. This country was called the USSR. It was a great and free country. Which could send everyone and dictate its inexorable will to everyone on our planet Earth, ”the user fallenleafs writes in his diary.

Nostalgia for one's own childhood sometimes smoothly turns into nostalgia for the political regime. The Soviet Union became associated with state development, scope, imperial power, as well as with a calm, stable and happy life:

"It was a time when there was no unemployment, terrorism and national conflicts, people's relations were simple and understandable, feelings were sincere, and desires were uncomplicated."

Nostalgia for the past in different eras turned out to be a very powerful driving force of social and political development. For example, the return of socialist parties to power in some Eastern European states already in the post-Soviet period was also largely caused by nostalgia for the Soviet times.

It seems to us that nothing like this can happen in modern Russia. The generation in their thirties is too apolitical, too immersed in personal life, to give serious support to any political force. And if dissatisfaction with their own lives grows, this will only further spur their political absenteeism. Instead of active actions, the current thirty-year-olds choose quiet sadness about the bright time of their childhood, which is gone forever.

The last generation of Soviet youth as a whole was marked by the fertile seal of deep indifference to politics. While adults broke the Soviet system, and then tried to build something new on its ruins, young people were busy with personal problems. The only area of ​​public life in which this generation excelled was business. That is why there are so many businessmen or managers among them, and so few politicians or public figures.

But the desire to link the irrevocably gone past with the ruthless present cannot always be interpreted in line with political actions. After all, they yearn not so much for the social system as for teddy bears, Cossack robbers and the first kiss in the stairwell. It is hard to imagine a revolution under the slogan "Give me back the right to ride a bike and be happy!" However, in May 1968, French students built barricades under slogans such as "Under the pavement - the beach!" and "It is forbidden to prohibit!".

It seems that today's thirty-year-olds, deprived of political ambitions, see the problem of historical change in a completely different way. The Soviet world allowed them to be human, but modernity does not. After all the social catastrophes of the 20th century, for the first time it becomes clear that in any political system, the main and only important figure is a person. And the riot of consumer instincts is just as deceitful as the communism promised by the 1980s. We no longer have illusions, we no longer have a single hope that the salvation of man will come from somewhere else - from politics or economics, it is not so important.

The current thirty-year-olds, it seems, are the first generation of Russian people left alone with themselves. Without the crutches of ideology, without the magic wand in the face of the West. And then the memories of the Soviet past really begin to burn the soul with a merciless fire of envy.

In order to feel their own human value, there were few opportunities, but they were all well known to everyone. Everyone knew what books to read, what films to watch and what to talk about at night in the kitchen. This was a personal gesture, giving satisfaction and instilling pride. Today's time, with the infinity of possibilities, makes such a gesture almost impossible or, by definition, marginal. Man found himself in the face of a monstrous abyss of himself, his own human "I", which until now has always been successfully camouflaged by the problem of social demand.

The thirteen-year-old generation lost the right to the familiar pronoun "we." This confusion is not before the time with its economic rigidity, but before one's own reflection in the mirror. Who am I? What do I want? Hence the meditations on youth. A person is trying to find the answer to painful questions where he began as a person. But this journey is not to the Soviet past. This is a journey into the depths of your own soul and your own consciousness.

Thank you tukki, pictures and text by the author. Attention! Long post, big selection

The kids of my generation didn't have computers, and that says it all. Yes, we didn't know counter, we didn't know Warcraft, we didn't know fun farm. All our entertainment was stored in the recesses of the house, in the yard, in bedside tables and mezzanines, on the balcony and in the garage (who had it). And now I say with great confidence my childhood was much more interesting and eventful without a computer.

So, I'll start with the notorious slingshots.
slingshots
Who remembers homemade slingshots? They were of two types, classic and keyed. The classic ones were cut from a thick hazel branch with a fork, a wide gray tourniquet was bought at a pharmacy, a piece of leather was taken out (you could secretly cut it out of your travel bag at home and dump it on your sister) and everything was fastened with copper wire or blue electrical tape:

Such a slingshot was loaded with smooth pebbles, which were often brought into the yards along with sand or unripe berries, such as mountain ash, plum or cherry, which grew in abundance behind the house. The power of a shot with a stone was sometimes enough to smash a champagne bottle to smithereens from 3 meters. Such a slingshot was valued due to the fact that not everyone had the skills and means to create it. It could be exchanged for other valuables such as inserts from Turbo, CinCin and Final90.
Walking and having nothing to do, it was possible to make a simpler keyed slingshot. To do this, it was necessary to find a thick aluminum wire in a braid in a landfill and find a flagellum. With the latter, as a rule, there were no problems; it was easily extracted from the elastic band of the underpants. The newer the underpants, the better the flagellum. From all this, something like this was going to (on the left): she knocked out her teeth! But mostly they just shot into the air, enjoying the sound of a flying dowel “firrrrrr”. Such a slingshot was collected for one day and in the evening, as a rule, merged to a friend for “driving a bike”.


Sikalka (sprayer)
What do you think a sikalka is? Something from the word "sikat" (more precisely, "splash"). And there is. This is a popular weapon of the near yard water "fight" before the era of the appearance of disposable syringes in pharmacies.
A sikalka was made from an empty shampoo bottle or a liter plastic bottle of "Whiteness". A hole was made in the cork with a hot nail on the stove and a half of a ballpoint pen without a core was inserted there. All this was sealed with mastic or plasticine.

Water was poured into the bottle (for the first time at home, subsequent from the pipe under the balcony) and splashed with water at the opponent. This was an alternative to an expensive and scarce water pistol. By the way, it was very cool to quench your thirst from the sikalka
Dart
Probably only the lazy did not play the game "darts". We also loved to throw darts in childhood. Yes, but they were not sold or they cost a lot of money. Therefore, almost any boy in our yard could make it himself. The dart, in terms of its flight and stick-in qualities, turned out to be no worse than the factory one. See how we made them:




A sheet of paper, 4 matches, a needle, stationery glue and thread. A home-made target from a notebook sheet was hung on the wall carpet and played.
Once a friend and I were playing darts at my house and had an argument. Out of anger, he threw a dart at me and stuck it right into my hand, and in revenge I hit him in the stomach
On the street, they also made darts from welding electrodes. One end was sharpened on a curbstone, and pigeon feathers were wound to the other:

Boomerang
Yes, yes, now you can easily buy a boomerang of any shape in the store. And in the late 80s, nothing like this was sold. We got out of the situation in the following way: we bought two 30-centimeter wooden rulers in stationery and twisted them with a cross with electrical tape, and then at home we twisted the blades over the steam:

It turned out an excellent boomerang, which even knew how to return! They again frightened crows and pigeons. They also launched from the 9th floor, where I lived all my childhood.
Spitting pipe or spitting
Another integral attribute of the boy was a metal tube for spitting plasticine or mastic balls:


It was not easy to get such a pipe and it was highly valued in the yard. A large supply of mastic or plasticine was molded directly onto the tube, from which a piece was plucked off and loaded into the tube. In addition to moral damage, such a spit did nothing to its victim. Later, the tube was replaced with an empty core from a gel pen, and plasticine with millet or buckwheat.
smokehouse
The real truth, only our generation knows what the connection is between a children's tumbler and a tennis ball.



here with this:


Lead
How much in this word, for the heart of a child merged And merged in the truest sense of the word. Remember scouring garages, scouring junk yards for old batteries?


They split them and mined pure lead:


The dried electrolyte was knocked out and the soft metal was crushed into a tin can. Or in a bowl:


They made a fire and waited for the liquid metal to sparkle in the jar.
And then do whatever your heart desires!



And even this is a useful thing in the era of gangs and battles for asphalt


Once I smelted lead at home and got very poisoned by inhaling vapors. In general, in childhood, out of ignorance, it was normal to undermine my health with all sorts of lead, chewing gum and other shit
Carbide
Who remembers magic stones with a specific smell that bubble in water? Carbide is a joy for those who find it, for the whole day! Caring gas welders shook it out of their cylinders right where they worked. Often, in the courtyard of the house:


And in a pile of useless white dust, a few strong pebbles of calcium carbide were always found! When combined with water, it reacted and released the wonderful gas acetylene. It is remarkable that it burns well.


In what form did not use carbide. And they just threw it into a puddle, setting it on fire. And they warmed their hands, squeezing the carbide in their palm, immersed in a puddle. And they put it in water bottles, plugging it with a cork. But the most effective use of carbide was a hand gun:


They took an empty bottle from under the deodorant or Dichlorvos, cut off its neck, made a hole at the bottom, put carbide inside, spat abundantly on it, plugged all the holes, shook for a minute, opened it and brought a burning match to a small hole VALLEY !!! :) My older brother told me that in his childhood they whistled a whole cylinder of carbide and poured it into a drainage well with water. They closed it with a heavy lid with a hole and waited half an hour. Then one boy brought the list to the hole and. There was such an explosion that knocked out several glasses in a neighboring house, the lid flew up, hitting the guy first on the chin, and then covering him a little when falling. But the worst thing is that he received severe burns to his face, the scars from which remained for life, I saw his photo in adulthood
knives
In my opinion, every boy in childhood had such a folding knife:


It has always been a source of pride. He was carefully kept away from his mother's gaze and was not often taken out into the street. The knife was always in the sand, remember? And all because he was just a tool for playing "Knives":


There were many variants of the game, but most often they played “zemelka”, “tanchiki”. Each game had a variety of rules. For example, "land": they drew a circle, divided it equally by the number of participants. Each one stood in his own place. Then, while standing, they stuck a knife into the enemy’s area and cut off a piece from his land. “He got ahead” (did not stick) the move passed to another. And according to one rule, it was necessary to stand on your own land all the time as long as you could. According to others, it was possible to stand outside, but in the event of a catastrophic decrease in your area, the enemy offered you to stand for 3 seconds on it. If you can't resist, you're out. You could even stand on tiptoe with one leg, the main thing is to hold out for 3 seconds.
More interesting and longer was the game of "Tanks". I won’t remember its rules, but here’s the shape of the knife, remember what kind of tank was placed in this way?


Magnesium
We mixed magnesium powdered with a file into a powder in a certain proportion with potassium permanganate, which cost a penny in a pharmacy and wrapped it in a tight paper bag, wrapping it with adhesive tape. They made a hole and screwed a match to it, so that the sulfur head was exactly in the hole. It turned out something like this:


They struck a match on the box and threw it sharply aside. The package exploded with a deafening noise and a bright flash.
I also liked to arrange various experiments with magnesium at home. For example, he put it in acetic acid and collected the hydrogen that bubbled out in a jar. And then with a match this hydrogen was set on fire. It burned with a ringing sound "PA". Or he set fire to powdered magnesium on the tip of a knife and quickly threw it into the water. Magnesium hydroxide, as a result of a violent reaction with combustion, sublimated to the ceiling and fell from there in white flakes like snow. By the way, never try to extinguish burning magnesium or titanium with water, there will be a hydrogen explosion.


In our aviation capital in the 90s, magnesium could easily be found. It was enough to find an Aviastar junkyard or saw off a piece of the rim from a monument aircraft, of which there were several in the new city. One day, one such landfill burned down and magnesium was no longer thrown out of the factory, everything was strictly accounted for. Sawing magnesium was extremely difficult, it took a hell of a lot of time. But the ends justified the means.
Slate in the fire
I think you can easily remember what happens to the slate in the fire. That's right, it's not good, it shoots a lot. in pieces.


Yes, sometimes so that little was left of the original fire

Shooting slate just scattered it to the sides. To our delight.
Finger
In childhood, we already used condoms with might and main. Just not on purpose


Those who lived higher up periodically “bathed” passers-by by dropping huge balls of water on them, 3-4 liters each. Particularly frostbitten added potassium permanganate there
Lamps and kinescopes
It was a sin not to break a fluorescent lamp thrown into the trash:


They broke with a loud bang, if you throw the lamp on the asphalt end. They didn't think about the environment back then.
But this find in the garbage was extremely rare and always brought great joy to the boys:

They cast lots to see who would be the first to throw a brick at the top lamp (the beam gun of the kinescope). She was the most vulnerable point of the kinescope. When the lamp broke, the kinescope collapsed inwards due to the internal vacuum with a very dull pop that echoed in the yards. Neighbor boys immediately ran to see this action. But more often we found kinescopes with a broken lamp
Siphon cans
Used cartridges for soda machines (siphon) also sometimes went into business:


They were stuffed with sulfur from matches and closed the hole with a bolt. Then the infernal device was thrown into the fire
I must say that this thing was the most dangerous invention of the yard boys. Once, all the students of our school were removed from classes and sent to the funeral of a sixth grader, who had his carotid artery damaged by a fragment of such a spray can. The ambulance did not have time to arrive, the guy bled to death on a bench at his entrance
And another comrade was left without two fingers when he was grinding a stuffed balloon on an electric emery wheel.
Personally, I have never made such a balloon. And I don't recommend it to others.
flying bolt
An easier way to make a “bang” was to twist two bolts and a nut, with a package tied to it all as a stabilizer:


Judging by the fact that the pictures were easily found on the Internet, we were not the only ones who made such things. I also made such a thing, but without a package. Just threw it on the asphalt. And as a result, he received a shrapnel wound to his finger. In the Central City Hospital, they did a mini-operation without the knowledge of my mother. Much later, she found a hidden extract from the emergency room about a shrapnel wound. There was a shock.


Maybugs
We already started looking for May beetles in April. We went to the forest and dug them out of the ground with a shovel. Maybugs were very valuable in the yard. While they were alive


Filled their full banks. And they were even distinguished by the color of their heads: red firefighters, black workers. There were also border guards with a greenish tint. Long mustache male, short female.
Once there was a rumor in the yard that in the pharmacy they accept beetle elytra for money. I will not continue further. It could be called genocide Wings did not accept in the end
Crossbows and scarecrows
From an ordinary stick or clothespin, a match crossbow or pugach was easily assembled:




They fired burning matches.
dowels
We look at the picture:


I think our generation will easily explain the connection of these objects. The dowel was hammered into the asphalt with a brick, taken out, crumbled matches into the hole, inserted the dowel and threw a brick on top Boo! and a piece of asphalt as if it had never happened. Matches cost 1 kopeck per box and were freely bought in the store.
pistons
Who had a revolver that fired such caps?


But it was more interesting to scratch the brown spots with something sharp and watch them ignite. Or even more interesting to roll a strip of piston and hit it with a hammer. Ringing in the ears for 10 minutes was provided
Sleeves
Empty cartridge cases also went into action.


They were stuffed with sulfur from matches, the neck was bent and into the fire. Personally, I made a rationalization proposal and filled the cartridge cases with gasoline for lighters:
Bahal not so strong, but effective

Instead of gasoline, it was possible to fill in diesel fuel, which easily merged from such tar colliders:


Construction cartridges
Occasionally, someone had such construction cartridges that were loaded into a construction pistol for driving dowels:


Those guys who were engaged in biathlon at home sometimes had such cartridges from the “small things”
Gunpowder was simply taken out of these, since the bullet was easily taken out with pliers (there were idiots) ..
Capacitors
In class 5m, the school was overwhelmed by a craze for radio components. Capacitive capacitors from the TV (from 2000 microfarads, 100-300V) were charged from a 220v outlet and used as a stun gun on comrades




Smaller parts, such as resistors and diodes, were clogged with a textbook into an outlet, which led to such a normal explosion and a sheaf of sparks


But this was already done by more frostbitten
Gun
Still, there were legal factory-made weapons. Remember?


Peaceful hobbies
From peaceful inclinations, I remember braids from the system and colored wire. They found a piece of telephone cable and pulled it.







Cherkash on a boot
The bonfire was the boy's constant companion. It was easy to find a match, but from the boxes with Cherkash, they didn’t always get out of the situation in this way: they took a filter from a cigarette, put it on the end of the sole, set it on fire and waited until it melted a little. Then they sharply applied the boxes with the brown side. The rough base was glued into the boot. Thus, the "box" was always with him. True, I had to update it periodically, since my mother scraped it off, my shoes.


Our toys and household items
Memory is a tricky thing. You remember some detail, and it will pull out something long forgotten from the depths. At the same time, such an amount of endorphin is released that just a lump rolls up in the throat.
Our way of life
I don’t know about you, but for me the 80s are primarily associated with this:

Remember? Fingers in a pinch and a bale on the lid Then you need to lick it into a bucket if you are going to drink the whole bottle, or straighten the edges, then to throw it over the neck. Pour into a glass: "ulk-ulk-ulk." A bottle of kefir and half a loaf became a symbol of the 80s. And they were even sung in a famous song.

The bottles were accumulated for some time under the battery, then they were taken to the point of collection of dishes and surrendered.




With the proceeds, kefir or milk was again bought


And so in a circle.
We children were sometimes allowed by our parents to turn in the bottles and spend the money on something else:

or
In a waffle cup, 10 kopecks are real ice, 12 and 15 creamy, 20 each top of pleasure, ice cream. It was also with a wooden stick in a paper cup, but I got goosebumps when my teeth gritted on wood brrr


But more often they didn’t buy milk in bottles; you won’t take much away, and it was more expensive, but draft:

It was almost never in the store, it was quickly dismantled by lunchtime. Therefore, my mother chased me for milk before school. Hours at 6 am so. To the barrel:


The queue was always terrible and being late for 10 minutes could not get anything and then you had to go for milk already at lunchtime, after school, right at the end of the lunch break in the store. It was necessary to know the location of all the barrels in the area, so that in case something happens, you can run to another barrel. There is a lot to write about products, but I will not deviate from my topic. I am talking about children.
Money box
Often, all our children's savings fit into one piggy bank. Mobile. With her it was convenient to go to the store for ice cream or chewing gum. 50 kopecks and 1 ruble were quite rare coins, so no place was provided for them. Moreover, as a rule, we did not have such big money.


Opener
No, we did not open a bottle of Duchess or Pinocchio on the curb. We drank lemonade more often at home. Opened the lid like this:


Cities were often painted on bottle openers.
Take a utility knife with you when you go out:


Although even now you won’t surprise anyone with them, this thing is constant like a shovel.
Magnifying glass
The magnifying glass was considered one of our main treasures, with the help of it it was possible to see a beetle and light a fire in sunny weather. The last function was used much more often.


The larger the magnifier, the more productive it is in this regard:


Binoculars
I didn’t have such a magnifying glass, so for making a fire I used lenses from theater binoculars, another attribute of our childhood.


The front lenses were very easy to twist. For its intended purpose, binoculars were used very rarely; they did not go to the theater often. And if they did, they forgot it. In it, I liked to watch fireworks in the city center. I lived on the Upper, on the 9th floor. Anyway, from the 9th floor a lot of things could be seen through binoculars
Stereoscope
I had another stereoscope binoculars. I still remember with reverence how I looked at the first 3D pictures in my life through a stereoscope. It was something! So many emotions, all the figures seem to be alive and voluminous. I did not understand how this happens, so I perceived it as a miracle. Bears, monkeys, mice heroes of pictures.

We had about 20 of these cards. In essence, these are comics, a story in 6 frames. Moreover, children's imagination was not limited to them and completed the story for a whole cartoon.
Mom still has the cards, but my children no longer squeal from them like I do. Why, if there is a 3D TV at home
The stereoscope is not the only household embodiment of Soviet 3D technology. Do you remember this?


Stereo postcardsThey were either with image depth, or simply changed the picture. A kind of animated GIF You twist it at different angles and laugh


Compass
Who had such a compass?


Judging by the fact that the picture was quickly found on the Internet, many had it.
Compasses
For some reason, I’m sure that most of you parents worked as engineers and therefore had such sets at home:


This is a set of drawing tools. We had a lot of them. Thank God, my studies at USU did not include making drawings, as in the Polytechnic University, because I hated drawing. The last time I did it was at school. And then, with my mother's help
Stationery
My mother was a specialist in drawing devices and stationery all her life behind a drawing board, an engineer. Therefore, I went to school with only the best KOH-I-NOOR pencils and an eraser of the same company, with an elephant:


But it washed well, without dirty stains. With the help of it and the blade, the “triple” in the diary skillfully turned into a “five”, and the “count” into a “four”.
I will not mention ordinary writing pens, because they were like dirt. But about the four-color it is necessary:


Remember those fat "rockets" with four rods inside: blue, green, red and black? All possible colors of Soviet pens in one case. I didn't have one
These pens, with colored plexiglass bodies, were something of a treasure:


They practically did not write, they just brought them to school and boasted. There were also pens with roses in glass, but I did not find their photo. Help, maybe someone stayed with them. By the way, they were usually made by prisoners in the zone.
knapsack
I went to first grade with a backpack that looked like this:


In the 90s, children went to school with these:

I liked mine more Eternal and indestructible.
Circle-twist
Who remembers what it was called?


Popular household trainer. An invariable item in the morning exercises The children used it as a carousel - squatting on it and spinning until you feel sick. It was?
Shell
Where were any more or less valuable small things, like crosses and chains, kept? That's right, in the rapana shell, in the sideboard where the crystal stood


Now they are small, but in our childhood, the Black Sea rapanas had not yet had time to degenerate and reached enormous sizes! Thanks to them, we all learned how the sea is noisy.
Lighter
“Matches are not a toy for children,” social advertising of the time told us. And it didn’t say anything about a lighter. Therefore, in the most secluded place, many of us kept this thing:


Petrol, reusable metal lighter. Extremely expensive and rare item. In my opinion, in order to get it, one had to almost lay down one’s soul. It was used on especially solemn occasions, when it was necessary to impress friends by lighting the first cigarettes in my life, at the age of 13. By the way, at the same time I gave up smoking for the whole life, smoking one summer.
A bike
Of course, we all had our own bike. I don't even doubt it. Velik was the main transport, entertainment and currency of the summer holidays. For "ride-ride" you could get some goodies, such as chewing gum or a slingshot. The bike was our car. I go where I want! Let's find out who had what. Here I tried to remember all the brands and models of two-wheeled horses that existed at that time (80-90s).
I'll start with Kama. Because I had one. Or rather, at first I was with my brother, but he was kicked off right from the landing when I was just studying on two wheels. Then I was bought handsome red!


Oiled, foldable, shiny, with footrest and reflectors! In the store on the Lower Terrace.
How much we have seen with him. How many kilometers of the private sector and dirt roads have been wound. They went for berries to the dachas of Karasevka, fled from the owners of these dachas. The gopniks tried to wring the bike more than once, but a faithful friend saved me from them too. How many sacks of potatoes were transported from the cellar on Volzhskaya to the apartment on Telman. And how many friends rode behind, on the trunk and in front, on the frame. The bike could take away 3-4 people at once.
And our “childhood” began with this bike:


Then he “left” to the village and his parents bought a second-level bike:


Good old Bear! I remembered about him at the last moment and shed a tear. True, I had a red one. Thick tires softened all yard bumps and potholes
Bicycle of the third level "Schoolboy":


There was another one, like "Stork".
I skipped this level and immediately moved from Mishka to Kama. By the way, after him I didn’t ride a bike for 15 years, and last year I just bought Stealth
I had a Kama, and a friend had a Salyut:


The Salyut has wheels slightly larger than the Kama, so it kept its speed well. But the Kama accelerated faster. And on the "Kama" it was easier to stand "on the goat" or fly at speed onto the curb.
Solid guys rode the Urals: