September 23, 2025

The topic of today’s class is “Real Socialism: Society, Economy and Culture.” We begin with Prague Spring in 1968 and the Soviet Invasion.

August 20th saw the invasion of more than 500,000 Warsaw troops; leaders of Czechoslovakia are brought into Moscow. There was more freedom in Czechoslovakia than in other socialist states. Western artists visited a lot, it was Socialism with a human face: economic and cultural freedoms, with less travel restrictions. People were excited for reforming the Socialist state in Czechoslovakia. It was unique in that it was betrayed by the west in WWII, so the communists were quite popular.

The Soviets are suspicious, because do they not have a human face? Leaders discuss the situation as it was dangerous, this was when Czechoslovakia leaders were taken to Moscow. After some soul searching, the Soviets made the decision to invade during a celebration of Socialism. People there tried to explain to the tanks that they were not enemies. Polish students that were demonstrating did not help maters as they were chanting about the leader of Czechoslovakia. Then the Brezhnev Doctrine comes out: it states that each communist party is responsible to the entire socialist world.

Now we move on to Romania in 1968 and the 70s. Ceausescu’s speech on the 21st of August, 1968, condemned the Soviet invasion. This made him incredibly popular. Western leaders thought he was a liberal. After his speech he sends a letter to the Soviets stating that nothing could hinder the friendship between the USSR and Romania. He was invited to the DPRK and China in 1971. China was not a fan of the post-Stalin USSR, as they preferred totalitarianism. They did think that Ceausescu was admirable in his critiques. Ceausescu was impressed with Mao and published his own words denouncing liberalism, he wanted Romanian nationalism. Stalin was a modest man but Ceausescu encouraged his own cult of personality.

Romania was the poorest socialist state. It was illegal to own a typewriter; abortions were outlawed in the 80s as it was a problem for all developing nations when women joined the work force. Apparently women were examined every month by doctors to determine why they had not had children yet.

Okay, now we can move on to Hungary. It had its own revolution back in 1956 but it was put down by the Soviets. In 1966, Hungary got rid of central planning, thus it became the richest Socialist country, but nothing compared to the west. Besides decentralization Hungary introduced market mechanisms and free prices. She been tells us a joke that I believe came from the GDR: A girl has to answer a question for school “Why do you love the USSR?” She ass her dad and he says he hates the USSR, she asks her mother and gets the same answer. Everyone she asks says they hate the USSR, so when she goes to answer the question she says “I love the USSR because no one else does.” Finished its the joke, she pivots to China in that it was deemed a threat to the USSR due to both countries having disagreements, so China pivots towards the USA. This is also when the USSR gets involved in global conflicts like Somalia.

Next we went into the Brezhnev years, which was characterized by “senile leadership.” Brezhnev himself had impressive political skills, but he suffered from health issues after taking too many sleeping pills back in the 60s. In 1974 he had a major stroke, he had another in 1976 but was kept on because the party leadership thought they’d have more control with a barely functioning leader. The politburo was created, and all the members were old. Brezhnev confided in his assistants that the politburo needed to be better. He simplified a lot, he even told his speech writers to not add any Marxism into his speeches ass nobody would believe he has read Marx. Brezhnev could not work longer than 2 hours, Politburo meetings lasted around 30 minutes to an hour which meant that he was spent most of the time. A lot of jokes emerged during this era, most of which were about Brezhnev himself, many students chuckled at this.

Economic challenges was covered next. The problem was that the USSR wanted to compete with the west, and they managed to do this! Because of the USSR’s existence the west was pressured to reduced work day hours since the Soviets were doing that. Regarding the space race, the Soviets were the first to send women to space, the US did so after but said women weren’t even astronauts, they were secretaries while the Soviet women were pilots. These successes were due to central planning and stealing US secrets. People were frustrated with the planned economy as most of the money was being directed to the heavy industry and military. It was impossible to buy things, and when items were available they were of bad quality.

There was not enough books, clothes, or food. Scholars talked about reforms, a guy who would work for Gorbachev was one of them (I could not make out his name). Standard of living was also too low while the military got too much money. No one listened to the scholars. Citizens of the USSR acquired stuff via “Blat” and the black market. Blat means to get something from acquaintances, how it was explained was you could get hard to find items by knowing a guy who knows a guy, so a friend or family member or friend of a friend could get something for you. You basically had to know someone to get stuff. It wasn’t very sustainable.

Everyone knew a change had to happen. Cybernetics was considered bourgeoisie and the party prevented the developing of computers. They were only really needed for space research, post-space race saw the destruction of all those computers. This was, in part, to prevent any research from being stolen I guess. The senile government was dealing with complex structural problems. This government started the war in Afghanistan as they thought it was justified as the Socialist Afghan government asked for support while the US was giving its support to the mujahideen.

Women and families were the next topic of today’s lecture. All women were expected to work, which also meant they had a double burden, working at home and at their place of employment. The Soviets were still patriarchal. Birthrates were declining because it was hard to do both, on average people were having only 2 children. Childcare was inexpensive and there was paid maternity leave. It was the only country to do so at the time. The average salary was 100 rubles, and daycare only costed around 10. Maternity leave was one year paid, while the workplace would apparently save your wages for three years. Free after-school activities were provided. Talented kids would join teams with free lunch and uniforms. There were special music schools as well. The government gave lots of help but it was not enough as women had to stand in queues for hours just to get food.

Society and culture-wise, the USSR provided free university education (wish I had that), free medical care, cheap medical care, cheap (inadequate) housing and retirement benefits. Urban society reined supreme as only 30% of the population lived in the countryside. It was quite depressing, young people wanted to leave the countryside and the old were heavy drinkers. There was struggle to provide food. The USSR sold its weed and the west complained, opting to instead purchase Canadian cannabis. My professor said that collective farms did not make enough, Socialism in this regard is not great. It was normal for a family of 5 to live in a one room apartment. There was no unemployment, once you finished university the government would send you to go where they wanted you to work for three years. Once the 3 years was up you could go and do whatever you wanted. People were happy with socialism despite the difficulties. Soviet people read the most and had the best movies.

We were then shown a picture of Gorbachev with Margaret Thatcher. Gorbachev and his wife were the poster children of the successes of the USSR according to my professor. They were initially liked in the Union but people became critical, especially over perestroika not delivering what it promised. Gorbachev’s wife was criticized for being too proud and too fancy. She then told us about how a foreign correspondent asked Gorbachev what he tells his wife and he said “everything.” My professor said that his wife was the intellectual, she was always sought out by her husband. Which is sweet, I guess, who knew Gorbachev was a wife guy? When she got cancer suddenly everyone started to love her. She said that she had to die for people to truly understand her. She was always the spokes person as Gorbachev did not know English.

That is where the lecture ended and we were given the map quiz. We had to study all fifteen republics of the USSR plus those associated like Czechia, Slovakia, and the Balkans. We were given a list of ten random countries from the full list we had to study. Let’s just say I was so confident that I labeled every single country regardless of whether she asked for it on the quiz.

(Again, I am sorry I am so behind on these posts. This course has actually been more depressing than I thought it’d be. My fellow students make me sad.)