My video about shopping experience in modern Ukraine:
https://youtu.be/R6jzHLoZvZg
Hello, comrades!
My name is Sergei. I was born in the USSR in 1971. Since 1999 I have lived in the USA.
Ushanka Show channel was created to share stories as well as my own memories of everyday life in the USSR.
My books about arriving in America is available on https://www.sputnikoff.com/shop (Russian or English versions) or Amazon:
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If you are curious to try some of the Soviet-era candy and other foodstuffs, please use the link below.
https://www.russiantable.com/imported-russian-chocolate-mishka-kosolapy__146-14.html?tracking=5a6933a9095f9
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anecdotes are the only way to actually describe what a system is actually like. Propaganda can say one thing but people may live the other way

In the UK 30 years ago there was a journalist who'd grown up in the USSR. When Euro-Disney/Disneyland Paris opened, people complained like heck about the massive hours-long queues for all of the rides. The Russian journalist was there and he wrote an article saying he'd loved it. Very nostalgic for him, just like when he was a kid in the USSR and he went shopping with his Mum.

I'm one year older than you, comrade cheeseburger and grew up in Michigan. My dad was an photography hobbyist and so I got into photography at a young age.  I used my dad's first camera from the 1950's until I could afford my own.  I purchased my first camera, a 1980 Canon AV-1 that was an Olympic edition for the Moscow Olympics the USA didn't attend.  I mowed lawns for two summers for several neighbors at $7/lawn to earn the $250 the camera body and the 50mm lens cost.  When I had the money my dad called B&H Photo and the camera arrived in a few days.  I'm not sure I would ever have the patience to survive the communist system.

I feel bad your brother sold your camera. After I graduated from high school, my parents donated all my  GI Joe stuff to a school fundraiser. Really wanted my kid to have those. They don't make toys like they used to. Fought a lot of Russians with those things 😁

This brings back memories. I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia and there were popular children comic books called “Fourleaf clover” . And you could not get even such a thing without “blat”. Remember my mom had a tobacconist friend who left it for us “under the counter”. It was a bit crazy. Or I remember being obsessed with a candy called “Lipo” which was pretty hard to come by. We did not have blat in this case, so I had to go through candy stores all around town (50.000+ people), trying to get this candy which lots of time I didn’t get. It’s a bit like current situation with Playstation 5, but it just extended to many more goods :) .

I still own a Zenit camera made in the USSR which I bought in 1989.

The camera was hard to get, but the excitement from ownership lasted a very long time, I bet. Something that is often missing in times of plenty. Your stories bring many memories of my youth in commie Czechoslovakia (CSSR). Mostly pleasant. I don't recall how difficult it was to get a quality camera in CSSR, but do remember east german Praktika being sought after. "Deficit" in my country was called "pod pultový tovar" (under the counter goods) or "úzky profil" (bottleneck) and required the same process as "blat". I was lucky that my dad was a photo enthusiast and owned pretty old Flexaret dual lens camera. Not good for 35mm film, but very good for 6x6 (cm). We developed films and made prints ourselves, of course.

Sergei mentioned buying an electronic device without testing it first.  I don't remember, I think it was a tape player.   He was surprised that the clerk told him, "You can bring it back if it doesn't work".

What a shame about the Soviet system.

I am a photographer working mainly with medium and large format film cameras.
All of my medium format cameras are custom built for me by Arax which is a Ukrainian company.

I have Always Enjoyed my Kyiv 88 that I bought Directly from the Arsenal!!

We bought a camera from the CCCP in East Germany and wondered about stripes on the photos. They came from an edge in the mechanism scratching the film. Back then you wouldn't just take it back to the store to get it replaired or replaced for reasons described in the video. So we took the nail file to grind it off - and it worked fine. The camera served for a long time and survived some bad drops that would have killed any modern western model on the spot.

~150 rubles was also the cost of an Elecktronika MK-52.  Imagine a student having to save his entire paycheck for ~3 months just to buy a decent calculator.

Maybe something about shaving in the USSR ? I know in poland during the communist times we didn't have shaving foam or single use razors. I think it would be Interesting !

There is ine thing you can do with a film camera- even the cheapest- that you can't do with your phone or a digital camera- take a quick snapshot of something. I have pictures I took fifty years ago that were "grab shots"- I saw something, pucked up the camera and clicked the shutter and got it. With my digital camera, it has to be turned on to do that.  If you try leaving it on, after a while it will turn itself off to prolong the battery life.

There is a 10 year wait for getting your own car, and you have to put up the money in advance. One man laid down the money, and the fellow in charge said to him: “Come back in 10 years and get your car.”

The man answered: “Morning or afternoon?”

And the fellow behind the counter said: “Ten years from now, what difference does it make?”

The man replied: “Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.”

Way to go Comrade Sergei!

Wonderful memories. These

Have you ever seen the movie, “Bridge of Spies”?  It is about the Francis Gary Powers, an American U2 pilot who was shot down over the USSR in 1960.  This was one of the first American movies that I’ve seen which portrayed Soviets, East Germans, and Rudolf Abel as human beings and this came out 24 years after the end of the Cold War.

haha, "camera buys YOU", I was wondering when you'd use that turn of phrase!