Lol there actually a joke similar to that one, I wanted to add it to the video but it was slightly too long. So basically: Soviet times. The doorbell rings. A woman opens the door. Two policemen stand on the doorstep and drag her dead drunk husband inside. They put him on the floor in the corridor. The wife gives them some money. Policemen: - We don't need your money. He said he is a butcher in a grocery store, he promised to get some meat for us. Wife: - Oh, guys, I'm so sorry! He's not a butcher, he's just a professor from Moscow State University. He just gets delusions of grandeur every time he drinks.
most prestigous job... prostitute obviously 400 rubles per night. even kids in highschool when polled about most prestigious job in soviet unioin... wrote it down... it landed in the top10 list of jobs of girls
I worked with a geologist in Canada who began his studies in the Kazakhstan SSR and finished them in Kazakhstan. His uncle was a geologist who traveled all over the USSR and he wanted to do the same! He immigrated to Canada because "Gorbachev destroyed my country". I enjoyed working with him, he had lots of interesting stories about the Soviet Union.
@@jackster2568 it was functioning for most people. Being poorer than the west doesnt equal nonfunctioning. The west gained their riches doing slavery and imperialism, while the soviet society had the fastest and most humane transformation from a feudal agricultural society who used wooden plough To a highly advanced and eventuelly space-traveling civilization, in thirty years after taking over a nation that was poorer than india from the tsar Gorbachov ruined it all and look at todays russia
@@mahbodbaghdadi5713 please, look at today's Russia? Look at any country from the Warsaw pact that westernised and tell me that what they did was ever achievable under the Kremlin puppet masters. Functioning for most people, never mind the shortages of food. It's all good according to mahbod. Just because your life is worse of than anyone's in the west doesn't mean anything. Funny that it's always foreigners or people with one foot in the grave having their "golden" youth flashbacks.
7:58 You do have to note the reason why that was the case is because 1. TVs these days are cheaper and much more palatable to throw away. LCDs have brought the cost of displays down by a lot 2. TVs back then we’re analog and much easier to repair. Analog devices such as older/simpler radios and CRTs can be repaired using commonly parts and general electronics knowledge. These days, TVs and displays are far more integrated and proprietary, meaning the only people often is the manufacturer themselves, meaning broken TVs will be sent back to them if they are still under warranty. Perhaps the job of repair was prestigious in the USSR, but it was something people did until the LCDs and digital devices took over the market.
I know there are good reasons for the giant gap between the original ideals of the Soviet Union and its reality by the 1970s. But even with limited access to information, the perverseness in the social prestige of professions, and the Soviet's citizen's willingness to deal with the petty corruption in so many aspects of daily life, still surprises.
Flight attendants are considered cool even in modern day Serbia because of similar reasons- not that an average person can not find luxurious goods here, but simply can not afford them, while flight attendants can purchase them at duty free shops and give them at such a price or gift them to whoever they want....
My grandma was a geologist in the Soviet Union in Kamchatka she always told me how in the Soviet Union the most desirable jobs where scientists and engineers whereas in the west they where bankers and how that shows the mindset of the people
Well.the grandma was partially correct, and partially propaganda…..never heard of any child in North America saying “when I grow up, I want to be a banker.” And pretty similar system, both sides chase jobs with good pay, perks and which are competitive (so cool if you got one), and both sides have some respect for those who do academic and scientific work, even if not the highest paid (like teachers, scientists,etc). And Wall Street isn’t exactly respected in the West,,,,they make the news a lot as finance often attracts people with a showy persona, or good for business to cultivate an image, but mostly vilified.
Really interesting and entertaining video! I laughed at the bit where plumbers were looked down on for being alcoholics by people who were giving them vodka.
the fact that in 1960 50% of engineers were university graduates of the USSR is simply insane. like school it's very cheap. remember at this time in the western world. Compulsory schooling for 12 years does not yet exist. let alone a free university
My grandad told me about how when he was a bus driver his company was hired to help a russian group transport parts and men to an air strip near the city. The russian in charge became friends with my grandad on the journey and while they were assembling the parts the russian asked my grandad to take his daughters to a market in a near by village. While there they were absolutely mesmerised by all the tropical fruits for sale at such abundance. He bought them a banana each and they were very grateful. When they got back to the airstrip their dad waved them over and he was equally confused by the bananas. I'm not entirely sure when this happened because my grandad has been a bus driver multiple times in his life sometimes a decade apart. Plus he was born in the 40s so that's quite a long time frame.
I have a story about my grandfather who went to Angola in the 80s for around 3 to 4 years. My grandfather was a surgeon and pretty good one at that time , i guess, so after all the background checks he, alongside my grandmother ( teacher ) flew there. They told me loads of stories about life there and brought alot of memorobilia ( african made stuff, books). Met alot of people who i would not expect there ( at that time) like portuguese, germans and west ukrainians ( mostly lviv reagion, germans naturally east). As they got back they got compensated quite nice, as even after the money that got worthless (almost) he bought a volvo 740 and a japaneese fridge with a no frost system which works still. I assume that if they would have just went to moscow beforhand it would be more valuable, but the volvo was so sweet, the one like in brat 1, only white. Just a true story i thought i shared. Keep up the good work
My grandfather’s friend, who is very close to my family, was in Angola in the 80’s teaching the African kids. He is from Stryi, a city in the Lviv region. I wonder if he is the one your grandfather mentioned.
@@overlyobsolete2797 i bet they send alot of doctors there. If the people he knew where from baltics then there is a chance. Fun fact Cristianos dad was there at that time too, so someone has met his for sure :D
Its interesting to hear stories from the Opposing sides of the South African border war. My Father was a Combat Engineer in SADF during those times of your grandfather. He volunteered to go to the border and built the majority of the roads in the Caprivi. With the pay the danger pay he got he managed to buy himself a Mazda and paid 2 years of tuition for University.
the most prestigious and elite goods and services in USSR were those no money could buy: like an apartment or dacha (vacation cottage) in the gated residential complex for government officials only, official car with personal driver, limited access to the special trade center (распределитель) etc. Your pockets could have been full of dollars, pounds or marks, gold and diamonds, but they won't let you even come close to the gates of this Paradise for the chosen ones...
Two weeks without Setarko is torture. MY Favorite soviet is informative, interesting, and extremely funny. Thank you so much for your hard work and laughs in these strange times especially.
During the eighties in Liverpool's Great Homer st market, two blokes drove Ladas onto a pitch at dawn. They then stripped them down an sailors from the Soviet Union would buy spares in dollars. You'd see sailors rolling wheels back to the docks.when the Soviet Union ended they drove Ladas into containers and shipped them to Russia. The Ladas vanished.
i feel like salesman and black-market smugglers are going to leap in popularity when living standards fall drastically. that usually happens in times of economic crisis, i think: these kind of people have access to resources you can't get.
Here is a note, that you probably forgot.. It was definitely a very good job - to work at any type of alcohol factory. Liquid currency, up to 500 rubles in a high season, when grape is ready)
Hey man, thank you for another great video! On the subject of doctors though, it's not really that simple: while most doctors were considered rank-and-file professionals, several medical professions were considered more lucrative, such as Gynecologists and Dentists, since (you guessed it!) their patients were usually very grateful (₽) for a job well done and/or preferential treatment. My parents are both doctors who started their careers in the USSR; my father, an ophthalmologist, once got a set of silver cutlery (that we still use today) as a gift from a KGB officer for performing an urgent surgery that ended up saving his eye, while my mother, a gynecologist, had some friends who ran a side hustle; basically started an informal private obstetric clinic in one of Moscow's top hospitals, where the wives of the nomenklatura would get separate rooms and other perks (₽₽₽). PS: this is not to be taken as a racist statement, but there's a very good reason there are so many Jewish and Armenian dentists and gynecologist in Russia.
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge they have a reputation for following the money in their choice of career, which is no surprise given how rocky their history has been.
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge it's rarely mentioned, but in Soviet high schools jews and some other nations (not always, 30-60s I believe) were discriminated so they couldn't learn some specializations and flocked to others, less prestigious. Even after restrictions lift it left as diaspora members became professors. It has especially hilarious trace in Russian media, there Jews, Armenians and Ukrainians overrepresented and follow different views, including Russian nationalism.
Thanks so much for sharing, friend. As a Nigerian with a love of history and geopolitics, I am always fascinated with the stuff I learn about the Soviet Union. Also, it is strange how so many westerners actually want the system you had in your society for their own.
@@MarMar-nq9ii Yes, you are correct. Life in the USSR was more prosperous than many western countries.....for a time, a VERY limited time. Also, the long-term impacts of USSR socioeconomic policies actually harmed most of the countries under it and still hurts them till today.
In my country, anyone sent to work abroad was not paid directly (in foreign currency), but the state collected all the transactions and once the workers were back home, they were issued special "coupons" that were redeemable for any imported/deficit product in the state-run stores usually reserved for foreign gusts and tourists. That was the legal way -- the rest was all grey-area dealings, smuggling and, of course, a lot of bribing. Up until the 1980, ordinary people we forbidden to hold foreign (i.e. convertible) currency, but the looming debt crisis forced the regime to relax the restrictions, so now anyone can spend dollars and marks in those specialized "tourist only" stores. This way the government was hoping to scoop away the hidden trove of precious dollars from the population. In fact, the chronic lack of convertible currency reserves was a typical characteristics of the Eastern Communist Block countries that resulted in sort of "cargo cult" for imported stuff -- from bananas to home appliances and cars.
Well, yeah, this system existed all over the USSR in the form of Vneshposyltorg checks and Beryozka stores where you could buy something with those checks. IIRC it was in place since 1964. Also similar systems existed in Cuba, in GDR, in Czechoslovakia
Regarding taxi drivers and sailors, I think you forgot to mention two other "well respected" category of the transport industry: namely truck drivers, and railwaymen. Truck drivers could make some extra money by accepting a "black" (i.e. without any legal paperwork) freight run, or by selling some of their extra fuel for lower prices than those at the filling station. Not to mention that some of the goods could "fall off from the truck" figuratively speaking, earning you some bonus, "off the books" income. Railwaymen - especially those who went to the socialist bloc, or Finland (in the case of the USSR) or Austria/Yugoslavia (in the case of my home country) - could also acquire some scarce goods, plus they made a good wage. There may be differences, but this was the case in my native Hungary, back in the '70s and '80s.
Interesting to see. I was born in the early 2000s in Ecuador and lived in the US for almost as long as I remember. The USSR certainly is an interesting and in some regards, strange country to live in from my perspective. This seems to add to the Chaos of the 90s and why some may have longed for the USSR, guys like waiters and clerks being demoted to just another unskilled job, and taxi drivers, butchers, repairmen, and likely sailors were demoted to being unremarkable blue collar jobs, all due to the fact shelves were stocked full and now access to goods was a matter money as opposed to connections.
Soviet Citizen: ''Ah he's an alcoholic'' Plumber: "No no I'm really trying to quit'' Soviet Citizen: "Here's a bottle of vodka **wink wink**" Plumber: "Ah fuck it" Bruh ... self fulfilling prophecy and kinda negligent to feed someone alcohol if they are an alcoholic 😅
@@BrutusAlbion every so often the government would hike up the price or restrict overall supply as part of their anti-alcoholism policy. At one point during the Gorbachev era people were drinking wood glue because regular booze cost too much
That's why utopian ideology fails they can't get rid of humanity desire if power and greed . And many commies don't understand economics hopefully someday ideology better than capitalism and especially communism come out
Even in the present day in Romania, you will still hear parents who grew up beteween the 1970s and 1990s tell their children that if you dont study well in life, you'll end up as a trashman or a janitor. Little do they know that even if these are indeed kinda nasty jobs, working as a trashman gets you quite a decent wage, because of the fact that it is work that can affect your health.
My grandpa was a deputy captain on a patrol vessel in Polish navy and he definitely had some connections, and got some stories. If you know Lech Wałęsa, he is famously known to jump through a dockyard wall to lead a strike. Yeah, that was a lie. He in fact was carried by grandpa's comrade from his vessel with help of a motorboat. Not to mention his family being quite set in life.
Hello, respect for the video as always! I would like to ask you, how was the situation of truck drivers (especially international) in the USSR? As i know nowadays there is a big cult in Russia for them, there are songs also (which i understand because they know the profession very well😄)
My grandfather was one, they own a house with 3 stories and a pretty big garden. When he retired they gave him shares of the company which was privatized
I once met a cabby who had started his career as a driver during the last days of the communist party's dictatorship. He complained that the job was far more lucrative back then than today. I asked him why and he explained: Before you could get multiple people within one hour and not stop the meter in-between each customer. Since the only people who used cabs back then where quite wealthy, they would never protest the incredibly high cab rates. Today he said he couldn't get away with that...
I live in Hungary and I've heard that being a truck driver was a very coveted job here during the socialist era. Mostly for the same reasons as sailors, you were able to bring stuff back home.
My father was a civil engineer in USA I think he made 2300.00 to 3000.00 usd on the 1970’s a month maybe it was the 1980’s? He’s 85 now and still working! In the 2000’s he moved up to director of environmental engineering and made 100k a year he now makes about 60,k a year
These stories go to show no matter how bad a nation’s economy or ideology. People will always find ways to get by and even thrive. I have learned to respect and even appreciate the people of USSR. All of them. I hope in these dark times we can come to an understanding between the west and east. Because in the far east a hive buzzes. It would be best if we banded together to destroy the eastern hive.
I guess there were also a lot of pretty useless jobs just for the sake of giving some job to the people. In some videos I watched about Russia I got the impression that some of those jobs exist to this day. E.g. babushkas watching over people in the metro or some guys guarding over some ordinary residential building.
@@Snp2024 There's no difference in employment form. One could have a hundred percent private or state employment, the only difference is where the profit ends up, in private hands or distributed back to the people.
@@Snp2024 If you are paying taxes, or perhaps that's an entirely new concept for you? Then you know what you get back in the form of healthcare and free schools and paved roads and subsidized air travel and libraries and day care and dental care and so on. Most countries have a road budget on the same level as their defence budget or do you think the streets you're walking on are payed by gnomes? Everything that goes into the state goes out to the people.
There was a time in the US if you had older TV,'s in order to repair them the only source of the vacuum tubes you needed came from Russia. Russia is will more a state of mind than not. Gee,' a Doctor or an Engineer not much to talk about, A cabbie well he is the master of his domain! Oh, and the Russian Vacuum Tubes were considered the very best and the zenith of that technology. I miss the days when you turned on the TV and you had to wait for it to warm up! Yea, and the Further Adventures or Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota!
my great grandfather was Head of the Vilnius Post Office and our family had access to special shop special summerhouse a car and we could make phone lines in apartments
Setarko, thank you so much for having such an interesting and amazing channel! Couldo you make a video or a post about all the russian movies that portray the Tzarist russia?
Hey, thanks for the idea! Tbh I always tried to stay out of cinema niche because I have no idea what I can and what I can't use when it comes to modern movies. But I will think about it!
In Romania it was different only in regards of doctors and engineers. They were respected professions. On the other hand teachers and gabage men ,werent respected. But still this people never complained because some of them were informants for the secret services. Just like in Soviet Union. I was in school both in communism and after ,in our so called democracy. Seeing the mess the romanian school is today I sometimes made some comparisons with those times when both kids and parents respected the teachers. I asked my parents about that and they said to me that my teacher from grade 1-8 was the wife of a secret services officer and everybody knew that .😁😉
While it's true that the Soviets were far behind on chip technology, they did however perfect valve tech, eventually making them very small and light. Aircraft with chips can be very adversely affected by EMP, whereas aircraft using valves are not.
A very notable fact is that women in former socialist countries quite often married guys who were formally standing lower in social/educational prestige by nowadays standards, like a doctor marrying a waiter. Needless to say that this has totally changed.
Psychology in the USSR was...not very developed. There were great scientists that moved psychology forward like Alexei Leontiev or Lev Vygotsky, but the field itself was too tightly intertwined with ideology which kinda hindered its development (in my opinion).
Greetings Comrade Setarko! I love Russia and Russian history, Russian people are tough and resilient. We here in America have grown fat and lazy and it seems like we are sliding down the rat hole of propaganda from our corrupt governments and media. Only time will tell if we can reverse the situation. I'm not very hopeful. Cheers to you and your wonderful channel!
This is interesting. The part about doctors are opposite in China. You HAVE TO know your doctor. For two reasons. 1. Half the "medicine" on the shelf is fake/placebo. Especially for diseases with high mortality. 😉 2. The quality of newly graduated surgeons were very poor. So most of them got their REAL training on the job. You didn't want to be the guy on the table when some idiot forgot a surgical knife in your belly. Or straight up harvested your eye and sold it on the black marked. My mom was a doctor, and when she had to do a C section, my cousin was the doctor operating. She didn't trust anybody else in her own hospital where she worked.
Transports Internationaux Routiers Maybe not so much in the USSR . But in block bordering countries of Europe, this was a thing. Ladies if you don't mind unusually shady even for a people of thieves, those TIR trucks are definitely worth a look. Should be way better than a regular shady carrier.
The main disconception here, that most of these jobs were not "prestigious", but "moneymaking jobs"(or "goods-making"). Except for the car mechanic and tv repair man, probably. Soviet engeneers had small salary and no career grouth? Well, that's just bullshit.
These professions were profitable, but not prestigious. Salaries were high because no one wanted to work in these jobs. People preferred to receive 5 times less, but to work as doctors and teachers, not as waiters and butchers.
Engineer has no honor whatsoever that even a doorman has more reputation than him??? Damn!!! this is what too much of education caused??? send some EDUCATION to Africa please, they need engineers 🤣😂
Homelessness did exist there, and the homeless would either be forced out of the cities into the countryside or prosecuted for "parasitism" and sent to prison.
What are you talking about? My father has been a taxi driver for 25 years in Paris and made around €5.500 a month. It is not not a mediocre job, show some respect.
![SAFEPLANET - ดาวเคราะห์ [ THE PLANET ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4X1XL3I_k3c/mqdefault.jpg)
Reminds me of a Cuban joke about a doctor lying to a beautiful woman that he is bellhop at a hotel
Lol there actually a joke similar to that one, I wanted to add it to the video but it was slightly too long. So basically:
Soviet times.
The doorbell rings. A woman opens the door. Two policemen stand on the doorstep and drag her dead drunk husband inside. They put him on the floor in the corridor.
The wife gives them some money.
Policemen:
- We don't need your money. He said he is a butcher in a grocery store, he promised to get some meat for us.
Wife:
- Oh, guys, I'm so sorry! He's not a butcher, he's just a professor from Moscow State University. He just gets delusions of grandeur every time he drinks.
@@Setarko If that joke could possibly be more Soviet Russian it would come in a vodka bottle....
most prestigous job... prostitute obviously
400 rubles per night.
even kids in highschool when polled about most prestigious job in soviet unioin... wrote it down... it landed in the top10 list of jobs of girls
@@Setarko heyo, make more vids about the unusual humour (perhaps dark)of Russia, or like of Soviet times, I just love them
@@ingvarhallstrom2306Soviet Russia was so Soviet, rivers flowed with Vodka all you had to do was walk up and take as much as you wanted 😊
I worked with a geologist in Canada who began his studies in the Kazakhstan SSR and finished them in Kazakhstan. His uncle was a geologist who traveled all over the USSR and he wanted to do the same! He immigrated to Canada because "Gorbachev destroyed my country". I enjoyed working with him, he had lots of interesting stories about the Soviet Union.
He did destroy the USSR and illegally dissolve it. Children were prostitution themselves after Gorbi.
Gorbachov indead did destroy his country :(
@@mahbodbaghdadi5713 lmao, like it was functioning before
@@jackster2568 it was functioning for most people.
Being poorer than the west doesnt equal nonfunctioning. The west gained their riches doing slavery and imperialism, while the soviet society had the fastest and most humane transformation from a feudal agricultural society who used wooden plough
To a highly advanced and eventuelly space-traveling civilization, in thirty years after taking over a nation that was poorer than india from the tsar
Gorbachov ruined it all and look at todays russia
@@mahbodbaghdadi5713 please, look at today's Russia? Look at any country from the Warsaw pact that westernised and tell me that what they did was ever achievable under the Kremlin puppet masters.
Functioning for most people, never mind the shortages of food. It's all good according to mahbod. Just because your life is worse of than anyone's in the west doesn't mean anything.
Funny that it's always foreigners or people with one foot in the grave having their "golden" youth flashbacks.
7:58 You do have to note the reason why that was the case is because
1. TVs these days are cheaper and much more palatable to throw away. LCDs have brought the cost of displays down by a lot
2. TVs back then we’re analog and much easier to repair. Analog devices such as older/simpler radios and CRTs can be repaired using commonly parts and general electronics knowledge. These days, TVs and displays are far more integrated and proprietary, meaning the only people often is the manufacturer themselves, meaning broken TVs will be sent back to them if they are still under warranty.
Perhaps the job of repair was prestigious in the USSR, but it was something people did until the LCDs and digital devices took over the market.
I know there are good reasons for the giant gap between the original ideals of the Soviet Union and its reality by the 1970s. But even with limited access to information, the perverseness in the social prestige of professions, and the Soviet's citizen's willingness to deal with the petty corruption in so many aspects of daily life, still surprises.
Flight attendants are considered cool even in modern day Serbia because of similar reasons- not that an average person can not find luxurious goods here, but simply can not afford them, while flight attendants can purchase them at duty free shops and give them at such a price or gift them to whoever they want....
My grandma was a geologist in the Soviet Union in Kamchatka she always told me how in the Soviet Union the most desirable jobs where scientists and engineers whereas in the west they where bankers and how that shows the mindset of the people
Well.the grandma was partially correct, and partially propaganda…..never heard of any child in North America saying “when I grow up, I want to be a banker.” And pretty similar system, both sides chase jobs with good pay, perks and which are competitive (so cool if you got one), and both sides have some respect for those who do academic and scientific work, even if not the highest paid (like teachers, scientists,etc).
And Wall Street isn’t exactly respected in the West,,,,they make the news a lot as finance often attracts people with a showy persona, or good for business to cultivate an image, but mostly vilified.
"in the west" that statement is definitely not true for germany.
Yet the West invented more stuff and more sophisticated stuff. Also became wealthier and free.
haha with the way Soviets treated engineers, that sounds like bullshit
@@Itried20takennames He said desirable jobs, not children dreams
Really interesting and entertaining video! I laughed at the bit where plumbers were looked down on for being alcoholics by people who were giving them vodka.
the fact that in 1960 50% of engineers were university graduates of the USSR is simply insane. like school it's very cheap. remember at this time in the western world. Compulsory schooling for 12 years does not yet exist. let alone a free university
Continue making videos Setarko! 🙂
My grandad told me about how when he was a bus driver his company was hired to help a russian group transport parts and men to an air strip near the city. The russian in charge became friends with my grandad on the journey and while they were assembling the parts the russian asked my grandad to take his daughters to a market in a near by village. While there they were absolutely mesmerised by all the tropical fruits for sale at such abundance. He bought them a banana each and they were very grateful. When they got back to the airstrip their dad waved them over and he was equally confused by the bananas. I'm not entirely sure when this happened because my grandad has been a bus driver multiple times in his life sometimes a decade apart. Plus he was born in the 40s so that's quite a long time frame.
Absolutly the same in Bulgaria except for the Butchers
Perhaps the situation with meat was better in Bulgaria in the 70s and 80s
@@Setarko I think cuz we are a small agricultural country. With lots of livestock and veggies. In a way we kinda are peasants xD
I have a story about my grandfather who went to Angola in the 80s for around 3 to 4 years. My grandfather was a surgeon and pretty good one at that time , i guess, so after all the background checks he, alongside my grandmother ( teacher ) flew there. They told me loads of stories about life there and brought alot of memorobilia ( african made stuff, books). Met alot of people who i would not expect there ( at that time) like portuguese, germans and west ukrainians ( mostly lviv reagion, germans naturally east). As they got back they got compensated quite nice, as even after the money that got worthless (almost) he bought a volvo 740 and a japaneese fridge with a no frost system which works still. I assume that if they would have just went to moscow beforhand it would be more valuable, but the volvo was so sweet, the one like in brat 1, only white. Just a true story i thought i shared. Keep up the good work
I love these stories in the comments. Thanks for sharing. I think I read the comments more than I watch haha
My grandfather’s friend, who is very close to my family, was in Angola in the 80’s teaching the African kids. He is from Stryi, a city in the Lviv region. I wonder if he is the one your grandfather mentioned.
@@overlyobsolete2797 i bet they send alot of doctors there. If the people he knew where from baltics then there is a chance. Fun fact Cristianos dad was there at that time too, so someone has met his for sure :D
Its interesting to hear stories from the Opposing sides of the South African border war. My Father was a Combat Engineer in SADF during those times of your grandfather. He volunteered to go to the border and built the majority of the roads in the Caprivi. With the pay the danger pay he got he managed to buy himself a Mazda and paid 2 years of tuition for University.
Owning a Volvo 700 series in the Soviet Union would be like owning a Rolls-Royce in the west.
The transition edits between the different professions look very nice
the most prestigious and elite goods and services in USSR were those no money could buy: like an apartment or dacha (vacation cottage) in the gated residential complex for government officials only, official car with personal driver, limited access to the special trade center (распределитель) etc. Your pockets could have been full of dollars, pounds or marks, gold and diamonds, but they won't let you even come close to the gates of this Paradise for the chosen ones...
this is so interesting to see that our perspectives can be so radically different when placed in different circumstances
Two weeks without Setarko is torture. MY Favorite soviet is informative, interesting, and extremely funny. Thank you so much for your hard work and laughs in these strange times especially.
My colleagues dad was fisherman and mechanic on fishing boat. He said that he's family was considered rich
During the eighties in Liverpool's Great Homer st market, two blokes drove Ladas onto a pitch at dawn. They then stripped them down an sailors from the Soviet Union would buy spares in dollars. You'd see sailors rolling wheels back to the docks.when the Soviet Union ended they drove Ladas into containers and shipped them to Russia. The Ladas vanished.
Probably because Lada made for export was better built ? Or cheaper than Lada sold in the USSR?
i feel like salesman and black-market smugglers are going to leap in popularity when living standards fall drastically. that usually happens in times of economic crisis, i think: these kind of people have access to resources you can't get.
Here is a note, that you probably forgot..
It was definitely a very good job - to work at any type of alcohol factory. Liquid currency, up to 500 rubles in a high season, when grape is ready)
Hey man, thank you for another great video!
On the subject of doctors though, it's not really that simple: while most doctors were considered rank-and-file professionals, several medical professions were considered more lucrative, such as Gynecologists and Dentists, since (you guessed it!) their patients were usually very grateful (₽) for a job well done and/or preferential treatment.
My parents are both doctors who started their careers in the USSR; my father, an ophthalmologist, once got a set of silver cutlery (that we still use today) as a gift from a KGB officer for performing an urgent surgery that ended up saving his eye, while my mother, a gynecologist, had some friends who ran a side hustle; basically started an informal private obstetric clinic in one of Moscow's top hospitals, where the wives of the nomenklatura would get separate rooms and other perks (₽₽₽).
PS: this is not to be taken as a racist statement, but there's a very good reason there are so many Jewish and Armenian dentists and gynecologist in Russia.
Armenians
Nah jk
Ĵèŵîß-
@@jamesabestos2800 SHUT IT DOWN
jewish intellectual profession is understandable because they have usually been so,
but armenian doctors ?
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge they have a reputation for following the money in their choice of career, which is no surprise given how rocky their history has been.
@@tranquoccuong890-its-orge it's rarely mentioned, but in Soviet high schools jews and some other nations (not always, 30-60s I believe) were discriminated so they couldn't learn some specializations and flocked to others, less prestigious. Even after restrictions lift it left as diaspora members became professors.
It has especially hilarious trace in Russian media, there Jews, Armenians and Ukrainians overrepresented and follow different views, including Russian nationalism.
Thanks so much for sharing, friend. As a Nigerian with a love of history and geopolitics, I am always fascinated with the stuff I learn about the Soviet Union. Also, it is strange how so many westerners actually want the system you had in your society for their own.
This isn't the Soviet Union though.
And not by chance. Because in many aspects life in the USSR was even more prosperous than life in the most developed Western countries of that time.
@@MarMar-nq9ii Yes, you are correct. Life in the USSR was more prosperous than many western countries.....for a time, a VERY limited time. Also, the long-term impacts of USSR socioeconomic policies actually harmed most of the countries under it and still hurts them till today.
@@orboakin8074 It was more prosperous depending on the rank you had in the party XD
@@orboakin8074 th-cam.com/video/qyey0xBUMIc/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%93%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2
In my country, anyone sent to work abroad was not paid directly (in foreign currency), but the state collected all the transactions and once the workers were back home, they were issued special "coupons" that were redeemable for any imported/deficit product in the state-run stores usually reserved for foreign gusts and tourists. That was the legal way -- the rest was all grey-area dealings, smuggling and, of course, a lot of bribing. Up until the 1980, ordinary people we forbidden to hold foreign (i.e. convertible) currency, but the looming debt crisis forced the regime to relax the restrictions, so now anyone can spend dollars and marks in those specialized "tourist only" stores. This way the government was hoping to scoop away the hidden trove of precious dollars from the population. In fact, the chronic lack of convertible currency reserves was a typical characteristics of the Eastern Communist Block countries that resulted in sort of "cargo cult" for imported stuff -- from bananas to home appliances and cars.
Well, yeah, this system existed all over the USSR in the form of Vneshposyltorg checks and Beryozka stores where you could buy something with those checks. IIRC it was in place since 1964. Also similar systems existed in Cuba, in GDR, in Czechoslovakia
Regarding taxi drivers and sailors, I think you forgot to mention two other "well respected" category of the transport industry: namely truck drivers, and railwaymen. Truck drivers could make some extra money by accepting a "black" (i.e. without any legal paperwork) freight run, or by selling some of their extra fuel for lower prices than those at the filling station. Not to mention that some of the goods could "fall off from the truck" figuratively speaking, earning you some bonus, "off the books" income. Railwaymen - especially those who went to the socialist bloc, or Finland (in the case of the USSR) or Austria/Yugoslavia (in the case of my home country) - could also acquire some scarce goods, plus they made a good wage.
There may be differences, but this was the case in my native Hungary, back in the '70s and '80s.
80% soviet goods move by train
Interesting to see. I was born in the early 2000s in Ecuador and lived in the US for almost as long as I remember. The USSR certainly is an interesting and in some regards, strange country to live in from my perspective. This seems to add to the Chaos of the 90s and why some may have longed for the USSR, guys like waiters and clerks being demoted to just another unskilled job, and taxi drivers, butchers, repairmen, and likely sailors were demoted to being unremarkable blue collar jobs, all due to the fact shelves were stocked full and now access to goods was a matter money as opposed to connections.
Soviet Citizen: ''Ah he's an alcoholic''
Plumber: "No no I'm really trying to quit''
Soviet Citizen: "Here's a bottle of vodka **wink wink**"
Plumber: "Ah fuck it"
Bruh ... self fulfilling prophecy and kinda negligent to feed someone alcohol if they are an alcoholic 😅
He could sell the vodka instead
@@vulpes7079 Everyone has vodka in Soviet Russia. It's probably not a high tier trading item lol
@@BrutusAlbion every so often the government would hike up the price or restrict overall supply as part of their anti-alcoholism policy. At one point during the Gorbachev era people were drinking wood glue because regular booze cost too much
@@vulpes7079 god damn USSR messed up.
Realising that the corruption and greed was prominent under socialism as well
That's why utopian ideology fails they can't get rid of humanity desire if power and greed . And many commies don't understand economics hopefully someday ideology better than capitalism and especially communism come out
Sadly, as under every system. It's weed that smothers the good people
Nepotism runs deep here
For some reason, in Yugoslavia chimney cleaners were respected a lot.
Fascinating stuff as always
All of your videos are absolutely amazing and perfectly done!! This is so interesting and I will share and recommend your channel every way I can❤
Even in the present day in Romania, you will still hear parents who grew up beteween the 1970s and 1990s tell their children that if you dont study well in life, you'll end up as a trashman or a janitor. Little do they know that even if these are indeed kinda nasty jobs, working as a trashman gets you quite a decent wage, because of the fact that it is work that can affect your health.
Mikhail Kalashnikov i heard he got a lot of respect but never got much money for a rifle produced and sold so many times.
Because all rights belong to state company, not to inventor.
@@xsc1000 yes, communist corporation :)
oh no! anyway...
I adore @Gattsu's and your video about the USSR and Eastern Europe
t. Georgian
What a phenomenal video topic! This is great original content, GOAT 🐐
If you think your life is horrible just think. You could have been a taxi driver in the USSR.
Another great video, thank you.
My grandpa was a deputy captain on a patrol vessel in Polish navy and he definitely had some connections, and got some stories.
If you know Lech Wałęsa, he is famously known to jump through a dockyard wall to lead a strike. Yeah, that was a lie. He in fact was carried by grandpa's comrade from his vessel with help of a motorboat.
Not to mention his family being quite set in life.
Great video
Hello, respect for the video as always! I would like to ask you, how was the situation of truck drivers (especially international) in the USSR? As i know nowadays there is a big cult in Russia for them, there are songs also (which i understand because they know the profession very well😄)
At that times, railroads were preffered, quality of soviet road were questionable, so I dont think there were many international truck drivers.
My grandfather was one, they own a house with 3 stories and a pretty big garden. When he retired they gave him shares of the company which was privatized
I once met a cabby who had started his career as a driver during the last days of the communist party's dictatorship. He complained that the job was far more lucrative back then than today. I asked him why and he explained:
Before you could get multiple people within one hour and not stop the meter in-between each customer. Since the only people who used cabs back then where quite wealthy, they would never protest the incredibly high cab rates. Today he said he couldn't get away with that...
That thumbnail is the best meme format ever
thank you setarko!
I live in Hungary and I've heard that being a truck driver was a very coveted job here during the socialist era. Mostly for the same reasons as sailors, you were able to bring stuff back home.
My father was a civil engineer in USA I think he made 2300.00 to 3000.00 usd on the 1970’s a month maybe it was the 1980’s? He’s 85 now and still working! In the 2000’s he moved up to director of environmental engineering and made 100k a year he now makes about 60,k a year
Setarko back again. 18:51 yooo😂😂
I wonder how prestigious a job on the railway network was in the USSR.
Generally, very
@@mariusd8649 Wait, it was a highly respected job?
These stories go to show no matter how bad a nation’s economy or ideology. People will always find ways to get by and even thrive. I have learned to respect and even appreciate the people of USSR. All of them. I hope in these dark times we can come to an understanding between the west and east. Because in the far east a hive buzzes. It would be best if we banded together to destroy the eastern hive.
I loved in Soviet Union, my job was to love Soviet Union. In this job I fail.
I guess there were also a lot of pretty useless jobs just for the sake of giving some job to the people. In some videos I watched about Russia I got the impression that some of those jobs exist to this day. E.g. babushkas watching over people in the metro or some guys guarding over some ordinary residential building.
On the other hand there were no unemployment....
@@ingvarhallstrom2306 yeah but a employment which is drain on economy may end up ruining things in long term . Sadly Soviets were too late to reform.
@@Snp2024 There's no difference in employment form. One could have a hundred percent private or state employment, the only difference is where the profit ends up, in private hands or distributed back to the people.
@@ingvarhallstrom2306 back to PPL lol
@@Snp2024 If you are paying taxes, or perhaps that's an entirely new concept for you? Then you know what you get back in the form of healthcare and free schools and paved roads and subsidized air travel and libraries and day care and dental care and so on. Most countries have a road budget on the same level as their defence budget or do you think the streets you're walking on are payed by gnomes? Everything that goes into the state goes out to the people.
There was a time in the US if you had older TV,'s in order to repair them the only source of the vacuum tubes you needed came from Russia. Russia is will more a state of mind than not. Gee,' a Doctor or an Engineer not much to talk about, A cabbie well he is the master of his domain! Oh, and the Russian Vacuum Tubes were considered the very best and the zenith of that technology. I miss the days when you turned on the TV and you had to wait for it to warm up! Yea, and the Further Adventures or Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota!
Haha I remember having such TV back when I was like...10 I guess. Good times!
@@Setarko Yeah the dirty little secret is that Russians and Americans are too much alike in many ways!
Keep up with the good work, Setarko
my great grandfather was Head of the Vilnius Post Office and our family had access to special shop special summerhouse a car and we could make phone lines in apartments
Nomenklatura 😂
Like today.. you need something? Ask the cab driver haha.. but they're terribly paid today, even that driving without the taxameter has continued.
Setarko, thank you so much for having such an interesting and amazing channel! Couldo you make a video or a post about all the russian movies that portray the Tzarist russia?
Hey, thanks for the idea! Tbh I always tried to stay out of cinema niche because I have no idea what I can and what I can't use when it comes to modern movies. But I will think about it!
In Romania it was different only in regards of doctors and engineers. They were respected professions. On the other hand teachers and gabage men ,werent respected. But still this people never complained because some of them were informants for the secret services. Just like in Soviet Union. I was in school both in communism and after ,in our so called democracy. Seeing the mess the romanian school is today I sometimes made some comparisons with those times when both kids and parents respected the teachers. I asked my parents about that and they said to me that my teacher from grade 1-8 was the wife of a secret services officer and everybody knew that .😁😉
Sunt tare curios cum de invatatoarea ta ti-a fost si profesoara...asa ceva nu exista, nu există nici acum.
Id be a mechanic it was easier back then most of the cars were the same you could get a good familiarity quickly
What's the name of the song that starts playing short after 13:00? Sounds familiar but I can't find it
If you are talking about the one that plays during the fragment about butchers - it's this one
th-cam.com/video/QkW8H6b6-EE/w-d-xo.html
@@Setarko спасибо
If you do a video about party workers in their lives in the Soviet Union or just party officials in general
I definitely will
I imagine they live like gods or royalty
I wish TVs were still built to be repairable.
Best job my Family had in Yugoslavia was selling Vegeta to the Hungarians and Czechs, they bribed some cops and military with it. The power of Vegeta.
Bros trying to compete with USHANKA. USHANKA is the OG.
@Setarko how can a person become rich in USSR ??? Im very curious
While it's true that the Soviets were far behind on chip technology, they did however perfect valve tech, eventually making them very small and light.
Aircraft with chips can be very adversely affected by EMP, whereas aircraft using valves are not.
Awesome Soviet jobs!
This is exactly how it used to work in the Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Do a video on ufos in the ussr 🛸
The tedium and constant frustration of engineering work is already hard enough for me. I would not want to add public ridicule on top of that.
A very notable fact is that women in former socialist countries quite often married guys who were formally standing lower in social/educational prestige by nowadays standards, like a doctor marrying a waiter. Needless to say that this has totally changed.
For being communists the soviets were incredibly entrepreneurial.
clearly you dont understand what communism is then...
What about psychologists?
Psychology in the USSR was...not very developed. There were great scientists that moved psychology forward like Alexei Leontiev or Lev Vygotsky, but the field itself was too tightly intertwined with ideology which kinda hindered its development (in my opinion).
90% of psychology is bourgeois pseudosciece
Greetings Comrade Setarko! I love Russia and Russian history, Russian people are tough and resilient.
We here in America have grown fat and lazy and it seems like we are sliding down the rat hole of propaganda from our corrupt governments and media.
Only time will tell if we can reverse the situation.
I'm not very hopeful. Cheers to you and your wonderful channel!
This is interesting. The part about doctors are opposite in China. You HAVE TO know your doctor.
For two reasons.
1. Half the "medicine" on the shelf is fake/placebo. Especially for diseases with high mortality. 😉
2. The quality of newly graduated surgeons were very poor. So most of them got their REAL training on the job. You didn't want to be the guy on the table when some idiot forgot a surgical knife in your belly. Or straight up harvested your eye and sold it on the black marked.
My mom was a doctor, and when she had to do a C section, my cousin was the doctor operating. She didn't trust anybody else in her own hospital where she worked.
Yuri Gagarin is still the coolest mother fucker on planet Earth and beyond to me.
Actors are still despicable buffoons, but they live better than kings. Such is life in The Zone.
Taxi driver but in the USSR
TIR
Transports Internationaux Routiers
Maybe not so much in the USSR . But in block bordering countries of Europe, this was a thing. Ladies if you don't mind unusually shady even for a people of thieves, those TIR trucks are definitely worth a look. Should be way better than a regular shady carrier.
The main disconception here, that most of these jobs were not "prestigious", but "moneymaking jobs"(or "goods-making").
Except for the car mechanic and tv repair man, probably.
Soviet engeneers had small salary and no career grouth? Well, that's just bullshit.
These professions were profitable, but not prestigious. Salaries were high because no one wanted to work in these jobs. People preferred to receive 5 times less, but to work as doctors and teachers, not as waiters and butchers.
And working girls ?😂
Assuming you mean "putani," how do you know she's not working for the security services?
The western equivalent to a Soviet cab driver would probably be a Western Priest.
the fact that in the soviet union education was very cheap. as long as you want to learn. You can get a PhD, without spending any money.
Engineer has no honor whatsoever that even a doorman has more reputation than him??? Damn!!! this is what too much of education caused??? send some EDUCATION to Africa please, they need engineers 🤣😂
Nobody was homeless. Everyone had a job. Housing was actually affordable.
False. It was illegal not to. Depends...
Homelessness did exist there, and the homeless would either be forced out of the cities into the countryside or prosecuted for "parasitism" and sent to prison.
Dream job of every Russian today: CS GO Pro player
😮You talk too fast, so with your heavy accent it's hard to understand what you're saying. Slow down baby! 🎉
What are you talking about? My father has been a taxi driver for 25 years in Paris and made around €5.500 a month. It is not not a mediocre job, show some respect.
In most countries it is a mediocre job. The most visitied city of the world is like the best place to be a cab driver.
Can confirm 100% that every plumber here is a hopeless alcoholic
Another great video, thank you.