Hearted Youtube comments on USHANKA SHOW (@UshankaShow) channel.

  1. Those weird triangular packages are called tetra packs. They were invented in Sweden. The point of the invention was to come up with a cheap and hygienic alternative to the bulky and not always so clean milkbottles. (They used to be washed and reused several times, only the top aluminium cap was new each time.) The invention is pretty basic with a thin plastic interior (liquid proof) and a relativly strong cardboard exterior. Offcourse the packaging has evolved a bit since then and so have the pattents, but it’s essentially the same. All cardboard boxes that contain liquid these days are based on that technology i e juice boxes, milkboxes etc. Just a little fun historical fact we take for granted these days. 😉👍
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  2. When power flows from the top and no information comes from the realities at the ground level, disasters like Chernobyl will happen and Empires will fall. The Soviet Union was destroyed by the Apparatchik mentality. How can you make a better Lada if you have a whole layer of bureaucracy that stifles the process of creativity? This is not solely a problem of Communism. Many corporations have been wiped out by this mentality.
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  3. Droooog! You don't ramble. You have the gift of story telling.
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  4. Sergei, I've learnt more about the Soviet Union in the last 12 months from your videos, than I did in the previous 65 years (I'm 66). Please don't let the bastards grind you down, as we say here in the UK. (nil carborundum illigitimum!) Thank you comrade.
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  5. I'm 14 from New Zealand, I am so glad to have videos like these. I've always wanted to know what life was really like in the USSR. With these videos it's given me a pretty good idea how people lived. Thank you so much for these!
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  6. I was born and raised in Turkey. After the collapse of the USSR there was a wave of "luggage commerce" where Russian speaking people would come down with however many allowed "personal" luggage full of Russian goodies. Fishing rods, tennis sets, tools, cameras, even war medals - you name it. They would sell them for a few dollars each because the dollar was very valuable in Russia. Turkish people enjoyed these items because they were a lot cheaper compared to their Western counterparts. It was a common scene in some neighborhoods to see Russian signs welcoming these types of trades.
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  7. I lived in Ukraine for about 21 years from 1998-2019, 20 in Kyiv and 1 year in Donetsk. Good channel. I had pieced together many different stories about Soviet times. But your channel puts it all together. Thank you.
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  8. These long and boring videos are invaluable. Some day will be collected and sold in a series. I can't imagine a better and more comprehensive way of knowing how life in the USSR was.
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  9. Phil is still around at 83. Vladimir Posner is also still around at 84. I became familiar with Posner from listening to his nightly commentary on the Radio Moscow North American Service on shortwave in the 1960's. He was a very smooth and engaging personality, and much different than the usual stolid Radio Moscow presenter. My assumption always was that he was a KGB agent, and, with his native English speaking ability and casual delivery, was able to spread Soviet disinformation so smoothly you almost didn't realize it. I don't think he's ever admitted he was in the KGB, but he has admitted his role as a Soviet apologist. He must have been considered an exceptionally reliable Soviet agent to be able to travel between the West and East so freely. He was even able to engage in some mild criticism of the Soviet government in ways that wouldn't have been tolerated from any other public figure. I quite enjoyed listening to him on my shortwave radio, but I also never forgot his real role as part of the Soviet media.
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  10. The central boiler heat, in my experience, worked very well when it was working. The trouble was it often broke down. The other trouble was that the walls were concrete, and didn't insulate very well. So you lost heat to the out door air an very high rates. Fuel was heavily subsidized as well, so heat was still cheap. But your apartment was slow to warm up, and fast to cool down, and that made winter unpleasant. Older homes from pre-Soviet times (still rented) often had more reliable coal stoves built in. At a pinch, you could burn wood, and they never broke down. The trouble there was they often didn't have indoor plumbing, or only running water but not sewer. That meant a outhouse in the back yard, or a tin pail. Survivable, but not exactly ideal. The limits on apartment size were obviously fluid. Shortly after WWII, housing was short, multiple familes might share a couple of rooms, and communal kitchen/bathroom. But by the time my parents had me, they were able to get a two-room apartment in a small city of 200 000-300 000, with neither of them being in the military or special party organizations. Dad worked at a brick factory, and mom worked at a children's library. A Banya, is somewhere between a public bath in the ancient Roman sense, and a sauna in the Swedish sense. It was a place to get clean, but also a place to relax, possibly drink with friends, possibly part of a health regime. The other side effect of a central boiler heat system, is it also supplies your hot water for bathing and laundry. So when the boiler breaks, or the pipes leak, or whatever other breakdown troubles the system, you're left with cold water that needs to be heated on the stove in the biggest pots you can find. Fine if you're prepared, but not ideal if you're accustomed to centrally heated water, that then fails at invariably the most inconvenient moment.
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  11. I have a similar situation as you but from the viewpoint as the American. My first job after high school was at a lake resort in California where I grew up. Every summer the resort would bring young people over from Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. I spent a lot of time with them throughout the summers, but there were a few that did not trust me because they said I was too nice and smiled too much. They thought that I was up to no good. I always thought that was funny and it’s interesting to hear you talk about your experiences with that.
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  12. I just finished watching the show the other day and I really loved hearing your insight on it :D I will say that about half the issues you have with the series about missing info is mentioned in the podcast of each episode. If you haven't heard those yet, I do recommend listening to it (not only you but anyone who watched the show), as the creator goes about explaining on each episode of the podcast what they left out and why or where they changed things, especially in the last episode. I think for the May 1 parade one of the biggest problems was that there isn't any footage available, iirc (this may not be true, but that is one of the reasons they gave). I think other things weren't shown - especially things outside Pripyat/Chernobyl - because of the limited scope they had. Like to show everything is just kinda impossible on a miniseries, but I do agree that it would've made the show even better. I loved the details you've given about the radio with classical music and the iodine poisoning (idk about other places, but we still occasionally use iodine to disinfect in little bottles, so I don't think that's too foreign a thing? The drinking of it surely is though. Must be a horrible experience to drink it because of lack of information. As for iodine pills, I wonder if many ppl already know about that. I knew about it because I got some when I moved to Japan for a year after the FUkushima incident (it was nowhere near the plant, but they handed them out to any person going for a longer period of time). Anyway, I liked the details of how you personally experienced the incident. It surely rounds up the picture the show gave.
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  13. Brilliant Putin-Supercut! Thanks for making the effort.
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  14. Not related to Stalin But today I spoke with a man from Klaipeda/Lithuania, Of course my first question was "How was life in Soviet Union", The guy just said good things about it, specially about Brezhenev , He was around 70 and bashed Gorbachev. Greetings from Spain
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  15. Not sure why people need to leave rude comments as if they know what you're about. Oh well. Keep up the good work and thank you for sharing your insights
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  16. Here in sweden where i live. We still have problems with radiation when you for exampel hunt wild boar, becuse they dig up their food from under the ground and their food is sometimes still irradiated, so when you have shot a wild boar you have to send in bits of the meat to an instituet make sure that there is no dangerous levels of radiation. Plus there is a nuclear power plant close to where i live and my father worked there. So one day when one of the workers went in to work all of the radiation sensors all started beeping becuse he had come in contact with irradiated rain that had been flown all the way from the Soviet Union. And then the nuclear power plant tought that it came from their reactors, so the whole facility whent into lockdown and decontaminatiom teams where sent in, but they could not find any source of radiation. So that is the way my family first learned about Chernobyl. But my dad is kinda known for over excadurating things so it may just all be some big lie he told to scare us kids. Sorry for the bad english!
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  17. did Brezhnev get a medal for kissing? ;)
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  18. Not really about trucks, but relates to Mercedes. There is a saying common to former Yugoslavian countries:"a wife can be from the village, but a car must be from Germany"
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  19. You have a beautiful relationship with your daughter, Sergei. Your love and pride for her is plainly evident when she expresses her affection for your answer in her smile while adjusting her hair and in the tone of her voice. Combine that with your on-screen playfulness and sense of ease with her questions, and I am left finding that relationship very endearing! Father #1 🎖 On a different note I am going to start recomnending your channel to teacher-friends in the field of social science and humanities in later high school. I believe that your videos would be an invaluable learning tool, especially for students who more these days rely upon audiovisual materials to learn.
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  20. I'm an American living in Poland. Traditional Polish food is very similar to Russian cuisine. My wife and my mother in law cook many of the dishes shown in this video. Since living in Poland I have learned to appreciate Slavik cooking. There are very few pre-prepared foods available here at the supermarkets. Everything is made from scratch the way it should be. People here are rarely overweight. Only the old woman. Unfortunately with the opening up of eastern European countries to western fast-food franchises that is starting to change. McDonald's, KFC, and the like are taking over. The former state-subsidized local eateries for students and workers that served good basic healthy inexpensive local dishes are now very rare. More the pity. It's next to impossible to find a local grilled sausage to eat on the street but a Big Mac with fries and a shake is no problem. Fat, salt, and sugar. Just what people need to keep healthy in this new era of post-communist Europe. As for trying to find a good hot bowl of healthy soup, forget it. Have a super-sized coke instead. Progress, some would say. Not I.
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  21. Great video Sergei! Very informative. My heart goes out to the people who lost basically lost their life savings due to the hyper inflation.
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  22. Hey Sergei - it's not easy to mention drinking so close to home/family - большое уважение - you did a great job with this video. One possible note for international viewers - hashish is a concentrated/compressed/waxy-pasty form of cannabis, often made mainly from the hairs of the leaves and stems, as well as some of the buds, whereas "hash oil" is the liquid concentrated oil form (technically it's an extraction) and is many, many times more potent than hashish itself. I'm not sure what Russian terms were used back in the Soviet days, so this is more of an overseas comment that may not be valid in the historical context of the Soviet Union
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  23. An Chuukchi, a Russian and a Ukranian are sitting at a bar, it's a pretty dirty place and it just so happens that they each get a fly in their beer. The Chuukchi see it in his beer and says "yay free protein!" and drinks it, the Russian sees the fly in his beer and says "eww" and picks it out, but continues to drink, beer isn't that cheap to waste it. The Ukranian...grabs the fly by it's wings and shakes it upside down over the beer mug screaming "spit it out you SOB that's my beer that I paid for and you can't have any!"
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  24. Fascinating look at Soviet smoking culture. Interesting the difference between the generations, my granddad and dad smoked but never chainsmoked my grandpa smoked a pipe and smoked only like 5 or 6 cigarettes a day, and rolled his own. Dad smoked too but lightly. Nowadays I mostly see people pulling hard on cigarettes and smoking more for addiction and not leisure.
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  25. Comrade Sergei, thank you for sharing. These seem to be two boys saving for the bicycle, no surprise they have to save. BTW, in Czechoslovakia, although in general we were probably better off than Soviets, there was a shortage of bicycles in 1970s and 1980s. A decent bicycle Favorit, made in Czechoslovakia, cost CSK 1,550 in 1988 (SUR 155, or black market $40 at that time). There were waiting lists, and people paying CSK 2,000 to the bicycle store employees to "put one aside for them." There also was a popular saying related to Украина-brand bicycles: "Chces-li poznat co je drina, kup si kolo Ukraina." or "If you wish to learn what the hard labor is, buy yourself a Украина-brand bicycle."
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  26. My friend´s mother grew up in Soviet Union then moved her family to Canada - she remembers her mother crying in disbelief the very first time that she walked into a Safeway grocery store and was overwhelmed by the many acres of completely packed shelves of wonderful tasty foods from all over the world - and in particular, the mountainous piles of nearly limitless options of fresh fruit, vegetables, pastries, bread, meat, etc. Then they were shocked that they did not even have to wait in a long line to pay for it. I also remember that my Canadian grandfather liked to point us to the many miracles found in any grocery store like getting oranges, bananas and pineapples in the middle of frozen January winters. It really is impressive and we all seem to take it for granted that this international supply system operates so efficiently.
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  27. During that time in moskow people stand in big lines to bay alkohol. One day in this line one man said ,I can't take that anymore. I go in kremlin to kill gorbachev. After some time he is back and stand in line again. People ask him, what's happened. He said, line in kremlin is much longer than here. Old soviet joke.
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  28. It's amazing to think that it took 5 years to get a telephone int USSR and sometimes longer in Eastern Europe. Here in Australia, we also had a telephone monopoly till the mid 1990's. Though here in Australia, people would moan about having to wait 6 weeks to get their phone connected!
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  29. I'm sure comrade Sergei knows more about the USSR than the 20 year old that left a smart comment. Everything he says reminds me of what the other side was like back in the day. A true living history book. A real treasure he is.
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  30. Burattino Is italian for marionette so maybe that's where the name comes from.
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  31. Excellent audio, great improvement. Very interesting topic, similar to what happened in China.
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  32. I am also a Russian speaking Ukrainian, I am from Severodonetsk. I always watch your videos, and I fully support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia. I've donated close to $1,000 to Razom and other charities last year. However, what you are doing in this video is what Americans call "mental gymnastics". The truth is, Azov Battalion are either neo-nazis or very close to it. You even said, they were originally called the "Social Nationalist" party. That's literally just "National Socialists" with the words reversed. I know it's a hard fact to accept and reconcile, but life is full of difficult things like this. Difficult times create extreme reactions, which occasionally includes things like nationalists taking it too far and going full nazi. And yet these gross people put up a very strong defense of Mariupol. Do I support them? And are their battlefield successes enough to offset the negative public relations value? I'm not sure. This is a difficult question. I think it would have made a much more interesting video than trying to justify their obviously Nazi-inspired symbols.
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  33. My father’s experiences were the same as Sergei’s. For example he was a conscript in Hungary during the early 80s. His barracks were in the Kőbánya district of Budapest. He told me that most of the time you couldn’t buy Kőbányai beer (the beer was named after the district) in the shop next to the barracks. I measured in google maps the barracks were located 1.2 km (0,75 mi) from the factory where the beer was produced, and it was the biggest beer factory in the country.
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  34. We had the same system here in Romania. Average waiting time for a brand new Dacia 1300 (license build Renault 12) was 7 years and the price was 70.000 lei. The minimum salary was 1200 lei and the average about 3000 lei. A good doctor made about 4500-5000 lei a month. You had to make a small advance payment and there after monthly payments until the car was delivered and then you had to pay the difference up to 70.000 lei. We also had special lists for party members and veterans. My grandfather was a ww2 vet and party member he got a car for my father after just 2 years. From mid 60's until the beginning of the 80's were available for purchase western cars and also Russian made cars imported by the state, those where much more expensive from about 80.000-120.000 lei, and those where available only to party members or people with influence. Who owned a western car back then was a big wig. Also some people who where allowed to travel in the west Europe for business (work related trips) and had the money usually purchased cars and returned with them back home. For example an uncle got a brand new Dacia 1300, for 70.000 lei sold it after 1 month for 100.000 lei and purchased from Italy a used Citroen GS for the equivalent of 120.000 lei, he was the coolest guy in town.
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  35. Very good, everything you stated was correct. I commend you and HBO for highlighting this horrible accident. At that time I was stationed near Frankfurt, Germany with the US Army. I don’t remember we were told anything. Working on the flight line, flying helicopters, and doing PT outside as usual. We prepared meals from local sourced fresh foods, ate from outside vendors. Maybe, we have to many secrets on both sides at the time called, Iron Curtain. US Veterans are followed up on Agent Orange after Vietnam, unusual ailments after the Gulf War, but not a word not one, about stationed in Germany or that region during this time from the VA. The only reason I mention this is because I’m a Veteran from all three. Hopefully, we can learn from our mistakes and not repeat them. History has shown we cannot...
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  36. My favourite Soviet joke: Two rabbits, a Polish rabbit and a Russian rabbit, are sitting on the Polish side of the border. The Polish rabbit asks the Russian rabbit why he's in Poland? The Russian rabbit replies that Stalin has organised a bear hunt. But, the Polish rabbit says, you're a rabbit, not a bear. I know, says the Russian rabbit, but I can't prove it!
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  37. I love your presentations. I was amazed by the Soviet retailing style when in country back in 1990. As you've highlighted, I got a kick out of four clerks working the same counter selling four products. I was also amused by the method of selecting, buying and taking possession of any given product. Take your selection to the counter for purchase. Clerk takes product and passes it on down the line while you pay and get a receipt. You take your receipt and try figure out where your purchase is...which is10 yards away with another clerk who gives it to you.
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  38. Hey brother, don’t apologize for the geography lesson! Here in USA, they don’t teach geography anymore. I think maybe here being self-centered is considered normal! Keep making these videos, you are a terrific instructor!!
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  39. My son in law test was moving a few thousand bricks. Dad was builder with 4 daughters and asked the 4 boyfriends including me who would help him, I was the only one who did and only one still around now. Used to annoy me that the bricks were moved and never used but I get it now. He insists on helping me out on projects every year now -the 6am brick moving was a good investment. Wife ok too I guess
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  40. Here in Poland people of course buy bread in the supermarkets. But some make an effort and drive to the other city part to buy it in small traditional bakeries. The difference in taste is so COSMIC HUUUGE that I can't understand how some people can eat bread form the supermarkets. It's not because the supermarket bread is so shitty. It's just because the traditional bread is SOOO good.
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  41. From Finland myself, and this was an intressting video for sure. Much of this I didn´t know so a very nice topic. Thx for all the videos that you do man. And keep making them :)
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  42. The faraway land of eternal hot water. lol I love that.
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  43. I was working as a chemist in North Carolina when the Soviet reactor went off. We noticed a spike in our background radiation. Our normal background was ~40 DPM It jumped to 60 DPM.
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  44. 5:05 "Religious ignorance or obscurity" must mean "occultism".
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  45. Sergei, my grandfather was in WWII also. 39th Infantry "Old Hickory" Division U.S.A. He was captured also. His unit had crossed the Reign River. They didn't get the message that the time for crossing had been changed. So they alone. They got caught in a farm house. They also escaped. Germans had basically abandoned the camp. They came upon a skinny cow after escaping.PaPaw said they slaughtered that cow and ate it in minutes. They were hungry. Respect for any man who has been through war.
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  46. I have learned more about the USSR and life there for the people from your videos than I have from anywhere else. I am only a couple years younger than you (From the USA), but I remember when all this was happening, and we had VERY little information about what was actually going on for the people in and around Pripyat and Kiev. Thank you for your amazing videos!
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  47. I was forced to write with my right hand in school even though i was left handed. Trust me Sergei, my hand writing is.. underperforming, to say the least😉
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  48. Very much enjoyed your video and learned a bit more of what daily life was for Soviet people. This is the kind of stuff you rarely find in the history books! Great video.
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  49. We used to have a "Soviet/Russian joke": In the Soviet Union they develop a haircutter machine. They go and present it to the Party. The responsible secretary looks at it, then asks. "But comerade! All persons have a different shape and size of head!" The engineer nods. "Initially..."
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  50. Classic family stories. VERY much appreciated. "massive butt hurt". LOL.
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