Comments by "Kameraden" (@Alte.Kameraden) on "How Soviet Soda Machines Were Spreading Herd Immunity 😳 #ussr" video.

"Officially" they had no Inflation. Inflation was supposedly a serious issue for the Soviet Union. However, as a result of Price Fixing, ie Prices of Consumer Goods were set by the State, not the Market. It mostly masked it. However, as a result the USSR suffered shortages, as when products were available almost anyone could afford them so they ran out quickly. As a result you have money but nothing to spend it on. This is actually a sign that Inflation is effecting the Economy. Which is where the critical phrase "Starving Millionaires" comes from, as it doesn't matter how much money you have if there isn't bread in the shops. It's actually the reason that once the Soviet Union Collapsed and Russia entered the world market, that Russia suffered a serious hyper inflationary period throughout the 1990s. It wasn't because the Russian Federation hyper inflated the Ruble, the Ruble was already hyper inflated under the Soviet Union. But unlike the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation couldn't control prices as it did during Soviet times to mask the problem.
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5:19 I think this was actually a serious problem. TIKhistory did a video called "Did the Soviet Union ever Recover from WW2?" At one point in the video he was talking about Soviet Hospitals. How even by the 1980s some still never had running water, and a large percent didn't have hot water. Blood was put into Communal Pools based on Blood type, which caused outbreaks of Aids and Hepatitis, though screening existed, it took only 1 person getting through the screening to contaminate an entire batch. Syringes were reused until the needles were too dull to work, getting cleaned, but you had to rely on the staff actually cleaning them proper. When you take account some medical facilities still didn't have running water, well. It's possible they may of not of boiled the water properly. Basically the USSR your chances of catching Aids or some variant of Hepatitis was about 30x that of living say in the USA.
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@madarssvikis7483 Well the issue with the USSR was it's lack of ability to trade. Ruble wasn't exactly considered reliable as a currency outside the USSR as the USSR operated outside the World Market, ie it was a closed economy so no one outside the USSR knew how much a Ruble was worth, though I'd argue those inside the USSR's government likely didn't either because without a market it's hard to tell what anything is worth. So the USSR had to trade for goods from abroad by other means, means that could be valued outside the USSR. Gold, Silver and Platinum being good examples, either that or other things, weapons, tanks, planes, grain, or general commodities. It's how Pepsi ended up with Submarines which is always a funny but kind of sad story when the State has to pay for Soda pop by issuing payment with Submarines. Heck it wasn't just submarines but other ships as well, Pepsi technically had it's own small naval fleet by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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