What was everyday life really like in the Soviet Union? Stories about homes, food, work and culture - told through the people who actually lived it
15 Sep 2026 5 minute read 1 comment SovietStories $0.02
In the late 1980s, millions of Soviet people sat in front of their televisions and waited for one man to speak. He was sitting in a television studio, while his audience could be hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. There was no doctor's of...
8 Sep 2026 4 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.00
For a Soviet teenager, joining the Komsomol was more than simply receiving a membership card. You needed recommendations, your application had to be discussed at a meeting, and other Komsomol members were effectively putting their name behind you. Af...
7 Sep 2026 4 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.03
Soviet vodka is probably one of the first things foreigners associate with everyday life in the USSR. The familiar bottle, the 40% on the label and the long history of vodka production became part of the image of the Soviet Union. But there was much...
4 Sep 2026 3 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.03
Getting drunk in a Soviet city could end with waking up somewhere run by the authorities rather than at home. Your money, documents and watch had been taken for safekeeping, a doctor had examined you, and you were told that you would have to pay for...
3 Sep 2026 3 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.04
Today, a gold tooth is more likely to attract attention than admiration. Most people who need a crown want it to look as much like a natural tooth as possible. In the Soviet Union, however, a gold crown could be something completely ordinary. It coul...
2 Sep 2026 4 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.01
Today, it is difficult to imagine Chukotka as a place where tens of thousands of people once lived and worked in cities that had schools, hospitals, cinemas, apartment buildings and even a nuclear power plant. The region is now one of the least popul...
1 Sep 2026 3 minute read 1 comment SovietStories $0.05
Today, Magadan is usually imagined as a remote northern city from which people try to move back to the mainland. But a few decades ago, the situation was almost the opposite. People came to Magadan from different parts of the Soviet Union, sometimes...
31 Aug 2026 2 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.01
I remember how ordinary the question "Where do you work?" sounded in the Soviet Union. Nobody needed to explain why they were asking. A person's job was simply part of how people understood one another. That may seem strange now, especially in a worl...
28 Aug 2026 2 minute read 0 comments SovietStories $0.01
There was a particular kind of person on a Soviet factory floor who didn't need an important title to be taken seriously. He might have spent twenty years working with the same machines. He knew the production line, understood how the equipment behav...
27 Aug 2026 2 minute read 1 comment SovietStories $0.02
I remember how unusual it was for a child to write with the left hand in the Soviet school system. Today, a left-handed child usually causes little concern. Schools can make small adjustments, and teachers generally understand that some children simp...
