Hi everyone :)

I'm working on a fiction project about the life of a student in 1980s Moscow. I've found a few books that were very helpful to learn about what life in Moscow was like at that time, but the late 1980s seem to be less studied than other periods of Soviet Russia...

Does anyone have recommandations for me?

It might be history books, memoirs, photography books, even films, anything that might help me understand what daily life was like for a student in Soviet Russia circa 1987 :)

Thanks everyone!

Was it just not necessary due to the Party policy of democratic centralism, or was there another reason?

Afghanistan is often viewed pretty rightly as "the Soviet Union's Vietnam". However, one key difference is that the sensationalist news media of America played up Vietnam for all it was worth, whereas the state-owned media of the USSR almost certainly was very careful and selective with how Afghanistan was portrayed in accordance to the official approved narrative.

Afghanistan was the first ongoing war that the USSR had been directly fighting in, at least outwardly and in large numbers, since the end of World War II, so I imagine it was a pretty big deal. I've heard it wasn't referred to by the media as a "war" but something akin to an "international duty" (this doesn't seem far off from Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine in the present day).

I also can't imagine there were many large scale protests against the war like we saw with Vietnam in the US, simply because they would be crushed almost instantly if they did start up. But I can imagine a lot of people silently opposing it and voicing that dissidence more once Glasnost took effect.

But a lot of this is speculation as I don't have as many concrete details as I would like, so I'm asking here.

Overall, how was this war viewed by the citizens of the Soviet Union when it was ongoing, and does it have a similar dark legacy in Russia and the other post-Soviet states comparable to Vietnam in the US?

Did they patronize them mostly? Was it a pretty straightforward Soviet heavy type of relationship like in the Warsaw Pact?

This Video examples

Nikita

Sergey

Ilya

Demid

I found this while going through some old documents belonging to my grandmother. She was born in the interwar Polish Republic near Lwów and then moved further east after the fascist invasion.

If anyone could provide more context or details from this document I would be very grateful.

Hey guys, from a former republic here, the KCCP to be exact (Kazakh).

What if we had the USSR/CCCP in modern day and make it more democratic. It would be a mixed economy, military power, politically democratic, similar to the Scandinavian states. Would it work or not? And religions are allowed as well as other things but the Union is not broken and has no signs of nationalism brewing. Would it be possible?

I’m very much interested to learn more deep about the old soviet union and life during soviet period.

IMO, the best and easy way to learn is by watching tv shows. I don’t mind the language as I can download english subtitles. Thanks in advance

Help by suggesting hard questions, possibly with answers attached!

I would guess one of the 9 floor ones but I am really not sure so I would need an exact floor count and designation of the building series.

I am writing a screenplay about a Ukrainian coal mine and I need some help with the dialogue. If anyone has any insight into how Ukrainian miners would speak, I would love to know.