[googamooga]

I was not a big fan of Soviet regime and I‘m still fully agree that the collapse of the Soviet Union was for the good and do not wish it restored in any form.

But being born in 1970 in Tselinogtad, middle-sized city in Soviet Kazakhstan, I cannot say that my life in USSR was any kind of bleak or depressing. Yes, there were much less variety of food in stores and clothes were not very fashy, but this is not what makes you happy, at least they meant almost nothing to me.

I always wanted travel the world and very early understood that this is complicated in the country where I was living. So at age of 9 I started to prepare myself for a career of a diplomat - my favorite book was “Countries of the World” and I joined “The Club of Inernational Friendship” at the Palace of Pioneers. Gradually I became a “president” of this club and in 1982 went to Artek, famous international pioneer camp in Crimea. Later on, still at school, in 1986, I visited Bratislava to participate the programming Olympiad for children. I went from my native Tselinograd to Novosibirsk Akademgorodok in 1985 to study at physics-mathematics boarding school. Akademgorodok at that time was kind of place from a sci-fi book, where scientists lived and worked. There were 27 research institutes and a university set in a Siberian forest. It was a fantastic experience to study there. What happened to Akademgorodok after dissolution of the USSR is another (sad) story.

So, as I said in the beginning, I don’t want to return to the USSR, but I don’t think we lived miserable lives there.

[qaq]

This is not exactly the common experience of a child in USSR. 99.99% never being to Artek and 99.999% never visited a foreign country. The STEM education was pretty good though.

[selivanovp]

I've been born in USSR, never been to Artek and visited a foreign country many years after USSR collapsed, and I was happy in my country. 'Democratic' Russia of 90's and half of 00'' was much, much worse in every possible way.

[tsukikage]

There tends to be a lot of negativity when discussing the USSR - there is an implicit selection bias here; in a US-centric forum, you are much more likely to encounter expats, and their stories will not generally be happy ones: in the end, something caused them to leave.

So it's good to see some contrasting views. Tell us about your life!

[qaq]

Next up: There tends to be a lot of negativity when discussing the North Korea ...

[igorstellar]

Pretty sure there are people who are actually happy there. Not that they can join HN for discussion though.

[holoduke]

Just wondering. But I hardly see any Americans in foreign countries. Seems they all have to work all the time. But in the many countries I travel through I generally see only Europeans , Asians and occasionally Australians. Hardly ever an American citizen.

[qaq]

In USSR foreign travel was severely restricted even to soviet block countries.

[oh_sigh]

Not only to the bloc countries, but even travel entirely within Russia was also restricted and bureaucratically regulated, requiring internal passports and visas for travel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...

[uwagar]

what was the rationale?

[qaq]

People were not supposed to see how people actually live in the "west" since quality of life was much higher even in other soviet block countries.

[justsomehnguy]

Not enough KGB officers to tail them.

/s

There was multitude of reasons but the main ones were what you needed to have a good standing in the society[0] and the need to control every aspect of that society. People who would see a (even a little) better living could start asking questions. One could say that was a result of fear.

[0] the article provides one such example:

> Because of Dmitry’s active involvement in the communist youth groups, when he was 15, his school sent him to the Pioneer summer camp in Nordhausen near Erfurt in East Germany.

[csomar]

Probably luck or something about how you went that made you not interact with Americans. I met lots of Americans all over the world.

Also: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.DPRT/rank...

The European numbers are probably a bit inflated due to Schengen and their closeness.

[KptMarchewa]

Most of USA citizens live pretty close to either Canada or Mexico.

[yostrovs]

Canada isn't much a vacation destination. Canadians travel South. Mexico is not very attractive to Americans right now due to crime.

[qaq]

There is way less crime in Cabo than in most of the US.

[thatfrenchguy]

Americans all go to the same places (they tend to be very trendy / checklist oriented and go for small amounts of time), it’s really obvious as a French person in America, all my American colleagues go to places I never visit in France and vice versa.

[kzrdude]

We see a lot of american visitors in europe (basically all over the place). In a normal year.

[SomeBoolshit]

Where? I mostly meet European tourists, as well, but that's probably because I only travel within Europe, which is where I live, so it's very easy to reach.

[qaq]

Americans take 93.0 Million international outbound trips each year

[netjiro]

The gp observation is anecdotal, right?

In 2019 Germans made more international tourism trips than americans, despite having only a quarter of the population.

But the observations depend on where you travel and see other travellers, right? Go to nw mexico and I expect most tourists are from the us? Whereas mallorca is practically the southernmost german bundesland? And cyprus presents plenty of russians?

And comparing geography: Germany is geographically much smaller than the US, and in a place like Liechtenstein it is easy to make an international trip just to go shopping, even if you take the bike.

[helloguillecl]

I wonder how this statistic would look if you'd stop counting Majorca and such as "international tourism" :)

[csomar]

Which is more than the population of Germany. These numbers must include Schegen movement otherwise the German are quite a touristy people. But including Schengen movements is like including inter-USA travel for Americans. I bet the US will rank much higher if we were to do that.

[qaq]

all very valid points I think the discussion was in the context of USSR

[yardstick]

Source? Is this the number of passengers, aircraft movements, or something else? Also is it for American citizens or just people flying from US to non-US?

Also factor in that many people who do fly, fly multiple times a year.

If that 93m is individual passengers then you should discount it quite a bit to accommodate frequent fliers and overseas tourists returning home.

[qaq]

A google search snippet :) thats number of trips taken by US citizens Number of US citizens who traveled is 44 mil so about half of the number of trips.

[flohofwoe]

At least Berlin is chock-full with US peeps.

[googamooga]

OP is here. I was a son of very ordinary parents, they both were doctors, second most underpaid profession after teachers in the USSR. In my post I just wanted to make a point that even in USSR if you wanted something and worked really hard to achieve it, you can get it. Without any help from your parents.

[qaq]

Well you would have to work very hard for things that you can get with no effort in western society such as traveling abroad. Also subject to many conditions including that your parents had never showed any descent etc.

[dgudkov]

>I cannot say that my life in USSR was any kind of bleak or depressing

Of course it wasn't. People didn't know many grim things about the country they lived in because their information intake was carefully designed to exclude anything negative about the USSR and the Communist Party. They believed they live in "the greatest country in the world". The decades-long propaganda has produced so profound and long-lasting impact that many people in post-Soviet countries (especially in Russia) born in the Soviet times still long for that feeling, 30 years after the collapse of the USSR.

[2wrist]

Akademgorodok sounds so inspiring! If you don't mind me asking, what happened next? What did you end up doing?

[googamooga]

Well, in 1990 I created a first FIDOnet node in USSR and became first regional coordinator of FIDOnet there. Next I graduated from Novosibirsk State University and opened my first business (ISP in Novosibirsk). Then in 1995 I moved to Moscow and became a first CTO of a first Russian stock exchange. Since that time I launched several startups and changed multiple CIO/CTO jobs at different Russian and international companies. In 2018 I understood that I fed up with Putin’s cleptocracy and moved from Moscow to Switzerland, now working as an enterprise architect for a large insurance business.

[Dracophoenix]

I don't mean to digress, but you seem like an interesting individual and I have several questions that you might be able to answer:

1) What was your first computer? Was it a Russian clone or a smuggled American or European one?

2) What was the USSR BBS scene like? What BBS software was in common use at that time?

3) Were you ever familiar with OGAS or latter-day Soviet/Russian equivalents to ARPANET?

4) Seeing as you were in Physics, did you ever meet the famous figures like Landau or tour areas like Dubna?

[googamooga]

1) ES 1022 which was a clone of IBM/360 and SM-4, a clone of PDP-11

2) Maximus BBS was the most popular software to run a BBS in USSR in late 80s, in addition to FifoNet utilities for sending/receiving/reading messages. In 80s there were just a few BBSes but their number grew exponentially starting 1990.

3) Unfortunately OGAS ceased to exist before my time. I haven’t seen Soviet equivalent of ARPAnet either.

4) I‘m in Mathematics, not Physics and never visited Dubna. Although I had a tour once of accelerators in Novosibirsk Institute of Nuclear Physics, it was very cool experience.

When I was an intern at the Institute of Catalysis I was introduced to Yulii Khariton, chief designer of Soviet nuclear program. I don‘t remember details of that meeting unfortunately…

[bigodbiel]

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back, has no brain.

-Putin

[avmich]

Not a particularly good source of ideas though. Even though this one could be agreed to.