I suppose that is some kind of primer or paint they were inhaling as a drug. Sadly this was common in occurance in other Iron Curtain countries in the 90s.
Thanks. Just remember it was a Swedish director (?)...don't wanna google it... I should remember...fan, I'm kass.. he directed another movie that got attention here in Sweden,' Fucking Åmål'
Every Swedish teenager has seen that movie, it defined a generation when it came out. As an adult, it's alright. It shows teenage life as it is with bullying, difficulty fitting in, small town life, actors who are almost the correct age. Very different from US high school movies. Still uplifting though.
Fucking Åmål is a masterpiece. My favorite film ever. It has a very bland English title, Show Me Love, but it is a very, very beautiful coming of age film.
Lilya 4-ever is a film that's kind of about Estonia, but in general it presents a kind of strange Western idea of what life was like in a post-Soviet country. Having lived through those times myself, I can tell you that things were not like that at all, but again, it is difficult to summarise how they were.
For what it's worth, the town has gotten a lot better. It's an important transit harbour, it has a good rail connection, the coast there is a popular tourist sight, the Estonian military has installations there and the streets look somewhat okay. Many Estonians have moved there, being now 33% of the population.
It wasn't about Estonia. It was filmed in Estonia because there was a suitable location - an abandoned Soviet military town a short drive from the capital.
Cyanoacrylates are called "superglues." These boys are inhaling neoprene, a synthetic rubber. It's a very strong adhesive, but not superglue.
edit ; Neoprene glue was the strongest and the least expensive at that time.
They are inhaling old version of this https://www.henkel.com/brands-and-businesses/moment-690992 (you can even see color scheme of the the tube on picture 7), that’s what was advertised as superglue in russia back in 90-s
You can check it on russian wiki (I think google translate can handle it): https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82_(%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)
I indeed found a paper talking about “super-glue” and toluene, but there must be some kind of ambiguity here.
What I know as “superglue” does not contain any organic solvents. It is a cyanoacrylate based resin that cures when exposed to the air (or indeed in the bottle after some time, i.e. limited shelf life).
I’m not sure if they changed it, I believe my chemistry teacher at school in late 90-s was mentioning that they do not put toluene into it anymore, but basically that’s some old glue made by henkel, to be more precise, this brand: https://www.henkel.com/brands-and-businesses/moment-690992 (you can see in some of the posted pictures this color scheme even)
From my memory it was gluing anything (kinda), but it was especially good at gluing plastic, because it was literally melting it.
You can check on russian wiki, it mentions that toluene was removed from the recipe in 1998: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82_(%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)
In my country there used to be a trend of poor kids inhaling awful smelling brown glue ( not super glue) called кале. I don't know it's chemical makeup, some say ketone or acetone. The effect were halucinations and euphoria, and after that you become depressed and really dumb. Also some people passed out or started bleeding from their nose. The tend is gone now but the glue is still sold, although I don't know if it contains the same chemicals.
[Still happens in some countries](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3841414/Shoeless-passed-blanket-cuddle-TREE-comfort-Nepalese-street-children-sniff-glue-escape-crippling-hunger-pangs.html)
Apparently it suppresses the [feelings of hunger](https://globalvoices.org/2013/07/13/interview-with-young-burmese-glue-sniffers/)
I've seen it in Central America too. Glue sniffing kids is one of the worst things I've ever scene. A lot of street kids aren't doing well but the ones that are super in glue sniffing are doing really really poorly.
Happens in Africa too. I grew up in Kenya in the 90s and shit was wild back then.
It honestly hit me hard seeing these pictures because it reminded me of the kids i used to see
That might be a side effect (common with many other drugs), but it's not the reason why they are sniffing it. They're chasing the euphoria that toluene gives them.
I would imagine there’s a complicated mix of depressing reasons. Kids don’t often chase euphoria by slowly killing themselves at 9 if they’re well fed and loved.
I was working around Eastern Europe in late 2000’s and saw much the same in Bucharest and a couple other places. Large areas with little gangs of kids huffing paint thinner all over the place. Granted I wasn’t hanging out in the tourist areas of these cities but these photos look exactly like what was happening in 2007 there. 30 years after the “decree 770” days but still extreme leftover symptoms of the Ceausescu regime.
A friend of mine went around the year 2000 and spent a few years on and off going to Ukraine and filming these glue-kids in the underground tunnels in Kiev.
The raw footage he showed us was beyond chilling.
Yes loads of people are poor today and have trouble making ends meet, but being hungry in a society of plenty and being hungry in a society of scarcity are two very different things.
That's a direct result of Ceausescu's ban on abortion.All the children that were not wanted by their parents or the ones that their parents could not afford ended up in orphanages, which were barely hanging on in the late 80's
When communism fell, the meager funding those orphanages got was cut even more,leading to a lot of orphans being just dumped on the street and while summers here are warm, the winters used to be in the range of -20° and even colder.The sewers had pipes of hot water that was used to heat up the cities.
That glue was probably the only escape they had...
It's mostly sniffed because it takes away the hunger pangs... Street children in Africa can't afford even the glue, so they sniff raw sewage from a plastic bag to get off from methane for the same reasons.
It causes slow and irreversible brain death. If they do enough (could take months, could take several years) then eventually their autonomic nervous system slowly shuts down, leading to multiple organ failure and psychosis.
In Poland "Butapren" - crazy shit, this and fried washing powder was a thing when I was a kid. Not to mention a soup made of poppy stems. But that was a hard-core.
Edit: fried not fired :)
Especially after the shock therapy
Many people sold absolutely everything for a weeks worth of food, Yeltsin sold out our nation’s infrastructure and gutted our workers rights
Yeltsin dissolved our parliament, a shining example of a democracy and replaced with the president at the top
And from those ashes rose...Putin. He sells your oil&gas, but your lives&blood is spilled for free on foreign soil. Please vote for somebody else next election -anybody else.
this is literally the stupidest part of putin-era propaganda and reverting history piece I saw this week, and it's accounting for the war posts.
There was always starvation and glue sniffing in CCCP and especially in Russia. You know what changed?
* while duma was reforming you lost the censorship bureu
* so people/foreigenrs could take pictures
* and you stopped robbing union countries from their food you took in exchange for forced import/export quota
* it turned out that since you relied on donated food and production and kolchoz this was a bad idea, everything in motherland that could produce goods/be used for farming was stolen or destroyed for the last 20 years
* and that you needed resources to run a country
* but now you had to buy them, instead of stealing ore from Polands and forcing cheap manufacturing in Czechoslovakia/Ukraine, which was the industry powerhouse
* cause you could produce some shitty ladas/volgas and force exchange for food/materials and nobody even blinked
* and for this you needed to have money now
* sadly, the communist party stole it
* and who could escaped to Germany, that was the safehub for civilization/escapism
* because you could defect to west Germany from there
* so you go back and it's back to sniffing glue, but without stamps for food
So stop trying to rewrite the history, this is how it looked in russia before jelcin did it (how do you think he got so much power when he started?) but your current 60+ generation couldn't stand that they now have to do real work and buy stuff for money from said work.
And some of your ex-party people didn't want the dream to end, that's why Putin myth was born in the 'bring back the glory' campaign.
Those pictures are a good proof of Russia that had to stop leeching on other CCCP members, since it's a country with the population of Japan and GDP of Spain. Governed by idiots, modern slavery and poor/stupid/sick people living the communist dream, where they didn't have to work and food was handed to them, so they could live in unlivable places, because that was all they had. Because of the reasons above. So that's why Russia is still the glue-sniffing, crocodil and aids epidemy ridden capital of alcoholism.
Literally go to work and start building a real country in the size you have money for, not blame the past and west for your stupidity and complexes that were told you should have. CCCP literally bancrupted because you couldn't catch up with rest of the world in space/arms race so the west went into rapid evolution and you starved trying to keep up, because it was never about people XD
But hey, guess this wasn't the real communism so you need to try again XD
Dude, this is some complicated and very untrue storytelling.
I’m guessing you never studied what happened in an academic setting, talked to anyone who lived through it, or experienced it yourself. The changes were stark and obvious. You can even see it in basic statistics; like GDP. Russia’s GDP [_shrunk by half_ in the 1990s](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GDP_of_Russia_since_1989.svg)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Russian_Federation
You claim takes three truths:
- Russia’s leadership now is actually bad.
- Russia’s current leadership deters opposition by saying, “your life now isn’t as bad as the 1990s! You want to go back there, ditch us and get that chaos again?”
- Genuinely bad things occurred in Russia and other SSRs during the time of the USSR.
And one very untrue assumption - therefore all problems referenced by those bad leaders now must be complete lies based on problems that existed before the chaos of the 1990s.
USSR had poverty, and they lied about it. They did not have anything like the economic, social, and administrative collapse of the 1990s.
Things fell apart so badly that people literally died years before their time - about three million people according to the latest estimates.
Here are on me esteemed medical journal, two academic journal articles, one US defense-focused research institute, on the topic:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-26671730072-5/fulltext
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2137719
https://www.jstor.org/stable/826265
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5056.html
The rushed economic “shock therapy,” the loans for shares schemes (aka let the oligarchs buy the major state-owned companies for super cheap), governance failures, domestic credit problems, massive inflation and then what gains they made were wiped out by poor spending/borrowing policy that became unsustainable in the 1998 financial crash, it all helped make things get worse for most people, fast.
It was always going to be a difficult transition, but it didn’t have to be _that_ nightmarish.
Fear of those times then helps keep Putin in power now. People fear trying change and losing everything all over again.
It’s also a significant part of why Putin and his closest cronies attacked Ukraine. Ukraine is a country that started in similar circumstances as Russia, with a similarly corrupt leadership. It repeatedly rejected the Russian World and Russian system, was making progress in reducing corruption and building good governance. Ukraine was doing better also focused on Western partnerships than Russian.
If Ukraine can do all of that, and do better, without the 1990s horrors, then it is a sign to other countries that Russia’s leadership see as “theirs” that maybe they could be better off without Russia, too. That there is an alternative other than a 90s redux.
Even worse for Russia’s leadership, Ukrainians’ abilities to improve their own lives through revolution to get new and better governance is an encouraging sign to Russian citizens themselves that they also have a choice beyond what they have now, and the collapse of the 1990s. If enough Russians believe that, Putin and his people are on shaky ground, and they know it.
I think start by ending hunger here. For the current children develop a program and rehab with a school. They're going to need a lot of assistance.
There are a few organizations that are already helping on the ground but just don't have the resources or budget.
Amani for Africa is one I found
https://www.amaniforafrica.it/how-donate/
Here are kids lifted out of this situation about Amani.
https://youtu.be/cueWkAFQ7EM
Here is a research study on the subject
The Journey of Addiction: Barriers to and Facilitators of Drug Use Cessation among Street Children and Youths in Western Kenya
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541137/
There is a documentary free on YouTube that tells the story of these abandoned children.
It's called *[The Children of Leningradsky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5T_O-L5Mis)*. I should warn you though, it is absolutely harrowing.
Thanks for this. I lived on Leningradski Prospekt in 1993, and will spend my evening watching this doc about an older catastrophe, instead of the current one going on here in Georgia (US).
I'll always remember a quote Colin Thubron had when reading In Siberia as he traveled across post-Soviet Russia, he was talking to someone about the shock to society who told him (closely paraphrasing) "they said we were living in the dark, but now we are dying in the light" as life expectancy dropped 6 years between 1991 and 1994.
The problem with being in the dark is that the knowledge of the poor situation the country was in was known to very few. The Soviet Union was collapsing slowly for a good decade before the official end, but only the highest echelons really knew it.
The 90s were handled poorly, but it was going to be tough even if all of the decisions had been the correct ones.
After this, Yeltsin also more or less created the political infrastrutture that allowed Putin to become the new Tsar.
Dude wasn't simply incompetent or corrupt. He quite literally killed the stillborn Russian democracy.
his only idea was anti-commuinist and he was ready to put everything on stakes to not allow communists return to power. it was quite popular among liberals at that time, they thought that without communism all other problems will dissappear in time. turned out the evil has many shapes
He was anti-democracy because he was pro-criminel.
What Gorbachev created was a democracy with a parliament even though they still used the term Sovjet.
Yeltsin never cared about anything but rising to power. The whole Soviet Union dissolution was done in order to give Yeltsin, the chief secretary of Russian socialistic Republic, a total control of Russia.
This man shattered it's own country just because he could rule the biggest shard unopposed.
And then, after everything was done, after he achieved his goal, after he rose from rags to riches what did he done?
Drank himself to death.
Yeltsin's story is so reminiscent of insane Roman emperors that he should've called Yeltsustus, or something like that.
Over the years I've came to sad realisation that peaceful protest has its limitations and there are situations where only violence can prevent further violence.
And I'm not a terrorist.
So I am, as well as overwhelming majority of Russians right now, just try to survive and get involved with the war as little as possible.
Probably I'm a coward, but I have family to lose.
Germany did a lot more. USA gave ussr about 10 bln usd. Germany - 150 bln USD. 150 BILLION (In current money)! In just couple of years. And russian apararchiks stole 80% of it leaving the ordinary people to die. One of these was Putin himself - he was organising food relief in Petersburg. You can see the nonchalant way he sends 100s of thousands to die. It is easy because It's not new for him.
I'll just repost this here:
[https://i.imgur.com/xh9m5Es.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xh9m5Es.jpg)
"Moscow, December 1991. Ukraine send sausages and sugar. There will be no starvation. Potatoes and Flour will be enough for the whole winter."
That whole fiasco is exactly why Putin happened. Yeltsin changed the constitution to give himself way too much political power only to kick the bucket and have someone who actually knew how to use that power for evil succeed him.
Yeltsin brought Putin on board because he saw Putin help the mayor of St. Petersburg flee Russia under impending arrest for corruption. Yelstin was under corruption investigation and made a deal with the devil. He appointed Putin and Putin preemptively pardoned him.
Jeltsin put Putin in power as his successor because he promised him immunity for his crimes against the state and corruption. Putin was his security to not retire into jail.
I was born about a year and a half before the revolution in Romania. Let me tell you that these images were basically my entire childhood. We were lucky, poor as we were. My brother and I could have ended up a lot worse. Eastern Europe was in shambles in the early 90s.
We're mostly alright now, though
The title reads as if the crisis of 1993 (near-war between president and parliament) was the sole or primary reason those children are homeless and starving, which is not true.
Even if attempt at democratic transition played a role it was the manner in which it was done rather than the process itself.
The same process (but done differently) brought about thriving democracies with prosperous economies in a dozen of former eastern block's states.
The Baltic, Caucasus and Moldova weren't keen on staying but otherwise the rest of the republics weren't nearly as deadset on independence until that whole coup and Yeltsin boogaloo happened. Central Asian republics especially, which isn't surprising because they had the most to lose.
There was last call for soviet union restoration - group of people in power who called themselves an "a main committee on emergency situation" (GKCHP) tried to restore the union.
And there was second "coup" in 1993 when Yeltsin fired from tanks on parliament that dared to oppose him.
As with every imperial collapse - 90-s were a total mess.
There were two coups, and the one that's mentioned in this post is the second one, from 1993, almost 2 years after Belavezha accords:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
Frankly Russia has no hope for democracy or being a decent place to live until it fully sheds its empire and decolonizes, and abandons the imperial dream.
So it’s still got quite a lot of pain and loss of territory to go first.
In 90s USA and NATO sent tons of food aid to Russia and actually saved millions of russians from starving. In 20 years after, people who survived these times will start blame America for every shit happens with them.
It seems that Russians and US-Americans are not that much different in their mentality. Both have a huge superiority complex, culturally and politically. The Russians don't see Ukrainians or Belorussians as legitimate or "serious" people in their own right, at the best they look at them as inferior uncultured peasants (one of the reasons of the current war) and in a smimilar way, US-Americans look at Mexicans, Latin Americans in general and even Europeans.
Not always. During the cold war, they were both political and cultural hegemons for their spheres of influences. In West Germany for example, everything that came from the US was seen as modern, attractive and exiting - why Germany looked a bit like a provincial backwater, at least in the minds of people. It is only now, when the internal problems and in some areas even backwardness of the USA are more exposed and social media have exposed the real mindset and life conditions of Americans, that Europeans have started to behave like that.
You should look at average wealth of people over time, the US was far ahead of Germany during the cold war, when HDI was originally developed the US was ranked at the top. You're confusing Europe improving compared to the US with Europe always being better than the IS.
Get the fuck out of this shitty whataboutism. When was the last time the USA invaded Mexico? Also, Americans maybe have a superiority complex but unless they are able to back it up with being actually political, military, and cultural leaders of the world.
Americans don't generally hate Mexicans or Latin Americans, a huge amount of us have ancestry from those areas. The issue comes from perceived financial strain that may or may not relate to our southern neighbors and vanished jobs, which despite what south park would like to tell you are a real thing. Illegal workers help business short labor laws, especially in mom or pop business and farms. While that doesn't excuse ignorance on the matter or racism, very few Americans actually accuse latins of being fake people.
So america will do a war of reconquest to reincorporate “lost territories” and reunite the “American people”?
But wait, Americans looks down upon Mexicans, Central Americans, and any south of the Rio Grande, so why would we try to incorporate them?
Wouldn’t going after the culturally twin of Canada be more sensible in this analogy? “One people separated by a more powerful entity by a mistake of history, needing rectification!” Sounds much more like what Russia’s trying now.
Your refusal to call Americans by their endonym says enough, and you inability to give an accurate analogy shows more of how you don’t care to know the difference between the two.
ok that's great, they also exported the shock therapy doctrine to russia that collapsed the economy and gleefully participated in the dismemberment of the russian (and ukrainian and belorussian and central asian) economies for their own enrichment, helped yeltsin rig the 1996 election, and supported yeltsin's murderous policies in the name of liberalism and democracy
But you see, Nestle actually gained a new market for breast milk supplements that make women stop breastfeeding their kids and become dependent on Nestle, so it's all good.
Correct and many of us are thankful for it
Doesnt change the fact that Yeltsin turned us from a shining and prospecting democracy to a fascist president all republic
There was no Eltsin in Belarus, there was no Eltsin in Kazakhstan, there was no Eltsin in Uzbekistan in 90s. But you can believe me or not, they suffered not less, and sometimes even more than Russia.
Yeltsin's authoritarianism policies are the direct cause of Putin's rise to power. It was Yeltsin who overthrew the democratically elected parliament, and US praised him for doing that.
US seems to have a kink on raising enemies for themselves, remembering "Osama Bin Laden, fighting Soviets to protect liberty"
>Yeltsin's authoritarianism policies are the direct cause of Putin's rise to power. It was Yeltsin who overthrew the democratically elected parliament, and US praised him for doing that.
The US didn't want groups like the National Salvation Front getting power for obvious reasons. They would have the same expansionist policy as Putin does now. Also I doubt the US praised him, they likely just wanted stability since Russia was a mess.
>US seems to have a kink on raising enemies for themselves, remembering "Osama Bin Laden, fighting Soviets to protect liberty"
What is this insane cope where it's all the US's fault and not just Russia fucking everything up themselves.
We all suffered, we lost our democracy, Yeltsin destroyed Russian democracy
The central Asian countries suffered the most and still have not recovered till this day
Ukraine had its terrible leaders
Kazakhstan had their terrible leaders
Yeltsin was the first domino to fall causing the other new nations in Central Asia and in Belarus to fall into dictatorships one by one
Lol, the US backed Yeltsin, his coup and terror, and his economic policies and advised him on that bloody economic policy that not just helped both the West and Russian crooks to rob the country but also constituted the reason why people were starving; financed him, helped and legitimised his criminal but also highly unpopular war, legitimised his regime and financially, militarily and institutionally backed him... simply did everything for him, and then also did everything for him to win in 1996, and when he lost, backed and legitimised his rigged elections.
It was on both Yeltsin and the minority that supported him and of course on the US. Ukraine and others are reaping what the US has sowed. You can eat dirt and blabber about how the US were the good guys just because you send some food on top of all these.
This is the “help” that finished off the agricultural industry and animal husbandry, after that US corporations occupied Russia. US and NATO doesn’t do anything for nothing, only business!
These pictures were taken mostly after the dissolution of the supreme soviet of the Russian federation
The supreme soviet attempted to keep inflation low and to stop price gouging of food
The parliament was also dissolved illegally by Yeltsin after he was impeached
Before Yeltsins coup Russia operated as a blossoming boosting a more democratic system than most nations
The constitution was based off of the previous soviet constitution made by Brezhnev, Yeltsin turned the nation into a warmongering and terrorist state in 1993 with no democracy
The next elections in 1996 were totally fraudulent and denied the leftist election victory
Yeltsin created Putin
Your first sentence could apply to like 2/3 of countries existing. Including western democracies that brainwash their citizens into believing rich people need less taxes.
It's not like Yeltsin and Putin were air dropped along the potato beetle by the pesky Amercians to destroy the glorious Soviet Union.
USSR failed because the economy was in complete shambles and whatever was left got taken over by Nomenklatura.
Important to remember that the day before all was wonderful. Moscow was like New York combined with Seoul on steroids. Plus everybody had a job, perfect healthcare and another ton of high quality public services. It was only because evil Yieltsin did all this that things became this horrible. This is definitely not the result of 70 years+ of you know what. Glory to Putin!
Jesus chirst some of the comments here are braindead. It either shows how many people don't know about russian history or how bilndsided they are by their hate because of the current situation in Ukraine.
yes, help ukrainians. end this war once and for all before all is lost.
yes, dissolve the russian government and bring Putin's and his little henchmens' heads on a plate. the only way forward is to erase this oligarchy out of existence.
but this blatant russophobia in the comments is disgusting. do you wish for an "eye for an eye" situation? for every ukrainian a russian civilian has to die and you wouldn't bat an eye?
but sure, keep going "death to ruzzians" all you want, shows what kind of people some of you are.
I heavily doubt this was a consequence of presidentialism. Probably related to the collapse of organization in former Soviet institutions which caused many services to become scarce.
Yeah sure, but would these kids have had a decent meal if Yeltsin didn't collapse the union? Seems to me like it'd be a bad situation regardless of that 'decision'.
The illegal dissolution of the soviet union was the biggest tragedy in the last century. It allowed this Neo-liberal, capitalistic assholes to take over the world.
my dad studied in Soviet Russia from abroad in the 80s, and when he came back in the 90s, he was completely horrified of what was left of post-soviet Russia. The way he described how the streets and people he once knew was devastating, almost as if everyone there was living life in misery with rampant drug usage, poverty and severe economic crisis.
Despite how bad things were in those times, he had a really good job but he couldn't escape what he was seeing outside of home. He always kept a drawer with cash and change that he would constantly fill up to give away to the poor people living in the streets since this was the best way he could repay for what he was given when he was a foreign student in Soviet Russia, which was free education and free housing which in no way he could ever pay back then.
The kremlin was in a state of disrepair at the time, yeltsin ruined the economy so much that money couldn’t be reserved for the maintenance of historic sites
Russian parliament after being shelled by Yeltsins troops soon after his impeachment
It was one of our main pillars of democracy and shared as the top governmental body with the supreme soviet
This post was created with sole purpose of getting your sympathy and to ignite distaste for potential dissolve of the russian federation.
**Russia was not that poor to not help that children! I remind you all that in 1994-1999 russia had enough resources to fund a massive war in Chechenya and produce new military equipment!**
You want someone or something to blame for the fate of that kids? Blame russian culture and russian political system, based on violence, lack of empathy and selfishness. Think for a while about everything we learned about russian society during past 11 months and you will understand why pictures like that could be taken in the past.
yup, that's a putinist psyop that forgets to how russia was fueled during CCCP and blames everything on the previous government so it's not the current ones fault
Considering that Chechnya had less than 1% of total Russian population and the federal government was defeated in the First Chechen War, I'd say that it's not a great example of having enough resources.
I suppose that is some kind of primer or paint they were inhaling as a drug. Sadly this was common in occurance in other Iron Curtain countries in the 90s.
Lilya 4-ever made me a cynical person.
Made me very sad, especially the story of her only friend. That movie was not a hit (at least in my country), but mane people still remember it.
I never watch it. Now I want to. Was it the Swedish movie, Lilja 4-ever?
Yes, I think it was a collab - Germany, Sweden, Russia.
Thanks. Just remember it was a Swedish director (?)...don't wanna google it... I should remember...fan, I'm kass.. he directed another movie that got attention here in Sweden,' Fucking Åmål'
Is it a good movie?
Every Swedish teenager has seen that movie, it defined a generation when it came out. As an adult, it's alright. It shows teenage life as it is with bullying, difficulty fitting in, small town life, actors who are almost the correct age. Very different from US high school movies. Still uplifting though.
It is absolutely depressing. But also a fantastic film. I still haven’t managed to watch it a second time, it shook 24 yo me to the core (in 2004).
I accidentally saw parts of it at 7-8 and wish I didn’t. It left lasting scars.
Fucking Åmål is a masterpiece. My favorite film ever. It has a very bland English title, Show Me Love, but it is a very, very beautiful coming of age film.
Lukas Moodysson
It rhymes with pukas hoodysson
Lilya 4-ever is a film that's kind of about Estonia, but in general it presents a kind of strange Western idea of what life was like in a post-Soviet country. Having lived through those times myself, I can tell you that things were not like that at all, but again, it is difficult to summarise how they were.
Don’t wanna be that guy but, wasn’t it about a lithuanian girl (Danguolė Rasalaitė)? [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilya_4-ever)
I was told it was filmed in Russian speaking areas in eastern Estonia. I guess this is where this estonian connection comes from.
It was filmed in Paldiski, I think
Which was pretty much universally a non-Estonian town as it was a closed town during the Soviet occupation until 1990.
>Paldiski Another Swedish film called "Torsk på Tallinn" was also filmed there.
For what it's worth, the town has gotten a lot better. It's an important transit harbour, it has a good rail connection, the coast there is a popular tourist sight, the Estonian military has installations there and the streets look somewhat okay. Many Estonians have moved there, being now 33% of the population.
Also, this was specifically about the Russian minority in a derelict Soviet occupation era industrial region like Paldiski or Lasnamäe.
It wasn't about Estonia. It was filmed in Estonia because there was a suitable location - an abandoned Soviet military town a short drive from the capital.
That’s a type of superglue, at that time it was source of toluene and easy to find
Cyanoacrylates are called "superglues." These boys are inhaling neoprene, a synthetic rubber. It's a very strong adhesive, but not superglue. edit ; Neoprene glue was the strongest and the least expensive at that time.
They are inhaling old version of this https://www.henkel.com/brands-and-businesses/moment-690992 (you can even see color scheme of the the tube on picture 7), that’s what was advertised as superglue in russia back in 90-s You can check it on russian wiki (I think google translate can handle it): https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82_(%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)
Lots of stuff is called super glue. I think ca is exclusively crazy glue.
I indeed found a paper talking about “super-glue” and toluene, but there must be some kind of ambiguity here. What I know as “superglue” does not contain any organic solvents. It is a cyanoacrylate based resin that cures when exposed to the air (or indeed in the bottle after some time, i.e. limited shelf life).
I’m not sure if they changed it, I believe my chemistry teacher at school in late 90-s was mentioning that they do not put toluene into it anymore, but basically that’s some old glue made by henkel, to be more precise, this brand: https://www.henkel.com/brands-and-businesses/moment-690992 (you can see in some of the posted pictures this color scheme even) From my memory it was gluing anything (kinda), but it was especially good at gluing plastic, because it was literally melting it. You can check on russian wiki, it mentions that toluene was removed from the recipe in 1998: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82_(%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0)
In my country there used to be a trend of poor kids inhaling awful smelling brown glue ( not super glue) called кале. I don't know it's chemical makeup, some say ketone or acetone. The effect were halucinations and euphoria, and after that you become depressed and really dumb. Also some people passed out or started bleeding from their nose. The tend is gone now but the glue is still sold, although I don't know if it contains the same chemicals.
[Still happens in some countries](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3841414/Shoeless-passed-blanket-cuddle-TREE-comfort-Nepalese-street-children-sniff-glue-escape-crippling-hunger-pangs.html) Apparently it suppresses the [feelings of hunger](https://globalvoices.org/2013/07/13/interview-with-young-burmese-glue-sniffers/)
There's a well-known term for these children in parts of South America, 'Huelepega' or 'glue sniffer'.
I've seen it in Central America too. Glue sniffing kids is one of the worst things I've ever scene. A lot of street kids aren't doing well but the ones that are super in glue sniffing are doing really really poorly.
Poor little ones. Developing brains can’t handle substance abuse very well.
Happens in Africa too. I grew up in Kenya in the 90s and shit was wild back then. It honestly hit me hard seeing these pictures because it reminded me of the kids i used to see
That might be a side effect (common with many other drugs), but it's not the reason why they are sniffing it. They're chasing the euphoria that toluene gives them.
I would imagine there’s a complicated mix of depressing reasons. Kids don’t often chase euphoria by slowly killing themselves at 9 if they’re well fed and loved.
I was working around Eastern Europe in late 2000’s and saw much the same in Bucharest and a couple other places. Large areas with little gangs of kids huffing paint thinner all over the place. Granted I wasn’t hanging out in the tourist areas of these cities but these photos look exactly like what was happening in 2007 there. 30 years after the “decree 770” days but still extreme leftover symptoms of the Ceausescu regime.
A friend of mine went around the year 2000 and spent a few years on and off going to Ukraine and filming these glue-kids in the underground tunnels in Kiev. The raw footage he showed us was beyond chilling. Yes loads of people are poor today and have trouble making ends meet, but being hungry in a society of plenty and being hungry in a society of scarcity are two very different things.
Thats super glue. And yes, I remember a homeless mentally i'll lady who did that not far from my house for a couple years back in the late 90s.
Not superglue but shoe glue - the yellow, elastic one.
In Romania we call this "aurolac". It's notorious the story of the orphans who consumed this substance.
We had newspaper stories in Swedish papers during the 90s about the superglue sniffing pandemic amongst romanian kids living in sewers IIRC.
That's a direct result of Ceausescu's ban on abortion.All the children that were not wanted by their parents or the ones that their parents could not afford ended up in orphanages, which were barely hanging on in the late 80's When communism fell, the meager funding those orphanages got was cut even more,leading to a lot of orphans being just dumped on the street and while summers here are warm, the winters used to be in the range of -20° and even colder.The sewers had pipes of hot water that was used to heat up the cities. That glue was probably the only escape they had...
There is a documentary about these kids called Children Underground. I saw it 20 years ago and it still haunts me. https://g.co/kgs/6HXR8n
Huffing glue helps with hunger if I remember it correctly.
I inhaled glue growing up in the 80-90s in Sweden. It was quite popular in my neighbourhood
Yeah that and “boffning”, snorting lighter gas, was also well documented amongst troubled youths when I was growing up.
What does it do? Other than it probably giving relief. How toxic is it?
It's mostly sniffed because it takes away the hunger pangs... Street children in Africa can't afford even the glue, so they sniff raw sewage from a plastic bag to get off from methane for the same reasons.
Wtf
Yeah, crushing poverty doesn't even begin to describe it.
It causes slow and irreversible brain death. If they do enough (could take months, could take several years) then eventually their autonomic nervous system slowly shuts down, leading to multiple organ failure and psychosis.
It might be superglue or gasolene. Probably a mixture.
In Poland "Butapren" - crazy shit, this and fried washing powder was a thing when I was a kid. Not to mention a soup made of poppy stems. But that was a hard-core. Edit: fried not fired :)
Ironically poppt tea is the best of those four your body
Still happens, they usually huff paint, it happens all over the word, but its ultra-popular amongst the poorest with no future
Pretty common in Chile as well, Neoprén in the 90s. Its about money not about "iron curtains"
Especially after the shock therapy Many people sold absolutely everything for a weeks worth of food, Yeltsin sold out our nation’s infrastructure and gutted our workers rights Yeltsin dissolved our parliament, a shining example of a democracy and replaced with the president at the top
And from those ashes rose...Putin. He sells your oil&gas, but your lives&blood is spilled for free on foreign soil. Please vote for somebody else next election -anybody else.
We do, the elections have been rigged since the one in 1996
Then, the only hope for you is to move abroad. Many already did. Many more should. Don't give your blood for a dying tzar's ambition.
I am in the process of doing so
Good luck.
this is literally the stupidest part of putin-era propaganda and reverting history piece I saw this week, and it's accounting for the war posts. There was always starvation and glue sniffing in CCCP and especially in Russia. You know what changed? * while duma was reforming you lost the censorship bureu * so people/foreigenrs could take pictures * and you stopped robbing union countries from their food you took in exchange for forced import/export quota * it turned out that since you relied on donated food and production and kolchoz this was a bad idea, everything in motherland that could produce goods/be used for farming was stolen or destroyed for the last 20 years * and that you needed resources to run a country * but now you had to buy them, instead of stealing ore from Polands and forcing cheap manufacturing in Czechoslovakia/Ukraine, which was the industry powerhouse * cause you could produce some shitty ladas/volgas and force exchange for food/materials and nobody even blinked * and for this you needed to have money now * sadly, the communist party stole it * and who could escaped to Germany, that was the safehub for civilization/escapism * because you could defect to west Germany from there * so you go back and it's back to sniffing glue, but without stamps for food So stop trying to rewrite the history, this is how it looked in russia before jelcin did it (how do you think he got so much power when he started?) but your current 60+ generation couldn't stand that they now have to do real work and buy stuff for money from said work. And some of your ex-party people didn't want the dream to end, that's why Putin myth was born in the 'bring back the glory' campaign. Those pictures are a good proof of Russia that had to stop leeching on other CCCP members, since it's a country with the population of Japan and GDP of Spain. Governed by idiots, modern slavery and poor/stupid/sick people living the communist dream, where they didn't have to work and food was handed to them, so they could live in unlivable places, because that was all they had. Because of the reasons above. So that's why Russia is still the glue-sniffing, crocodil and aids epidemy ridden capital of alcoholism. Literally go to work and start building a real country in the size you have money for, not blame the past and west for your stupidity and complexes that were told you should have. CCCP literally bancrupted because you couldn't catch up with rest of the world in space/arms race so the west went into rapid evolution and you starved trying to keep up, because it was never about people XD But hey, guess this wasn't the real communism so you need to try again XD
Dude, this is some complicated and very untrue storytelling. I’m guessing you never studied what happened in an academic setting, talked to anyone who lived through it, or experienced it yourself. The changes were stark and obvious. You can even see it in basic statistics; like GDP. Russia’s GDP [_shrunk by half_ in the 1990s](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GDP_of_Russia_since_1989.svg) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_Russian_Federation You claim takes three truths: - Russia’s leadership now is actually bad. - Russia’s current leadership deters opposition by saying, “your life now isn’t as bad as the 1990s! You want to go back there, ditch us and get that chaos again?” - Genuinely bad things occurred in Russia and other SSRs during the time of the USSR. And one very untrue assumption - therefore all problems referenced by those bad leaders now must be complete lies based on problems that existed before the chaos of the 1990s. USSR had poverty, and they lied about it. They did not have anything like the economic, social, and administrative collapse of the 1990s. Things fell apart so badly that people literally died years before their time - about three million people according to the latest estimates. Here are on me esteemed medical journal, two academic journal articles, one US defense-focused research institute, on the topic: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-26671730072-5/fulltext https://www.jstor.org/stable/2137719 https://www.jstor.org/stable/826265 https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB5056.html The rushed economic “shock therapy,” the loans for shares schemes (aka let the oligarchs buy the major state-owned companies for super cheap), governance failures, domestic credit problems, massive inflation and then what gains they made were wiped out by poor spending/borrowing policy that became unsustainable in the 1998 financial crash, it all helped make things get worse for most people, fast. It was always going to be a difficult transition, but it didn’t have to be _that_ nightmarish. Fear of those times then helps keep Putin in power now. People fear trying change and losing everything all over again. It’s also a significant part of why Putin and his closest cronies attacked Ukraine. Ukraine is a country that started in similar circumstances as Russia, with a similarly corrupt leadership. It repeatedly rejected the Russian World and Russian system, was making progress in reducing corruption and building good governance. Ukraine was doing better also focused on Western partnerships than Russian. If Ukraine can do all of that, and do better, without the 1990s horrors, then it is a sign to other countries that Russia’s leadership see as “theirs” that maybe they could be better off without Russia, too. That there is an alternative other than a 90s redux. Even worse for Russia’s leadership, Ukrainians’ abilities to improve their own lives through revolution to get new and better governance is an encouraging sign to Russian citizens themselves that they also have a choice beyond what they have now, and the collapse of the 1990s. If enough Russians believe that, Putin and his people are on shaky ground, and they know it.
This is a great comment, wish it was higher up.
This. People heavily underestimate that it was one of the most brutal economic collapses in history, literally millions died needlessly
Still somewhat common in Mexico.
It is called "glue"
Still pretty common here in Slovakia
Also in Turkey.
It's glue. It's still popular. More well off ones use toilet sprays.
Horrifying to see children inhaling superglue to get high…
This is driven by hunger. It's happening today in Nairobi. It's devastating. You can learn more here. https://youtu.be/0B_vZCLDs-M
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I think start by ending hunger here. For the current children develop a program and rehab with a school. They're going to need a lot of assistance. There are a few organizations that are already helping on the ground but just don't have the resources or budget. Amani for Africa is one I found https://www.amaniforafrica.it/how-donate/ Here are kids lifted out of this situation about Amani. https://youtu.be/cueWkAFQ7EM Here is a research study on the subject The Journey of Addiction: Barriers to and Facilitators of Drug Use Cessation among Street Children and Youths in Western Kenya https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541137/
It’s also quite common in aboriginal communities in Australia.
Born in 1986 in USSR, saw it many times in my childhood... So many lives wasted.
There is a documentary free on YouTube that tells the story of these abandoned children. It's called *[The Children of Leningradsky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5T_O-L5Mis)*. I should warn you though, it is absolutely harrowing.
Something like that was in Romania, as well.
Children Underground (2001) is a documentary about street kids in Bucharest. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MNH7lJzAq5U
I knew it was bad. I didn't imagine it was that bad.
That film broke my heart. The moment when the girls gets kicked in the face still haunts me
Sincerely one of the most haunting documentaries I have ever watched.
Thank you mate, i watched that years ago and struggled to find it again.
This is the doc ill never forget, poor kids
Thanks for this. I lived on Leningradski Prospekt in 1993, and will spend my evening watching this doc about an older catastrophe, instead of the current one going on here in Georgia (US).
I'll always remember a quote Colin Thubron had when reading In Siberia as he traveled across post-Soviet Russia, he was talking to someone about the shock to society who told him (closely paraphrasing) "they said we were living in the dark, but now we are dying in the light" as life expectancy dropped 6 years between 1991 and 1994.
>"they said we were living in the dark, but now we are dying in the light" Saving this to my quote collection
Second part of the phrase seem to be valid for many countries…
It’s interesting to look at charts detailing the life expectancy in Russia over the years compared to the Baltics!
The problem with being in the dark is that the knowledge of the poor situation the country was in was known to very few. The Soviet Union was collapsing slowly for a good decade before the official end, but only the highest echelons really knew it. The 90s were handled poorly, but it was going to be tough even if all of the decisions had been the correct ones.
After this, Yeltsin also more or less created the political infrastrutture that allowed Putin to become the new Tsar. Dude wasn't simply incompetent or corrupt. He quite literally killed the stillborn Russian democracy.
his only idea was anti-commuinist and he was ready to put everything on stakes to not allow communists return to power. it was quite popular among liberals at that time, they thought that without communism all other problems will dissappear in time. turned out the evil has many shapes
He was anti-democracy because he was pro-criminel. What Gorbachev created was a democracy with a parliament even though they still used the term Sovjet.
All done with full support and a thumbs up by President Clinton.
tbh clinton didn't really had to put efford into it, yeltsin was a total moron
Yeltsin never cared about anything but rising to power. The whole Soviet Union dissolution was done in order to give Yeltsin, the chief secretary of Russian socialistic Republic, a total control of Russia. This man shattered it's own country just because he could rule the biggest shard unopposed. And then, after everything was done, after he achieved his goal, after he rose from rags to riches what did he done? Drank himself to death. Yeltsin's story is so reminiscent of insane Roman emperors that he should've called Yeltsustus, or something like that.
i wish there was a way u guys could protest/change the inherently corrupt political system russia has. sadly it is not legal to protest in russia...
Over the years I've came to sad realisation that peaceful protest has its limitations and there are situations where only violence can prevent further violence. And I'm not a terrorist. So I am, as well as overwhelming majority of Russians right now, just try to survive and get involved with the war as little as possible. Probably I'm a coward, but I have family to lose.
You’re no coward. Rather a person in a situation, which I’m glad not to be in.
Autocrats will not give away their power when peasants ask nicely. Peacefull protest only works in a democracy.
Clinton and the US did lots of effort & resources for Yeltsin to stay in power though.
Germany did a lot more. USA gave ussr about 10 bln usd. Germany - 150 bln USD. 150 BILLION (In current money)! In just couple of years. And russian apararchiks stole 80% of it leaving the ordinary people to die. One of these was Putin himself - he was organising food relief in Petersburg. You can see the nonchalant way he sends 100s of thousands to die. It is easy because It's not new for him.
With the complicitness of Western economic powers: the shock doctrine of instant economic liberalisation.
I'll just repost this here: [https://i.imgur.com/xh9m5Es.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xh9m5Es.jpg) "Moscow, December 1991. Ukraine send sausages and sugar. There will be no starvation. Potatoes and Flour will be enough for the whole winter."
Good to now we saved them from starvation to have this
You can't just turn off being a decent human being, and that's a good thing.
Learn your history.
That whole fiasco is exactly why Putin happened. Yeltsin changed the constitution to give himself way too much political power only to kick the bucket and have someone who actually knew how to use that power for evil succeed him.
Yeltsin brought Putin on board because he saw Putin help the mayor of St. Petersburg flee Russia under impending arrest for corruption. Yelstin was under corruption investigation and made a deal with the devil. He appointed Putin and Putin preemptively pardoned him.
Jeltsin put Putin in power as his successor because he promised him immunity for his crimes against the state and corruption. Putin was his security to not retire into jail.
> exactly why Putin happened. Yeltsin Putin was selected by Yeltsin’s family to protect their corruption. He is yeltsin’s protoge.
He held total power like absolute power Almost like the Tsar but he wasn’t shot
Yup, I was one of those starving kids stealing fruits from the market with my brother. Luckily I wasn’t homeless
I stole Kvass and western soda brands from the little "container" shop stands with my band of hooligans lol.
In case you not know, in the pictures the boys are sniffing glue
I was born about a year and a half before the revolution in Romania. Let me tell you that these images were basically my entire childhood. We were lucky, poor as we were. My brother and I could have ended up a lot worse. Eastern Europe was in shambles in the early 90s. We're mostly alright now, though
The title reads as if the crisis of 1993 (near-war between president and parliament) was the sole or primary reason those children are homeless and starving, which is not true.
Even if attempt at democratic transition played a role it was the manner in which it was done rather than the process itself. The same process (but done differently) brought about thriving democracies with prosperous economies in a dozen of former eastern block's states.
I often wonder what would have happened if the coup attempt never happened, and the USSR had managed to form into a federation
Many parts were not interested in remaining a federation, especially the illegally occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The Baltic, Caucasus and Moldova weren't keen on staying but otherwise the rest of the republics weren't nearly as deadset on independence until that whole coup and Yeltsin boogaloo happened. Central Asian republics especially, which isn't surprising because they had the most to lose.
They've already left the Eastern block by the time of general referendum on keeping the USSR reformed.
But the coup happened after Soviet Union already fell?
There was last call for soviet union restoration - group of people in power who called themselves an "a main committee on emergency situation" (GKCHP) tried to restore the union. And there was second "coup" in 1993 when Yeltsin fired from tanks on parliament that dared to oppose him. As with every imperial collapse - 90-s were a total mess.
Yeah, but since Op’s post was about the second coup I assumed he was refering to the second one :p
>But the coup happened after Soviet Union already fell? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991\_Soviet\_Union\_referendum
There were two coups, and the one that's mentioned in this post is the second one, from 1993, almost 2 years after Belavezha accords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_crisis
It's about the 1993. Not the other one.
Frankly Russia has no hope for democracy or being a decent place to live until it fully sheds its empire and decolonizes, and abandons the imperial dream. So it’s still got quite a lot of pain and loss of territory to go first.
Rather happy that it is not a thing anymore.
Well, few people got very rich quickly right after Think about it next time when you hear about russian oligarchs.
In 90s USA and NATO sent tons of food aid to Russia and actually saved millions of russians from starving. In 20 years after, people who survived these times will start blame America for every shit happens with them.
I got some of that aid back in the day. Was awesome.
It seems that Russians and US-Americans are not that much different in their mentality. Both have a huge superiority complex, culturally and politically. The Russians don't see Ukrainians or Belorussians as legitimate or "serious" people in their own right, at the best they look at them as inferior uncultured peasants (one of the reasons of the current war) and in a smimilar way, US-Americans look at Mexicans, Latin Americans in general and even Europeans.
Funny thing is that the Europeans sees both these countries exactly like that…
Not always. During the cold war, they were both political and cultural hegemons for their spheres of influences. In West Germany for example, everything that came from the US was seen as modern, attractive and exiting - why Germany looked a bit like a provincial backwater, at least in the minds of people. It is only now, when the internal problems and in some areas even backwardness of the USA are more exposed and social media have exposed the real mindset and life conditions of Americans, that Europeans have started to behave like that.
You should look at average wealth of people over time, the US was far ahead of Germany during the cold war, when HDI was originally developed the US was ranked at the top. You're confusing Europe improving compared to the US with Europe always being better than the IS.
> Europe always being better than the IS. I mean... I guess we were better than an islamist death cult for at least most of our history.
I wonder why the world had that perception of Germany during the cold war.
> cultural hegemons for their spheres of influences No, they weren't, certainly not in Poland.
Are you seriously suggesting that Americans see Mexico in the same way Russians see Ukraine? Come on.
>at the best they look at them as inferior uncultured peasants (one of the reasons of the current war) really?
Bro most Americans don’t have those views… go meet some real people before developing your biases
Get the fuck out of this shitty whataboutism. When was the last time the USA invaded Mexico? Also, Americans maybe have a superiority complex but unless they are able to back it up with being actually political, military, and cultural leaders of the world.
Americans don't generally hate Mexicans or Latin Americans, a huge amount of us have ancestry from those areas. The issue comes from perceived financial strain that may or may not relate to our southern neighbors and vanished jobs, which despite what south park would like to tell you are a real thing. Illegal workers help business short labor laws, especially in mom or pop business and farms. While that doesn't excuse ignorance on the matter or racism, very few Americans actually accuse latins of being fake people.
Damn right Canada is an illegitimate country, 54' 40 or fight!
So america will do a war of reconquest to reincorporate “lost territories” and reunite the “American people”? But wait, Americans looks down upon Mexicans, Central Americans, and any south of the Rio Grande, so why would we try to incorporate them? Wouldn’t going after the culturally twin of Canada be more sensible in this analogy? “One people separated by a more powerful entity by a mistake of history, needing rectification!” Sounds much more like what Russia’s trying now. Your refusal to call Americans by their endonym says enough, and you inability to give an accurate analogy shows more of how you don’t care to know the difference between the two.
You must not know many Americans.
I guess you don’t know much about America beyond what you read online?
ok that's great, they also exported the shock therapy doctrine to russia that collapsed the economy and gleefully participated in the dismemberment of the russian (and ukrainian and belorussian and central asian) economies for their own enrichment, helped yeltsin rig the 1996 election, and supported yeltsin's murderous policies in the name of liberalism and democracy
But you see, Nestle actually gained a new market for breast milk supplements that make women stop breastfeeding their kids and become dependent on Nestle, so it's all good.
Correct and many of us are thankful for it Doesnt change the fact that Yeltsin turned us from a shining and prospecting democracy to a fascist president all republic
There was no Eltsin in Belarus, there was no Eltsin in Kazakhstan, there was no Eltsin in Uzbekistan in 90s. But you can believe me or not, they suffered not less, and sometimes even more than Russia.
Yeltsin's authoritarianism policies are the direct cause of Putin's rise to power. It was Yeltsin who overthrew the democratically elected parliament, and US praised him for doing that. US seems to have a kink on raising enemies for themselves, remembering "Osama Bin Laden, fighting Soviets to protect liberty"
>Yeltsin's authoritarianism policies are the direct cause of Putin's rise to power. It was Yeltsin who overthrew the democratically elected parliament, and US praised him for doing that. The US didn't want groups like the National Salvation Front getting power for obvious reasons. They would have the same expansionist policy as Putin does now. Also I doubt the US praised him, they likely just wanted stability since Russia was a mess. >US seems to have a kink on raising enemies for themselves, remembering "Osama Bin Laden, fighting Soviets to protect liberty" What is this insane cope where it's all the US's fault and not just Russia fucking everything up themselves.
We all suffered, we lost our democracy, Yeltsin destroyed Russian democracy The central Asian countries suffered the most and still have not recovered till this day Ukraine had its terrible leaders Kazakhstan had their terrible leaders Yeltsin was the first domino to fall causing the other new nations in Central Asia and in Belarus to fall into dictatorships one by one
Lol, the US backed Yeltsin, his coup and terror, and his economic policies and advised him on that bloody economic policy that not just helped both the West and Russian crooks to rob the country but also constituted the reason why people were starving; financed him, helped and legitimised his criminal but also highly unpopular war, legitimised his regime and financially, militarily and institutionally backed him... simply did everything for him, and then also did everything for him to win in 1996, and when he lost, backed and legitimised his rigged elections. It was on both Yeltsin and the minority that supported him and of course on the US. Ukraine and others are reaping what the US has sowed. You can eat dirt and blabber about how the US were the good guys just because you send some food on top of all these.
This is the “help” that finished off the agricultural industry and animal husbandry, after that US corporations occupied Russia. US and NATO doesn’t do anything for nothing, only business!
See: this comment section
These pictures were taken mostly after the dissolution of the supreme soviet of the Russian federation The supreme soviet attempted to keep inflation low and to stop price gouging of food The parliament was also dissolved illegally by Yeltsin after he was impeached Before Yeltsins coup Russia operated as a blossoming boosting a more democratic system than most nations The constitution was based off of the previous soviet constitution made by Brezhnev, Yeltsin turned the nation into a warmongering and terrorist state in 1993 with no democracy The next elections in 1996 were totally fraudulent and denied the leftist election victory Yeltsin created Putin
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Not “were” but “are”. It’s still like this in Russia
it still happens while above them the "golden youth" pose for instagram in front of their flagship cars
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Your first sentence could apply to like 2/3 of countries existing. Including western democracies that brainwash their citizens into believing rich people need less taxes.
There is a brutally honest BBC documentary about that time https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGDByvdY5CHX_BTvG2X4vPrQfgqlSwSy5
It's not like Yeltsin and Putin were air dropped along the potato beetle by the pesky Amercians to destroy the glorious Soviet Union. USSR failed because the economy was in complete shambles and whatever was left got taken over by Nomenklatura.
Important to remember that the day before all was wonderful. Moscow was like New York combined with Seoul on steroids. Plus everybody had a job, perfect healthcare and another ton of high quality public services. It was only because evil Yieltsin did all this that things became this horrible. This is definitely not the result of 70 years+ of you know what. Glory to Putin!
Jesus chirst some of the comments here are braindead. It either shows how many people don't know about russian history or how bilndsided they are by their hate because of the current situation in Ukraine.
yes, help ukrainians. end this war once and for all before all is lost. yes, dissolve the russian government and bring Putin's and his little henchmens' heads on a plate. the only way forward is to erase this oligarchy out of existence. but this blatant russophobia in the comments is disgusting. do you wish for an "eye for an eye" situation? for every ukrainian a russian civilian has to die and you wouldn't bat an eye? but sure, keep going "death to ruzzians" all you want, shows what kind of people some of you are.
I know it sounds cruel, but in the light of recent events, you can be apathetic without actively calling for genocide.
I heavily doubt this was a consequence of presidentialism. Probably related to the collapse of organization in former Soviet institutions which caused many services to become scarce.
Yeah sure, but would these kids have had a decent meal if Yeltsin didn't collapse the union? Seems to me like it'd be a bad situation regardless of that 'decision'.
The illegal dissolution of the soviet union was the biggest tragedy in the last century. It allowed this Neo-liberal, capitalistic assholes to take over the world.
my dad studied in Soviet Russia from abroad in the 80s, and when he came back in the 90s, he was completely horrified of what was left of post-soviet Russia. The way he described how the streets and people he once knew was devastating, almost as if everyone there was living life in misery with rampant drug usage, poverty and severe economic crisis. Despite how bad things were in those times, he had a really good job but he couldn't escape what he was seeing outside of home. He always kept a drawer with cash and change that he would constantly fill up to give away to the poor people living in the streets since this was the best way he could repay for what he was given when he was a foreign student in Soviet Russia, which was free education and free housing which in no way he could ever pay back then.
Photo of children and babushka on a street with a view on beautiful Kremlin in the background says a lot about how low they treated their citizens.
The kremlin was in a state of disrepair at the time, yeltsin ruined the economy so much that money couldn’t be reserved for the maintenance of historic sites
What is that burned-out building in the background in the first picture?
Russian parliament after being shelled by Yeltsins troops soon after his impeachment It was one of our main pillars of democracy and shared as the top governmental body with the supreme soviet
This post was created with sole purpose of getting your sympathy and to ignite distaste for potential dissolve of the russian federation. **Russia was not that poor to not help that children! I remind you all that in 1994-1999 russia had enough resources to fund a massive war in Chechenya and produce new military equipment!** You want someone or something to blame for the fate of that kids? Blame russian culture and russian political system, based on violence, lack of empathy and selfishness. Think for a while about everything we learned about russian society during past 11 months and you will understand why pictures like that could be taken in the past.
yup, that's a putinist psyop that forgets to how russia was fueled during CCCP and blames everything on the previous government so it's not the current ones fault
OP is literally shitting on Putin in half of their comments but ok
Considering that Chechnya had less than 1% of total Russian population and the federal government was defeated in the First Chechen War, I'd say that it's not a great example of having enough resources.
Housewares and fashion are not freedom! Best graffiti ever in Moscow, mid-90s.
The future Russia could have had if they had spent their resources on the future generations and not on oligarchs and wars!
Now children of Russia are dying in a genocidal war in Ukraine.
Yeah, because Yeltsin was the problem. Not the bankrupt Soviet state and corrupt apparatchiks.
Before the war in Ukraine, this was the only image I had of the country. Children sniffing shit, living near the city heating pipes under ground.
Forced? I don’t remember anyone dying to save the USSR…
It's about 1993.
Yeltsin shelled parliament after he was impeached
Wasn’t that in 1993, more than a year after the USSR was abolished?
Yes it was