Why was the soviet union so cultureless?

Your point being? Are you telling me people in the USSR didn't have the best health? Well stop the presses.

you mean art, then, not "culture"

Thread asks about culture in the USSR.
There is most definitely a culture surrounding use and abuse of alcohol in what used to be USSR.
I argue that it arose during the USSR, this it is USSR culture, which the thread is about.

I think you are acting overly defensive for no reason here. So let me ask you back, your point being? What are you trying to do here?

>implying art isn't culture

Give me your definition of both.

If we are talking about culture, we are talking about culture. If you wanna talk health issues you gotta talk a look at obesity, child mortality etc. too instead of nit-picking according to a stereotype.

>I argue that it arose during the USSR
Well, not true. Pic related. You could also look at the role of alcohol during the Revolution: Bread and vodka were the first goods getting fixed prices.

I am not saying that alcoholism didn't spread during Soviet times tho. But, and it's a big but, consumption in socialist societies was more in the open and you drank more liquor than beer and wine (cheaper to produce) than in the West. The stereotype is therefor largely based on misconceptions of Westerners who drank quite a lot in private.

>t. someone who actually did research on that regarding the two Germanies.

>during the USSR
Actually, the Soviet people didn't consume that much alcohol until Brezhnev came to power. The average citizen consumed 4.2 lit/year until 1964.
Brezhnev saw an opportunity to make more money and the government started advertising alcohol more and more and selling more and more vodka and beer.
The amount of alcholol consumed per year increased by 0.4L every year after 1964 whereas before it used to increase by 0.2L.
This lead to alcohol becoming one of the symbols of the USSR and Russia.

So there was a culture of casual drink in the open and publicly in the east, that didn't exist in the west.
There was a culture of accepting heavy drinking and accepting drinking alcohol throughout the day, rather than privately after dinner.

Alcohol culture.

>Why was the soviet union so cultureless?
It wasn't.

>So there was a culture of casual drink in the open and publicly in the east, that didn't exist in the west.
>what is spring break
>what is fasching

Point is that it didn't make much of a difference. Forget about Russia for a moment and focus on the other socialist states. Look at the data. Socialist countries didn't drink more per capita than non-socialist countries i.e. the drinking in Russia is a Russian thing rather than a Soviet-communist problem.
>There was a culture of accepting heavy drinking and accepting drinking alcohol throughout the day, rather than privately after dinner.
Congrats it looks like you learned something. Don't forget that drinking privately after dinner is as much culture as is drinking in public.

>you mention X
>you argue me
>i tell you that you fail to understand
>you argue some more
>i reinforce my point X
>you repeat my point X to me and congratulate me for learning something

Mixed emotions.

>you mention X

I mention X*
Anyway, re-read the whole chain of replies and you might be surprised who learned something.

It wasn't but there were all sorts of problems with the Proletkult institution. It was full of sectarianism and revisionists. Stalin purged most of them from the CPSU and personally posed the question to reform all creative intuitions.

Socialist Realism wouldn't exist without the intervention of Stalin.

>There is most definitely a culture surrounding use and abuse of alcohol in what used to be USSR.
Implied that this special to the USSR which is wrong (I am following your lead here regarding what "culture" is) since every country on a the plant has "a culture surrounding use and abuse of alcohol".

>Proletkult
That shit was abandoned in the 20s. What are you talking about?

Opera is also not special to the USSR. Would you say there was no opera culture in the USSR?

There were many Proletkult institutions such as the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers, which lasted right up to 1932.

Things just hanged their name and upgraded their definitions.
Would you say that there is no physical culture cult today? They just renamed it and went from parading naked on the Red Square with flags to posting Zyzz poses on bodybuilding forums.

>So there was a culture of casual drink in the open and publicly in the east, that didn't exist in the west.
Nigga, maybe in your proddie shithole in the US there's nothing like it but go to France in summer evening and you'll see enormous amounts of people drinking publicly in the open - in parks on the beaches etc. At least they've used to, before enrichment came to them.

People in the west are ashamed of alcohol, Ivan. You cover that shit up.
We have a culture of drinking in private, and only doing it in public on special occasions where its socially acceptable.
You can't go to the park with a bottle of vodka on a work day afternoon and not expect people to give you looks.

Holy shit, this thread was bait from the start, wasn't it?

/thread

>high culture isn't culture

I am done talking to you. Read a book.
No. is right. People in France drink habitually in the open and they drink a shit ton. Difference to most other neighboring countries is that they don't have a beer drinking culture (which is why they have so many Irish Pubs...).

>I am done talking to you. Read a book.

I said that there is alcohol culture in the USSR.
You argued there isn't because it wasn't special to the USSR.
I countered that there are other things not special to the USSR, which are still considered part of USSR culture.

And now you get bitchy and mad?
Just continue responding like you did, why turn all /b/ on me?

...

It had tons of culture. Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Eisentstein, the list goes on...

I'd recommend a few readings to prove you otherwise.

Mikhail Zoshchenko's works are all short stories about daily life in 1920's-30's USSR, in which the traditional Russian cultural staples never really left. I'd recommend the "Galosh and Other Stories" as a great example.

Vasily Grossman's "Everything Flows" is also a pretty insightful into how Soviet life was in the months after Stalin's death, how everyone carries on with their day and try to lead normal lives.

but in the end, the image the Soviet Union projected on the world stage, and the reality within daily life with normal people are vastly different. The Communist Party painted this images of a bombastic rigid power where everyone was dead serious and driven to achievement, but that simply is not so, as with any other nation that tries to put on a face for the world stage to see and represent them.

(not true, by the way)

because that would promote individuality, which doesn't go well at all with collectivism

The Soviets had incredible orchestras, ballet , opera, world class musicians.

What are you referring to?

All of art is culture, not all of culture is art, you bloody eejit.

This thread is just reactionary faggotry

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_première_of_Shostakovich's_Symphony_No._7

You call those two sex gods in pic related lacking in culture?

>implying lifeless art is considered culture

>contains 50+ years of culture in a single post
Now do the same for the united states from 1910 to 1990. Don't pretend the oppression didnt take its toll.

/thread

communism kills culture on purpose

This. I have relatives that visited the USSR at least once in the 60s-70s. They said that the population was visibly poor, but that the public parts of the city itself (Leningrad) were gorgeous, with lots of classical architecture and culture. There were museums with plenty of art dating back to the Tsar's era.

You manage to both strawman and still not even oppose what I wrote.

Hamburgers, getting fat, feminism, pacifism, globalism, muh guns, lynching niggers.

I think thats about it.

that's capitalism honey :) x

"culture" is of burgois and capitalist pigdog. All who "culture" must be gulagd.You write a poem? To the gulag you go. You make statue of other then communist leaders? To the gulag, you capitalist shill. You paint painting party leaders don't like? Gulag.(themoscowtimes.com/articles/manezh-re-examines-khruschev-outrage-of-1962-20360 interesting red on the matter). You build nice rockets and are a genius? To the gulag you go.
That's why Solzhenizin was so popular, culture of gulag or anticulture.

You silly bunny, museums of old were to show how old societies were opressed by all their private posessions.