Episode 14 – Love Thy Big Brother
The Eastern Border
Kristaps Andrejsons
4.7 • 877 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2016
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Greetings, Comrades!
After all of our editing issues which you know about already, if you follow us on social media, this episode is finally out. (Alice is far away and Andrew’s PC died at the last moment) This one ended up focusing on Marriage, Family and Everyday life. I had an unprecedented amount of people, giving me their stories and they were so good that I didn’t want to throw any of them out. So, I didn’t. I hope you’ll like this show, as I think it really captures the “feel” of being a Soviet person. We’ll continue with the entertainment and chess next time. And a few other things.
Oh, and one more thing – this episode is best enjoyed while listening to it together with your spouse/partner/significant other. Seriously. Because at the end it’s about what families had to go through, and how they did it.
Today’s images are: pictures from various Soviet stores!
A typical queue. They’re waiting to get into a shoe store, by the way.These TV’s differ by how they improve morale. (Latvian National Archive photo)
Your Brezhnev-era typical shoe store. This is how it looked normally, and the queues formed when they actually brought in something that you could buy.
A vegetable/canned good section on a good day. Still, note that while there’s a lot of stuff here, there’s almost no selection of anything. And half of it all is probably disgustingly bad.
The sour cream has already been diluted!
A butcher’s store – with the usual lack of merchandise, wrapping paper and the iconic Soviet weights.
A special thanks to Ryan Caligari from the Rumor Flies podcast for editing this on such a short notice.
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter, support us on Patreon or Paypal and leave us reviews on iTunes. Oh…and of course, don’t forget to love your spouse. That’s the most important part.
Hope you’ll enjoy the show!
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast? |
| 0:01.7 | Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. |
| 0:05.3 | It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. |
| 0:09.1 | Just click the link in the show description to support now. |
| 0:15.2 | Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track |
| 0:24.5 | to your destination, not a care in the world as you simply lean back, and before you know it, |
| 0:30.9 | you're there. London to Birmingham from just 16 pounds each way. Avanti West Coast, |
| 0:37.4 | feel good travel. Exclusions and limitations apply full terms and conditions. just 16 pounds each way. Avanti West Coast. Feel Good Travel. |
| 0:39.0 | Exclusions and limitations apply full terms and conditions can be founded atavantiwestcoast.combe. |
| 0:44.0 | combe. |
| 0:44.1 | Forward slash plan. Greetings, comrades. Latvians are normally very self-conscious folk. We love our privacy here, and I'm a bit of a weirdo for doing a podcast |
| 1:13.4 | and telling the stories of the people. You see, the people whom I ask about this, they often |
| 1:19.5 | need to be persuaded to talk about this issue, because some of them can't understand why would |
| 1:24.9 | some foreigner would even need to or want to hear anything about their private life. |
| 1:29.3 | We don't like people poking around our lives. |
| 1:32.3 | But, and this surprised me, it wasn't always so. |
| 1:36.3 | While researching for this episode, I came upon tons of information stating that Latvians |
| 1:42.3 | were one of the more open societies in the 20s and the 30s. |
| 1:45.8 | So, what happened? Well, Soviet totalitarianism happened. Totalitarianism in the sense that the |
| 1:53.3 | government actively tried to control everyday aspect of life. And this is interesting, |
| 1:57.8 | because I obviously follow the news about various events in other countries. |
| 2:02.3 | So, listen close. |
... |
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