Soviet Union and Its Affects

Robert Manoukian was born in Esfean, Iran on January 11, 1934. He lived near the well known city of Daran. During the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic time period, he lived in Kirovakan, Armenia which was the third biggest city in Armenia. Robert had a huge family. They were nine children all together including him; they were four brothers and five sisters. Now all his siblings are in Armenia and want to come and visit him. In his opinion Communist times were very hard and had a lot of affects on societies. Robert attended the Daran High School of Iran and then graduated in 1950 as a young 16 year old teenager. He says, “I very brave and successful throughout my educational career.” During those times, Robert was an assistant of a shoe maker in Kirovakan Shoe Co. and when he was almost was turning 18 years old; he found himself his first job right after graduating high school.

The Soviet Union affected me in many bad ways and some good ways. Some of the bad affects were that nobody had freedom of speech and neither the radios nor the televisions could say what they felt about the USSR. The government was only willing to hear only positive things about them. The good affects that the USSR impacted me on was that the Communist government paid for all types of activities. Also, in job wise the one nice thing about it was that every person got a job. Neither newspapers, radios nor the televisions had the right to say whatever; they felt like about the government. People who said anything against it would have found themselves in a jail. Just like the media, writers and journalists had to only publish good things about the government and how it was governed. The Communist rule was only ready to hear positive things about them.

The leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republic before Garbachev were Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, who had served as a leader for about twenty years or so. After him came another Communist leader named Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, who was only in power for only a year, but he was the one that I mostly favored in because of his strictness in obeying the laws and getting rid of any mafia that he came up to. As in part of Communist lead, which, then came the first secretary of Armenia; Karen Seropi Demirchyan who was among the last Communist leaders of Armenia. He served as a long term leader in Armenia during the Soviet Union.

The legal voting age during those times was eighteen or older and the governments made the people choose, this was because they wanted to always benefit from it. Women had the same right as men did, they could participate in voting. Women didn’t have as much differences as men did, but men and women weren’t treated equally. The choice of women working was mainly up to the families. “In my family my mother didn’t go to work; she just stayed home and took care of the household.”

During the Soviet Union, teachers did not act violent towards their students; they would send any misbehaved student to the principals’ office as an alternative. They would have a phone call home, telling what they have done wrong. In some cases, there was hitting involved between the teachers and their students. The school conditions during the rule of Communism were excellent. All schools were well organized with lots of technology. Any student could get to his goal and achieve it. The teachers always wanted the best of you. Now days a student has to pay for all the classes that he or she is willing to take.

Throughout the Communist rule, it was said that no matter the class your in, you are all treated equally, but there was no equality between the upper classes and proletarian classes. People, who had to do something about government, were the ones that the government favored the most. The upper class did not help the lower class people not in a single way except to get money of them.

Another good thing was that there were thousands of various places that a person could get accepted to work, but the wages were low. During the Communist rule no person had the right to operate their own personal business. The benefit that the people got under Communism rule was having the right to work in different jobs. If people couldn’t cover their expenses, they could go work at any other place to earn extra money. Every person worked on weekdays and took rests in weekends just like today. Robert always wanted to own his personal business, but the government didn’t give him the opportunity to operate any personal business of any kind. In his opinion he said, “it was really disappointing of hearing about the mayor’s cousin opening a personal business on the area of place that I had decided to operate my business.” In contrast, now days working conditions are not similar, whatsoever. The technology is dominating the world and for that reason, people are becoming lazier. In comparison to this, some jobs have remained the same.

During the Soviet Union, there were numerous types of religions such as Christians, Muslims, Catholics and etc. There was no racism between the republics, but there were well more than 100 religions, overall. The republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic were Armenia SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Georgian SSR, Latvian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Estonian SSR, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, Moldavian SSR, Kazakh SSR, Tajik SSR, Turkmen SSR, Uzbek SSR, Kyrgyz SSR, and Russian SFSR. Now there are no republics left in Russia. The demolishment of Communism in the 1990’s brought up a different type of rule called Democratic government. Two different types of government have affected people in different ways. Under the Communist rule, the government mostly controlled the country and didn’t give the people the rights that they wanted, but right now under the Democratic rule people have more say to what they believe in.

One of the best things that I mainly favor in a Communist government is that almost everything that had to do with education was free with no expense. The one thing that I disliked or hated was the no freedom part of a Communist government such as no say in speech, travel, radios or business. If somebody wanted to travel somewhere like next to the border countries like Romania, Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy you needed to put a lot of work to it and sometimes after all that work they would still not accept.