Point of view: five bad habits come from the USSR
'06.05.2022'
Source: Obozrevatel
“Some of these habits relate to purely Soviet life, and some, so to speak, to the imprint that was deposited on a person as a result of living in such a society. The USSR has not existed for a long time, but many, for some mysterious and not fully understood reason, continue to live with all these terrible habits,” quotes the popular Belarusian blogger Maxim Mirovich Obozrevatel.
So, in today's post - another series of bad habits that you must get rid of if you do not want to be a "scoop."
1. Fear of phone calls
One of the main habits that betrays in a person that he was born and lived a significant part of his life in the USSR is the fear of telephone calls and telephone conversations in general. Usually such people are afraid of calls at “after hours”, so to speak. Suppose they are used to communicating with their relatives in the evenings, but suddenly someone calls them during the day - and such a call usually causes microstress. At a party, I have repeatedly observed such a picture: an “out-of-hours call” of a telephone is heard in the corridor, and the landlord hurries to the receiver, excitedly saying something like “what is it, but who is it calling at such a time”.
As soon as it turns out that the call does not represent anything “terrible” (say, they call from the post office), the person who picked up the phone becomes noticeably more cheerful and talks more relaxed. The same applies to calls to mobile phones from unfamiliar numbers - former Soviet people, as it were, are even “afraid” to answer such calls, because they do not expect anything good from them.
If you look at it, then all this is an atavism of the Stalin era - when, during the unfolding campaign of repressions against their own people, people lived in fear and expectation that they were about to come for them. Since then, any call that rang out in the house after school hours is perceived as a threat - as the fact that the authorities will take over you right now. Somehow I see this situation.
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2. Stubborn intervention in someone else's life
This point concerns, rather, "professional scoops", but in principle, to one degree or another, is characteristic of all citizens who grew up in the USSR. The elderly allow themselves to turn to “you” even to strangers - they usually take such a mentoring position in relation to those who are much younger than them. As if by default they consider themselves higher, they allow you to poke, point out, give unsolicited advice and so on.
Once I witnessed a situation where an elderly aunt stopped a young couple in one of the entrances and began, poking, telling the girl that she had bad hair, that they needed to be washed with some kind of nettle decoction. From the general awkwardness of the situation, it was noticeable that the aunt for the girl was not a relative and not even a good friend, but, nevertheless, she allowed herself to crawl into someone else's life with unsolicited advice.
Where did it come from? In the USSR, it was believed that a person does not have a personal life, and everything should be kept “in full view of the collective”, in consultation with the “collective mind”. Many people miss those times - the presence of personal space, inner world and their own opinion seems to them something bad, and living in the modern world with a high degree of respect for personal space is a great suffering for them - and it washes away their five cents somewhere. insert.
3. Putting off tasty “for later”, saving new things
Two rather strange Soviet habits that I also observe in some of my acquaintances - some goodies like sweets or chocolate bought in a store are not eaten (with all the desire) right away, but are put off “for later”. They are eaten after a while. I think the reason for the emergence of this habit was the Soviet shortage - in the USSR, if you managed to buy something “tasty”, then it was most often put off “for the holiday”, because before the holidays nothing “tasty” might not be sold. Now any products are available in stores at absolutely any time, but for some reason unknown to me, many continue to live the way they lived in the USSR.
Something similar happens with new clothes - many “people from the USSR” prefer not to put them on right away, but so that several days or even weeks have passed from the moment of purchase before the first “publication”. This is considered wrong. Why this happens is a big mystery to me.
4. Tea party with sweets and other nonsense
A purely Soviet household (culinary) habit is to arrange tea parties with various sweets and useless cookies. In the USSR, this was usually done at work in all sorts of research institutes, design institutes and statistical bureaus - lunch was held in the dining room, but something like an “evening tea party” was most often arranged right at the workplace - for this, there could be an aluminum electric kettle or coffee pot.
In the USSR, such a pastime was considered, as it were, legal idleness - people could chat for an hour and not deal with work issues, and formally this was considered a “legal tea break”, and migrated from work to home life. I think there is no need to explain that all these “tea parties” are equal to zero in terms of benefits for the body - neither biscuits, nor black tea, and even more so sweets are not healthy products.
Nevertheless, even to this day, in many "soviet" families, such tea drinking with cheap cookies is considered a normal option for meeting guests. As for me, fruits, or some homemade pie, look much nicer and more appropriate in such cases on the table, and all these Soviet purchased teas / cookies / sweets should remain in the distant past.
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5. Treatment of diseases with “folk” remedies
And the last habit is treatment with all kinds of “folk” medicine. In the "scientific" USSR, there was a whole layer of medical legends, tales and superstitions - about the treatment of cancer with the help of plantain, about the treatment of the consequences of a heart attack with lime blossom and about the prevention of all diseases with the help of the "Health" circle. Official Soviet medicine was rather poor - and the people began to look for some kind of "alternative means". During the years of perestroika, numerous books were even published on these topics with titles like “Sick, heal yourself!”, In which it was proved that plantain and a good mood are enough to treat any disease.
If you now meet an elderly fan of alternative medicine, then with a probability of 8 out of 10 he will also be a supporter of the USSR. For some reason, faith in some miraculous “folk” remedies gets along well with faith in the “great and mighty USSR”.
Do you have any of these habits? What do you think of them?
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