They Steal Everything! 1980 Secret Report That Shocked the Soviet Government #USSR

Life in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. What was going in on in the USSR in the late 1970s?
A Soviet Government investigation into the problems with wide-spread stealing in the country.
My books about arriving in America is available on my site:
"Ushanka Show" is a collection of stories about life in the USSR.

[UshankaShow]

Hello, comrades!
My name is Sergei. I was born in the USSR in 1971. Since 1999 I have lived in the USA.
Ushanka Show channel was created to share stories as well as my own memories of everyday life in the USSR.
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[noco]

I guess they weren't joking about the workers seizing the means of production.

[olmostgudinaf]

There was a joke about a Western delegate being taken around the country. He was allowed to speak to the locals, and so he did. To his confusion, each conversation followed the same pattern:
- How much do you earn?
- 150 rubles a month
- How much do you spend?
- 250 rubles
- So where do you get the extra 100 rubles from?
- Докладываем ("dokladivayem")

The joke is based on a pun: dokLadivayem ("we are adding extra, topping up") versus dokRadivayem ("we are stealing extra").

[wackyruss]

I worked as a teacher in Kazakhstan and there was a series of thefts at our international school. Huge sewing machines from the Home Economics class were taken among other things including laptops and desktop computers. The thieves turned out to be a ring of local security guards! They sold the sewing machines to the tailor shop in the Dina Bazaar, the largest Bazaar in Atyrau, Kazakhstan! They were all fired.

[medic]

A hospital I used to work for collected outdated but still functional medical supplies and equipment and send it to our "sister city" in Russia, instead of throwing it out. The guy who coordinated it said he was told that employees (most likely) would steal seriously expensive equipment. They would come in for shift change and the heart monitor, ventilator, or suction machine would be missing. This was mid to late 90s...tough times then..

[tom]

We were told stories of trains loaded with military vehicles of all kinds being sent to bases in Germany and upon arrival were missing tires, battery's mirrors, wipers, fuel and oil. The guard were stripping the items and selling them off the train to locals for food, vodka, beer, transistor radios at every stop along the way.

[justdustino]

A good English equivalent to the word nesunstvo would be to "pinch"
or "pinching". That is when it seems ok because you are taking from work.
The military code phrase for "pinching^" is
"the government discount".
I worked for a major defense contractor in the shipbuilding sector and I saw alot of theft and corruption.

[mattanderson]

12:30-‘Mobilize the masses, then everything will get stolen.’ Great perception by the ‘Central Comedy.’

[munxcorp]

My grandad worked at a bakery and people there suspected that one guy there was a KGB snitch. They wanted to get rid of him so the most simple way to do it was to catch him stealing. Since everyome knew how, where and when to sneak stuff out, that was pretty simple and the dude was quickly caught and "voluntaraly" quit (basicallybwas given a choice to quit or be fired).

[aftpi]

People who can't get what they need will get what they need, if you catch my drift. No matter the system, no matter the year..

[Matt_The_Hugenot]

My home town in the UK makes helicopters. In the 70s workers there stole expensive aerospace metal sheets and tubes for their own projects or made stuff for themselves at work. One guy even made himself a sidecar from the tail section of a helicopter.

[badnewswade]

I read once that in the 1970s, people in Britain used to paint their houses with paint from the car plant where they worked, but this is mental! The black economy must have been huge - I'd love to see more on this topic!

[drgeorgek]

I love it when comrade Sergei pronounces “Central Committee”... it actually sounds like “Central Comedy”, an apt description. Maybe he’s being deliberate and the joke is on me ... 🤔🙄🤦🏻‍♂️😂

[michaelboyd]

This was a very informative video! I was amazed to hear about the problems with cars, I knew cars and car parts were rare in the USSR, but that was incredible.

Thanks for another long but interesting video, comrade. I wish I lived in a country where it was possible to steal a tractor from work, hehe.

[ivarkich]

I was 17 by 1991. And, I knew the Soviet workers' practices not only from my parents' experience, but even from one of my own. That time every worker stole from his workplace. They even did so without any remorse. The moral considerations were following (at least, in Latvia): The Soviet communist regime occupied and robbered our country, they expropriated all the private land property, all private factories, even small ones, they sent our parents and grandparents to gulags. They stole even our future. We could be like Finland, if we were not occupied. So, with such considerations everyone believed having a moral right to steal from the Soviet economy as much as possible.

There were also another banal reasons. For example, empty stores. There were constant shortages, and many important things (for example, building materials, gardening tools) were not available in stores even for money, so stealing (or buying, or bartering from a fellow who can steal them for you from his workplace) was only way to get them.

How about punishing about this? Stealing was so widespread that it was not possible to punish even 10% of those thieves. So, you could be punished only in three cases: 1) if you are so gready that you cannot stop yourself and steal in extreme amounts; 2) if you chatter and talk big too much about how you steal; 3) you have another faults towards bosses, which are not crimes by themselves (abuse, verbal assault), but they may remind you about your stealing.

[olmostgudinaf]

We had a saying in Czechoslovakia, "who does not steal, steals from the family".

[NeverlandSystemAngel]

I love your personal experiences and insights- it adds such a great authenticity and interesting expression of the things you talk about.

[Roddy]

Also you absolutely nail the explanations and delivery of the information, never talking down to your audience or leaving them confused.

The humor is also spot on, especially tricky as I think 90% of Soviet jokes told by westerners are really cringy.

[wilco]

My thought on tractor and combine parts is that the managers and upper echelon folks that were involved in managing the collective farms would lose their bonuses if they didn't make their goals and if you can't get parts to fix your machines you pay someone else to find the part's to make your goals to get your bonuses..

[frydemwingz]

When I worked at a grocery store for a few months, I watched a training video that said about 75% of the shrinkage is from employees. That really stuck with me. At first I stole food just to eat at work because I only made about 6 bucks an hour after taxes and I was really poor. I then graduated to stealing stuff to take home like stuff to make sandwiches, then on my last day, I stole a huge commercial bag of hot sauce and a huge bag of chicken lol. Then I thought man, it's at LEAST 75%.