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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime. Sure they could and did send people off to the camps for weird [political and crimes against the state] offenses, but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

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This is one of the myths that a lot of former Soviet Union citizens believe themselves. Unfortunately, crime levels isn't a thing that can be accurately reported from your own experience - you have to rely on some objective outside measure. And while any crime-related news (or any bad news, for that matter) were heavily suppressed, soviet police was equally reluctant to open investigations, because of statistic-based reward system in place.

Independent investigations now show that there was actually a lot of everyday crime. Even serial killers were just as common in USSR as they were in US, I've read a whole book about the notorious cases - but while in US media elevated them to celebrity status, in USSR the whole thing was heavily suppressed, and most people only heard rumours.

Please, don't perpetuate soviet propaganda.

Thanks for the insight. It gives a more balanced perspective into the SU.

Sure, you could in Soviet Union meet some nice guys under the bridge or in the park selling you a brick for 50 rubles when you salary was like 160 rubles a month. I heard of nobody refusing to buy it. Is it a crime? Drinking in a bar in foreign city with some stranger would end with clonidine poisoning. Stealing from workplace was that common, that it wasn’t defined as crime anymore. People were so poor in general, that there was nothing to steal from each other.

> Sure, you could in Soviet Union meet some nice guys under the bridge or in the park selling you a brick for 50 rubles when you salary was like 160 rubles a month.

That sounds utterly horrifying. It’s amazing how people were able to survive in those conditions.

Domestic violence was so absolute norm that there was a saying "Бьёт – значит любит", "he beats, means he loves". Rapes, domestic and not. So many of them. Corruption related crimes. Everywhere. Education, Health, Finance, you name it. There was not a single sector in the country that was not affected by corruption.

Also, don't forget that USSR is not only Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev and few other big cities. Rural USSR was very poor, and full of all sorts of crimes. Life in SU was not rosy as they might have tried to describe.

Edit: Formatting.

Property crimes cannot really exist if everyone is very poor and everything is state owned. Risk and effort required needs to be appropriately rewarded for people to consider it.

If someone breaks into my government supplied house and takes my government supplied mattress, leaving me with no mattress, isn't that still property crime? Just because I was supplied that mattress for "free" doesn't mean that I'll get another one any time soon.

Meanwhile the criminal that took my mattress is sleeping in luxurious comfort on two mattresses, so he got his reward.

On what basis do you think there was no everyday crime in Soviet Union?

Having lived in SU there absolutely was normal crime - violent and nonviolent. Levels of crime were presumably like everywhere else.

Why wouldn't there be property crime?

There absolutely was everyday crime:

Burglary Stealing (personal and state property) Hooliganism (always a favorite in the news) Frauds / Confidence Games Firearms and Narcotics related offenses were less prevalent than in the US Rapes (not mentioned loudly) Sex related crimes in general were suppressed in the news Murders (also rarely heard at the time but they were there)

only one I cant find is Carjacking.

There were also economic crimes which even had a special KGB section to deal with them in addition to police.

-Meaning large scale stealing within state enterprises(ie stealing from the corporation that you work for) by higher up directors -Various black markets / money exchanges -Illegal enterprises down to midnight video services

In fact during that time official newspapers did not cover the murders as much as they did cover the lesser property crimes and performed various awareness rising functions.

Now with the opening of police archives a lot of more brutal crimes have been brought up.

>property crimes and such were close to non existent.

Whaaaaaaaat? Well, according to official statistics.

From my father's side, we had relatives living in a closed down military city, but they were totally paranoid about break-ins during "Peak Brezhnev." Break ins were 50/50 annual events.

Street poverty existed as well, just not in big cities, where classless were either branded as substance abusers and locked away in jail, or being labeled as mentally ill and locked away in jail.

The regime tried really, really hard to make it appear that there were something wrong with the classless people, and "you keep your head low and everything be alright"

Huh. Interesting. Maybe it depended on where you lived. The people I’ve talked to from the former USSR were all city folk, West of the Urals

Ukraine had plenty of crime under the USSR as well. My mom was shocked when arriving in Canada that people kept their doors unlocked or even open for most of the day in the suburbs.

> Break ins were 50/50 annual events.

It really depends on the city and region. For example some of the people I went to school with ended up as serial burglars and pickpocket. Most came from broken homes with alcoholic or otherwise absent parents. Many were caught, sent to prison, then back out again presumably becoming even more hardened criminals. Others from the same school though ended up as software devs in the West, accountants and CEOs.

Going by personal narratives you can basically support either point of view. I've lived in more dangerous places in US in general, yet I've experience more personal harassment and bullying in the Soviet Union in the 80's than here in US. It's just hard to compare overall without good statistics.

> The one thing that you didn’t get in the Soviet Union was everyday crime, well, what we understand as crime....but property crimes and such were close to non existent.

This isn't about the Soviet Union, but another Communist country. I recently visited China, and was surprised to see that literally every apartment window had aftermarket bars installed (and every enclosed balcony was surrounded by a cage), even 20 stories up. Apparently there are buglers that will repel down from the top of a tall apartment building, so no apartment was safe from them. On buses and public places, the locals I was with were constantly warning to be on the lookout for pickpockets and thieves on public transit.

I don't know what the official crime statistics say there, but the perception of property crime risk was certainly very high.

True that, for China. When I visited China, Beijing / Shanghai felt safer than San Francisco, especially when walking at the night.

I agree it may “feel” safer, but a lot of that, in my experience, comes down to not knowing what you don’t know about a place. For example, I would say, “oh, yeah, such and such place seems alright, not bad, I walked around and felt fine.” Locals would say something like, what, that’s nuts, we don’t go there unless we’re looking to get knifed, stay away from that area, it’s trouble”. Now, I also know that locals are prone to exaggeration too, but just goes to show that as an outsider we may enjoy naive safety.

What you are saying is true in general, but I experienced both sets of places as a tourist. So for me, "not knowing what you don't know" applied to both sets of places.

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