Hacker News Reader

Comment by glogla | Hacker News Reader

As far as I know, the ones cozy with the regime were cared for (well beyond normal people) while underground artists worked odd jobs like night receptionists, janitors, boiler room operators or were in prison. (edit: also uranium mines for the ones who pissed off the state)

Those tend to get overlooked by people longing for the old days.

View on HN

For what it's worth, that's what the vast majority of artists do today. Spending most of your time and energy doing stuff that doesn't make money doesn't typically lead to a comfortable lifestyle.

Was Tarkovsky, for example, cozy with the regime?

There were also a plenty of 'underground' artists, who had a day job of being a book illustrator, and did some stuff on the side, which they only would show to the close circle.

perhaps if the artist is cozy with the regime they cant be critical of the regime?

can parents support their child that is an artist with their income? or the state knows everything about the artist (her age, fit to work so on) and will compulsorily draft them to work?

It was illegal not to work in the Soviet Union. There was even a name for such people who weren't officially employed - "tuneyadets".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitism_(social_offense)

Young people were assigned jobs on finishing schooling. There was not much "looking for a job". Unless you had the right contacts, the closest thing to deciding where to work at was to pick a higher education - if you picked automotive engineering, you'd end up in a different place than if you picked medicine or something.

>> young people were assigned jobs on finishing schooling

Could you provide evidence for this?

"Job by distribution" was no secret and it is a well-known thing among people from post-soviet countries. Graduates were obliged to work at assigned place, usually for three years.

It's hard to find English source. You could try machine translation of this wikipedia page [1] - but that says it was mandatory only in 1951 to 1959 and then it was changed to a recommendation.

I know my uncle was supposed to go to one company but then that didn't work our for some reason and he had to look for a job himself, which was supposed to be rare. That would be early 1980s.

[1]: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Um%C3%ADst%C4%9Bnka

Reply on news.ycombinator.com