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Comment by Onavo | Hacker News Reader

> They had been trained, from an early age, to love mathematics more intensely.

Nonsense, sounds like post-hoc rationalization. Maybe talk to some actual Slavic people. Sure the Russians had "math clubs" and "chess clubs" but it wasn't as if the US didn't have RadioShack and garage/ham culture. Talk to some of the older generations that still remember the Berlin Wall and you might also understand why so many women from the ex USSR states are in STEM while it's the opposite in the West. TL;dr: STEM was a quick way to prosperity, the eastern bloc countries were poor, and engineers are useful even in a communist regime. They studied math because there wasn't much else they couldn't have done.

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Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker.

I'm not joking.

But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor. This was very much a cultural thing, pushed by the government (engineers are useful!).

Another thing, there was a huge societal pressure to excel at school. It was common for parents to check their children's marks every day.

There's a very famous picture about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Marks_Again - a kid knows that his parents are going to check his marks and berate him.

And this attitude was everywhere. For example, getting low marks and then overcoming them was a theme for a lot of iconic Soviet cartoons and stories ("The country of undone homework", "Vovka in a Faraway Kingdom", etc.). I have not seen anything similar in the US.

> Hah. In the USSR an average engineer earned less money than an average worker.

But in the USSR, your ability to buy something was generally not limited by the amount of money you had. It was limited by whether you'd be allowed to buy the thing for other reasons.

> But STEM was seen as far more prestigious than manual labor.

Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's?

> Sounds like an engineer's money may have been worth much more than a laborer's?

Not in general. It heavily depended on individual circumstances.

For example, machinists could earn a bit more money by using factory tools (lathes, drills, etc.) to make replacement parts for cars. And a lot of workers were stealing some of the product their factory was making. There was a common attitude of "everything around is common, so everything's around is mine".

On the other hand, engineers had more career perspectives. They were more likely to be promoted to managerial positions.

That depends on what you are buying. Some things worked like health insurance in US, some others weren't. Housing you don't buy at all, a car you need to know a secret way to jump the queue or be in a right position. Fancy stuff -- you need to have friends who can sail and bring it to you.

But there was plenty of stuff you just buy, from air plane tickets to beer and meat.

> getting low marks and then overcoming them

Do I understand https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrS6z4tUtI correctly to mean that it wasn't possible to join a scouting troop without good marks?

It was done by individual schools, there were no hard-and-fast rules.

Straight "A" students did get some additional rewards, such as trips to summer camps in Crimea.

Where they might have the opportunity to make music videos with famous singers? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NepI7BTYpnY

Thanks for the correction!

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOnxu62nz9g

EDIT: wait a moment, now I'm confused: if her (Lena's?) marks weren't an issue for induction, why does it matter that her friend got jealous and ruined her test?

(or did I get this story right, but it wasn't necessarily a general all-Union thing, just that in this specific case a 2 would have been problematic for her troop/school/family?)

in case anyone else were interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NlnJsCEzSM "The country of undone homework"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpygndkMSWA "Vovka in a Faraway Kingdom"

(I was already shocked that one of the leading roles in the romcom Три плюс два was a physicist, but then again Young Sheldon might provide evidence that pop culture in the Old Country is more STEM-accepting now than it had been in my day?)

EDIT: I love how the exclamation point cries out "Halt!" and the question mark demands "Where [do you think you're going]?" (and the doodle of Kyzya)

EDIT2: Vovka needs much more russian-specific cultural background than Homework. I recognise the golden fish (Только ты — рыба моей мечты), but not any of the other tales. I'll probably eventually run across filmstrips explaining each/each family of tales, but if anyone would care to give pointers to specific ones, I wouldn't mind any spoilers!

Is the "sam" of the samovar the same as the "sam" of "sdelai sam"?

> Is the "sam" of the samovar the same as the "sam" of "sdelai sam"?

Yes. It literally translates as "self" in "yourself/himself/myself", and in compound words it can be translated as "auto" (which also means "self" in Greek).

This is not true at all. Communists made a big emphasis on stem over law and classics, and most communist leaders had stem background.

In communist state prestige is money.

Universities in eastern bloc were really elite places. Only low single digits percent of people were able to enroll. Also majority of degrees were in STEM, education or medicine as they were deemed useful for the state. To get degree outside of STEM, political background of your family was checked and things like having family member (even say uncle) who emigrated outside of country or having grandparents who owned businesses or farm decades ago will get you discarded. So the smart kids usually have very limited path forward, so STEM it was (if you were lucky)

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