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theplushpairing t1_j104kf5 wrote

Fun fact, soviets needed brands to identify which factory made what. They experimented with removing all branding and quality went downhill fast because you didn’t know which factory was slacking or making inferior parts.

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an_actual_human t1_j10uzm7 wrote

Got a source for that?

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HedgehogSecurity t1_j1mhqno wrote

It's kinda fun.. I bought a gp5 gas mask and I can tell it was made in yaroslava in july-sept.. All from an R and 3 dots. Which is interesting.

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thepokemonGOAT t1_j0z5vxy wrote

I’m looking for a star but I don’t see one. I see something that looks like an anvil with the letters CCCP above it. Is it meant to be a star?

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daanikp OP t1_j0z62tc wrote

Yes your right, it's not a full star but that's it. I just wasn't sure what would be the proper name for it

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TacticalPopsicle t1_j0z8xeu wrote

The symbol is called a "patriot". Its a person who's head is only of the CCCP.

Kidding of course :)

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thiswilldefend t1_j10ksv5 wrote

its a freaking magnifying glass.... its not exactly something that ever needs to be replaced they are not exactly known for suddenly not working.

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j11wv69 wrote

The things that hold them are often not great quality. The glass falls out and breaks.

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SauerkrautJr t1_j10p8t5 wrote

But muh soviet quality

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An_Alone_Wolf t1_j12o9vl wrote

Yes, the USSR, known worldwide for quality craftsmanship (eyeroll)

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thundrstroke t1_j1f4sui wrote

There are people today still using Kaleshnikovs and Lada's produced in Soviet run factories.

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lardcore t1_j11fiu2 wrote

Heh, this brings back memories of the smell of burning... well, everything - paper, wood, etc. Bought one as a kid back in my Soviet childhood. It was black, made of plastic but looked identical to this one. See that indent on the inside of the ring, a bit above the handle? It could be used to unscrew the inner ring and remove the glass lens, though it would the usually end up chipped due to falling on hard surfaces.

Fun times.

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[deleted] t1_j0zmpgo wrote

[deleted]

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DiaMat2040 t1_j101svr wrote

r/buyitforlife would have had a blast on sowjet russia tbh. it does wonders for average product lifes when the profit incentive doesnt stand in the way

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professor__doom t1_j1134qr wrote

General build quality in the USSR was terrible.

Here's an article with a lot of academic sources discussing the overall low quality of Soviet consumer goods: https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-durable-goods/

If something was for military or government use, it was generally pretty good. Otherwise, you got whatever crap the local factory spat out, because there was no competition.

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CharlesDeBerry t1_j118pdr wrote

I find that in the past this was true, but many products I find today are made very very cheaply, even good quality brands I have bought before are breaking. It feels like we ended up with the same result just with more steps and more waste. So I am thinking maybe there needs to be some oversight in quality of consumer goods again to decrease waste and increase durability.

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11dzh7 wrote

Sure, but then everything you want to buy will be 2-3x more costly.

You can find long-lasting stuff without issue. It just costs a lot more. Durability costs money.

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j11xdkl wrote

I wouldn’t say “without issue.” You have to hack your way through mounds of junk and a high price is no guarantee of quality.

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11xxjn wrote

Not really. You either buy commercial or you can find which particular brands are fine.

High price doesn't necessarily mean high quality, but low price is a guarantee of low quality.

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j11y27w wrote

Surely you have read this sub enough to know that’s not true.

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11zium wrote

Yes, it is.

There's just a lot of people here who don't know what they are talking about pretending to be experts.

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professor__doom t1_j120egz wrote

It's not like consumer goods manufacturers are making insane margins. Single digit operating profit is pretty normal in that industry.

The question is just "do consumers want to pay more for quality," and the answer is virtually always "not really."

The bulletproof appliances at your grandparents' house cost a FORTUNE back then compared to what people earned: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-2012/

The cost of a washer/dryer set in 1959 represented 181.8 hours of work at the average hourly wage.

A washer/dryer set in 2012 represented 31 hours of work at the average hourly wage.

The newer model might only last 5-10 years instead of a lifetime. But businesses realized that that's fine for most consumers. Maybe even preferable - "I'll move before then; I don't want to pay extra so the next owner doesn't have to buy a washer and dryer."

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j11x8aq wrote

Not because there was no competition. There’s plenty of competition for the crap we are surrounded by today, always 50 different brands of everything.

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professor__doom t1_j12115l wrote

I'm talking about USSR products. In the USSR, there was genuinely no competition. No branding. Literally whatever your local factory churned out.

USA: Tyson, Purdue, oscar meyer, store brand chicken, etc. available nationwide

USSR: generic chicken minced meat.

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j121ct2 wrote

I meant the lack of competition wasn’t the problem. It was more about prioritizing resources.

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11dr86 wrote

No it would not have. My family in Hungary had soviet-made junk in the 80s.

It was all garbage. It's why it all disappeared as soon as the economies opened up. No one wanted a TV that takes 10+ minutes to warm up before it can show you a picture. No one wanted a deathtrap car made of cotton composite, no matter how easily it could be fixed with a screwdriver or how long it would last.

To be clear: they were capable of making quality stuff, but that was for export. That typically wasn't available for the average person.

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Fyvrfg t1_j10jhwy wrote

You're talking out of your ass

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DiaMat2040 t1_j10jr83 wrote

google planned obsolescence and why companies do it. also, why would a planned economy create cheap crap?

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Fyvrfg t1_j10kp0x wrote

It would create cheap crap so they could reach their quota. Soviet cars were pieces of shit you had to wait 5 years and more to buy. Even then everyone wanted a western one. Same thing with household appliances and clothes. "Soviet quality" is a myth carried by russian nationalists. Nobody wanted to make quality stuff, it just had to be acceptable

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BananaPeely t1_j10nohw wrote

The same incentive for planned obsolence drives quality

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BoilerButtSlut t1_j11x70b wrote

Planned obsolescence isn't a thing.

Source: am engineer.

To answer your question, they made junk because there wasn't any incentive to make anything good: the economy was closed. You couldn't import anything, so there was no competition. If there were only two TV makers, and no one got fired or lost their jobs because one TV was worse than the other, well it's just a race to the bottom to make it as shitty as possible.

I've used soviet-era stuff. My family lived with it for decades. It was garbage. It's not a coincidence it disappeared or broke shortly after everything opened up.

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daanikp OP t1_j0zn60t wrote

Most probably... I grew up in Israel and moved to Canada eventually so I'm not too familiar with current stuff there

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spizzywinktom t1_j10emig wrote

I learned about current in my physics 2 class. If you aren't an electrical engineer/technician, you didn't miss much.

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CleanAssociation9394 t1_j11x2of wrote

No, that happened after the break up of the USSR. He didn’t become president for about 9 years.

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Generation-WinVista t1_j101gkc wrote

I'm curious where precisely this was made. The USSR had some incredible accomplishments but since the war I've been learning that Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia to an extent were the "heavy lifters" of the USSR in many ways. Russia today has only a limited claim to any good that could be attributed to the USSR.

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SoItWasYouAllAlong t1_j10czbu wrote

You should ease off the propaganda, bud. The following is the list of USSR Nobel laureates in science. Of a total of 8, Lev Landau is the only one I can identify as non-Russian (I'm not sure about it - he was born in Baku, which was in the Russian Empire at the time, but today is in Azerbaijan so I thought I'd count him as non-Russian).

​ Physics:

  • 1958 Pavel Cherenkov, Ilya Frank, Igor Tamm
  • 1962 Lev Landau
  • 1964 Nikolay Basov, Aleksandr Prokhorov
  • 1978 Pyotr Kapitsa

Chemistry:

  • 1956 Nikolai Semenov
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linotype t1_j11b26a wrote

How did you make the leap from manufacturing prowess to Nobel prizes?

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SoItWasYouAllAlong t1_j11dakh wrote

How did you manage to misread "claim to any good" as "manufacturing prowess"? The expression "manufacturing prowess" does not appear in the discussion before you mentioned it.

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an_actual_human t1_j10vjd5 wrote

Landau was Jewish.

A very interesting character BTW, a Soviet Feynman of sorts.

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GumbertShpampboltz t1_j10wxng wrote

Oh my gosh, I still have one of these. Actually I had two different sizes. Smaller and bigger one

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back-in-1999 t1_j11gsh4 wrote

Oh, man. I remember my grandma had one of these exact ones. Felt like heavy-duty machinery piece in my hands back in the 80's.

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seeker_of_knowledge t1_j14uaug wrote

Aesthetically beautiful AND built like a tank. What a wonderful item.

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Cinemaphreak t1_j10xh2m wrote

>a state quality mark of the USSR which works as a certification of quality.

But does it denote quality....?. /s

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WernHofter t1_j0z4bek wrote

By any chance you are selling it?

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[deleted] t1_j0zb6ge wrote

[deleted]

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daanikp OP t1_j0zcakk wrote

No cracking and discolouring of plastic. Turning mechanism has no rust. I just appreciate vintage stuff given what we have available to us today

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