Romance and love in a Soviet way, or how young people used to meet and go on dates

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

As in our time, Soviet citizens also faced an important problem - to find among the population of a huge country their destiny, a soul mate. And if now there are social networks and various dating sites on which people correspond, communicate, make an appointment, then in the USSR there was nothing like this. Therefore, our grandparents, mothers and fathers had to exert much more strength.

The lack of mobile phones with loads of applications and other gadgets made people completely different. They were much simpler, opening, kinder, to some extent. It was considered quite normal, commonplace, to meet at the train station, on the platform in the subway, in public transport, in line for scarce goods or tickets for a movie, concert, theater performance, while relaxing at a resort and, of course, on business trips. There were also dances and discos, "apartment houses", where young people spent their leisure time, had fun, danced, got to know each other and began to meet. A simple question for a girl: "Can I meet you?" was commonplace and did not frighten the fair sex.

How young people met in the USSR.

In the USSR, we also met at various events, for example, during the New Year's Eve, at someone's birthday party, at friendly gatherings, where other people were invited. Student weddings are a separate column. For several years, young people closely communicated - they went to classes, lived in one or nearby hostels, spent their free time together and went to the collective farm for potatoes. We have all seen the most popular ways and places of the Soviet "pickup" in the famous film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears." Here, three girls from the periphery are trying to catch hold of the capital, using various ways to achieve the goal. The picture “Where is the nofelet?” Covers the topic quite well.

Of course, there was another option - office romances. Feelings arose between employees of organizations and offices when people worked for a long time on a joint project, worked in the same area.

Often, girls who did not have enough attention from the opposite sex walked around Central Park in the evening in the hope that their gentlemen would come up to them with an offer to get to know each other.

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, procuring was prohibited at the legislative level, the punishment for which was spelled out in the Criminal Code. But already in the seventies a new heading appeared in the newspapers with the name "Dating". It printed ads for men and women, mostly aged 30+, who were desperate to find a life partner on their own. The content of the advertisements submitted by the women was approximately as follows: “Woman, 31, b. 157 cm, h. 55 kg will get acquainted with m / h with living space, without a / p for serious relationships. " Then time passed while waiting and receiving letters from interested men. Unfortunately, often, potential husbands were behind bars, and in most cases nothing good came of it. There were also adventurers, men dialing a phone number at random. The most interesting thing is that some of them managed to find their future wife in such an unusual way.

Having exchanged letters, and then phone numbers, or having received a phone as a result of a random fleeting meeting, the young people went on a date. Sometimes events developed more rapidly, and a guy and a girl went on a date as soon as they met. Traditionally, the meeting place was chosen somewhere in the central part of the city. In the capital, usually a guy with a bouquet was waiting for his girlfriend near the monument to Gogol or Pushkin.

After the meeting and the presentation of flowers, the girl was invited for a walk in the nearby park. Here young people could enjoy sweet soda from the nearest machine, delicious ice cream, ride a Ferris wheel or other standard attraction, walk along the alleys. The meeting ended on a park bench, where in the shade of trees under the cover of the gathering twilight, the lovers for the first time timidly kissed. And it also happened that an attempt with a kiss turned into a slap in the face for an unlucky gentleman.

Some guys invited girls to the cinema for a not-so-good movie with a half-empty auditorium in the hope of buying tickets in the last row. Another popular summer meeting place is the cafeteria. The institution served delicious ice cream, which was necessarily watered with syrup on top.

Basically, lovers belonged to the same age category, plus / minus several years. the Soviet Union did not welcome the large age difference between men and women. A middle-aged professor who married a student, or a factory director who married a secretary, also met. But it was rather an exception to the rule. This is in our time "unequal marriages" almost a regularity. Do not forget about fictitious marriages, which were concluded with one purpose - to obtain a residence permit in Leningrad or, for example, in Moscow.

As a rule, the relationship with the beloved was limited to a walk, in which the couple held arm or hand, and modest, by our standards, kisses. The guy was not always allowed something more before the wedding. It was not so much about the girls' chastity as about the lack of a place for an intimate meeting. In the USSR, the search for premises suitable for this purpose was catastrophically tight. Here, too, the total deficit for everything, including living space, played a role.

You can't invite your girlfriend home. Here mom and dad, brothers and sisters, often also a grandmother or a grandfather, or even both, live here. And it's also good if this is not a communal apartment and there are no all-seeing and all-knowing neighbors. Hotels were also not an option - the "image of morality" of the Soviet citizen was watched especially vigilantly. If there was no marriage stamp in the passports, representatives of different sexes were not accommodated in one number. In addition, vacant hotel rooms, especially if the city was large, were very rare.

Perhaps the simplest and only option is the apartment of a friend or friend. By the way, this could make great money. And on barter it was possible to make good money. For example, to receive as gratitude for the service rendered, one of the scarce goods. The American version (rear car seat) was not available to most Soviet couples. They simply did not have a car - an expensive purchase that was difficult to carry out. To buy a car, you had to wait in line for years.

As for the hostels, there was a "morality police" in the person of strict watchmen. They tirelessly made sure that the limiters and students living here did not bring strangers with them. Some got out of the situation by secretly making their way through a window on the second floor. That morality was reliably protected, rooms in Soviet hostels were designed for two or three people, sometimes more. It could be problematic to come to an agreement with the neighbors for a walk for a couple of hours. The lovers had more chances if they lived in the same dorm building, but not everyone was so lucky.

Lack of knowledge about contraception was also a major obstacle to close relationships. And if the inhabitants of large cities were more or less savvy in this matter, then village girls or those who came from small district towns generally knew little about ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Absolutely everyone was afraid to "bring in the hem", because for an unmarried woman in Soviet times it was a shame. To avoid risk, they simply refused to be close to their gentlemen.

During the Perestroika period, a lot began to change, including moral principles and people's values. They have become more liberal. The girls got pragmatism and practicality. Their attention was attracted by the "tough" guys - the so-called "new Russians" and businessmen. The boyfriends got what they wanted much faster, often already on the first date, more precisely after it.