Strange prohibitions from Soviet childhood

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

The bans that were in force in the USSR and extended to children and adolescents.

You can't look like everyone else

Now each school has its own approach to the form: somewhere it is, somewhere it is not, somewhere the basic principles are stipulated, and everything else is at the discretion of the parents.

In the USSR, school uniforms were mandatory for everyone, and they required the same color of fabric, and if someone had a dress or suit of the wrong shade, they could easily be asked to change it to a new one.

The color of the girls' bows was also discussed. On holidays, white ribbons were prescribed - to match the color of the apron. On weekdays, bows could be either black or brown. There could be no question of any red, blue or green ribbons, and there were no colored elastic bands for hair, even more so: they came into wide use only in the late 80s - early 90s.

By the way, long, loose hair was also prohibited, even a ponytail was not welcomed - only braids, only hardcore.

As for the boys, the student who “grew the hairs” could easily be sent to the director, and from there to the hairdresser.

You don't even need to mention make-up: pioneers and Komsomol members did not have to wear makeup. Both boys and girls had to cut their nails short.

Students with pierced ears were looked upon with disapproval, and only in the late USSR they stopped reprimanding for earrings. But all the same, it was recommended to go to school with modest “carnations”.

In short, the goal was to ensure that all students look the same and no one stands out from the crowd.

You can't write with the wrong hand or the wrong pen

It is now customary to say that left-handed children are endowed with special talents. In the USSR, right up to the early 1980s, left-handedness was considered a defect and they tried to eradicate it.

Left-handed children were subjected to forcible retraining. Moreover, the methods could be different - from gentle ones like constantly shifting a handle or spoon in the right hand to cruelly tying the left hand to the back of a chair or even hitting a “guilty” hand with a pointer. For teachers and parents, special guidelines were developed to help retrain left-handed children.

Why this was done is not very clear, but most often the retraining was explained by the fact that the whole world is focused on right-handedness and that left-handed children will find it uncomfortable to live in it, so they need to be corrected as early as possible, while they are not yet grown up. In addition, in those years when in Soviet schools they still wrote with pens, it was quite difficult to write text with your left hand and not smudge it.

By the way, about pens - it was important to write not only with the right hand, the prohibitions also extended to the “wrong” pens and “wrong” ink colors. Although ballpoint pens appeared in the USSR in the 50s and quickly became widespread, schoolchildren were officially allowed to write with them around the early 70s.

Prior to that, teachers insisted that children write with a pen, explaining that the ballpoint pen spoils the handwriting. True, even after the ban on the "ball" was lifted, it was possible to write exclusively with blue paste, and use green to highlight it. For the text written in black pen, there was a deuce, and even the order to rewrite the entire notebook again, but the phrase "Red pen - for the teacher" became the talk of the town.

You can’t not eat until the end, throw away bread and play with food

In the history of the USSR there was more than one period of famine, remember at least the notorious famine in the Volga region in the 1920s, the mass famine in different regions in 1932-1933, the Great Patriotic War and, first of all, the blockade of Leningrad.

Even in well-fed times, the situation with food in the USSR was, to put it mildly, not very good, no matter what the nostalgic for Soviet sausage might say.

The assortment in stores was extremely scarce, especially outside the capital: for almost everything that was more or less decent, you had to stand in line, the goods were not sold, but "thrown away." All this has developed a relationship to food and especially to bread as something sacred. Almost all of our contemporaries who lived in the USSR still remember, as a mantra, the Soviet slogans "Bread is for everything," "Bread for dinner in moderation, bread is our wealth, take care of it!"

Therefore, children from an early age were taught to finish eating every last crumb, leaving the bottom of the plate clean. If the child refused to eat, the parents could appeal to the besieged Leningrad or remember the starving children in Africa. In this case, usually the arguments that the child is not hungry, that he has already eaten half of the portion, or that he simply does not like the food, were not taken into account: food is sacred, you need to finish everything. Do not throw it away!

The thought of throwing away the bread was especially unacceptable, so rusks were dried from it, or at least fed to the birds, if only not in the trash can. And if one of the children at school was caught playing football with a piece of bread, then the guilty one would receive a serious reprimand and regular lectures about what this piece was worth during the war.

You cannot eat in the presence of those who do not eat

In the USSR, the absence of private property was declared and children were brought up in the spirit of "Everything in common, it is necessary to share everything that you have." And since no one had special wealth, people usually willingly shared food.

As a result of this Soviet upbringing, many people over 40-50 years old still cannot eat if someone is not eating next to them.

In the Soviet era, it was simply considered indecent, say, in the circle of classmates to get an apple or a candy out of your pocket and just start eating it - such a child was immediately declared a goon and a miser. If sweets or other treats were brought to the child in the pioneer camp, it was understood that he would definitely share with his comrades. These habits continued into adulthood. Remember the notorious meals in the reserved seat in Soviet films: the person who got the food automatically invites his fellow travelers to join, it could not be otherwise.

They often tried to feed even those who did not want to eat. For example, a child who went to fetch a friend and found him at the dinner table was sure to sit down at the same table, and no arguments like “I just ate at home” were not taken into account. Dined once - will have lunch again, only it will be healthier! Of course, there is nothing wrong with sharing and treating, but in the USSR it sometimes took exaggerated forms, while there was not much to share, and there were not so many opportunities to treat!