RE: Jūrmala, Latvia
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I think Soviet people felt Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were a sort of the West of the USSR – better services, better retail (it was different in each city and each republic of the USSR), cleaner streets, etc.
Secondly, it was a place of the music festival (of young pop music performers), probably the most famous in the USSR - I can recollect myself as I was a kid at the time (in Soviet Georgia) - Soviet TV was super boring, so people loved the Yurmala music festival. Doubt there would be Russian investments after the USSR collapsed if not this festival that created the glory of Yurmala as well as connections between Moscow money and local beneficiaries.
Yurmala festival, a TV program, 1987:
Watch the first 20 seconds – the TV intro is epic, lol. Soviet AF.
Gosh very Soviet, and the concert a bit like a "rigid" eurovision must say though that I do like a big band sound. Thanks for sharing.
I can understand the differences between the soviet republics, having visited them all except Moldova ( visiting in May) and Belarus ( whenever I can).
The marked differences in the Russian Federation to me were also noticeable, away from the big cities some of the villages were like stepping back in time.
I didn't know you were from Georgia!
Impressive!
When they were united as the USSR, there were big differences between them too. In Tula in Soviet Russia, food in stores was completely different - diverse milk products, different types of bread and pastry, we had not much in stores in Sukhumi but, at the farmers' market, we had goods from villages including fruits, veggies, mozarella (suluguni), smoked meat, yogurt (matsoni), etc. While fruits were a treasure in Russia.
We used to send parcels with food from Georgia to Russia, to our relatives, and received some cool food from them by post too, lol. And now we have almost the same food worldwide.
The USSR was such a vast size, half the world! I guess it would be so diverse in everything food, fashion architecture et al.
I have just read up on Sukhumi, it certainly has had some troublesome history.