Sunday Bath. Inconvenient Truth About Hygiene In the Soviet Union
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Hygiene in the USSR. How often did Soviet people shower? Stories about life in the Soviet Union.
0:00 Intro
1:12 Discussion about hygiene in the Soviet Union based on personal experience.
4:44 Contrasting living conditions between city and village in the past.
8:42 Soviet families had infrequent showering habits, which was emphasized during orientation for a trip to the United States.
12:55 A person in the Soviet Union had misconceptions about deodorant and armpit hygiene, leading to awkward situations.
17:15 Personal hygiene challenges in the Soviet Union.
Recap by Tammy AI
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"Ushanka Show" is a collection of stories about life in the USSR.
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I grew up in a very small town in the USA. Don't feel ashamed. Our family also only took a bath once a week. In our case, it was more about having to pay for water. There aren't many jobs in a small town, so my parents did little odd jobs. For example, yard work, or serving at someone's party, and sometimes my mom did sewing for someone.
“Doesn’t even look Russian”. Hahahaha. Thanks for the best laugh I’ve had all week.
Funny thing about that ignorant comment(not your comment, original poster) is comrade Sergei has never claimed to be a Russian. A Soviet Ukrainian American hybrid, yes.
Russian?
No I think not.
@@rufusray Right. He doesn’t look Russian to me either, but he sure as hell looks Ukrainian. It just cracked me up for some reason. Like someone would go to all the trouble of being an imposter Ukrainian.
She think the stereotypical Soviet citizens look like Brezhnev.
Thanks for saying everyone looks alike, I've met some young people from Russia a few years ago one was named Mischa he was very tall for a young guy with blonde hair and blue eyes he was so nice his friend was very quiet and of average height and was Asian descent and he was friendly they worked with my 3rd''s niece's baby daddy where we use to live they were with the exchange program from May to September young people came to the USA to work I meet a ton of nice people and only one arrogant one from Belize.
@@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647 i cant tell, neither all Russians or Ukrainians look the same. Maybe they mean he doesnt look Slavic? All Russians/Ukrainians dont look/arent Slavic either though
It is actually very interesting how similar this was in Eastern Germany. We usually had hot running water nearly everywhere, but we also only took a bath or showers like twice a week, on the other days we just filled the washbasin with warm water and just washed the body parts that get smelly quickly. We also weren’t that afraid to eat food that fell on the ground, at least if it wasn’t in a public place. A sausage that fell off the grill was just rinsed with water, reheated and eaten just as if nothing had happened.
Maybe that’s why studies done after the collapse of the wall stated East-Germans had less allergies and went ill less frequently. We thoroughly trained our immune systems.
This was my life in rural Canada in the same period. Though I did have two pairs of shoes.
Plus a shower everyday with heavy soap outside of summer is absurd, besides a workout day
@@AHMEDGAIUSROME welcome to Brazil. We shower multiple times a day, sometimes
Das war im Westen bis in die 70er hinein auch nicht anders.
@@TwistersSK8 Maybe in humid cities ?
This describes hygiene from most of Europe during that period actually.
Exactly. People who grew up in the Soviet Bloc were isolated, and they though the west was a wonderland where everything was perfect.
LMAO about the summer break vacation. Back in Poland our father sent my brother and I on "vacation" to his childhood village every summer. We hated it as kids, but looking back today, it was a great time. We got to help harvest potatoes, bail hey, drive a tractor, etc.
👍🤣It was your parents vacation break.
My grandmother was born in 1900, and grew-up in rural Minnesota. Your description of hygiene habits in the villages kind of reminds me of some of the things she described to me from her childhood.
It called being "Nose Blind" when your nose become acclimated to the prevailing odors of your environment.
In Australia most people shower every day. I dug graves for 18 years. Usually 2 per day. All graves dug by hand. Short handled digging spade.We would shower 6-8 times per day as we had to attend and supervise all burials. It all depends on circumstances.Now I’m retired and live alone I rarely shower more than once a week. As for changing clothes. Most stuff I do now, like grocery shopping and doctors appointments, I just wear my dressing gown, pyjamas and slippers. Never had any negative reaction on my style of dressing. Old people can get away with anything, god bless us.
Interesting. Looks like the whole Soviet block didn't care much about hygiene in the 70s and 80s. I remember that around that time we usually showered once a week, mostly after we went to the countryside to work in the field. I also have the same experience regarding the public transportation (i.e. people didn't smell that much). I think the hygiene culture came after 1989 when the Soviet block fell and we were introduced to western products. We didn't care much before that. I'm from Bulgaria.
A very large part of the world's population only showered once a week back then.
It is better for climate and nature to shower once a week.
@@Mario_N64I think you are correct
When I was in high school in the 80s we had exchange students from Novosibirsk. They were all so attractive, and yet they all had such bad BO! They hardly ever showered according to the kids who were in their exchange families. I guess it didn't bother them but it was definitely noticeable to us.
When I was in high school there was a family who had moved to the USA in the 80s because of the Islamic revolution. The kids adapted to the lifestyle pretty fast but the parents had a difficult time with it. I felt bad for the son who was a year younger than me because his mother was a substitute teacher for the school system. She always had terrible BO and everyone gave him a hard time for it.
It is better for climate and nature to shower once a week.
@@lukdhguirg7121 You probably smell bad.
In the early 70's here in the UK we had a weekly bath! There was no deoderant we had talcum powder! However in a few years time we showered every day which shows how the Soviet Union stagnated
The weekly bath routine was the same in Ireland.
Exactly. This was done all over the world. It was just the way things were.
I'm 43 but we had a arga and could only have a bath ever other day only had a gas boiler in 87 I remember having a bath in the sink till I was to big
14:04 It's hilarious that you kept your distance from people who had deodorant stains, in case it was catching! 😂
In the rural midwest in the 50s and into the 60s, washing and changing of clothing was a little more like what you describe than it became later. I didn't learn to shower every day until I went to college in the mid 60s. Although it wasn't a completely new concept, as we would shower after high school gym classes and sports activities. In the 50s there was a lot more odor of people than there was later.
I shower when i smell there is no way i will shower every day in winter.
Those voiceovers never get old. Love your content. I'm a history buff. Keep doing what you're doing!
Thank you!
My Grandad used to take off his shirt and wash under his arms when he'd been doing some work in the garden. One day when my cousin was around 6 years old, she saw our Granddad without his shirt on, and he had a bit of a beer belly. She asked him, "Granddad, are you having a baby?" Luckily, he had a sense of humour about it! He just laughed and told my Nan!
I live in America and have taken a bath in a tub on the porch that water had to be carried to. There was also no power and the road was a creek bed that was dry most of the year. We were dirty but well fed and had fun daily. When everyone stinks, nobody notices.
I knew about Yuri Gagarin even as a child living in the USA because I had a big interest in astronomy and space travel. The Soyuz mission occurred when I was eight years old, for example. But I didn't know that Gagarin was only 5 ft. 2 in. (157 cm). I'm ten inches taller than that and I'm not a giant. It was simpler to engineer smaller space capsules so it made sense that the cosmonauts/astronauts would be short.
I appreciate his honesty. Most Europeans don't talk about this subject of rare bathtaking that Americans have known about.
01:04 🚿 Hygiene was promoted in the Soviet Union, emphasizing regular showers, handwashing, and brushing teeth.
02:55 🛀 City dwellers in the USSR had better access to hygiene facilities due to running water, contrasting with rural areas where access was limited, impacting cleanliness.
04:32 🏠 The Soviet dream focused on apartments for amenities like hot and cold running water, differing from the American dream of owning a suburban house.
05:42 🏞 Life in the countryside meant limited access to bathing facilities, leading to less frequent washing routines, especially for children spending summers there.
07:30 🌅 Daily habits like teeth brushing were taught, but evening routines varied, with a focus on morning facial washing with cold water.
08:54 🚿 Weekly bathing was common among Soviet families, often on Sundays, with baths more prevalent than showers due to convenience.
09:50 👕 Changing clothes was emphasized, even if not washing them daily, to maintain cleanliness.
12:36 🚫 Deodorants were not widely available in the USSR, and daily showers were not the norm, contributing to body odor issues, especially in public transportation.
14:18 🤢 People might become desensitized to body odors in their environment, not noticing them until experiencing different environments.
17:35 🧴 Limited shampoo options meant using soap for both body and hair, with early experiences leading to issues like dandruff from unfamiliar products.
18:18 👚 Clothing items were scarce, leading to methods like visually inspecting or smelling clothes to determine if they needed washing.
19:00 🧖♂ Villages often had communal saunas (banyas) used weekly for bathing, with some families constructing their private saunas for hygiene purposes.
The business of daily bathing and washing clothing after one use is a modern thing. One or two generations back and people bathed once a week and wore clothing until the collar had a dirty ring or was visibly soiled or stinky.
When i was a child, we had to tote water to the house for drinking and cooking and making ice. The house had running hot and cold water, but it ws rusty water w high mineral content. I knew my mom sometimes sponge washed my dad, using a basin, because he didn't like bathing in the rusty water. They told me, it was common in their early lives for people to bathe that way in rural Mississippi. 1920s 30s 40s 50s.
The most favorite pastime of the children of the camp was really swimming in the river. After breakfast, after cleaning the territory, all the detachments went together to the river. We had to go there for about 15 minutes: first through the forest, then past the camp "young railwayman", then past the camp "Berezka", then we walked through Sosnovy Bor and here you have a gorgeous view from a small cliff to Ishim. Our river is not too big, about 50 m wide, but below, under the cliff, there was a beautiful beach, where we all camped safely down. The bathing place was fenced off with a picket fence, and no one was allowed to swim outside of its territory. And yet I had one privilege. Swimming for all the detachments took place according to the scheme - 10 minutes on the shore, 5 minutes in the water, and the children did not like it too much, because the water was still cool, and only in 5 minutes you got used to the temperature, as the whistle sounded and everything was amicable had to go ashore and bask in the hot sand.
And only the first detachment was allowed to swim as much as it pleased. I was allowed to do the same. My dad told the counselor: "Let her flop, nothing will happen to her." My personal bathing schedule has been the envy of all the kids.
From my mum's experience in Czechoslovakia, she lived in the countryside, they had running water with an electric pump taking water from the well. The majority of the people had electric boilers (there was no methane) but her family had a wood boiler until mid 80s, and they would also take a bath once a week (usually friday afternoon/evening).
"11:48" Look at that cute chubby cheek Ushanka. Take care.
Before running water people used to only bathe one day a week on Saturdays (in western Europe and the USA) because you had to go to church on Sundays. It was from oldest to the youngest so the dad always went first and then mom and then the older kids and the last one to get the bath would be the baby and that’s where we got the saying of not throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Also now we are being told that it’s not good to shower or bathe everyday because you get rid of all your natural oils and stuff but also because you don’t need to bathe everyday unless you have a job that calls for it (like blue collar jobs) Plus, there is a limited supply of freshwater in the world I believe they said that freshwater only makes up 2.5 % of the whole world’s supply of water and most of that is in ice caps while the rest is either brackish or saltwater. They are also saying we could be out of freshwater to meet energy demands by 2040. We need to preserve freshwater.
Your channel is one of the best channels ever to exist
Years ago, I worked with one lady whose sister was married to a Russian man. She told me that when his family visited for a week, he had to keep reminding them to take a shower each day, for which the family found quite odd.
That story about the arm pits at the camp he was at was so damn funny 😆 he thought they had a skin disease but it was just deodorant
Guys who served in Vietnam reported that returning from post to "the world" required them to relearn to use the toilet.
One admitted that while on Liberty he went to the bathroom just to flush the toilet. He said that it fascinated him.
A common punishment for some American soldiers was solid waste disposal. The latrine used petroleum barrels to catch the body waste. People would remove the barrels from under the latrine, drag them away, pour petrol in them and set them afire. The crap would burn. Often the smoke got into the clothing and body.
v=Y5OmwOyOWac
Greetings from Finland Sergei! Yet another interesting video on daily life in the USSR. Now I understand why the St Petersburg Metro sometimes had a funky smell during rush hour, when I visited the city :). But it wasn't too bad and hence it didn't bother me too much. I also think that the public spaces in Russia, or atleast in St Petersburg, were way hotter/heated more than in Finland, I wonder why.
A Banya/Sauna question for you: Did you have any electric Banyas in the USSR or did they all burn wood? And were there any communal banyas in apartment buildings or at public swimming pools?
Because in Finland we also have Saunas using electric heating heating to warm up the stones, onto which we throw water to get steam/heat. I guess the electric saunas were popularized in the 60's and 70's when all new apartment buildings got communal Saunas and sometimes swimming pools built into the basements for residents to use. Our public indoor swimming pools also always have an electric sauna in addition to showers. Of course nothing can beat the real wood-burning saunas in the countryside, but I do enjoy having a sauna and a swimming pool in the basement of my 70's era building.
When i lived in Northern Minnesota and it was freaking cold all the time, i noticed most people bathed less in the winter. I did ask about this. i was always complaining about the cold and i mentioned i hate bathing in the winter and everyone basically agreed and said they bathe less in the winter. Nobody thought that was weird. I bathed about once a week. But yea in general most people in the us bathe everyday.
Going back down memory lane, washing the hair with soap instead of shampoo. I remember some people doing that when I was a child. Going to the river with your bar of soap to take a bath, in my village we did not have rivers that much and the only small river we had had crocodiles in it so we used to take baths in ponds
However, washing yourself properly with water especially your rear end after going to the bathroom, in the Indian subcontinent this practice has been done for millennia because at least in that regard we consider hygiene to be very important so we even had special bathroom devices to help us with that type of cleaning
. The American or western equivalent of it would be one of those big water containers you used to water your garden or the flowers in your garden, just cut the top part of it and you get a water container that helps you clean those areas a bit easily on a human body.
But heating the water in a bucket so that you have warm water to take a bath with, I remember that too.
Let me know if this also happened in the Soviet Union. Especially in the village. Brushing your teeth or doing its equivalent with tooth powder instead of toothpaste. Did this happen in the Soviet village that well?
My Mom used to use baking soda to brush her teeth with. I assume that was because it was less expensive than tooth paste in the 1930’s.
@@PNL-DJ-1 well back in Bangladesh especially in the mid 90s I remember that a lot of elderly people or those who still thought electricity was fascinating used to brush their teeth with dental powder. I wonder if there was dental powder in the Soviet Union or what they used to do to maintain dental hygiene in the Soviet Union
West Germany here, we had nice capitalist bathtubs and we used them each and every Saturday, so we'd be clean for Sunday. Some mothers saved on water and heat by bathing multiple young children in parallel.
Y'all would just bathe once a week though?
The Mom of my childhood friend had such bathing. Dad would go first, then Mom, then the kids. Dad was a coal miner. She wasn't very clean growing up.
Exactly, this wasn't just a Soviet thing. The majority of the world's population only had a bath once a week.
@@Liphted Habits were very much what Sergey describes for the Soviet union with the switch to daily showers occurring some years earlier than in Eastern Europe. Of course, we still had much more comforts than socialist or post-socialist countries. But I guess habits were similar in much of Europe. Frequency of showers/baths depended on the individual life situation. 45 year old German office worker in 1983? Chances are he took a bath once a week, washed his hair (and only his hair) every three days and washed himself with a washcloth every morning and evening. Factory workers doing manual labor or miners usually took showers at the workplace. The group shower rooms would most likely be a bunch of showerheads protruding from two opposing walls, no stalls. Same at sports facilities. So people doing sports and blue collar workers got clean more often. Still, in 1980s Germany an American tourist would very likely have noticed the smell on public transport. To defend my national honor, I would like to emphasize that washing oneself with a washcloth in the morning and in the evening was considered an absolute necessity. For this purpose, teen's bedrooms in middle-class homes often included washbasins. (Combined showers/bathtubs per home: 1, more for upper-middle class upwards.) Culture shifted in the second half of the eighties, I guess. Think of Europe as a place where most cultural changes that take place in America are copied with a variable delay, the length of the delay depending on how visible the change is on TV. Since TV does not transmit smells and does not show people showering, this change took us decades to implement. The delay was much shorter for women (and later men) shaving their armpits.
💶🗑️
I shower everyday. Sometimes twice a day. Can't imagine going more than a day without it.
Growing up in the country we used to run around barefoot all summer. Even though I was in the US, but just something about running around with no shoes in the summer time in the 70s was what we did. I used to be able to run on gravel with no shoes, now I step on something as small as say a piece of cat food maybe and I'm almost crippled by pain. 🤣🤣
The person who left that comment that you don't look Russian was *kind of* right. You're Ukrainian so...😎😎
Still loving this channel.
14:12 Bus suspension is a capitalist concept. In Russia, springs are a weakness
I'd guess it's just the heavy load compressing the springs. And of course soviet-built buses didn't have any fancy air ride systems to cope with the changing loads.
I worked at an industrial paint shop for a few years in the 90's. You always feel dirty when you do this kind of work. I completely understand your father's experience.
Thank you, another fascinating exploration of Soviet life. I lived in Kazakhstan for three years. I really enjoyed my time there. My wife and I lived in Ust Kamenogorsk and Taraz. Here are a few ideas that might be of interest - Local tourist camps. We spent a day at a place called - the blue lake. This was near Ust, it was grim! The only redeeming feature was the lake. I still wonder what anybody got from the experience but I do have a friend who spent her honeymoon there . Could you explain more about these simple local camps. Another idea is secret cities. Ust Kamenogorsk was a secret city, it was reserved only for those required to work there. I wonder what people knew of these places in the Soviet era. Lastly, there has been a huge return of ethnic Russians from the lost republics back to the motherland. This is a very interesting and largely undocumented movement of, I suspect, millions of people.
Sergei smashed those Russo-Korean guts in. 😂
growing un in Northern CA, in the 80's, I showered and brushed my teeth daily, before bed. Plus there was a shower after gym class.
Wow😄 you are so honest about hygiene and showering once a week. Quite funny.
I’m a generation older than you, but growing up in rural New England was about the same. I think for most people Saturday morning was “Bath Day”. As a child I would also swim in streams and rivers in good weather.
In the Scandinavian languages lørdag/lördag (Saturday) actually means wash day (laugardag, as it was called way back when).
Well, here I was in Netherlands. Village. Washing with the sink in the morning (and evening before going to bed) cold of course, once a week a short bath in the tub when really young and later an even quicker shower. Since everyone had to use the bathroom the same evening. I think beds were changed that day so we gotten into a fresh bed after the shower.
Born in '72 so about the same age...
Sergei, how was the water pressure for homes and apartments in the big cities? In Seoul of '80s and '90s it was very poor, and not enough for more than a gentle stream (and often a dribble), which made showering tough - same too for washing dishes and clothes. Also, we'd often lose water for a day or two. We kept our bathtub and two large (20 litre?) water dispenser jugs filled with water at all times and to shower would fill a large pail with hot water (had a wall-mounted gas-fueled water heater above the tub). In a second pail we'd mix the hot water and the cold water from the tub, and use a large plastic ladle/dipper (held about 1 litre of water with a large handle on its side) to pour the warm water on ourselves. Soap up and shampoo, then sluice off. It was quite a production. The bathroom was tiled entirely and there was a drain in the middle of the floor as well as drains in the sink and tub. Also, we'd have to step down into the bathroom because the bathroom floor was several centimetres (6 to 8) lower the floor outside it. It was constructed this way to prevent the water egressing. Still today modern Korean homes and apartments are constructed this way, though, thankfully, the water pressure problem is a thing of the past.
Water pressure depended on which floor apartment was located and time of a day. We lived on the second floor so we always had good pressure. People on the ninth floor had just a trickle during the evenings
In Latin America, this way of taking a bath, with a pail and a bucket of water, was common too. Water was heated in the kitchen stove.
Love this program. Keep going! And thanks(spacibo)!
not flushing the toilet is something kids do everywhere I think.
Your program is great, and thanks for it.
Thanks for posting Comrade
I was just like that in my childhood. Basically it was pretty common in Europe, France is still like that lol
Aww, you were such an adorable kiddo. Look at that happy smile.
☺️♥️
Thank you
I think it wasn't very common during those times to shower daily. Finnish paper mill workers got "sauna compensation" if they had to work during sauna time on saturday - 6 day work week, ending Saturday. Company housing, company sauna that was warmed up on that schedule. (5 day work week was agreed on 1965)
The house where I lived in as kid was built after WW2, and initially the only place to wash up was the sauna outside, you had to carry water and heat it up if you wanted to wash up. We had a shower room (and sauna, naturally) retrofitted during early 80's. The hygiene products of those days were rather brutal in many ways.
What an interesting video!!
very interesting honest and informative,thanks for giving us a window into the past,,,xx
You are so welcome
Much of the USA didn’t get electricity and running water in the houses in the country until the late 1950’s. The government here would promote clean hygiene after WW2 too. There is an old saying, which is supposed to be a joke in the 1950’s and 1960’s that I take a bath on Saturdays whether I need it or not. So not long before that, it would have been common that people bathed less too. The military during WW2 would promote cleanliness amongst the soldiers. Often, many of the inductees saw a dentist and sometimes a doctor for the first time. An English friend of mine said that she only got a bath once a week because they didn’t have access to much hot water, but she did have a foot bath every day. Things were similar, but it sounds like you all in the Soviet Union were about a generation behind us in hygiene.
thanks for your stories. You are a natural at it!
I appreciate that!
It’s awesome that you show your kids how you grew up!
Well, my aunt, my mom's big sister had an outhouse we used when visiting until they got indoor plumbing they lived in a semi-rural area, and had spring water until they got on city water.
Awesome comeback. I subscribe top-level, like, share to text and posted this! Keep it up!
It probably depended on education. My grandpa was an engener and it was normal to take full bath and wash hair every two days with daily showers. Everything build since '60 had central heating so hot running water as well. At least in theory as only gas was certain. Water got often cut due to maintance of pipes, boilers or burstin during winter. And after every such break it was rather rusty so washig yourself would be counterproductive.
Another nice video of best rezindent of the Centre in Michigan
My family is from poland and I myself visited the countryside and my family, very simmilar
Actually, especially in the wooden houses built before WWII, it was quite common in cities as well, that the houses had only cold water, and sometimes even one shared dry toilet for the whole house with several flats. The way these old houses were built, the way they usually remained. And, there were no boilers in USSR, so even if someone had a will and space in his flat for building his own toilet, for hot water there was no other solution than warming water on stove. Modernizing such old houses nearly never took place, there were problems even with necessary renovation. And, in modern houses, during the summer months the situation was not much different, as the hot water was simply turned off in summer. As there were no air conditioners either, the temperatures inside could reach 30 C. So, if you try to imagine the routine Soviet life, you have to go to the work using public transport, and perhaps you were brave enough to wash yourself with cold water (as there was no time for heating it in the morning), but for sure several other people were less brave with that...
I think another reason why people didn't have a daily habit of taking a shower was - USSR was much further north, geographically, than USA is. Hence, people simply didn't sweat as much in their everyday lives - it simply wasn't hot enough for most of the year to induce sweating. Without googling it - I am willing to bet that your average Alaskan showers A LOT less than your average Texan.
Born and raised in Chicago, and still here.
Cool to know that you passed by town when I was a kid 🙂
I've worked with animals all my life and I have surely gone "nose-blind" to odors that strongly affect the normies.
I grew up in California, and I only bathed 1-2 times a week when I was growing up. Additionally, I would style my hair with a comb and water. Occasionally, my mom would put hair spray and mouse in my hair for special occasions. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I started to bathe, and by bathe I mean shower because I only took baths growing up.
Its really a waste of water unless you've been sweating/getting dirty. Every other day if not is fine. My skin always felt like cardboard after showering at my grandmothers who lived in New Mexico & had hard water. Went through ALOT of lotion there lol. Daily proably isnt the best for our skin either, even with soft water
Mouse in your hair? Hope you meant mousse, ha ha😄😄
I can't imagine showering once or twice a week only. I'd just feel terribly uncomfortable!
Also, as a girl, the thought of not washing during periods is especially disgusting. I honestly hope Soviet women washed every day at least during their period!
It doesn’t matter if they did. It didn’t change anything to shower everyday. Vaginas are just dirty things.
I think it’s important to note that you can clean yourself pretty well without dumping 17 gallons of clean water (average American usage) in to a sewer every single day.
@@general2109 yeah unless you sweat alot or get dirty every other day is enough. Daily is proably not very good for your skin
Maybe at the start and end. On the heavy days in the middle, thats whats disgusting
@@kristiskinner8542 I’m a cook, so I definitely have to rinse off most nights of the week. Otherwise I would be very comfortable not showering regularly.
The village you had summers in is a lot like my island property where I spend the summer, I’m always so happy to get a bath. I also can relate to the going bathroom in the bushes 😂 I love those days
I live in the American counterpart to somewhere like chelyabinsk I believe, a very industrial area with many plants, and there is a pervasive chemical smell here in town.
I find that after 5 years of living here I've thoroughly gotten used to it, though I'll have friends and family that say it's a prevalent smell.
Same here in the UK, the closing of the cellophane factory made one local town a far better place to live.
As long as its not a papermill🤮 its bearable lol
You know after hearing you say that water was free I kinda figured yall would be taking baths 3x a day haha. I would lol
A lot of people in present day Poland smell like they shower once a year. An odious blend of fermented sweat and alcohol in public transportation.
I grew up in Bulgaria and we did the same thing. Only showered on sundays and basically didn’t really change clothes daily unless they were stained.
lol "Marsha Marsha Marsha!!!"
In the early 70s I spent the summer with my relatives in Italy and the difference between the country and city was pretty similar to your experience.
14:50 omg, when I was a teenager we used to do the same thing in Montréal. Goes to show that deep down we were always more similar than we were different.
Its funny the similarities to things that my parents grew up with in rural Saskatchewan (Canada) i know my grandparents were beside them self that my mom would wash her hair every day when she was in high school. (in the 70's) They had running water but only cold. My mom would heat water on the stove. They weren't poor, just it was the culture norm. Always interesting to watch and compare and contrast. My both sides of my family came from Ukraine to Canada before the revolution. Also Saskatchewan being the the first socialist jurisdiction in North America. I remember an Orthodox priest that immigrated to Alberta drove cross the border into Saskatchewan. He asked if he was back in the USSR. Mostly because the roads turned bad so fast. The guy he was driving with said well is a satellite state.
When my dad was little (in the 1980s), he would spend his summers in the countryside (Crockett, Texas) working at his great-aunt’s ranch, and that house was built in the 1800s, but it still had running water (in the bathroom) except in the kitchen, of which they used a pump over the sink. Only the adults could use the bathroom with running water, and the kids had to use the outhouse😅. Once he came back to the city (Houston, Texas), he would love the conveniences that were in the city. Lol
Nice and humid down that way. That's why I live out in the hill country near Austin to get away from that humidity.
My grandparents' farm in Nebraska got electricity (thanks FDR!) and even gas, since the pipeline crossed their property, but they kept the out hose and the "base burner" heating stove in the main room just in case.
Masha Masha Masha, lol. Very interesting video, a long time in the making. Who are those 3 girls, lol
i would never have any of these problems, i can manufacturer at home soap from olive oil/ lard/ sunflower seed oil - pretty much anything. if i can get my hands on an oil ill have soap. as for the sodium hydroxide i can make that from simple wood ash then filter and purify. you can make cheap bulk laundry soap or higher quality skin soap, ez and cheap.
Shower regularly sounds like mockery if you live in "kommunalka".
In areas where there are water shortages but they have flush toilets (like California), I've heard kids say "if it's yellow let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down" Different rules for flushing in different places.
In Massachusetts where I live My family had a cottage on a lake in a Town called Carver for vacations like 30 people in my family owned it together and we would all go there in the summer but the cottage was so old it was built in the maybe 1800s and the plumbing was probably just as old so we were not allowed to flush anything but poop we had to throw the toilet paper in the trash and there was a needle work picture in a frame behind the toilet that said “if it’s yellow let it mellow if it’s brown flush it down” Us kids were not even allowed to shower we had to use the lake my grampy would give us a bar of Ivory soap and tell us to go wash up because Ivory soap floats.
I have an Australian friend here in Rome. Newly married. He tells me that his wife buys him a stupid new T-Shirt every month. He rarely wears any of them. Is this a thing that women need to buy T shirts for their man?
Morning workout at work..cool, here in America I think only only those of us in the fire department do that.
9:36 In the 1970's in America my family encouraged us to only bathe once every 3 days approximately. Sometimes one of us kids wanted to bathe more often and got away with it once or twice, but then were corrected. i also would just wash my hair only. We lived in the city. When I left home in the early 80's I started showering daily.
The opening logo looks like Ushanka Snosh
I like that Marsha from Kazakhstan.
3:43 Heating water by burning wood isn´t complicated. The oven is on anyways from autum to spring, so you just have to place a large pot or a bucket with a flat bottom on it , fill it with water and wait. For smaller amounts you have a kettle that stays on the stove the whole day. How do I know that? I live in Germany and heat my water like that. With my kitchen oven I heat my home, I cook, I bake bread and I heat water. It´s not complicated at all and the cheapest method anyway.
With military shows, we washed our private bits daily, the rest got duck skin from sweat and dirt. only when a storm rolled through at night we showered between the cars.
We had a German exchange student in my junior year of high school. When asked if the American habit of showering every day would be considered "excessive" in Europe, he responded that it would be considered so.
I think one aspect that Americans get wrong and the Chinese get right is the American preference for the morning shower. A Chinese would ask, why would you get into bed at night without showering first?
I think they have a point there.
In Finland at least, showering daily is considered normal. I remember in high school I told my friend that I shower about five times a week, and he thought that's too little.
@@Cyberspine same thing in "Norja". Every day is shower day, at least for myself and everybody I know. At least as far as I can tell.
Going to bed dirty with pollen and all? Recommended for allergies. In the Winter I shower every other day as my skin gets too dry with the cold weather and inside heat. In Assisted Living the residents get showers three times a week. The do get what is called peri care for women. I like the old phrase Pits, T**s and A**.
Community drinking cups & promoting personal hygiene go hand in hand in the CCCP.
They say to wash your hands before you eat, after using the toilet number one and number two, brush teeth and floss three times daily and shower once or twice per day. Realistically I’ll brush my teeth after eating or before social events, shower in the morning before work or in the evening after manual labor. I definitely wash my hands or use sanitizer before eating after using the toilet and after touching anything toilet related that includes doors to bathrooms that typically open from the inside. I’m not sure if this is something unique to the United States but they say you should keep your hands clean yet they make doors two bathrooms that open in word so you have to touch a note to open that instead of outward where you can kick the door open and keep your hands clean. This is in current time North Carolina United States. Thanks for the videos, cheers!
PS during a lake vacation to our datcha on the lake we did not take showers at all because we were in and out of the water throughout the day
Totally understand washing the tan away. After being in Ekibastuz for several days and going to the banya my wife said I came back noticeably whiter. Not just from the sweat and scrubbing but getting whipped with the birch branches. There is always some joker whipping a towel around to stir the ultra hot air in the top and those felt hats don’t provide protection from it 🥵😂
Hi Sergei, you asked for topics, and I've got a good one for you. It would be interesting to hear about Russian watches, how people kept the time, and Russian people's conception of time (are they strict with it like the Japanese or are they more fluid when it comes to punctuality like in South America?). It would be interesting to hear about watches as a status symbol in the past vs. now. Anyway, given my username it's no surprise my interest in this topic, but I have a few Vostok watches from Russia, and in the watch world they are something of a cult brand with a very loyal following. Take care - I enjoy your videos, and the depth you go into when it comes to Russian culture. I've never been to Russia but always wanted to go.
ruclips.net/video/qfF51AH05Ho/видео.html
I come from a place where it is fairly common for people to take baths twice a day, being a tropical country and all. My family never does that because my dad doesn't like wasting money on water bills but I know quite a handful of people who do so. I can't really say much for the older generations here but one thing that you said that stuck with me was washing hair with soap. I'm going to be honest, that just sounded really insane to me. But I asked my grandparents and they said they did so too. So mayhaps it's a generational thing? Regardless, it's a really interesting video! I really like these ones that talk about more 'mundane' topics. :^)
I don't think soap rinsed out as well as shampoo.
@@dorismahoney1440 Oh yeah, definitely doesn't. Tried it once when I was younger and my hair didn't even look like it had been washed
Energetically rub yourself… 😹
Here's something surprising from growing up in the US. Growing up in the 60's my middle class house (Mom, Dad, myself and two sisters) we had a bathtub and from my recollection, years later when we first encountered showers built into houses, that was a new thing, and so, in America, middle class, we did not have a shower, we did not use a shower, and we were unaware of the concept of a shower in a regular house (at that time).
Now one thing we did all have in our normal psyche from exposure to media and the world is that at a high school with sports teams there would be showers used to wash after sports practice... so as I got to high school I first had showers in the men's gym with all of the other teammates after football practice.
[I think they even made us shower after gym class in high school and that seems weird now, but as I recall that was required. Us boys did as we were told, we had towels but that was the first time you got to see your classmates naked... we all were little troopers doing what we were told.]
Thinking back I remember that my Mom had us kids take a bath each Sunday night. It was sort of a "make sure you take a bath" and it would be the time to do so, and the bathroom would be occupied for a bath at intervals. I'm trying to recall and I don't remember my Mom ushering my sisters to do the same as they got older so maybe she had to control the situation and tell me to take my bath but my sisters were more self regulated. I have a vague recollection that my sisters would be taking baths more regularly on their own. I definitely remember a "once a week" thing from when I was young.
I was living in Vermont so it's possible that showers being added to homes happened elsewhere in earlier years. So in the 60's houses had bathtubs, not showers as far as I know.
I showered after football practice every day of practice (in high school) so I was in the habit of the benefits of using a shower, and once I was into that routine, the bathtub at home seemed 'low tech' and it seemed a little 'backwards' to use a bathtub.
So it was the early 70's when I was in High School that I started to notice that my old "take a bath on Sunday evening" thing started to seem unusual.
Long story but my Step-dad's house that I started using in like '73 or so had multiple bathrooms each with a shower and so in the early-mid 70's in America I got used to taking a shower every day, the American habit that Ushanka mentions.
So I'd like to close out this story by mentioning: I believe the habit of using a shower ever day at home, in America - I believe that got started in the 70's and then it really got going in the 80's.
So Ushanka's hygiene story for me is like "Life in America" shifted in time. In other words my 60's experience was like his 80's or early 90's experience in the USSR. The US had transitioned to showers in the middle class homes during the 70's and 80's.
There should be information about when showers were added to houses in the US and when they were included as part of construction of homes in the US.
I will bet, if you check, that houses in the US were built with bathtubs in the bathroom (it is like showers in the home were not invented yet) up through the late 60's or early 70's in the US.
Cheers!
Yup, born in the country here in America, very poor family. We did rag baths every week, wash hair in the sink, rag wash more if ya got really dirty or sweaty. Soap on a rope, boil the water wait for it to cool, rub the soap or the wet rag on the soap then on the body, rinse rag, wipe body.
I see people get so upset with younger generations forgetting to flush at home, when that is probably the only toilet they encounter that doesn't auto-flush.
thats stupid, because that toilet at their home will still have been the first one they ever use, and their primary toilet even after they go to school or start working... they will have still been using those toilets at home... at least in most countries anyway...
just seems like a stupid excuse... obviously accidents happen though i guess
Knowing them they dont want to "bully" or "offend" the toilet🙄 loathe gen y & z
13:00, CULTURE SHOCK for many Americans. MICHIGAN is Hot and Humid in the Summer. Yes it is true, Michigan is the "Water Winter Wonderland" State. I am just so thankful he did not arrive in Mississipi or any Sweat belt/swamp butt State in 95'. He arrived in 95' during a Michigan Summer and learned Showering.
GOST 30266-95 @ 17:31
I remember reading about a Soviet cryptography standard that was under the "GOST" umbrella. I think it meant "government standards". Used multiple "boxes" to transform and thus encrypt data.
ГО-сударственный СТ-андарт. Yes
@@UshankaShow The Soviet GOST codes gave us a headache for a while.
I don't know their status today.
The Soviets were really big on "One Time Cyphers". These are supposed to be theoretically unbreakable.
In reality you could sometimes break them. Depends upon you generate them.
Some were generated using high speed counters that started and stopped by radiation detectors. You use a small sample of something radioactive.
The counters supposedly held random numbers. You would then generate your tables of values accordingly.
I proposed doing this at work using a smoke detector. Management shot it down. :(