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The Soviet team on the opening ceremony of the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck (otherwise known as the Franz Klammer Olympics since : a) he was a local and b) his downhill run was the greatest two minutes in the Winter Olympics ever)
Not a Soviet torture tool (at least, not officially) but a sharp metal spike that held the retail receipts in order to avoid quick falsification. And you thought the barcode was evil. (shown next to a matchbox for size comparison)
I remember watching the story on the news…. I was 13 or 14 at the time. Imagine telling someone standing in that line for hours that many cities had multiple McDonald’s and you could even have your birthday party in one, if you wanted to.
I don’t even know how many we have here, where I live, but there are two that are within 5-10 mins of me, on the same road as each other, that are only about two miles apart. And I wouldn’t eat at either one of them(McDonald’s in-general) if you paid for my food. Unless they have the McRib…
Here's the deal with the Soviet restaurant industry. There wasn't much. For example, in the 1970's, the city of Kiev (the Ukrainian capitol with about 3.5 million residents) had 11 restaurants and about three dozen diners and coffee houses. The nighttime restaurants functioned as clubs - not quite the Brown Derby or the Maxim's but nonetheless much in demand among those with unverified income. They had live bands but their food was mostly cold cuts and hot chicken. And plenty of watered down vodka. Prices were reasonable during daytime but required a large graft when operated at night.
With the announcement of perestroika of 1986, private eating establishments opened up but, on an average, they were still too expensive for an average citizen. McDonald's sort of hit the sweet spot. It was still quite expensive - hamburger 1.50R, cheeseburger 1.75R, Big Mac 3.75R - in the day when an average wage was about 200R per month - but it also gave a proven quality meal. McD spent far too much money on it but it was a huge publicity coup for the company. Lines were long ... I mean, 3-4 hours long early on and the outlet serviced about 30,000 customers daily. For the Moscow residents, it was as much of an experience as a nourishment. And with better smells than Lenin's Mausoleum.
Speaking of the Soviet restaurant/night clubs. That's where the originator of the Soviet racket Gennady "the Mongol" Kharkov (here, sitting down, in his later years) began to look for his victims and formed the most feared crew in the USSR.
A scratch sheet of the Russian-to-English translation of Lilliana Gassinskaya right before she jumped out of the window of the Soviet cruise ship and swam across the shark invested harbor in Sydney, Australia. English she didn't spoke gut but, apparently, she looked good enough in a bikini to pose for the original Aussie issue of Penthouse magazine.
A Soviet era picnic. Presumably, more than one car brought everyone and their track suits in ... but I wouldn't bet on it. One salted herring, one roll of hard salami, half a dozen bottles of vodka was a typical menu. And no folding chairs.
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