Photos from the "old days"

A typical Soviet school. This is likely early-mid 1970's. (due to the shortage of buildings, the 10 year system had everyone sharing the space but, in my time there, 2-4 grades had to be the second shift, taking our classes 1-5 PM, while having a pseudo kindergarten on the same premises 8AM -12:30PM)

Notice Soviet school benches, modeled after the German designs on the late 1800's. Two people per, mostly boy-girl. I once had a super-popular 11-year old girl decline to be sitting next me and it stayed buried deep in my psyche for the next 50 years. We finally exchanged a few e-mails a year ago. She's teaching English at some local college in Belarus and still looks pretty nice. But we really had no chemistry otherwise.

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More on the Soviet school desks/benches. Do note there's a hole for an ink well. As kids, we had to use dip pens, which was a suffering in and of itself. Ballpoints were still expensive, though some teachers didn't mind. Finally, we were allowed the switch somewhere around 1971-72. My parents' study drawers were filled with mostly non-working ink pens.

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A staged photo of high school basic military training class. Assembling and disassembling AK-47 was required. (and you got an extra credit for killing an innocent civilian... go figure)

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And a shop class, divided by sexes. Boys got wood and metal classes, girls got cooking and sewing. I should have declared myself a girl.

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Everyone in the Soviet Union was equal but some were more equal than others. (how's that for stealing a line?) While an average citizen often had to wait a decade - often, people were placed on waiting lists after marriage - there was also a Soviet elite, from the high ranked members of the Communist Party to other "important" people - celebrities, scientists, generals, etc. For those, special architectural designs were created. Whereas a typical 1-bd Khrushchevka (a panel housing design that was stolen from the French construction engineer Raymond Camus, who rebuilt the heavily bombed during WWII coastal city of Le Havre) was ~ 475 ft sq, with a tiny kitchen and bathroom, the elite housing was about 1000 ft sq and up. Often the "elite housing" was gated and some even had the front door security.

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An old Soviet joke about this type of a street vendor, "What's inside these pockets? - What do you mean? - Meat. Before it was boiled, did it bark or did it meow? - It asked stupid questions".

In Russian, these meat-filled pockets made from dough were called "pirozhki" (pirozhok for singular). This is where a lot of cheating took place because any meat could have been sold for a tidy sum before it made it inside the pocket.

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Soviet police/SWAT team is breaking into a gym to arrest the Soviet Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Lou Ferrignos. One could lift weights but the term bodybuilding was outlawed. The Soviet organized crime took advantage of that and trained kids to lift weights, so they could maim and injure others.

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