Photos from the "old days"

Pushkin airfield, 15 miles south of Leningrad, February 7th, 1981 was the place of one of the worst disaster in the history of aviation. Tupolev-104, carrying 44 highly ranked members of the Soviet Pacific fleet and its 6 person crew, crashed on the takeoff with no survivors. Killed were 16 admirals and generals, essentially stripping the Fleet of its leaders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Pushkin_Tu-104_crash

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Agdam, a fairly inexpensive fortified wine - the Soviets seemed to have directly translated the term from English - with 19% alcohol by volume. It was basically a grape juice from the concentrate with a potato derived ethanol providing the punch. It was popular among the poor/students and the alcoholics. Kind of a Soviet version or Ripple or Night Train.

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One of the few happy memories from my Soviet life - an open top bus in Sochi. My mom took me there in September, 1978 after we had applied for an immigration visa/permit, had some money and very little to do. (This photo is from 1981, by the late British photog Peter Marlow, 1952-2016)

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The Fanta micro bus. Moscow. At the 1980 Summer Olympics. Drink Koka Kola too. And they weren't even Dutch.

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So symbolic (if you can read the sign). OK, I'll translate. It says "Dead End" (Kursk rail station, Moscow). Photo by Victor Akhlomov, 1989.

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Soviet retail distribution system wasn't exactly adequate and so open air markets - where most items were of both higher quality and higher prices - popped up here and there. In Russian slang they were known as "tolkuchki" (bumpers, i.e., places that were so jammed, you couldn't help but bump into people). Here's one of those in Odessa.

Side note, in modern Russian lexicon, they're known by the literal translation from the English "flea market". When someone told me about them, I actually thought they sold fleas and alike.

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Soviet era ersatz coffee (made of barley, chicory, oats and some other toasted grain, with a hint of the actual imported coffee) in a high school cafeteria. I wouldn't call it drinkable. Combined with other aromas, I wouldn't call the whole place cafeteria either.

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Any endurance boosters in there? [Young Russian figure skater reportedly failed a couple of drug tests in the Olympics today.]
 
NorBro said:
Any endurance boosters in there? [Young Russian figure skater reportedly failed a couple of drug tests in the Olympics today.]
Click to expand...

Aleksandr Bubnov, a former Soviet national team/Dinamo/Spartak Moscow central defender turned Russian soccer pundit, wrote in his book that everyone knew that the top Soviet team of the 1970's Dynamo Kiev had a slew of secret KGB laboratories working for them. That's how they could press on the full pitch for 90 minutes.

Dynamo Kiev was one of the two "Brezhnev" teams. In hockey, his club was the Red Army (aka CSKA) Moscow. Brezhnev was a big sports fan and both clubs had strong support of the Soviet state. The Soviet national hockey team, mostly made up of the CSKA stars, won 23 out of the last 29 World Hockey Championships. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, which coincidentally took place at about the same time as the introduction of the modern era drug tests, Russia won 5 out of 30.

The same, however, applies to all communist nations. I once did a 45 minute video on the performance enhancing drugs in the Eastern Bloc nations. And the first question I posed was, "Who was the greatest national soccer team of all time according to the Elo ratings?" And no one knew who.

https://www.eloratings.net/
 
Henri Cartier-Bresson was sent to the USSR in 1954 to find some smiling people. That's all he could snap.

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You should start embedding the photos in the thread so more people can see them...

Right now they are viewable by only those signed in and that's a low number (but maybe that's best).
 
NorBro said:
You should start embedding the photos in the thread so more people can see them...

Right now they are viewable by only those signed in and that's a low number (but maybe that's best).
Click to expand...

I thought of that but keep not doing it. Ay, karramba.
 
Leonid Brezhnev was the the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but the nominal head of the Soviet government, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was Alexei Kosygin. The two of them didn't always get along and parted on the ideological grounds (Kosygin was the businessman in the 1920's and favored what was later to become Perestroika). Naturally, there were plenty of jokes about their rule.

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B - Listen, Alex, what should be do about the immigration? The Americans are offering to sell us wheat at huge discounts, if we let the Jews go.

K - Let's do it.

B - Everyone?

K - Everyone.

B- How many people would that be?

K - Five million real Jews and two hundred million who will convert

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B - I thought about easing off on the immigration. Americans are offering us a good deal on trade..

K - We should take it.

B - So, whom should we let go and who should be required to stay?

He looks to his right. Kosygin's gone. A second later, he comes back.

B - Where did you go?

K. - Called my secretary to make the permanent travel arrangements.

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(The photo is from the late 70's/early 80s, they died two years part)

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Here's a separate link - https://beautifulrus.com/wp-content/...d-Brezhnev.jpg
 
Katya Lycheva (bottom right, here in 1986) was a Soviet postcard baby, a surrogate for the late Samantha Smith. She traveled the world and was even taken to a 5-star McDonald's somewhere in America.

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I'm having a snack, DLD.

You would be pleased to know these are incredible, even if they are from the USSR.

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These look recent. Kartoshka existed in a different form then.

But, get a load of this. I Google the name, see that the distributor for Belarus is next to my old apartment building. I lived on Smolyachkova 26.

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