Go inside the USSR (56k warning)

[Wanderer]

Comrade Stas, I assume Little Sister is no longer little

By the way Stas, what military equipment surrounds your dad?

[K. A. Pital]

I assume Little Sister is no longer little

By the way Stas, what military equipment surrounds your dad?

SOme sort of engineering equipment, looks like a BREM. I'm sure Vympel could make out the tank chassis, my wheel-fu is kinda weak, I can only determine them by towers.

Was he a Wolgadeutscher?

Yes. Worked at the SK factory. Post-collapse, moved to Germany as part of the repatriation program offered by the FRG.

[PeZook]

Awww...cutey widdle Stas

And I can't believe Shroom is surprised at the hotness of Slavic women. Of course, I had the undisputed luck of actually living in a Slavic nation full of hot, happy, smiling girls.

Sorry, but SPARTAFREEDOMERICA has nothing on them

[Shroom Man 777]

Aw! Stas' little soviet sister wuvs the Patriotic Multicultural Book Shelf of the Soviet Working Peoples!

[[R_H]]

Was he a Wolgadeutscher?

Yes. Worked at the SK factory. Post-collapse, moved to Germany as part of the repatriation program offered by the FRG.

SK factory? Was he the last generation of your family to speak German, or did your parents learn it too?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Why do most Russian women look like they're capable of stabbing you and not caring?

[Wanderer]

She sure grew. To think I have three daughters who might one day leave the nest. "sighs and prepares to scrutinize every suitor who follows them home"

SOme sort of engineering equipment, looks like a BREM. I'm sure Vympel could make out the tank chassis, my wheel-fu is kinda weak, I can only determine them by towers.

Fair enough

[K. A. Pital]

SK factory? Was he the last generation of your family to speak German, or did your parents learn it too?

My parents did not learn German, but I did.

She sure grew.

She's even older right now and is learning at an Architecture University in Leningrad, 2nd course.

[Pelranius]

Well, congrats on that, Stas.

It certainly kicks down all that garbage about Soviet life that I read about in the Red October. BTW, how prevalent was the KGB actually in present day life (the claims of KGB omnipresence always sounded a little exaggerated to me, since the larger a nation state's population is, the less effective its secret police apparatus is. Go ask China).

If I may ask, what ethnicity were you considered as under the USSR's policy? German? My apologies if this is an inappropriate question? (I haven't quite gotten how they determined one's ethnicity in the USSR. In the PRC, it seems that if one had say a Manchu or Hui grandparent somewhere, one could claim to be an ethnic Manchu/Hui/Zhuang even if all the other grandparents were Han).

[K. A. Pital]

BTW, how prevalent was the KGB actually in present day life

Um, from the 1960s onwards... not at all? Unless you were some kind of dissident against the Soviet regime, publishing anti-soviet books and travelling to dissident meetings, you'd generally get zero attention. Dissidents got cracked down on periodically. Depending on the period of course: in 1930-1950, the NKGB-NKVD-MGB organs were very prevalent: they controlled a lot of economic activity, controlled lots of production both civil and military... since 1950s onwards their role decreased. The KGB itself was not "ever-prevalent" unless you really worked on some top-notch closed factory.

Far more prevalent were CPSU bureaucrats - those indeed filled the ranks everywhere and it'd be hard to avoid meeting one at your workplace here or there.

If I may ask, what ethnicity were you considered as under the USSR's policy?

Russian; so did my father. You could change ethnicity record in your passport on demand in USSR, and that's what my father did. That later led to him being uneligible for German emigration unlike many relatives on his side.

[Spice Runner]

Very cool Stas. Thanks for posting those pictures. Very enlightening. I especially liked those pictures towards the bottom of daily life in the U.S.S.R.