Continuing my previous post about the comparison of the American and the Soviet education systems I will now post a few photos of Stephen Lapekas – Alexei Kutzkov’s American counterpart.

According to this article:

Lapekas became a Navy pilot, then a commercial pilot for TWA; I am told Kutzkov works for the Russian equivalent of the FAA.

Despite the seemingly different education systems in the Soviet Union and the United States, the article didn’t mention that the most important factor was not how the students were educated but how their country utilized their talent and knowledge after the graduation. In the USSR the graduate was likely to be drafted to serve in the military and after eventually graduating from college be assigned a low-paying job anywhere in the country. Most of the intellectual jobs such as engineering, science and medicine were paying less than manual labor to maintain the socialist class hierarchy, where intelligentsia was not considered a class like workers and peasants, but was tolerated as a mid-layer in order to serve the cause of the working class. Therefore, a welder was making more money than a doctor or a scientist with a PhD.

In the end, the quality of life was probably better for the fun-loving American kid, than for his serious Soviet counterpart, whose abilities could not deliver him the material success he deserved.

Continue reading →

On the morning of August 19, 1991 I was eating breakfast and watching news on my TV (something like this) when the announcer reverted to the official voice they used when someone died and announced that due to the health reasons M.S.Gorbachev can no longer perform his duties and  the control of the country is being taken over by a State Committee of the State of Emergency. This was the beginning of the 1991 Soviet coup d’état attempt. People had different reactions to the events; I for one wasn’t surprised at all: many people weren’t happy about Gorbachev’s reforms and were hoping for some form of reversal, and this was just what they were asking for.

This is what their first press-conference looked like (in Russian). For a group of conspirators they acted too strange and spaced out. Some of them were not exactly well-known before the events.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4eV8ffgDF8

The coup was over in 3 days with the press and the army refusing to support the conspirators and suppress demonstrations in Moscow and other places.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqoAhfEIfXo

Gorbachev returned to Moscow but never regained his full capacity and the USSR was over before the year’s end.
One might say that right there over my breakfast I witnessed the beginning of the end of the country I grew up in. Recently I had a chance to find out how these events were covered in the American press. After the the putsch was over the Kansas City Star combined all of its coverage into a special insert.

18 years later people still argue if this was the right way to go. At that time it probably couldn’t go in any other way, but every forum is overloaded with people mourning the loss of the USSR – the superpower.
I witnessed it then and thanks to one of my readers had a chance to revisit it now from the other side of where the Iron Curtain used to be.
More videos of the American news coverage.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Continue reading →

Every year an ever-expanding group of morons gathers to celebrate Stalin’s birthday and reminisce  about the greatness of the Stalin’s years in the Russian history. Considering that a person born in 1953 when Stalin died is quickly approaching  the age of 60, not too many people in the crowd actually remember the life under Stalin but that doesn’t stop them from marching around, dreaming about going back in time. The irony is in the fact that during Stalin’s times marching around or expressing disregard for the current regime would be a sure-fire way to get shot or be sent to labor camps.

And here we see a group kids whose parents could use a few months of labor camps themselves.

Few photos from Gori, Georgia where Stalin was born.

Continue reading →

Things you could find in a drug store…

….on your trip to pick up some Colgate Dental Cream.

httpvh://youtu.be/-Q7cf0z0fG8

Continue reading →

Kansas City Chiefs 10 at San Diego Chargers 10
Sunday, September 26, 1965

Continue reading →