For a person with a surprising and painful lack of childhood memories I seem to remember a lot about the Moscow Summer Olympic Games of 1980. I remember where I was at that time and remember watching the games on a 12 inch black-and-white TV. Since the 1980 Olympics were boycotted by the USA and and over 60 other countries some of you may be seeing the clips below for the first time (and some of you were born after 1980). Boycotting Olympics is a tragic event for the athletes, some of whom may only get one or two shots at competing in the Games in their lifetimes. Moscow Olympics were not an exception, we will never know what the results would look like if all of the countries were participating. Nevertheless, for the Soviet people (especially in Moscow) the Olympics became a two week window when they got a peek at the West and they liked what they saw. The USSR went all out to impress the rest of the world, no expenses were spared, only the best was to surround athletes and the guests in order to show the superiority of the Soviet regime. For years after the Games people were wearing jackets with the Olympic emblem on it and the Olympic Bear is still recognized by most people. Not only the people in the stadium but the whole country cried when the Bear took off during the closing ceremony. I haven’t see one more touching ever since.

It’s hard to believe that I am typing this 28 years later. In 1980 I was busy figuring out how old I will be in the year 2000. It seemed like it was 2000 years away….
Opening Ceremony

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

Closing Ceremony

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGy7JIo4_Oc

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Iola is located South of Garnett on U.S. Route 169.

Iola is the scene of an upcoming gritty drama sequel to the Baywatch – Methwatch, where less toothy but a lot more animated characters save lives of unsuspecting citizens.

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The extent of the falsification of the official Soviet history is still mind-boggling many years after the USSR went extinct. “The Commissar Vanishes” by David King provides a small glimpse into the Soviet photo manipulation at the time when a Photoshop was an actual photo shop. In the years after the Revolution as the result of the Red Terror and later the Great Purge, the official history had to be corrected to reflect the destruction of millions of the “enemies of the people”. Many of them were prominent revolutionaries, frequently appearing next to Lenin and Stalin in the photographs. It was easier to get rid of a person than completely wipe out the record of their existence, but the Soviet people were persistent and came close to erasing all traces of the entire lives from the record. Some of the materials shown in the book survived only abroad. Even owning a photo could trigger a new way of arrests and murders.

I copied a few photos from the book (I am pretty sure illegally) but it is available from the library so if the subject interests you, go ahead and rent it. I am not even going to list the people on the photos (I am sure you’ll recognize Stalin); what’s important is that each airbrushing or a crop represents death, labor camps, murder, lies and in many cases disappearance of the whole families, their friends, co-workers and sometimes neighbors.




Here is another set:




Do we engage in cleaning up history? The answer is: every day. Sometimes it’s innocent like omitting a distinguished employment at Domino’s, sometimes it’s more serious like erasing some unpleasant facts from a politician’s biography. Hopefully it will never come to this again:

UPDATE: Emaw unleashed his Googling skills to find my own long-lost and retouched photo.

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Continuing from my previous post about the orders issued by the Romanian Authority in Odessa regarding the treatment of the Jewish population and the creation of a Jewish Ghetto.
The source is in the National Archives of Ukraine, translation mine.

Order number 2 from November 15, 1941 by the Commander of the Odessa Garrison General N. Gineraru directing all persons of Jewish origin to declare possession of precious objects, gems and metals to the city police by 12pm on November 19th.

“Odessa newspaper .- November 17, 1941 – № 28. – P. 2.

I, Gen. Nikolai Gineraru, Commander of the Garrison of Odessa, on the basis of the Supreme Decree №1798 of 21 June 1941 and § 486 of the Code of Military Justice, in the interest of the Army, in order to protect the country, maintain order and public safety

ORDER :

§ 1. All persons of Jewish origin living in Odessa are mandated by 12pm on Nov. 19, 1941 to declare all their precious things, stones and metals (platinum, gold, silver) -in any form: jewelry, coins, household items, etc. The Jews living in the areas of Odessa, Ovidiopol, Ochakiv and Berezovsky regions are required to submit their declarations within 48 hours after the publication of this order. Statements in duplicate must be submitted to the City Police (in rural communities to the local authority). One copy of the application remains with the Police, the other – stamped by the city police or rural authority – is returned to the applicant.

§ 2. Those guilty of violating this order will be punished by death.

§ 3. This order is to be published in Romanian, German and Russian languages in Odessa, Ovidiopol, Ochakiv, Berezovka and enters in force in Odessa on November 16 of this year, and in Odessa, Ovidiopol, Ochakiv, Berezovsky regions, on the date of publication.

Establishing the facts of violation of this order is the duty of all officers, military, judiciary and civil police, as well as all military personnel with an official mandate for policing services. Violators will be escorted with the protocol and found property, to the court-martial of the Odessa Military Command (Kanatnaya Street., № 27)

Commander of the Odessa General N. GINERARU.

Military prosecutor Colonel BYLUTSA-Dumitrescu

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There are two kinds of people in the world – selfless dreamers and the rest of us. Selfless dreamers are busy dreaming up ways to make the world better, feed the starving, enrich the poor and keep the Earth at some temperature that they know to be perfect for all of us to live happily and comfortably. The rest of us are lazily pointing out why these dreams will never come true and why they shouldn’t, at the same time hoping that there is enough medication to keep selfless dreamers sedated or at least writing another unsellable book. Sometimes the dreamers manage to convince the weakest-minded among the rest of us to follow them and that’s when we end up participating in wild social experiments like the one in the USSR that lasted for over 70 years.

I am sure in 1917 the idea of communal living sounded great: rich people where enjoying palaces and nice apartments with heat and indoor plumbing, while the poor where huddling in shanties, dorms and dirty cramped tenements with no running water and freezing outhouses. People reasoned that they could use an upgrade, kick out or downsize the rich oppressors, move into their posh apartments and share the amenities with their working class brethren. Thus was born a “kommunalka” or a communal apartment where many families were crammed together in a formerly single-family apartment. I am not sure how many days it took the new kommunalka dwellers to realize their mistake, find the dreamers who promised to make their lives better and beat them senseless, but they and their families had over 70 years to regret that move and some are still facing their neighbors every morning in the line to use the restroom.

I guess it takes a generation to grow up without knowing any better to have a completely opposite reaction to something that would normally be considered abnormal. I’ve seen all kinds of living arrangements but I never thought that any of them were weird, no matter how ugly, overpopulated or cramped some of these places looked I always thought that was business as usual. I wrote about communal living before and originally planned to expand on the subject but I found a virtual museum with plans, photos and videos, with English captions and transcripts which thoroughly covers every aspect of life in a kommunalka. You wouldn’t find any of this in the glossy cheery photo albums that somehow made it into this country.

However, for your enjoyment I uploaded and tagged a video clip from the movie Russian Dolls in which the characters arrive at the typical apartment in St.Petersburg.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HcNmpEiNdU

Another clip is from a recent Russian movie Stilyagi which also depicts a huge communal apartment, although it may be a dorm. I think in real life the happiness was dialed down a little (or a lot). Also notice neighbors always being in your business and a lot of times in your food (imagine your office fridge times 10).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyGOf0jdOoQ

Thin walls, whole families in the same room with kids and grandparents, often separated only by curtains, fights, hate, backstabbing, stealing, it wasn’t a communal dream that the dreamers promised. But at the same time there was love, care, lifelong friendships, memorable times and helping hands – some things cannot be killed by years of inhuman living conditions.

Here is another post on the subject.

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