UPDATE: My Facebook conversation with Alan Scherstuhl inspired The Joys of Russian Star Wars: Meet Tripeo, Erdva Dedva, and Obi-Wan Knob

I had this article saved up for some time but only now got around to translating it.

To the best of my knowledge, the Star Wars were never shown in the Soviet Union, at least not in the wide distribution. Certain people always had access to the Western movies, the legendary uncensored versions, which included sex and violence and images of the Western lifestyles that were so detrimental to the psychological well-being of the Soviet people. For the rest of us, the press published articles like this, to nip the desire to see the banned movie in the bud. Even though some people could have read a much better review (links to the Google-translated version) in the limited distribution of the Amerika Magazine, in the pre-VCR era there just were no other options for and average Soviet Citizen to see the movie an decide for himself.

Published under the heading “Mass Culture -77” in the box tiled “Their Sensations”

Cosmic Movie Horrors*

by Yulia Warshavskaya

This summer a new wave of the movie mania washed over the American movie theaters. As reported in the press, the movie Star Wars directed by an American director George Lucas beat all the box office records: it made sixty million dollars just in its first month of release. From morning to midnight the Star Wars is being shown in the crowed theaters. To get in, one either needs to stand in line for several hours, or buy a  ticket from a scalper for an unheard price of $50.

Following the monsters, mass catastrophes and giant sharks, American movie screens are overtaken by the horrors on a truly cosmic scale – terrifying tyrants terrorizing our Galaxy. They are being fought by the characters of the movie, a round-faced princess, a country boy, an old knight of the Round Table, an ape-man and two robots. One of them – huge and gilded Tripio possesses human speech, the other one – Artwo-Detwo – looks like an automobile and communicates with the “star signals”.

The plot, as reported by the French weekly “Express”, is fairly primitive.**

But to further terrify the audiences the creators of the movie employ the most menacing weapon ever – the laser beam – which the movie characters use to fight like a rapier. The screen is constantly filled with horrifying monsters – a lizard-man, faceless gnomes, a live mummy, whose head is covered with rubber tubes, fantastic animals…

Along with this blood-curdling “masterpiece” which director George Lucas calls a “Western of the future”, several parallel commercial operations were undertaken. Ballantine Books published a novel with the same title; Marvel Comics, a publisher specializing in comic books, divided the screenplay into six parts and started publishing a million copies every month. Other classic attributes of mass culture followed – pins, shirts, promotional posters, soundtrack. And closer to the New Year the stores will be filled with toys – miniature Artwo-Detwo making the same noises as its prototype, as well as the gilded Tripio. The famous laser sword is not invented yet, but it’s in the works.

In the near future the next episode of the Star Wars will be released, but, most likely, it will be as mediocre as it will be profitable. It’s not surprising at all. Mass viewer often “bites” on these “pieces of art”, so the life outside of the theater walls feels a lot safer…

* amateur translation mine
**obviously the author did not see the movie and has to cite another publication

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Korean Spicy Carrots are like American Chinese food – they are not known in their supposed country of origin, but that doesn’t make them any less delicious. There is a fairly large population of ethnic Koreans in the former republics of what used to be the Soviet Union; many of them live in the Central Asia courtesy of comrade Stalin who thought that they might be thinking of spying for Japan. Sometime between then and now Korean Spicy Carrots were born. The average citizen may not know much about Koreans but there aren’t many people who haven’t tried the carrots. Koreans guard the secret better than the Coca-Cola recipe, but there are many that come close and they are fairly easy to make.
Attention: Do not attempt to change the following recipe. John Dickerson of Bowling Green, MO changed the recipe and was soon beaten, robbed and repeatedly sodomized, his wife left him and he has a confirmed case of the swine flu. Dick Johnson of Butte, MT, didn’t change the recipe, instead sending it to 45 of his closest friends; soon he won the lottery, married Ms.April 2008, and discovered that he is fluent in 6 languages. Make your own conclusions.

For this recipe you will need julienned carrots, ground or crushed coriander seeds, cayenne pepper, vinegar, vegetable oil, onion, garlic and salt (kosher is good). It is very important to have julienne carrots, they look similar to thin long matchsticks. You can learn to do your own, try a special peeler, or do what I do and buy them. The package I have says “shredded”:

…but as you can see on the photo they are square shaped and not flat shreds. Real Koreans manage to have them cut in long almost spaghetti-like strands.

Mix carrots with salt and leave for 20 minutes. The amount of salt should be slightly more than you would use for a regular salad.

In the meantime, in a skillet heat up some oil and place a sliced onion in it. I used 1/2 cup of oil for the amount of carrots I had and that might have been a little much, maybe 1/3 cup will do next time; adjust accordingly with the amount of carrots.

Press as much juice out of the carrots as possible until they look fairly dry.
Construct a volcano-looking mound out of carrots. Place coriander and red pepper into the “crater” area. I used 1/2 teaspoons of each. Adjust to your own heat tolerance.
Remove onions from the skillet (they should be golden, not burned) and pour almost-smoking oil into the “crater”. Add a splash of vinegar, 2 finely minced (or pressed) cloves of garlic and mix.
Place the carrots in a container and refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Some recipes suggest to chop the fried onions and add them to the mix. I didn’t, I ate some and threw away the rest.
Korean Spicy Carrots can be enjoyed as a salad, pickle-like condiment, on a sandwich, in a taco or with whatever else that may benefit from a spicy kick. Make sure you go easy on heat if you can’t handle it. Enjoy!

Here is another recipe.

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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.

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A recent post on Kansas Travel and my own visit to a gallery this week, where I was chastised by my daughter for not understanding art, reminded me that I had this set of photos from 1955 bookmarked for a long time.

It’s no Paris, but a tiny Kansas farm town grows its own crop of painters.

Up to now Attica, Kan., for all its classical name, could pass for any other tiny town in the wheatlands – a slowdown point on a rural highway leading to Wichita. But today traffic through Attica not only slows down but stops and looks. Encamped with palettes and drawing boards on the sidewalks, along the railroad, in the wheatfields are painters – singly or in bunches – recording the surroundings with the earnest concentration of Paris professionals. The painters are members of the Artists Guild of Attica, a burgeoning group that in course of three years had made the town of 622 people aware, curious and eager about art.

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On a long list of things that I am lacking, somewhere between being sporty and good looks, is the ability to do the Yo-Yo thing (shut up, Chimpo). I am not sure if the Life magazine ever ran these photos taken in June of 1961, so here is your chance to see them.

I have a strange feeling when I look at these photos – these Kansas City kids are about 60 years old now, their own kids are likely to be older than they were in these shots, which captured just one second of their summer almost 50 years ago.

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