I am often asked if I like cold and snow because I am from the USSR where it’s always cold, snowy and hungry bears are roaming the streets attacking the people who spend their days standing in darkness in line for toilet paper. As much as this image is truthful, I only like cold and snow when it stays where it belongs – in Colorado, or more generally away from the areas where I live, work and drive. The song about the white Christmas was probably written somewhere in Florida where it was unlikely to ever happen.
With this in mind here are some photos of winter in Moscow. Original Life Magazine article can be found here.
Exactly 20 years ago, on July 8th, 1988 I had to report for duty at the local draft station. Several hundred young men gathered in the yard waiting for their fate to be decided by chance and lucky or unlucky circumstances. We all wore old clothes and had backpacks with personal items, we all tried to act brave pretending that this was just another day in our so far mostly care-free lives. In reality, for many of us it was the first day of our adult lives. Most of us have never been separated from our parents for more than a few weeks, many of us never traveled far away from home, we stood there looking like we could care less but our future couldn’t have been any more uncertain.
In the middle of the yard on a desk there were stacks of personal files. Once in a while an officer walked in (they called them “buyers”) with a requisition for a certain number of people and grabbed a handful of files from the top of the stack. That simple act decided where the draftee would spend the next few years: the most unlucky ones were stuck for 3 years in the Navy where being short almost guaranteed a submarine; the others got the Army and shorter guys didn’t fare much better – they were a perfect fit for a tank. In 1988 they were still sending people to Afghanistan, so your file being on top in the wrong time could ultimately decide if you would come home in a zinc coffin. And then there were locations – anywhere from remote posts inside the Arctic Circle, to scorching desert sands; mountains, faraway borders, big cities, resort towns, or somewhere deep in the woods where you’d see people once in 6 months – military was everywhere and all these places needed new “meat”.
My parents didn’t try our “Jewish luck” – a friendly (bribed) officer kept taking my file off the top of the stack until a good buyer showed up. I ended up only a few hundred miles away in the engineering regiment. My parents were happy – I was not too far, I never found out how much money and favors did it cost my Dad. I was happy – I didn’t end up in some horrible dump. “Friendly” officer was happy – he had a reason to celebrate. And the Soviet Army got one of the most worthless soldiers in its history.
That hot day in July of ’88 is still with me. Anxiety and fear long ago faded away but I still remember the buyer grabbing my file from the stack, like a hand of fate grabbing my life and pulling it into a mysterious unknown future.
Sometimes random bits of information come together nicely. Here is a quote from a local blog…
I attended Kansas City, Missouri Public Schools way back before Kansas City became a hollow shell of a city and before the school district lost its will to live. From the fourth grade on, we were regularly treated to visits to the Nelson, The (then) Kansas City Philharmonic and other cultural treasures of the area.
In the sixties, Corinthian Hall was the herding place for throngs of children, delivered by groaning yellow buses from all corners of the district. We sat, cross-legged on the floor, ready to buddy up and explore, two-by-two, the wonders of the world contained inside the limestone and marble wonder.
⋆FRATERNAL GREETING TO THE PEOPLES OF SOCIALIST NATIONS! Let develop and stregthen the peaceful system of socialism–deciding force of the anti-imperialist struggle, the bulwark of peace, democracy, and social progress!⋆
After somewhat of a run-up to this day it’s finally here:
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMue1xI01Kk
**this is more of a Red Square compilation from many festivities; I am pretty sure there was no military parade on that day.
⋆Under the banner of Marxism-Leninism, under the leadership of the Communist Party–forward to new victories in the construction of communism!⋆
When I was growing up© every able-bodied male over 18 years old was drafted to serve 2 years in the Army or 3 years in the Navy. Very few people were able to escape the draft based on health and other reasons. Going to college resulted in getting the lowest officer rank but even then a person had to serve some time and if you quit or got kicked out of school, guys in uniform came looking for you without delay. Threat of the military service was probably the single largest stimulus for getting into and staying in college for any male.
