#post-Soviet

[fuckyeahplattenbau]

Residential building, built in the 1970s. Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo: Stefano Perego

[thererisesaredstar]

Portrait of cosmonaut Boris Volynov by Vitaly Georgievich Smagin (2011)

[redpredatorforpindoses]

I didn't want to post anything about this dude for a long time like I don't want to look like someone who writes on hype topics but lol look at this underground! I've been there irl, it's pretty much the same as the one in my city (also a big post soviet city), the only difference was that instead of grids (like at 2:33) we have a blank wall and you can't look down at passing trains (for safety).

Russian metro is awesome, also look at stations from other cities and neighbouring countries (google pics).

"Palats Ukraina", Kyiv, Ukraine (Photo from 2010, all the Soviet decorations have now been removed)

"Mayakovskaya", St. Petersburg, Russia

"Moskva", Almaty, Kazakhstan

"Botanicheskaya", Yekaterinburg, Russia

"Lefortovo", Moscow, Russia

"Dostoevskaya", Moscow, Russia

"Alisher Navoiy", Tashkent, Uzbekistan

"Avtovo", St. Petersburg, Russia

"Pyatrowshchyna", Minsk, Belarus

"Belorusskaya", Moscow, Russian

"Zoloti Vorota", Kyiv, Ukraine

[ferdifz]

Spaceman (2024, March; Netflix)

Why does Hanuš the space-spider never call Jakub the Czech cosmonaut, Jakub? And Hanuš instead keeps calling Jakub "skinny man"? I don't protest this about the movie. No, I think I love it.

Also I love how all the dialogue feels translated. As if it's not natively written in English. The post-neo-Soviet vibe, it fits the narrative so well.

In fact I think I'd love watching the movie with Czech audio and English subtitles. I wonder if that's possible... I suppose it's subtle but it would require me hunting for the Czech audio, which I'm 99% sure exists.

I also love the movie's subtext-dialogue about the notions of love, relationship, loneliness, attachment, self-centeredness, touch, beginning & end, cosmology, and so on and so forth.

So much to think about. It's like, I myself had to watch this in a couple of sittings, and I just had to watch it like two, three times to catch what I want to catch out of it...

Spaceman (2024 movie) at Wikipedia

[postsovietique]

From the archive. Two-bedroom apartment in Khabarovsk. "Quiet, friendly neighbors.”

[heidekraut404]

familiar place.

[omeem]

Post-soviet baby

[xe-5aj1700155-024]

I love this film so much

“The Nutcracker” (USSR, 1973)

[urartinspo]

[couldoneimagine]

I saw an Australian do this and I wanna try too - which one of these Russian foods is fake?*

*Russian food here refers to food that is eaten by Russians, not specifically Russian in origin. a lot of "Russian food" is Ukrainian, Belorussian, uzbek, Tatar etc. in origin.

Fuck Putin.

[fuckyeahplattenbau]

Pskov, by Dmitry Markov (1982-2024) (insta)

[inbabylontheywept]

Soviet Birds.

The secret facility that I work in has holes in the ceiling. We don't know how to get them fixed.

We tried asking the government to fix it, once. We told them that the holes in the older parts of the facility had gotten large enough to fit birds through, and that birds were getting through, and that, perhaps, a Soviet Spy could fit through as well.

After all, it is well known that Soviet Spies and pigeons are approximately the same diameter.

Our hope was that that this vague and nonsensical threat would put a little fire under Uncle Sam's feet. If the fed couldn't be bothered to give a shit about the giant gaping holes in the roof of our facility, perhaps they could be persuaded to give a shit about... Soviet Spies.

This attempt at manipulation 100% blew up in our faces.

See, the government does not need to be persuaded to give a shit about Soviet Spies. It still wakes up most nights, drenched in cold sweat, terrified and confident that a Soviet Spy is hiding in their nightstand. If it sees a rock on the ground, it flips it over, pistol drawn, ready to shoot the Soviet Spy it fully expects to slither out from underneath. Which is to say: The government is crazy. So when we dropped those two words - inflitration risk - in the repair request, they came in guns-a-blazin'.

Does that mean that they fixed the roof? Of course not. Don't be stupid. No, instead of performing basic maintenance, they installed a state of the art alarm system throughout the facility - lasers, sonar, the works - and told us to always be on the guard. Because of the roof holes.

Then they left.

So now we had an extremely good alarm system... and birds. Which have combined in incredibly obvious and predictable ways to produce an unending fountain of problems.

For Example: About once a month, someone gets called in by the local airforce dispatch because AAAAAAAAAAA a Spy is in the Rad Lab! We're all gonna die! Except every time, it's a bird. And I get why we have to check, but every time, the dispatcher is panicked and the person going out has to be like listen, listen: It's a bird. It's always a bird. It's been a bird every month for the last fifteen years. It will be a bird next month. All this stress? Bad for your heart.

Second Example: Sometimes, birds get in while we're actually working. And when it's in the morning, you know, it's a nuisance, and it stops testing (we are not going to risk irradiating a bird) but it's not an all-hands-on-deck situation because it doesn't take ten hours to get a bird out. But surprisingly often, the bird gets in riiiiight at closing time, and in that situation, everyone goes feral because nobody can leave until the alarm is set, and we cannot set the alarm while the bird is there, because the bird would immediately trigger it and then we'd have to stay another 4 hours to confirm that it was not a Soviet Bird.

So in order to go home, everyone's top priority is Get That Bird. And we have a system for it.

Step 1: The test stands tend to be located in rooms with 30+ foot ceilings. We can't catch birds in places like that - so we have to lure the bird into the relatively low ceilinged (8 feet only) upper offices.

We do this by turning all the lights off in the test rooms, then putting floodlights by the exits. I don't know why this works - some kind of evolutionary brain fragment shared by both Bugs and Birds - but work it does. The birds almost always follow after the lights. From there, it’s just two guys moving the floodlight and a third guy to turn off the lights.

Step 2: Everyone else has been waiting for this step. There is this long stairway up from the basement level into the offices, and in the final stage, the floodlights are brought to the base of the stairwell to bring the bird up. At the top of the steps there will be a group of tennish people, waiting for the signal. The light guys will set up the final transfer, everyone will tense, and then, swish...a bird will flit up the stairs and into the offices.

It's like watching werewolves on a full moon. Before the bird cometh, we are engineers. Nerds. Pale and skinny things, trembling under the fluorescent lights. After the bird, we are beasts. Feral, gnawing things, glowing under the orange sunrise of the 70's halogen floodlights.

And like all beasts, we cannot help but give chase.

Step 3: The were-engineers begin the hunt. The goal at the start is not really to catch the bird - just exhaust it. So the pack simply does not relent. Because the stakes are going home on time, the group is basically given free reign to go anywhere in the building. If someone's door is open, and the bird goes inside, they're going to have to deal with ten sweaty panting maniacs leaping around their office. They don't get to say that they're busy, or remark on how all this movement is a terrible distraction. They are allowed to sit in silence during the chaos, and perhaps thank the war party for chasing the bird while they sat comfortably on their ass. This has been explained several times, and it will continue to be explained until cooperation is achieved.

Anyway.

The chase can go on for quite some time. Sometimes, the bird will get tired and find a crevice to hide in, where it can then be reached through standard cornered-bird catching techniques.

Other times, it will slow down enough that someone can actually yoink it out of the air. But this will go on until someone catches the bird and triggers Step 4.

Step 4: The Finale. This is the get-the-bird-out-of-the-building stage, and it requires someone to adopt a specific role: To Become the Sacrificial Vessel of Bird Removal.

This job is both coveted and feared. It's coveted, because holding a wild bird in one's hands is a precious thing. To feel how small, and fragile, and scared it is, only to free it from the building? That is what it's like to be a benevolent God. But the cost! Oh, the cost. The entire time the Vessel is in motion, the bird will be biting the hell out of their fingers. And I cannot emphasize enough just how painful bird bites are. Their entire face is a set of needle posed pliers, and they know tricks the even the cartels haven't figured out yet. So there's always a little hubbub about who shall be The Vessel while onlookers, stranded outside The Office of Bird Capture, can only look on. Quiet arguments and pleas are heard, little fragments of fear and pride and glory trickling out of room like the silver dust left behind in a bag of well shook quarters. The sound of concensus is silence, and the argument will go on until that's all that's left. And then, from the darkness of the final office, the chosen sacrifice will step forward: Hands gently cupped, tears streaming down their face, fingers trembling from the pain of the ongoing bird chomps.

And this scene is what organizes people. Not leadership, not truly. No one can think and coordinate a crowd while their fingers are being attacked with a combination nutcracker/ear piercer. But the crowd sees the suffering of their annointed, and it is driven to do everything poossible to make the process flow. People instinctively flair out, finding the fastest path outside. Doors are held open. Paths are cleared. Someone, somehow, always knows the way forward and can describe it to the sufferer. Left, left, forward. Corner closet. Yep, there's a hall in there. Forward. Two-hundred more feet man, you're doing great. Just hold it together a little longer. You're killing it.

Then the final door swings open, and the bird flees out into what remains of daylight. And yet, even here, the deed is not yet done. I cannot explain it in words, but the crowd that helped is never content until they can see and speak on the Bird Vessel's wounds. They all have to pull the fingers back and see what was given. Estimate the price: One day to get better - No, three - No, a week! Are you blind? Do you see that blood blister? -Yeah, that's not going away anytime soon - Damn, can you believe how feisty those things are? Like wolves without teeth.

(They cannot help but touch as they go. It has always been this way. Even Thomas was not content until he felt the wounds in Christ's hands.)

Only when the last of the helpers has seen, and commented, and commended, will the engineers scatter. It is their return from the underworld that announces to the sun living surface dwellers that they too can go home. (@somerunner tolja it needed to be a post.)

[doctahchang]

my favourite ukrainian artist oleksandr murashko :) need to chomp on his artworks so bad just to be able to work with colour like that

[moviesandropes]

[aoloieruarchive]

Risa, 2021

[fuckyeahplattenbau]

Budapest, Hungary, 1980

Nation-World magazine Goodbye to Old Buda 30th July, 1980