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Xander77 posted:At this point the NKVD could investigate and lead to the near-guaranteed execution* of ordinary workers, party leaders and military heroes (in the height of the Great Terror, this could be done without a trial, within days). Men would be recalled from Spain or the Chinese front to face charges of being Francoist / Trotskyist collaborators or Japanese agents (for best results, switch the two around. Nowhere was Franco's spy network quite as active as on the Mongolian border). A commissar could execute a unit commander on the spot and lead the men in an attack himself (yes, as per W40K tabletop rules), being sure that his faithful comrades in the заградотря́ды would stop or shoot any men trying to flee. Agents would travel abroad to assassinate political opponents, enemies of the Soviet people or dissidents. The NKVD was at the height of its power. Don't get too sensationalist. Blocking squads were there to reform fleeing soldiers and send them back into battle (arresting those that would not), not executing anyone that they saw. Also the only account of a commissar doing anything like that I have read of was one where a commissar allegedly shot the only remaining soldier in his battalion for trying to surrender, and then himself (but then, who told the story?).
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Oct 16, 2013 23:40
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More like too busy watching television on the beach, decadent capitalist scum! (From a real Russian texbook, albeit a very much tongue-in-cheek one).
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Nov 1, 2013 03:37
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Simple answer: the devious chekists at Department 7 broke his shutter to prevent Rukov from completing his mission while he was inside the building.
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Jan 24, 2014 03:34
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Kopijeger posted:We don't see the entire apartment, so there might be a piano on one of the other walls. On a different note, there is a joke about our hero still having his books about childhood heroes like Spidercomrade and Tractorcomrade. What kind of books would a boy growing up in the 1970s Soviet Union actually be likely to have read? I grew up a bit later than that, but I don't think the books changed. A lot of Marshak's books, classic fairy tales. Sherlock Holmes was the poo poo. Winnie the Pooh was very popular, too. If you were lucky enough to know a guy who knows a guy at school, you could get a lovely quality carbon copy of Western science fiction, for one night only. Lots of books about war, too, not just WWII, but modern stuff. My grandfather also had a copy of the Partisan's Companion that I read end to end a number of times, but that might be atypical. There were no superheroes, in the Western sense. Supernatural abilities were rare in fiction. I only remember two instances: a short story about a policeman who was very tall, and, of course, Karlsson. A lot of the books were about Young Pioneers or similarly "nice" children getting up to an acceptable amount of mischief and then thwarting the plans of some corrupt Bourgeois/border smugglers/anti-social elements. Xander77 posted:Oh! Here's something I neglected to mention about Uncle Vanya's gloomy abode - it doesn't have a piano! It doesn't have any carpets hanging on the walls either (for insulation, yeah, but mainly as an ostentatious display of disposable income), but some "intelligentsia" class family didn't approve of such crass displays. But a piano? That's a must. It might be completely out of tune, it might have served as nothing more than a particularly cumbersome shelf for years, but you can't have a "kulturniy" home without a piano. I was about to say "but Xander, we did not have a piano!" and then I remembered we did, but my interaction with it was limited to elbowing the keys to make some horrible sounds as a child. I was not a proper wunderkind, I could neither play the piano nor the violin, and could barely recite any theorems at all.
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Jan 26, 2014 19:18
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I made it halfway through War and Peace before I decided I could not be bothered. They never made us read the whole thing at school, just excerpts. Dead Souls was pretty cool, though.
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Jan 26, 2014 23:53
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I should find "Guidelines for Visiting Bourgeois and Other Developing Countries" again. It had a lot of hilarious stuff like "Capitalists will attempt to bribe you. Do not accept cash bribes, and bring any culturally significant material goods you receive for placement in a museum."
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Feb 13, 2014 15:16
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Uncreative street names with party imagery are pretty common, especially in small towns. As the joke goes, "The longest street in the world is Lenin Street, it goes through every Russian city!"
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Feb 13, 2014 17:08
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Silenced revolver? Someone's old fashioned.
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Feb 15, 2014 06:52
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Steak Flavored Gum posted:This was actually A Thing. The M1895 had a very strange design where the cylinder cammed forward when firing to allow the case to seal with the forcing cone of the barrel, which enabled it to be suppressed fairly easily. I know. My point was that the Nagant is ridiculously obsolete come 1980-whatever that the game is set in. You'd think that all shadowy figures would be upgraded to at least a Makarov.
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Feb 15, 2014 20:28
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I've seen "bourgeois" used to refer to countries to differentiate them from the same country as a part of the USSR. For example, pre-1940 Estonia would be called "bourgeois Estonia".
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Feb 15, 2014 23:40
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Xander77 posted:Is that a take on "The Motherland calls" or am I just imagining puns where none exist? It's a painting by this guy. 
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Feb 16, 2014 01:59
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German is also capable of transforming words like that, but to a more limited degree. Russian has these things all over the place though, making a direct translation pretty difficult.
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Feb 17, 2014 02:35
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Saying "du" to someone you just met? How rude 
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Feb 23, 2014 22:21
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I've met Jakovs and Daniils in the depths of Russian countryside with no trace of Jewish ancestry whatsoever, so I wouldn't say that there is.
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Feb 23, 2014 22:42
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Probably because that's the fastest way of getting someone thrown out of a fancy establishment.
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Feb 25, 2014 02:35
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All that, and not a single New Russian joke? I am disappointed. The New Russians are stereotypically represented as people with more money than sense. They suddenly came into their fortunes, and have no idea what to do with them, so various anecdotes tend to be about them buying gold chains, garish clothes, cars (they favour the "Mercedes 600"), and various overpriced Western doodads. All in dollars, of course. Now their children, these are the ones with business sense.
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Mar 28, 2014 01:58
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Xander77 posted:I don't even remember what the rules for hostile takeovers of abandoned LPs are. You Photoshop the OP out of all screenshots and pretend you started the LP to begin with
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Jul 17, 2014 15:01
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Dawncloack posted:I know you probably know this, Xander, but just in case there's someone reading who isn't into soviet history, it's not as nonsensical as it seems at first glance. Even during Stalin there were factions. In one famous example, I believe from the first purge, he had those who opposed Lenin's New Economic Policy or NEP shot (that would be the "left wing" of the regime, those in favour of total centralization and no free market at all) and then he had those who favored NEP shot (that would be the "right wing" of the regime, ie. those who were for a very modest economic liberalization). One of my favourite period quips is "The communist party has grown a left wing and a right wing, perhaps it will flap them and fly away."
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Aug 4, 2014 23:54
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