Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
Star Wars IV.... That's really the first one, right?
Yep.
You watched that one in the USSR?! What about the sequels?
As far as I remember, it was in 1986, the very beginning of so-called "Perestroyka". I saw the sequels on video several years later.
Well after reading the latest posts I am beginning to think that this censorship that the USSR supposedly engaged in was mostly hype! Were there any program / film that you were aware of and wanted to watch but couldn't?
I was a kid at that time, and loved American cartoons, especially "Tom&Jerry", but there was only one opportunity to watch it - on a VHR. And it was a very rare thing in the middle of 80s in USSR. One of my father's friends had a video recorder at home (he was a diplomat or something) and I was able to watch VHR only if we went visiting that family.
If you could watch Star Wars and those other films, then you didn't really miss a whole lot of GOOD 1980s Western popular culture! At least not much more than what I "missed" in Sweden! The fact you didn't grew up with Disney and Dallas is probably just healthy. There were some good blockbusters like "Dirty Dancing", "Top Gun" and James Bond... Other than that, no big loss by the sound of things..
I'v also just remembered that I watched "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade" on video when I was very little, about 5 or 6 y.o., but it was dubbed in Spanish . A boy, who showed me this film spoke Spanish fluently (he was a son of that diplomat and they brought this tape from Mexico), so he was doing translation.
The reason they cut Star Wars may not have been anything political - it was seriously cut in Sweden too. I think it was just very violent. As a result the uncut version became very sought after. I don't remember what the difference was.
I strongly suppose that there was another reason - a very bad quality of the copy (the tape broke a couple of times during the seance) .