Thread: About Cold War and more

If Nulle is the biggest Latvian nationalist on the forum (not much competition) then I think Marcus is the biggest Russian nationalist on the forum!!

PS - what happened to the smiley with the red flag? That would have been more appropriate....

Anyway, I think everybody here is doing a great job of representing Russia to people from other countries, and also explaining the USSR and the Cold War from your perspective.

It's interesting to hear that you don't see Russia as being dominating in the USSR. Most other people thought so.
What about stars in the USSR ice hockey team, were they mostly Russian or other nationalities?
I remember from this time that people said, "blah, blah, blah Russians...." and teachers said "don't say Russians, say Soviets". It never really caught on though!

I have no idea what it was like with possible Russian domination of the USSR, and no opinion on it -- but I remember often seeing programs on TV with people with really elegant national costumes from different parts of the USSR - I could be wrong, but it seemed to me that the different nationalities were something that was celebrated in the USSR, in culture at least.
Plus, several of the Soviet leaders were from other Soviet republics than Russia, as far as I am aware. I guess that wouldn't have been the case if Russia totally dominated.

One thing that seems strange though, is that USSR apparently marked in people's passport who was Jewish (why??!) and that Jews were sometimes discriminated against (?) to the extent that many got fed up and tried to emigrate. But on the other hand... tons of really famous people from the Soviet era were Jewish, so it can't have been extreme. Don't know what the truth about this is - does anyone have a view on it?

Originally Posted by Hanna

If Nulle is the biggest Latvian nationalist on the forum (not much competition) then I think Marcus is the biggest Russian nationalist on the forum!!

PS - what happened to the smiley with the red flag? That would have been more appropriate....

Anyway, I think everybody here is doing a great job of representing Russia to people from other countries, and also explaining the USSR and the Cold War from your perspective.

It's interesting to hear that you don't see Russia as being dominating in the USSR. Most other people thought so.
What about stars in the USSR ice hockey team, were they mostly Russian or other nationalities?
I remember from this time that people said, "blah, blah, blah Russians...." and teachers said "don't say Russians, say Soviets". It never really caught on though!

I have no idea what it was like with possible Russian domination of the USSR, and no opinion on it -- but I remember often seeing programs on TV with people with really elegant national costumes from different parts of the USSR - I could be wrong, but it seemed to me that the different nationalities were something that was celebrated in the USSR, in culture at least.
Plus, several of the Soviet leaders were from other Soviet republics than Russia, as far as I am aware. I guess that wouldn't have been the case if Russia totally dominated.

One thing that seems strange though, is that USSR apparently marked in people's passport who was Jewish (why??!) and that Jews were sometimes discriminated against (?) to the extent that many got fed up and tried to emigrate. But on the other hand... tons of really famous people from the Soviet era were Jewish, so it can't have been extreme. Don't know what the truth about this is - does anyone have a view on it?

Stalin was a Georgian (Svan I think in fact) and spoke with a noticible foreign accent. There were many others of course. The only real advantage of Russians was the language, the Russian language unofficially became the state language and the lingua franca.
The ethnicity was marked anyway, now it is not. Why? I have always wondered. Jews had very high positions in the first decades of the Soviet power. But the tensions arose between them and Stalin, because of their support of Israel which appeared to be anti-Soviet despite the USSR helped it a lot.
Many people wanted to emigrate, many Jews thought their motherland was Israel. Jews were allowed to emigrate after the war and in the 70ths. Others did not usually get this opportunity.
Jews were never oppressed, they still occupied high positions in culture, science, but they were gradually excluded from the government, Party lidership, high army command and the special services. It is worth saying that they occupied a very large part of posts in Soviet ministries, Party, army and special services before the end of the 1930s. The Soviet Union enjoyed the support of Jews throughout the world but was called Jewish state by the white, Hitler and other enemies.

Originally Posted by Hanna

It's interesting to hear that you don't see Russia as being dominating in the USSR. Most other people thought so.
What about stars in the USSR ice hockey team, were they mostly Russian or other nationalities?

There were no Russian domination in sport, if we talk about sport in general. If you google "Soviet (Olympic) champions", you'll see people of different ethnicities. Sometimes certain sports were dominated by people from certain republics (that probably depended on what sports were popular there due to cultural differences or climate). For example, wrestling champions were almost exclusively machos from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Ossetia, etc. Ukrainians succeed in soccer, Russians in hockey, and so on.

I remember from this time that people said, "blah, blah, blah Russians...." and teachers said "don't say Russians, say Soviets". It never really caught on though!

Your teachers were smart.
The USSR was a union of 15 ethnic republics, people of various backgrounds all mixed together. For example, in my school class we had loads of kids of mixed ethnicities, who were proud of their "ethnic" last names (Georgian/Armenian/Uzbeck/Arab/Korean/Karaim/Latvian and some others).

One thing that seems strange though, is that USSR apparently marked in people's passport who was Jewish (why??!)

Absolutely everyone had their ethnicities marked in passports, along with name, address and some other info. Jews were no different.
If a child was of mixed ethnicity, parents could choose which ethnicity they prefer to "transfer" to their kid.

Originally Posted by Hanna

If Nulle is the biggest Latvian nationalist on the forum (not much competition) then I think Marcus is the biggest Russian nationalist on the forum!!

PS - what happened to the smiley with the red flag? That would have been more appropriate....

The smiley with a rose always suits well. So, you congratulate me as a winner? Thank you!