
Greetings, Tovarischi! In this episode I’ll try to introduce you to the basics of the Soviet culture life. And don’t worry, I will return to this subject sometime in the future I well. I hope you’ll enjoy the show.
Also, the word “tovarisch” is a latinized spelling of the word “Товарищ” meaning “Comrade” – and the way of me, pronouncing in the show is the proper Russian pronunciation of it. I received a question about the meaning of this from a listener, and as the answer isn’t included in the show, I thought I should post it here.

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Will there be new shows uploaded soon?
Yes – I have had some health issues recently, so we are lagging behind, but I’m working.
Hope you get well soon! M and my friends are eagerly awaiting next installment! 🙂
Great start so far!
Very interesting. Makes you wonder how the USSR survived as long as it did!
Very good book on this topic by Francine Hirsch Francine called “Empire of Nations: ethnographic knowledge & the making of the Soviet Union” http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Nations-Ethnographic-Knowledge-Socialism/dp/0801489083
Two TV channels was the same we had in Sweden.
Although we where in the west the Swedish state TV company looked to the east for inspiration. For instance when Swedish State TV (SVT) did a demonstrated cable television in the 80’s it was all eastern block channels like 10 of them that they showed and one West German one 😀
Swedish politicians where extremely upset in the late 80’s and wanted to ban satellite dishes when TV3 started broadcasting to Sweden from the UK via satellite.
So Sweden was kind of a USSR wannabee in some ways but definitely a free country
This is kind of irrelevant, but Riga (Avotu street) was Marseille in this movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHBRG0zFd4I
Will repost this on twitter! Thank you!
Thanks a lot for your labor, comrade. It’s really cool. One minor note : this series of “Wizard of Emerald city” by Volkov, which was definitely originally plagiated from “Wizard of Oz” is quite long (approx 6 or 7 books), but it never mentions Americans, Soviets or any other real nation or state. All the personages in it bear though Anglo-Saxon names) it was my favorite reading in childhood)
Dear Kristaps, the village of Paris in Siberia was founded in 1842 by Cossacks commemorating the Napoleonic wars. The replica of Eyfel tower was constructed there in 2005. All the stories about the tourists cheated by sending there instead of France are some jokes that have nothing common with reality…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parizh,_Chelyabinsk_Oblast