bloc life

Ost German Nostalgia

admin — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:52:37 +0000

Film Review: I am Cuba [Soy Cuba]

Comrade I — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 08:43:45 +0000

For a dash back into the realm of communist block propaganda tinged with a snobby capitalist ascetic, check out the film I am Cuba [Soy Cuba]. If you grew up in the communist block, it’s likely you’ve never heard of this film. Actually, if you grew up in the capitalist block, it’s also likely you’ve never heard of it, that is unless you’re a film freak. It only became well known after the fall of the Soviet Union, when it was discovered by western filmmakers in the newly opened Soviet archives.

It was made by a Russian team with a more or less unlimited budget. After its release in 1964, it was condemned by the Cuban and Soviet governments for basically not being communist enough. This allowed it to find an honorary place in some dusty Soviet archive where it sat for around 30 years.

The following brief synopsis shouldn’t spoil any of the movie for you. The film is narrated by Cuba herself in a poetic style, then goes on four vignettes displaying different forms of oppression during the pre-revolutionary Batista era. The first story starts at a Havana party full of Americans. The Cubans are treated as their toys with the Cuban men being entertainers and the Cuban women all being prostitutes. This vignette contains a powerful scene where an American gets lost in a Cuban slum. The next scene follows the injustices brought on a peasant and his family working in the sugar cane fields. After this we get to follow a student revolutionary and his fellow classmate’s struggles against the Batista regime. Finally, the film takes us out into the hills where the fighting between the Castro guerillas and the Bastista armed forces is taking place. Here we get to follow a peasant man and his family as they get caught up in the fighting.

If you come upon a film student, they probably have heard of I am Cuba and will then proceed to gush on about its artistic genius, marvelous long shots, and beautiful imagery (They might even use the term mise en scéne). Like most film students, they are most likely repeating what they heard in class or read in some book, but watching the film even the layman can’t help but notice some of the camera acrobatics. This becomes very clear from the beginning when the audience is taken to a decadent party in the Batista era full of Western tourists treating the country as their play thing. According to film aficionados, this is the most famous scene and these film geeks really get gushing when the camera splashes into the swimming pool to join the partiers, then emerges from the pool and continues on without a single cut. I’ll admit, it’s pretty impressive, but if you’re used to the tricks of modern cinema where whole worlds are created from CG, then you might not get as excited. Equally, if not more impressive is a scene later in the movie that follows the funeral procession of a fallen student. The camera goes up the side of the building to what looks like the third or fourth floor, through a window into a cigar rolling factory, then out another window where it dangles above the crowd.

Overall, I am Cuba is a good trip down communist nostalgia lane, but with an artistic style that many can appreciate today. It might even bring out the hidden quasi-socialist film snob buff in you. If anything, the fact that it’s shot on location in early 1960s Cuba is enough to make it historically relevant. The next step after watching the film would be to visit Cuba today for a real dose of communist nostalgia.

Resurrection of a Soviet Singer

admin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:51:32 +0000

What Was It Like To Travel in the Soviet Union?

admin — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:02:15 +0000

What was it like to travel around the Soviet Union? According to blogger NEXTSTOPJUPITER, pretty tricky!

When you wanted to travel in the Soviet Union you had four options: You went to the Soviet Union

- on an organized trip

- after getting a private invitation

- after getting an official invitation

In all these cases you were restricted in your movement. You could visit only certain areas. It was not allowed to visit closed cities, towns or areas.

- or you went to the Soviet Union on your own with a transit visa

You were not restricted in your movement but you had to avoid police controls or encounters with other authorities

I tried all four options…

Georgia

In 1980, on my first visit to the Soviet Union, I went there on my own, only with a transit visa which was valid only for two or three days. Coming from Poland, I arrived by train in Kiev where I took another train to Sochi and then to Sukhumi. From there I started a hitchhiking trip in Georgia, I stayed for several days there, and it was a great experience to come in contact with people I otherwise would not have met, to see places I otherwise would not have seen. Georgia is the country where Stalin was born, and there was still a great admiration for this dictator.

Moldova

Back in Sochi, I took a domestic flight to the Moldovian capital Chisinau. Soon I realized that this city was culturally more connected to Romania than to Russia. After several days there I decided to hitchhike to Romania. After arriving in a small village two kilometers from the border I had to walk. When the border guards saw me coming, they checked my papers, and they saw that I had entered the Soviet Union from Poland more than two weeks ago. But it was no problem, they thought that I was walking all the time from the Polish to the Romanian border.

Uzbekistan, Tajikistan

In 1985 I went for about ten days on an organized trip to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. It was the first time that I chose this way of traveling but after all, it was a positive experience. Before I visited these countries I didn’t know anything about Islam, but during the trip I learned at least, that it is not allowed to take photos of Muslim people, and I saw some of the great islamic architecture you can find in these countries, especially in Samarkand, one of the most ancient cities of the world whose history dates back 2,500 years, and in Bukhara, another ancient city. Unfortunately I could not make any personal contacts during this trip.

Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

In 1988 I was invited to the first jazz festival in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Antanas Gustys, the festival director, whom I had met two years before in Germany, had invited me to bring a band to his festival. The festival was a big success, but it was not only the festival which I was interested in. At that time the movement for the restoration of the Lithuanian independence from the Soviet Union had started. People began to think for themselves and stopped listening to politicians. It was an exciting spirit of freedom I felt when I was in Vilnius. I had some similar experiences in the following years when I visited Latvia (in 1989 and 1991), Estonia (in 1990) and again and again Lithuania, and it was always a good opportunity to come in contact with people in these three countries still under Soviet occupation. In 1991 I tried again to visit Estonia. Coming from Finland I had no visa for the Soviet Union because the Soviet consulate in Helsinki was too lazy to issue visas in time, and so I tried to get a visa at the border. This attempt was unsuccessful, and so I had to return to Finland.

Russia

In 1990 I went to Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) to attend a jazz festival there. The first impression was a nightmare, a dirty and ugly city, 40 km East of the Ural mountains. My friend who had invited me, lived with his family in a small apartment, but he told me that he was lucky that he had not to share it with another family. The room of the hotel were I spent several nights was big enough to host a soccer team but I had dozens of other roommates – cockroaches (a friend had even a mouse in his room). The festival was interesting, some of the most important Russian musicians performed there, plus some musicians from Bulgaria, Lithuania and the UK, and it was a good opportunity to make some new friends. Another year, another festival. In October 1991 I traveled to Arkhangelsk, a port city in the Northern part of Russia at the coast of the White Sea. It was at a time of transition, the Moscow putsch had just collapsed, but the Soviet Union was still existing. During Soviet times, Arkhangelsk was one of the most important places for jazz and improvised music in the country, and so it wasn’t a surprise that the festival offered some high level performances, including some by foreign groups. The festival included a trip to the Solovetsky island in the White Sea, a place of extraordinary untouched nature. This island is also home to a monastery which was turned into a prison camp during the time of Stalinist dictatorship, and where many prisoners, Russians as well as foreigners, lost their lives.

February 1992 – the Soviet Union was history. At that time there were no border checks between the countries of the former empire. I bought a train ticket for about 1$ in Vilnius and traveled, without a Russian visa, to Leningrad to attend another festival there …

History of USSR for Kids

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:28:57 +0000

Lego inspired Soviet history… on syllabuses at a school near you soon.

Cool to be a Communist?

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:34:43 +0000

With Che Guevara staring out from trendy t-shirts across the globe and hammer and sickles gracing anything from cigarette cases to badges, how did communism become cool? And should we be celebrating what was for many a brutal and dehumanising system and existance?

Glenn Beck from Fox News investigates…

How Did Communism Become Cool?

The Real Deal

admin — Sun, 30 May 2010 15:39:40 +0000

So it’s not just bloc life interested in all things socialist and communist… introducing Real USSR, a collaborative blog publishing all sorts of interesting stories about the former Soviet Union.

From great features on anything from Soviet fashion design to cars, and fascinating oral histories, Real USSR covers a wide range of topics. Plus, many of the articles relate this important period of history to modern life, providing a really user-friendly way to access information about a way of living that is fast being forgotten. Check out the pretty hard-core quiz to – How Well Do You Know the USSR? - but maybe read a few articles first.

bloc life is pleased to have permission to reproduce some of Real USSR’s stories for our archives, and we hope they inspire other people to contribute too, to both us and Real USSR.

Filter Jugoslavia: A Yugoslav Childhood

admin — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:23:10 +0000

Billed as a book that will make anyone who was part of former Yugoslavia laugh, Filter Jugoslavia is based on a series of columns written by Macedonian Konstantin Petrovski.

Originally published from September 2004 – June 2005 in EGO magazine under the nickname Mirko and Slavko factum est, the columns were about small, daily things that were part of life for people in the former Socialistic Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1943-1992), particularly in the 1980s when the author was growing up.

From the irresistible collectability of Pez candies to the famed beauty of folk singer Lepa Brena, the taste of powdered orange juice to the little dramas of small town life, it’s all here in this collection of deeply personal memories which will nonetheless resound with a lot of Balkan people.

Filter Jugoslavia (FENIKS Skopje) by Konstantin Petrovski, Illustrations by Viktor Lozanov, Cover design by Saso Alusevski. Read more in Macedonian below and a further review in Macedonian here.

Open publication – Free publishing – More jugoslavija

Kommunalka Communities: Shared Homes, Shared Lives

admin — Thu, 06 May 2010 11:01:26 +0000

Communal living defined life in Soviet Russia for many people. But rather than being an idealogical concept introduced on purpose, they actually developed because of urban overcrowding and a lack of Stalinist investment in housing.

Of course local authorities were also encouraged by the Revolution to force people to give up or share their larger apartment with proletarians.

For a fascinating resource on communal living in Russia check out kommunalka.colgate.edu – a virtual museum of Soviet everyday life:

The tours are one of the best resources, videos showing the reality of life in a kommunalki from some actual residents.

Lunokhod 1 Calling

admin — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:59:44 +0000

Lunokhod 1, a 1970s era lunar probe sent to the moon by Soviet scientists has been found by NASA some 40 years after falling silent. The first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another celestial body, Lunokhod means moon walker in Russian, and the probe managed to send back photographs and soil sample data before contact was lost after just 322 Earth days of operations.

It first landed on the Sea of Rains, a relatively smooth surface formed by lava which flooded a giant crater created when a very large object hit the Moon long ago.

The NASA team sent pulses of laser light toward the newly found rover and found its retroreflector in excellent condition. This can give information about the moon’s core and gravity field, as well as lunar dust.

The Soviet Space Program continued for more than 60 years from the 1930s to when the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, and was responsible for a lot of significant space achievements, as well as some failures and thwarted projects.