Reminiscing things from the Soviet Union

We found ourselves drinking Kvas and reminiscing about Soviet Union things. Kvas is a summertime non-alcoholic drink made by fermenting rye bread in water.

That’s kvas in the Cyrillic script —квас..

In the 80s, books from the Soviet Union (translated into English, Hindi and several other Indian languages) were very common in India. One of my favourites was a children’s magazine called “Misha”. The last page always featured Russian lessons. I remember some basic phrases like spasih-ba (thanks), dobrey den (good afternoon), deh svedanya (bye), da (yes) and nyet (no).

The Soviet Union published colourful popular science books. They were highly subsidised and they were much cheaper compared to Western books.

My earliest memories reading about robots, space stations and computers were in these Soviet Union books. I liked Soviet Sci-Fi, even in the 80s their style was a lot like the American sci-fi from the 30s through the 50s — more about adventure, space exploration and far away colonies etc.

These books were available until the early nineties and then with the fall of the Soviet Union, they slowly disappeared. Also by then with the advent of satellite TV, the U.S/Western pop culture became dominant.

I faintly remember watching the movie Stalker on television (a movie about three explorers going into a mysterious area called “the zone” where an alien spacecraft had crash landed).