If we combined the premise of the movies Match Point and Final Destination, the result could very well be called Yuri Yudin. This was the name of a young Soviet man who, paradoxically, was saved by a series of health issues in 1959, forcing him to abandon an expedition that would cost the lives of […]
Soviet Union
Intervision, the Soviet Bloc Festival that Replicated Eurovision with Voting by Turning the Lights On and Off
This is evident with NATO and the Warsaw Pact or the European Common Market and COMECON. But interestingly enough, the Eastern countries also had a response to something much less serious. In 1977, the ISC, the Intervision Song Contest, was born, which, as you can guess, was a copy of the Eurovision Song Contest in […]
Soviet Experiments to Create a Man-Ape Hybrid that Inspired an Unfinished Opera by Shostakovich
In 1932, Dmitri Shostakovich, one of the most significant composers of the 20th century, started writing a satirical opera that he ultimately left unfinished. Its title, Orango, refers to the name of the unlikely protagonist of an almost surreal plot about the life of a Parisian journalist, a hybrid between a man and an ape. […]
Mikhail Devyatayev, the Soviet Prisoner who Staged a World War II Escape by Stealing a German Aircraft
The city of Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia), has a medieval historic center where the local cemetery is located. There stands a monument in memory of World War II and, next to it, an artistic tombstone bearing the name of Mikhail Devyatayev, a character with a more than curious story: he starred […]
Aimo Koivunen, the Finnish Soldier who Was the First Documented Case of Pervitin Overdose in Combat
Pervitin is the name of a drug that soldiers consumed during World War II for its stimulating and euphoric effects, basically composed of methamphetamine. It was commonly used in the Wehrmacht but also in other armies (including the Allies), either under that name or other commercial names. Pervitin helped soldiers cope with the harshness of […]
Operation Osoaviakhim, the Forced Relocation of Thousands of German Scientists and Technicians to the USSR in 1946
Certainly, World War II history enthusiasts may know that the transfer to the United States of German scientists specialized in cutting-edge weapons at the end of the conflict was called Operation Paperclip. What is not as well-known is that the Soviets carried out a similar action, adding more than two and a half thousand specialists […]
Ossip Bernstein, the Chess Player who Bet his Life in One Game
Chess is a game that represents war on a board, where pieces are eliminated in a metaphor of combat and death based on their hierarchy. That’s why it’s ironic that a game played in 1918 literally saved a man’s life. His name was Ossip Samoilovich Bernstein, and he had to win to prove his identity, […]
Kaliningrad, the Strategic City no one Wants
Similar to what happened with the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, the end of World War II reshaped the European map, with a special impact on the eastern part of the continent and the borders between Germany, Poland, Russia, and the present Baltic states. This resulted in some cities that previously belonged to one country […]
Two Tortoises were the First Living Beings to complete a Full Orbit around the Moon
In September 1968, the former Soviet Union launched the Zond 5 mission, a milestone in space exploration that marked not only the first time a spacecraft orbited the Moon in a circumlunar trajectory and returned to Earth but also the first time living beings did so. Onboard the spacecraft were two tortoises, becoming the first […]
Kitchen debate, the dialectic exchange between Nixon and Khrushchev during the American National Exhibition in Moscow
On July 24, 1959 Moscow was the site of an unusual event: the American National Exhibition, which followed the Soviet exhibition held a few months earlier in New York, both with the objective of reducing tensions between the two major blocks of the Cold War, taking advantage of the period of thaw that Nikita Krushchev […]