25 Soviet things that were not heard abroad
The past of each country is unique and unites the people living in it. Maxim Magazine remembered the good Soviet times and gathered what makes our hearts feel pleasant awe and nostalgia.
1. Pioneerball
This simplified version of volleyball for the frail children's calf appeared in the 1930s. Let this kind of Soviet children's sport develop basically only a grasping function of the body, but it was tremendously democratic. To play pioneerball could literally all: boys, girls, fat, dystrophic, mentally retarded and glasses. In pioneerball, there were no stars, because it was not good to play it (you could play very badly, but that's another story). Until now, Russian children in Turkish and Spanish hotels are amazing staff, playing their mysterious game.
2. Trust turnstiles
That's where they are buried, the roots of national psychology. Only in our turnstiles work on the principle of predatory plants. They lurk in the darkness of the iron boxes, creating an illusion of complete freedom and security. But with any attempt at illegal penetration, their jaws are closed on the body of the offender - in the area of the most vulnerable places. Yes, we are not looking for simple ways. We do not trust him from childhood.
3. Boiled condensed milk
Caramelized concentrated milk also lives in foreign supermarkets - in the departments of all kinds of ingredients for confectionery. But the taste, appearance and smell is not at all what our dear condensed milk, which you yourself had boiled for three hours in a saucepan, and then scraped off the walls and ceiling. After being slightly distracted to watch the final match of the European Cup.
4. Footcloths
"Footcloths were, are and will be! "Army General Vladimir Isakov, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, once said in an interview with the press. - Because synthetics for the legs are harmful, especially when you have to run 30 km in kirz boots. Instead of synthetic dense socks, each soldier should be sewed to measure by measure, or they will be crocked, and the legs should be packed with wrinkles. The Russian army tried socks, tried it, not in the Stone Age, we live. So, the experiments failed. It's all sorts of American marines, who, by helicopters and jeeps, move around strive, they can afford to indulge in socks. " This is the opinion of the army leadership. But one of the useful skills of the army each of us can bring. For girls, for example, the ability to instantly make themselves socks made from two handkerchiefs makes an indelible impression.
5. To sit on the path
Our ancient national superstition says that if all the members of a noisy family sit down before they leave and keep silent a minute, then the trip will be successful. If only because it is in this sacred moment that they can mystically realize that passports have remained on the couch, tickets are in the bathroom, and the child wears skates instead of mittens.
6. Knock on wood
As you know, around each person is full of eared evil spirits who are busy with destroying all dreams. As soon as they hear that someone wants to buy a horse more favorably, or to give a daughter a successful marriage, then they immediately rush off from all the paws, pick up the price, and spoil the girl - just to play a dirty trick. Therefore, in all countries, reasonable people, foolishly expressing some of their desire out loud, immediately knocked on the tree: the devil's tree frightens off, which the druids still understood. But now this useful skill other nations podotratili. And we knocked and knocked!
7. Broom broom
More like an instrument of torture than pleasure, this bunch of branches with withered leaves is a much more original symbol of our country than the French ballet, Chinese kokoshnik or, for example, black caviar, which can be exported by all kinds of Iran and Canada. Many nations have baths. A broom is only with us.
8. Birch Juice
It seems that there are a lot of birches where they grow, but for some reason no one thought about how tasty and useful birch sap is. Maybe it's all a matter of some kind of gene that only allows us to feel the subtle taste of the sweet plywood that is so beautiful in childhood? Yes, and an adult man birch sap is absolutely necessary when a foreigner comes to visit him. Then you can buy a jar of this juice and get the guest to taste our national drink, with a kind of pleasure watching the expression of his face at that moment.
9. Kvass
Let the sake, the progenitor of kvass, come up in Mesopotamia - today neither in Egypt, nor in Iran kvass during the day with fire you will not find, as in any other country of the world. Only here. And those scoundrels who in recent years have used to sell carbonated drinks "on the basis of kvass", you just need to heat in basins with their products.
10. "Retona"
Washing machine, which weighs 300 grams, practically does not burst electricity and does not flood its neighbors from the bottom, was born in Tomsk, in the research and production association "Reton". Just put it in a basin of water and dirty laundry, add detergent, and rest - I do not want. While you are doing your own business, Retona is engaged in its own: it diligently processes clothes with ultrasonic waves, creates microbubbles that separate the dirt from the fibers of the fabric. Then you will only need to rinse the laundry properly, wash it manually or remove the most stained spots with bleach and squeeze out the laundry thoroughly. Millions of people have already bought this ingenious invention. Yes, by the way, "Kasha from the ax" - this is also a Russian fairy tale.
11. Seeds
How we contrived to introduce the rank of the ancient national tradition of eating sunflower seeds, which was brought to us about two hundred years ago, is a mystery. Nevertheless, the plant is so absorbed in our culture that even the well-trained historians are not-yes, and they are mistaken. For example, in the book of the remarkable writer and historian Boris Akunin "Altyn-Tolobas", we can find a beggar girl who scroungs seeds, without being embarrassed by the fact that in the year 1682 this exotic flower was just started cultivating the advanced gardeners of Holland and France.
12. The Vocabulary
Once it was in many Indo-European languages, but then it degenerated into many. And we carefully saved it. True, slightly modified. If before, when referring to a man we expanded the word "e" at the end ("prince", "man"), then in modern Russian, the calling form is, on the contrary, a reduction in the last vowel: Zin, Zin, Listen, Pashk "," Leh, ah, Leh! ".
13. Old New Year
Europe moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar at the end of the 16th century, and Russia only in the early twentieth. However, the Orthodox Church categorically refused to participate in this disgrace. Nothing special was not there (after all, all the branches of Orthodoxy celebrate Christmas on January 7), but we also had an atheistic revolution that threw out Christmas on the dustbin of history, and the most important holiday of the year was not made by it, but dangling in the neighborhood New Year, having attached to it all the former Christmas attributes such as Christmas trees, burning stars and gifts of the Magi. As a result, the memory of the people turned out to be a mishmash like salad olivier, and we became owners of unprecedented wealth - as many as three festive weeks beginning with Catholic Christmas and ending with a slightly sad holiday, the Old New Year, the very name of which is from the category of things that are impossible, but existing.
14. Avoska
It is not known when a primitive man first figured to connect the tendons of animals so that they form a cellular container that can be put in your pocket in case you suddenly track down the shortage of sausage on the way from work. But it is known how the name of a bag beloved by Soviet citizens appeared. For the first time it sounded in Raikin's monologue in 1935. "But this is an avoska," said his character, waving the above-mentioned subject in front of the viewer. "Maybe I'll bring something home in it today."
15. Address opposite
What is more important - the person or the state? Personality or society? A unit or a system? While philosophers are struggling to resolve these global issues, Russian mail has decided them long ago. Only our address starts from the country, then comes the city, the street, the house and, finally, the combination of letters that you are accustomed to consider your personal callsign. From general, so to speak, to particular. In all other countries, you first notify the postal services that you need John Smith, and only then you specify the coordinates of the place where John Smith usually finds himself. But we have a simpler postman!
16. Activated carbon
Coal has an absorbing property and at the same time lowers the acidity of the environment - what the doctor prescribed. So they are treated "from the stomach" to them everywhere. But khanzhensky-minded doctors and pharmacists from abroad in every possible way mask the original component, thrust into the coal all kinds of supplements and subject it to various metamorphoses (in life you will not guess what this white pill or pink capsule is made of). And only with us honest sellers are packaged in chemist's packaging blackened, most frightening kind of pills, smearing your mouth and fingers. But it helps!
17. "What? Where? When? "And KVN
Quiz and competitions on television are more than you can eat. But only two games are our original projects, the scenarios of all the other TV companies were bought from foreign companies. Only two. But the best and most beloved.
18. Staining Easter eggs with onion husks
Of course, this is all from poverty. The Russian peasant usually did not have sufficient funds for gold foil and honey paints, so that the poor peasant decorated the eggs with what was on hand - onion scabs. Sometimes even the eggs were wound with threads, so that the cheerful little pattern turned out. But then the egg boiled in the onion solution turned out to be much more delicious than usual, especially if the shell slightly cracked.
19. Cupholders
At a time when glass cost to the ugliness expensive, the cupholders were spread all over the place - like armor and support for an unstable high-priced glass. When the glass began to cost a ridiculous number of pennies and pfennings, the cupholders said goodbye to mankind, boarded the ship and sailed with beautiful songs to the fairy-tale country. This happened everywhere, except for one big, big country. People there had to travel very long in trains. And on the road, as you know, I really want tea, especially since in the country we are talking about, tea drinking has become a national tradition. And here it turned out that you can not do without a glass holder in a shaking train: it's unpleasant when you are scalded with boiling water. Everyone is so accustomed to drinking tea from glasses with cup holders that they began to serve this drink in the same way.
20. Buckwheat
Although the root of the "Greek" makes us suspect in this mess of the Greek spy, it is the most that neither is ours. Ancient evidence of the use of buckwheat man in food found only in one place, in the Altai. There, the fossilized grains of buckwheat in graves and in parking lots are full. Apparently, it was with Altai that the buckwheat spread across Asia - though without much success. Only the Japanese and the Chinese have partially preserved it in the diet, adding crushed buckwheat to flour, and most of the peoples have never really eaten it. Nutritionists believe: here the whole point is that you have to get used to the buckwheat since childhood, otherwise an adult, for the first time trying buckwheat porridge, will feel bitterness and chemical taste. So, except us, no one really eats it and does not know how. Although buckwheat is sold in Europe and the US in any stores of "biological" food, but without tears on these bags you can not watch. Buckwheat in them is not roasted: green, crushed and not good for anything.
21. Doors opening inwards
The legend that the doors of the apartments open in the USSR, so that it would be more convenient for the KGB to knock them out at the time of arrest, is just a legend. Doors opened for the KGB themselves - quietly and doomed. And their location is a common thing for the northern regions. Where the snow falls a couple of meters on the porch for a pile, you very quickly understand how to hang doors if you intend to get out of the house before the spring comes.
22. Pickle
Marinade - at least fill it. You will not find a simple cucumber pickle anywhere and never. Only here. It is unclear why the export is not yet established, the tanks are not rushing, brines are not laid. One might think that we are such drinkers alone. Or was there no one ready to risk the liver of Prometheus, who would have stolen this mystery from us and gave it to the man suffering from a hangover?
23. 8 March and 23 February
There are no such paired holidays anywhere. Unless in Japan our main sexual holidays correspond a little to the "holiday of boys" and "the holiday of girls". But there it is only for children, and we have it for everyone. For a long time nobody looks at the original meaning of these dates. On the day of a working woman, even those ladies who did not work five minutes in their lives receive gifts, and on the day of the Russian army the most heroic deviators will not be saved from new examples of socks, ties and razors in their private collection.
24. Zelenka
Perhaps, in our country there is not a single house where there would not be at least one bubble of greenery. The magic remedy for everything: anoint - and everything will pass. From "Domodedovo" and "Sheremetyev" daily hundreds of miraculous vials fly away. They fly to distant lands, to wild people who do not know what greenery is. Western doctors have already learned at inspections to distinguish Russian children from the mysterious green spots on the body. And as soon as they learned, they raised a cry, because the children were plastered with such a mixture, which is not something to pour on themselves, but it is not safe to consider from afar. Solid teratogens with carcinogens. Since then, all malignant Western commissions now and then require the production of green ban. But in a country in which till now in textbooks on midwifery it is recommended to lubricate the green nipples of nursing mothers (against cracks), such proposals can be regarded as extreme blasphemy and, in some ways, even swinishness. Because this is an attempt on the basics.
25. Pine nuts
The most useful nuts. That they could get on the table of any citizen of the country, this country should have many thousands of square kilometers of taiga. And industrially, pine nuts will not grow. Or they will have to be sold at a price quite obscene: too much space is required for the cedar to breed 50 years later, the top ten modest cones. True, now we export pine nuts, but abroad do not hurry to bulk purchase them: this unusual exotic fruit for the local customers is unusually unaccustomed.
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