Sakpo

Out with it, what stuff do you have lying around from the Cold War period... old books with silly propaganda , etc? I just came across this in a copy of the constitution (American) I found in a closet... published by Norton in 1964:

I love the bit about the republic "menaced by collectivist trends."

I also have a children's book from the 1970s, that warns about the evils of Communism and such. My favorite bit is a little section where some American church goers are having a picnic in an American park, and then a Russian teenager beams into the park, and with a big grin, kills them all with a lazer beam (the comic is set in the vague future, the 1980s). I think there's a box under the stairs with a bunch of pamphlets and such.

lisarea

Ooh!

I have a smallish collection of cold war propaganda books. I think my favorite, title-wise, would have to be "You Can Trust the Communists...TO BE COMMUNISTS!!!"

Okay, it's not really in all caps with the three exclamation points and all, but I say it that way.

I probably have about twenty others, of varying degrees of shrillness. To be honest, though, I haven't actually read most of them.

But dang it, I'm just glad I'm not the only one.

Ab_Normal

Close as I come is Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet by Blake Savage, a 50's juvenile SF where the bad guys are thinly-veiled Communists. Here's a nice review.

enrious

I have a Civil Defense geiger counter.

Chuck

As a total Slavophile, my cold war relics are primarily from the other side of the iron curtain. Some old Bulgarian war medals (I plan to get more on my upcoming trip), and a few old Russian books; my favorite to look at, but not to read, is a large compendium of "worker's statistics" from the mid-70s.

From the US, my favorite is "Scientific Russian," published by Wiley Interscience in 1950. From the introduction:

"The Russian Nation-- and Russian Science-- have survived many difficult times, and can be expected to outlive the Soviet era. The inalienable rights, with which all men are endowed by their Creator, cannot forever be denied the Russian people."

And I still love that Soviet National Anthem. So catchy, and easier to sing than ours - better for mass song that way. Soyuz nerushimi, respublik svobodnik...

Other things I like are my pocket Russian-French dictionary, printed on the grainy, cheap paper that seems so very Soviet. And a mothball-smelling guidebook from Ruse, Bulgaria, printed by Reklama Economic Direction, Sofia, 1978, including some great black and whites of the Monument of the Soviet Army (I think that's one's in Svobodna square). And the undated printing of Dostoevsky's The Insulted and Humiliated published by Moscow's Foreign Languages Publishing House. Oh, and a trilingual (English, Russian, and Georgian) book of pictures called "Sunny Georgia" with great pictures of the synthetic fiber plant and the metallurgy facilities, as well as a concert in a work shop and the Tblisi victory monument.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated with stuff like this. Something about the maniacal industrialization, the severe mismanagement, the langourous stagnation that was zostoi, and the ridiculous propaganda is incredibly appealing to me.

Chuck

The Other Michael

Shucks, I am a Cold War relic. I've got those wonderful memories of "duck and cover" nuclear bomb drills in grade school (being in the same town as Lawrence Radiation Labs and Sandia Labs I guess we were considered a likely target), fascinating articles in Popular Mechanics on building a back yard bomb shelter, and my dad spending a couple of summers in Hawai'i participating in some of the test shots in the Pacific.

The only book I have that is somewhat related to the topic (being that it deals with defense) is "Defenseless America" by Hudson Maxim, inventor of the Maxim gun. published by Hearst's Int'l Library Co in 1915. I bet it wouldn't take much more than a substitution of names/dates to have made it useful 40 years later.

I like the quote from Maxim on the frontispiece: "The quick-firing gun is the greatest life-saving instrument ever invented."

cheers,
Michael

Cipher Girl

We have a small piece of the Berlin wall with some graffiti on it. I think it's cool.

lisarea

Can't believe I forgot this: Somewhere around here, I've got a nine-panel (I think) poster, in yellow and red, of Lenin.

It's freaking HUGE. My baby bro brought it back from the Soviet Union probably in the 80s sometime, and the only place it would even come close to fitting was on a ceiling. So, um, it's all brightly colored and boldly graphic and stuff. And, uh, you know how that's all good for babies and all that?

Heh heh. Yep. As a baby, my son drifted off to sleep every night and awakened every morning to the soothing yet heroic image of Daddy Lenin.

Defiant Heretic

Cold War relics, eh? Does Reagan count?

lpetrich

This reminds me of when my family visited the then-USSR many years ago. It was rather interesting to find out what they had to say.

They would tell children about Uncle Lenin and how much he loved children and stuff like that.

I also got a little history book. While it discussed the Tsars a lot, there was only Communist leader ever mentioned -- Lenin. No mention of Trotsky or Stalin or Khrushchev or Brezhnev. And in its description of the Stalin years, it stated that the Communist Party ordered this, that, and the other thing; I wonder what would have happened to someone writing like that during the Stalin years. An extended involuntary vacation in Siberia, perhaps?

And yes, that book described Eastern Europe as one big happy family united in the fight against militaristic, evil empires (though not in those words, of course!).

I also got a little book describing places where Lenin had lived and worked; it was written in English, French, and Italian (the two biggest Western European Communist Parties had been in France and Italy).