Why Is It "Acceptable" to Wear and/or Display Soviet Stuff?

soviet ones were in the practice. the ideology/symbolism was bastardized, there is a large discrepancy between what was professed and what happened, this is not so with nazism

if you equate Soviet imagery with Lenin then i really dont see any problem whatsoever

Plus their emblems are cool.

And people will awlays be offended by something.

I had a friend (who used to post here but left) who was always banging on about socialist rhetoric and politically correct gubbins and having goes about American imperialism and racism, sexism, classism, etc. and tried to lecture me on 9/11, etc.

Went over his house and there was a MASSIVE FUCKOFF CONFEDERATE FLAG hanging in his living room. I refused to go in the house again. He was totally unaware of the connotations.

Most people I know who are fascinated by Soviet gear are not neccessarily into the politics, but the brutalist, social realist, futurist iconography of it all. In the America of the mid-80's it was part frisson of displaying something "forbidden" and also part "take your Cold War and your Reaganomics and shove it!"

Every political or national symbol is emotionally loaded, and therefor offensive to someone. Look at the furour that the British flag still provokes in quarters.

at any rate, this fellow i saw on my commute home didn't look much like an idealist or a lefty nostalgic -- as i said before, he looked more like yer typical NYC yuppie lawyer/stockbroker/financial analyst/whatever.

i am not trying to say that they're all as bad as each other, i know there is a huge difference between different situations.

but for me the difference comes down to the fact that the nazi symol was intended to represent those actions, and does so. i dont see the same thing with soviet regalia

(raises hand. and x-posted with kate)

We occasionally would intercept Soviet TU-95 "Bear" bombers off the coast of North Carolina or Florida as they headed on their routine flights to Cuba, but strayed (intentionally) too close to the ADIZ.

They cut in, see how fast we respond and then take pics of our planes before turning and heading back out to sea. And we do the same to them in Alaska.

I have a photo, taken by one of the intercept pilots, showing the Bear tail-gunner in his "bubble." Close enough that you can see his fur-lined hat, much like you describe, but also close enough that you can see the can of "Coca Cola" that his is enthusiastically pointing to, and close enough that you can see the bright, huge smile on his face.

Disagreements and strifes between countries are almost ALWAYS between their governments, and not the people themselves. At heart, I have found people everywhere, all over the world to be pretty much the same.

I suppose the symbol/insignia on the hat may have been offensive because it was symbolic of a reprehensible political system, but the people who wore them only wore them on the outside.

-- ex-KGB officer Rein Sillar, 55, answering the questin how's he doing these days

(a rough translation from today's newspaper, Postimees/ Areen p.13)

Another thing I've always thought is that symbols and words like racial slurs, confederate flags, swastikas et al. can be best defeated of their harmful purpose by watering them down and placing them in a harmless silly context. By being 'P.C.' and shunning the use of any terms with negative connotations we reduce ourselves to squirming milquetoasts who can't stand a dirty joke.

In my view, the conf. flag, Soviet emblem, et al. are all more or less a little joke on the people wearing them, unless they happen to be double-ironic and are making an inside joke about the people who wear them with sincerity.

Also, those hats are warm.

My ex-boyfriend was a descendent of such, and still walked around dressed in KGB gear. Everyone is offended by something, as everyone here has said. There are plenty of people who aren't Polish or Hungarian or anything else who would be offended by the hammer & sickle. OH WELL.

It really isn't socially acceptable either, judging by the way people react to it on the street.

And people do dress like skinheads as a fashion statement. Not wearing a swastika /= not dressing like a neonazi...and incidentally why hasn't anyone weighed in with the statement that a swastika is NOT a definitively offensive symbol, being as it was an image stolen from a completely different meaning in India.

It reminds me of that Onion article where they added a middle finger and a swastika to the confederate flag.

I have a feeling that the main reason I like Soviet-era art and emblems is that they are attractive on a purely aeshetic level. I don't think the same is true of Nazi art, as it tends to be very overtly violent.

This might not be true.

No, I was not in on that discussion, I only read 'Bizarre' and The Economist (pricey habit when you're living in the land of filth and evil)

I still think the knee-jerk reaction to symbols like the hammer and sickle, swastika, skinhead getup etc. are kind of ridiculous. Most likely a person who celebrates or wears those sorts of things is guilty of at most a couple of fistfights.

The people who are out & about propagating actual mass injustice and suffering don't wear any sort of silly badge of allegiance unless you count the Bush-Cheney 2000 sticker on the back of their Lincoln Navigator.

I'm so sorry, world, as an American I just don't think I can apologize enough for all the free fucking food and oil and military support.

American greed has been the number one reason for AIDS deaths in the world and as we all know there never would have been so many mass murders in Southeast Asia, Africa or the Balkans if it wasn't for the influence of American economic programs and CIA operators right from the start.

...
If I could live the rest of my life without hearing from another insipid, misinformed 'iconoclast' taking an 'unpopular' stance in favor of 'the good of the world' or some other intentionally vague ideal, it wouldn't be long enough. Thank you, Toraneko, for letting me see some red today. Nothing like some real intellectual laziness on the part of a self-styled moralist to put some spark back in a boring Sunday evening!

Well said, Tom. Your post certainly put some spark back into mine. Cheers!

wtf? thats crzy talk man, most aid given by western countries is TIED, it comes back into the donor country, its done to help the donor countries economy. i mean, yeah send out free stuff isntead of having free trade wont you. perhaps if america stopped slapping massive subsidies on its own agriculture the rest of the world might have a decent shot. aid perpetuates the status quo, especially while trade relations are so unequal. and when is america going to start going on and on and on about liberalizing economies and opneing them up for mulitnationals, while actually employing PROTECTIONISM of its own economy. thasnk world bank, what a loadf of shit!

military support, yeah, thanks for dragging us into yet another war designed for american interests, cheers. tony blair is worse though, the man is sickening

perhaps if the UN were alloweed to become a properly functioning entity, then there might be some actual global democracy of some sorts rather than one country pushing to get what it wants. if america paid up its subsciptions it might be a start, then if george w realised its not actually a rubber stamp

nb...i dont exempt britiain from this, we are no better. the only reason you perpetuate more crap is because you are a more powerful country, but american double standards disgust me

now dont read this as saying "americans deserved to get their civilians blown up" like you did with toraneko, that was WAY out of line. at no point did toraneko suggest this, and you know it.

but please, please, dont play the 'rest of the world should be so fucking grateful' card

As an American, I sure wish I could get some of that free fucking food and oil. And maybe some decent health care. And maybe some medical assistance for my lower middle class friends with serious medical conditions who are afraid to go to the fucking doctor because they can't afford to shell out thousands of dollars for treatment and medication.

DV, OTM by the way. Soviet aesthetic is attractive. Besides, they invented Constructivism. Well, I guess El Lissitzky invented it, but Rodchenko and crew refined it.

Tad: How old was the NYC yuppie who provoked this post? Much about the Soviet Union wasn't as well known in the West before the breakup of the USSR in the 1990s. While the media did some reporting on what the newly accessible archives revealed, I'm sure it's possible to have completely skipped those stories. It's quite possible that this guy isn't as aware of the atrocities committed by the Soviets as he might be of the Nazis.

So if you really want the question answered -- i.e., why is it socially accepted that people do this -- I think it's down to that last point. The defining association for a Nazi emblem is a really horrible way of seeing the world. For anyone young enough in the U.S., Soviet stuff has associations that seem a lot friendlier: a Swastika will make people think of concentration camps, a hammer and sickle may just as well make people think of Olympic hockey.

Personally I'm all in favor of people not toying frivolously around with symbolism that actually means important things.

i also don't think that everything that came out of the Soviet Union was polluted. i do listen to Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and I like Eisenstein films (even though all three artists did produce the occasional bit of Stalinist propaganda -- then again, all three also faced countless indignities and the constant threat that they or their loved ones would be killed for being politically incorrect while living there).

what i don't get, though, is this idea that some seem to have that one's display of potentially offensive symbols is "negated" and therefore "okay" if one does so in front of the "right" (or "wrong") person. i.e., because the US has done some awful things, and supports some awful policies, americans should just remain silent when some loudmouth engages in extremist anti-American rhetoric. would parading around with a swastika in front of an elderly Holocaust survivor be "alright" if the elderly Holocaust survivor is an ardent Likudnik who supports Ariel Sharon? if someone's burning a British flag and supported the IRA when they blew up innocents, is it "okay" because they're a Catholic from Belfast? i don't get it.

he looked about the same age as me -- late 20s/early 30s. though i don't think that it's entirely credible in january 2003 to plead ignorance of the details of Soviet crimes. even before the late 80s/early 90s, people knew enough about Stalin and the Soviet system to know that it was rotten.

I say presumably ironic. I don't have a hotline to their thought processes. But I certainly appreciate it in an ironic way.

With Soviet imagery, you have two levels of blurring: the wearer might be wearing it because he like it, or because he likes sympathises with the ideals, and can only express himself in headgear because he has to wear a suit to work.

To be honest, I think the communist "all pull together for the good of the state" vibe is closer to the US subconscious than ever these days, so I'm not that surprised.

Shame they never did "Stalin's Last Secret" that would have been a cracker. They could have roped in young Alexei Sayle.

I'm not in Djibout, I'm in Pigangolo in the Prikaprika atoll. Here everyone wears jeans as an ironic 'celebration' of US values. The US is not very popular here, since they used the neighbouring Korakora atoll as a nuclear test site.

I can't agree that the Straight Dope site is a very useful measure of mass murder, since R.J.Rummel's category of 'democide', which they use, excludes war. But it looks fairly clear that China is the country with the most premature death of the last century.

Will I be throwing out my big blue Chinese military coat as a result of this information? No. It's cold here in Pigangolo and without my coat I will die.

wasn't really sure where to post this, but i found this essay very haunting:

http://www.vox.com/2015/12/22/10634320/soviet-union-christmas

her husband sounds like a dick

i have a hammer+sickle belt buckle an ex-gf's brother found on the ground in the mountains of afghanistan (from one legionary to another) but i don't usually wear it; in general i feel uncomfortable using soviet symbols as fashion because it feels kinda triumphalist.

novogodnyaya yolka article relevant to the most controversial opinion of the controversial opinion thread, about the semiotics of christmas trees.

That story has barely anything to do with Soviet Union Xmas traditions and everything to do with the American Jewish Christmas experience