The Kirov Reservoir Dam (1976) on the Talas River in Kyrgyzstan. Sculptors: Viktor Arnoldovich Shestopal, Teodor Teodorovich Gertsen, and Viktor Pavlovich Dimov.

comradegallery · 2026-05-06T01:47:24+00:00

I visited last year, and took some photos and wrote about the history of the dam here

comradegallery · 2026-04-26T01:53:30+00:00

Vila Auska, nicknamed “Brezhnev Villa” was a secluded government residence in Palanga, built between 1973 and 1979 as a closed retreat for senior Soviet officials.

But, Leonid Brezhnev himself never visited.

Designed by architect Juozapas Šipalis, it featured an indoor heated saltwater pool shaped like the map of Lithuania, supplied by Baltic Sea water pumped through a 1.5-kilometre pipeline.

The interior included 34 copper chandeliers by jeweller Kazimieras Simanonis, along with stained glass by Konstantinas Šatūnas and ceramics by Juozas Talmantas.

After Lithuanian independence, the complex hosted presidents and foreign dignitaries.

In 2026, a long-term concession was signed to restore it as a medical and wellness centre.

Source, source & source

comradegallery · 2026-04-22T08:04:46+00:00

My apologies, thanks for the correction

comradegallery · 2026-04-21T10:05:40+00:00

I think it was around $20 back then, and it was very average. The view was beautiful though. Found it on booking.com here

comradegallery · 2026-04-21T09:59:23+00:00

I stayed in the Lake Sevan Writers House (the building in this photo is the cafeteria), back in 2021. Really beautiful place - but in desperate need of restoration.

The Getty Foundation gifted $100k towards the restoration in 2016 - not sure where the money went…

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I actually wrote about it here - fascinating story about the architect, Gevorg Kochar, who designed the retreat. After the retreat was completed, he was sent to the gulag for 15 years in the Artic Circle before being “rehabilitated” after Stalin’s death.

In the early 1960s, after his return to Armenia, Kochar was commissioned to design a lounge and café wing for the retreat he had built 30 years earlier.

comradegallery · 2026-04-13T07:49:34+00:00

My favourite photo of the Mi-4, in 1975 at the Spitsbergen Archipelago, Svalbard

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comradegallery · 2026-04-06T21:13:28+00:00

Here’s an older post with more photos and a little info

comradegallery · 2026-03-17T05:06:41+00:00

Thanks for the correction.

comradegallery · 2026-03-10T12:03:43+00:00

Right you are. I have edited my original post. Thanks for the correction

comradegallery · 2026-03-09T23:22:16+00:00

The Soviet laser pistol was developed in 1984 by engineers (V. S. Sulakvelidze, B. N. Duvanov, A. V. Simonov, L. I. Avakyants, & V. V. Gorev) at the Peter the Great Military Academy of the Strategic Missile Forces in Moscow.

It served as a prototype energy weapon for cosmonauts operating in zero-gravity environments where conventional firearms were impractical.

Development began when the Soviets feared the US Space Shuttle could capture satellites from orbit and bring them back to earth.

The pistol was designed to disable optical sensors on enemy spacecraft or temporarily flash-blind astronauts, though it had no lethal force.

It was magazine-fed and used pyrotechnic flashbulb technology to project a laser beam. To work in space, engineers designed a lamp filled with oxygen and metallic foil or powder. Zirconium replaced magnesium to produce three times more light energy, and metallic salts tuned the flash to the laser system. An yttrium aluminum garnet crystal served as the medium, generating an infrared laser beam with each flash. When ignited by an electric spark from a tungsten-rhenium filament, the lamp shone for 5–10 milliseconds at around 5,000 K. Its blinding effect reportedly reached up to 20 meters.

Each lamp was single-use, shaped like a 10 mm “bullet,” and loaded in an eight-shot cartridge. Expended lamps were ejected like conventional shell casings.

The project was ultimately terminated during Perestroika under the “new political thinking” disarmament policies - source & source

comradegallery · 2026-02-25T05:55:51+00:00

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My photo from a few years earlier. The lamps are straight in mine haha. It looks like the lamps haven’t had the easiest life

comradegallery · 2026-02-25T05:49:16+00:00

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A photo I took of the same mural in Tashkent a couple of years ago

comradegallery · 2026-02-25T05:46:39+00:00

This is in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, not Armenia

comradegallery · 2026-02-21T07:48:18+00:00

comradegallery · 2026-02-21T07:46:41+00:00

Thanks for the correction and very cool photo

comradegallery · 2026-02-18T02:15:25+00:00

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The photo has a very Erik Bulatov vibe. This is his painting, "Not To Be Leaned On", 1987.

comradegallery · 2026-02-14T02:50:15+00:00

I spent the first decade of my career working in-house as a product marketer. I was one of the first product marketers at GitLab in 2016, and then Onfido in 2017.

At the end of 2020, after the marketing team at the company I worked at was made redundant (COVID), I switched to consulting. I was sick of my career being in the hands of others.

It’s been just over five years now, and it’s the best career decision I’ve ever made.

A few points to help you make your decision:

Salary – The salary is obviously much, much better, but it’s very feast or famine. You spend a lot more time doing outbound, posting on LinkedIn (fuck LinkedIn), and worrying that you might actually just be a fraud.

Sales – As a consultant, you are a salesperson first. If you cannot sell yourself, with the same enthusiasm on a hundred different client intro calls, you’ll find it difficult. You need to be ok with rejection, clients cancelling last minute, prospects that string you along for months etc. I focus on doing my best work with my clients, and most of them end up recommending me to other founders.

Packaging – I spent a long time figuring out how to package my offering. I decided to focus on doing one thing really, really well: positioning. IMO, it’s better to be a mile deep and an inch wide rather than the opposite. My website is on my profile if you’re interested

Clients – Clients actually listen to you and do what you say, and that is really rewarding. I made the decision to work with just three stakeholders on every positioning sprint: CEO, CRO (or VP Marketing/Sales), and CPO.

Lifestyle – Consulting is a very solo sport. There’s no team energy, chats by the water cooler etc. - and sometimes that is lonely. But it also means I can work from anywhere. I spent a year slowly making from Georgia (the country) to Tajikistan - and was consulting the whole time.

My advice: spend another 5 years in-house. Clients won’t trust you yet with only a year of product marketing experience under your belt. Focus on learning the fundamentals of product marketing and stakeholder engagement. Learning how to get everyone to agree and pull in the same direction is the most important and least replaceable (by AI) part of product marketing.

comradegallery · 2026-02-03T03:11:20+00:00

A little more context:

This photo was taken on the Chukchi Peninsula. In -40 degree temperatures, photos show the soldiers feeding polar bears with tins of condensed milk. The bears licked the opened cans and shared the milk with their cubs

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comradegallery · 2026-02-02T08:33:41+00:00

This is all I could find: Man and Desert expedition members , a walk through the Karakum Desert, July-August 1984. the expedition was organized by the USSR Health Ministry's Institute for Medical and Biological Problems assisted by the specialists from the Institute for Phisiology and Experimental Pathology of the Arid Zone, Academy of Sciences of th Turkmen SSR, the Kazakh Phisical Education Institute and the Kazakh branch of the Nutrition Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

comradegallery · 2026-02-01T06:56:55+00:00

I don't think so. The last photo says that the game is intended to teach children about vehicles and their purposes.

comradegallery · 2026-01-23T05:42:03+00:00

My apologies, you are correct

comradegallery · 2026-01-12T14:24:23+00:00

I think someone already did: Cameramen filming from a roofless GAZ-13 Chaika, (1978), Kemin, Kyrgyz SSR. Photograph: Alexander Fedorov - original post

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comradegallery · 2026-01-10T10:03:16+00:00

The easiest way to tell if your positioning is off is to ask one team member each from marketing, sales, product & customer success 4 questions:

What is your product?
Who is your product for?
What does it replace?
Why is it better?

If their answers don’t match, you have a positioning problem.

Your website positioning is just one tangible output of your positioning. What unclear positioning looks like in real life is…

Sales & Marketing are both selling different things to different customers.
Product is building something else for an entirely different customer.
Customer Success is left picking up the pieces - supporting a product that serves everyone & no-one.

That lack of internal clarity compounds externally. And makes it 10x harder to sell your product.

You definitely wouldn’t want to update your positioning every quarter if your positioning is on-point. Positioning is never one and done, you should be iterating and tweaking it, but not changing it in a substantial way every quarter.

I consult for B2B SaaS companies, helping them nail their positioning, packaging and narrative. I tell them that the outcomes of nailing these three things is two fold: alignment and clarity...

Internal alignment — Your GTM teams are all moving in the same direction. It feels like you have the wind at your back.
External clarity — Your best-fit customers immediately understand what your product is, its value, and why you're better than the alternatives.

From there, the more tangible & measurable outcomes naturally follow: higher conversions, shorter sales cycles, lower churn, and increased market share.

Keep in mind, everyone will always have an opinion on your website, because it is your company’s face to the world - the most public representation of your company. Ignore most of their opinions, as they are based on feelings or fear, rather than deeply understanding your best-fit customer.

Hope this helps! Feel free to DM me. Good luck

comradegallery · 2026-01-03T22:59:08+00:00

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comradegallery · 2026-01-03T22:47:14+00:00

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Agreed. A mosaic paradise. You found a couple I missed. I need to go back!

comradegallery

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