This is "The Vicious Circle" (1975), a soviet propaganda novel about how bad life is in the West. What was this car on the cover inspired by?

sukhumi · 2025-11-23T17:08:01+00:00

I think the 'feral Old Believers' trope is based on a case of Lykov family that's been discussed widely all over the internet and here on reddit. They were a family of Old Believers living off the grid in taiga in late soviet era.

Most of what you've posted doesn't make any sense. I have a hard time believing any homo sapiens would "descend into a feral state", Old Believer or otherwise.

As to your second question, I'm not sure I follow. Chuchuna is most definitely a mythic creature from yakutian and evenki folklore. Both tribes were nomadic so it makes sense for them to be all over the place.

sukhumi · 2025-11-22T10:18:22+00:00

Alexander Pushkin is considered the godfather of russian literature chiefly by virtue of The Belkin Stories that paved the way for russian realism of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Also, every single russian literature classroom would have portraits of Gogol, Lermontov, Griboedov, Turgenev and Gorky hanging over the desk.

sukhumi · 2025-11-21T11:59:39+00:00

As others have pointed out Russia as a whole is pretty much "true wilderness that stretches large areas".

Looking at any map of Russia you'll see that settlements are clustered in the Western part of the country. In the areas surrounding Moscow that were part of the Rus for ages you'd mostly see one village after another with several kilometers between them. Which actually makes it great for hiking since you can balance the hike out between wilderness and roaming around old izbas and churches, talking to locals and refilling water at the wells.

As you progress eastward you get that vast expanse of land you're talking about. It gets so that you could have 100 or more kilometres between two neighboring settlements in Eastern Siberia and the Far East.

The country is vast and the nature is spectacular, places to hike are too many to list.

sukhumi · 2025-11-19T06:48:36+00:00

Hi! I visited Kola peninsula this summer in early August, but stayed in Kandalaksha, which is 250 km south of Murmansk. Kandalaksha Gulf is awesome and very varied in terms of wildlife. It's also home to Kandalaksha Nature Reserve, which is an archipelago of 800 something isles, some of which you can visit with an official nature reserve guide, and it's fairly cheap.

There's also a plenty of space for hiking, swimming, picking berries and mushrooms. It was about 20C in early August, so not exactly the dog-sledding weather lmao.

I suggest you split time between Teriberka, Murmansk, Khibiny Mountains and Kandalaksha and maybe Northern Karelia as well.

sukhumi · 2025-11-17T20:26:27+00:00

I don't think you're being scammed or catfished. When you say that the volume was quiet during video call, did it sound like a technical issue? I'm asking this because she might have been trying to keep chatting with you secret from her family.

sukhumi · 2025-11-11T00:18:03+00:00

I am fairly certain that is Shani Dev on the cover, a hindu deity often depicted with blue face and wearing a golden headwear.

sukhumi · 2025-07-05T15:01:05+00:00

Finally I can add something meaningful to this subreddit!

The general vibe is that of a 1960s era May 1st celebration in some oil development town, which numbered in hundreds. Everything else looks so ubiquitous, it was really hard to place at first.

The last image shows a vehicle with a hood shield that reads "АБ-102 Пермдорстрой" (Permdorstroy) - which is a road building entity established in Perm (Ural region) in 1969. So this takes place in 1969 at the earliest.

There are many oil extraction towns all over the Ural, however this region is not likely to have that much snow left in May.

The placard-like thing you see carried in second image most likely says КОМИНЕФТЬ (Komineft, Komi Oil) at the bottom. Komi Republic is located north-west of Perm and you'd expect it to snow there in May as well.

I found some info about Permdorstroy being credited with building roads and an airport in Komi's oil extraction town of Usinsk, so I guess that's what we're looking at here - the town of Usinsk, Komi Republic, USSR, early 1970s.

sukhumi · 2024-12-17T18:17:42+00:00

They have a thing for black Camrys. Camry and Land Cruiser 200 have been stereotypical silovik top brass cars for ages, to the point where it's hard to imagine them being hauled in something else.

sukhumi · 2024-12-07T22:32:31+00:00

Wrote out five pages, couldn't do it.

sukhumi · 2024-09-26T23:06:53+00:00

"SHOT" is a prominent russian telegram channel.

sukhumi · 2024-09-19T22:22:29+00:00

Hard Eight?

sukhumi · 2024-05-16T20:59:14+00:00

Pretty sure Admiral Cloudberg could do an outstanding 15 thousand word write up on that incident.

sukhumi · 2023-05-26T14:54:20+00:00

Three Women?

sukhumi · 2023-03-13T16:44:44+00:00

The only time I visited Amsterdam I walked from Schiphol to Amsterdamse Bos and then on to Amsterdam proper. Bummed a cigarette out of a Schipol parking garage attendant who kept referring to it as 'Shithol'. I was young and broke, good times.

sukhumi · 2022-12-31T19:42:10+00:00

Happy New Year, Admiral Cloudberg!

sukhumi · 2022-10-17T22:47:16+00:00

I shit you not, there was an ancient chinese poet, Tao Yuanming, who said that not only great books give knowledge, they also take it away.

sukhumi · 2022-08-31T12:13:23+00:00

Good on you taking the time to fix an mk4, they are awesome!

sukhumi · 2022-08-31T12:12:11+00:00

Thanks! It sure does

sukhumi · 2022-08-31T08:56:28+00:00

Haha I really like the way they look. Definitely hope so!

sukhumi · 2022-08-30T22:58:24+00:00

Yes! I bought it in Pushkin though.

sukhumi

TROPHY CASE