Re: Finnish soldiers find 'secret Russian military bases' after raiding mysterious island
I remember trying to keep track of the interior Russian turmoil through the 1990s, just after the fall of the wall. I remember so-called friends showing me catalogue websites, where young Russian women were selling themselves as wives to any man in the West for a minimum fee, my so-called friends being very eager to make me buy an Eastern wife for a cheap laugh at my expense and not least the Russian womenfolk. I remember thinking this could only create a counter response from proud Russian menfolk. I remember thinking, that this was just like broken Germany after 1919. I remember thinking a strong psychopath might just be around the corner. I remember thinking, "What might be the next Sudetenland?"
Do you know who Cassandra is in Greek tradition?
Not to mention all the former Soviet "officials" who, for a very small fee in $USD, would prepare an "official" (used in quotes for a reason!) set of papers verifying that a Soviet asset was now in private hands.
Any asset you can think of!
A group of buddies I used to know from Venice, California had a post-punk group called "Club Adobe" and they had a moderate following in the USA but their fan base in the USSR was enormous. During the brief flirtation with privatization, these guys went to the former USSR and BOUGHT a Soviet recording studio and cassette tape manufacturing facility...for about ten thousand US dollars.
Now they had their very own facility to manufacture and distribute all the Club Adobe music they wanted for their much larger Russian fan base.
The love affair with freshly privatized former Soviet state owned assets lasted about four years, at which point they were informed that they would be given "fair market value" (a joke) for their factory and it was thought best if they took the meager offering if they knew what was good for them.
They refused, and four days later two of the five were up on corruption charges, they lost the factory anyway and got nothing.
My own boss at American-Russian Television (Sergey Levin - former Soviet TV director pictured below in Rocky IV)
made a deal to trade a large cache of blank professional videocassettes (Sony BetaCam) for an entire press run of the Melodya issue of Paul McCartney's album "Back in the USSR".
You see, blank broadcast videocassettes were in very short supply during late 1991 in the USSR, thus they were worth a lot of money, much more than the US price and shipping costs.
The album would later be officially issued with an English orange label for Western consumption anyway but the original Soviet yellow label Melodya discs had much higher collector value and once back stateside, we enjoyed a $27,000.00 profit selling the albums to Rockaway Records in East Hollywood.