Reading this made me think about my favorite glasnost story about the Bering Sea U.S./Soviet boundary, which is actually not related in all except for Bering Sea connection, but is a neat enough story anyway that I thought you might like it.
On the first Friday of every month, Fairbanks, like many places, has an art crawl with various shows and gallery openings, which I like to go to. One of them recently was at a gallery with a bunch of pretty walrus-ivory carvings, and I read the artist bio that went with them.
Apparently in the 1980s the artist, as a young man, was a Russian soldier stationed at a middle-of-fucking-nowhere military outpost on the Bering coast across from Alaska, guarding the Soviet border from the Capitalist Menace. Having nothing else to do, he made friends with the local (Siberian Yupik) people and became interested in their ivory carving.
Fast forward 30 years, and he's now moved to Fairbanks, married a Native Alaskan woman, and learned to carve ivory, and now he's doing shows around town.
So obviously I loved this because of the "we're all just people deep down" aspect of it. I mean, seriously, this young Russian military dude was sent to the edge of civilization to Protect The Homeland From The Enemy, and that backfired in the most adorable possible way. But it's doubly interesting to me because, in spite of growing up here in the 80s, I actually had no idea there was a military presence on the other side of the border! Apparently there actually was quite a bit of militarization along the border in those days. My husband also worked with a guy who was in the Air Force in the 1970s and whose job was, I kid you not, to fly towards Russia each day with instructions to drop bombs if he didn't get the "turn around" order. Which he always did. But still ... GAH. I'm glad I didn't know how close we actually came to nuclear war on apparently a regular basis back then.
Anyway, fascinating! The bit about the teeth is especially ... augh. D:
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Date: 2016-06-28 02:18 pm (UTC)On the first Friday of every month, Fairbanks, like many places, has an art crawl with various shows and gallery openings, which I like to go to. One of them recently was at a gallery with a bunch of pretty walrus-ivory carvings, and I read the artist bio that went with them.
Apparently in the 1980s the artist, as a young man, was a Russian soldier stationed at a middle-of-fucking-nowhere military outpost on the Bering coast across from Alaska, guarding the Soviet border from the Capitalist Menace. Having nothing else to do, he made friends with the local (Siberian Yupik) people and became interested in their ivory carving.
Fast forward 30 years, and he's now moved to Fairbanks, married a Native Alaskan woman, and learned to carve ivory, and now he's doing shows around town.
So obviously I loved this because of the "we're all just people deep down" aspect of it. I mean, seriously, this young Russian military dude was sent to the edge of civilization to Protect The Homeland From The Enemy, and that backfired in the most adorable possible way. But it's doubly interesting to me because, in spite of growing up here in the 80s, I actually had no idea there was a military presence on the other side of the border! Apparently there actually was quite a bit of militarization along the border in those days. My husband also worked with a guy who was in the Air Force in the 1970s and whose job was, I kid you not, to fly towards Russia each day with instructions to drop bombs if he didn't get the "turn around" order. Which he always did. But still ... GAH. I'm glad I didn't know how close we actually came to nuclear war on apparently a regular basis back then.
Anyway, fascinating! The bit about the teeth is especially ... augh. D: