Forgery Ring "cracked" by FSB

[Dave]

Originally posted by skipper1939
But Russian citizen HSU holders living permanently in Moscow or St. Peterburg have lost their summer dachas and anything else they held.

Dr. Bob:

Hope you don't mind me asking, but what is your reference for your statement? When I was living in Russia (Moscow) in the late 1990's, everything that had been "awarded" to "exceptional" Soviet citizens (i.e. HSU's, HSL's, etc.) had been given over to them as part of the whole move for privatization. The family I lived with (prominent geologists) didn't lose anything that they had been awarded during the Soviet times, which included both their apartment (in a building where quite a number of HSUs and retired generals lived as well) and their dacha. Of the HSU's I ran into while there, they were still treated as demi-gods, with even the youngest Russian citizen giving them the greatest of deference.

--Dave

[skipper1939]

Dave:

My syntax was confusing. I meant that Russian HSU holders who had been awarded property in, for example, Estonia, simply had it confiscated with no compensation whatsoever. I meant the ones who didn't actually live in Estonia (or Latvia or Lithuania) but rather had permanent residence in Russia itself and had used their dachas or apartments as vacation homes or had relatives living in them.

You are quite right about Russians living in Russia, although my military friends in Moscow and St. Petersburg say that they no longer seem automatically to have the respect that they did under the Communists. I am afraid that goes for many veterans of the BOB whom the younger generation now regards as dinasaurs.

Dr. Bob

[HuliganRS]

Dr. Bob,

What's BOB?

Thanks,

Rusty.

[otlichnik]

BOB is the cyrillic letters VOV for velikoi otechestvennoi voina (great patriotic war) = WWII.

Shawn

[skipper1939]

Sorry, but when they name a war after you it's hard to resist using the Russian shorthand for it. The VOV, some of you may not be aware, was the SECOND great war for the fatherland. The first was the war against Napoleon in 1812.

Nicholas II tried to designate WW I the second VOV but it never caught on - possibly because although much of the war was on Imperial territory, most of it only occurred in Poland, the Carpathians and on White and Little Russian land. Anyway it did not stick, even during WW I itself and the Soviets ignored the idea completely until Stalin realized he needed Great Russian patriotic support and not communist propaganda to resist the Germans.

Old professors never die, they just keep nattering along.

Dr. Bob