And was the guy looking for a job, any job - washing dishes or, perhaps, doing counter-espionage? 
To be serious, a tatoo has always been a must among soviet 'non-political' prisoners, the typical designs being related to the cult of Motherhood (Ne Zabudu Mat' Rodnuiy, i.e. Will Never Forget My Dear Mother etc.). It was also popular among young army officers around the war time (1940's) who would often depict on their flesh a vertically positioned sword with the sharp end down and with a snake winding around it (do not know why). Those latter ones do look a bit like a KGB (or medical research
) symbol but I guess the meaning was different. A shield was also popular but the technology was not good enough to figure out what was written on the shield. A sailor (or a young person of anti-social disposition) from Odessa or Sevastopol would often have an anchor, some of those (I mean the anchors) were quite pretty. Just my own observations, may be well off the mark. Sergei.
Oh, by the way, among my friends who became officers in 1981-1982, no-one had a tatoo, even after Afghanistan. A different generation, I guess. Sergei.
To be serious, a tatoo has always been a must among soviet 'non-political' prisoners, the typical designs being related to the cult of Motherhood (Ne Zabudu Mat' Rodnuiy, i.e. Will Never Forget My Dear Mother etc.). It was also popular among young army officers around the war time (1940's) who would often depict on their flesh a vertically positioned sword with the sharp end down and with a snake winding around it (do not know why). Those latter ones do look a bit like a KGB (or medical research
) symbol but I guess the meaning was different. A shield was also popular but the technology was not good enough to figure out what was written on the shield. A sailor (or a young person of anti-social disposition) from Odessa or Sevastopol would often have an anchor, some of those (I mean the anchors) were quite pretty. Just my own observations, may be well off the mark. Sergei.Oh, by the way, among my friends who became officers in 1981-1982, no-one had a tatoo, even after Afghanistan. A different generation, I guess. Sergei.
