T h e N u c l e a r C a f é

G.I. Joe commercial 1960's ( Hasbro )

2010-08-21T00:56:00.000-07:00

I've been loooking out for toys that reflected some of the values (and paranoia)in the US during the Cold War. Being a girl, and having mostly girls who were relatives around my age, I didn't see many of these. But my cousin Jeff had some and I remember playing with him and his sisters in the backyard, although inevitably his sisters and I would drift toward the jumprope or inside to watch TV.

I've asked some of my Russian interviewees about their favorite toys during their Cold War childhoods. It surprised me to hear from a couple of them that Americans weren't the default "enemy" in playground play. I remember hearing boys (mostly) talk about "the Rooskies", although often their role-play adversaries were pretend Viet Cong. Russian kids in the 60s still had images in their head of the German Wehrmacht when they played with toy soldiers....at least my the people I've been speaking to. This was despite the fact that none of them were old enough to have remembered or seen any bellicose Germans...but of course the USSR suffered greatly under Operation Barbarosa, and parents and grandparents who had survived that era were still around to talk about it. Americans had not seen fullscale war within its borders over 100 years before GI Joe, and Soviets and Viet Cong ended up being the easiest target. And Indians, if we were playing cowboys.

Trailer Ischeznuvshaya imperiya (2008) - 1m51s - CineMagia.ro

2010-08-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

Saw this film the other day on Netflix. If you don't have Netflix, you should. Not only have they made the late fee obsolete, but they have a lot of films from the world over set up so you can see them instantly on your computer (if you have an X-box, there is some way you can also get them on your TV). Actually there are quite a few cold war era Russian and American films. This was made later, but is a good coming-of-age movie set in Moscow in the 70s.

Some reviewers have said the settings aren't quite as bleak as in the real 70s Moscow & Black Sea, but they still look pretty austere.

RIA Novosti on the 65th anniversary of the bomb on Hiroshima

2010-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Although this isn't focused on kids in the US or the USSR, the Russian view of the beginning of the Cold War is certainly important to the discussion. Here is the article in Russian:

http://rian.ru/world/20100806/262346036.html

and a video on the same topic in English:

http://en.rian.ru/video/20100806/160097197.html

WELCOME BACK!

2010-08-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Although the book on children's experiences in USSR and the US during the Cold War is still underway, I've decided to advertise this blog and seek participation in it as another way to get this information out and to preserve it. Please feel free to comment on anything here if you have something to say about the issue.

I am still seeking participants, particularly those who were children in the USSR during the last half of the 20th Century, for interviews to be included in the book. Please e-mail me if you want more information at

maestrobabe@gmail.com
or at
klnorman@med.umich.edu

thanks!

Lots of Links!

2008-04-16T22:12:00.000-07:00

I'll get them in the layout sooner or later, but in the meantime, here they are for you to enjoy in blog form.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
Somewhere within is the tale of the little girl and wrote to JFK telling him she'd heard the Soviets were testing nuclear weapons at the North Pole, and she was afraid Santa would be hurt. He wrote her back and told her Santa was fine. Boy, he really had connections, that Jack Kennedy.

Stalin-era Research and Archives (University of Toronto)

National Aeronatic & Space Administration (US)

Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
(check this web layout, man, it's grroooovy!)

By the way, I'm certain I will eventually have every Cold War presidential library up....from Truman to at least Bush 41 and perhaps Clinton, given his friendship with Yeltsin and aid we gave the Soviets during that time (also the impact the war in Kosovo may have had on US / Russia relations). At this time I'm only putting them in as they seem to correspond to the research I'm doing with interviews.

The CONELRAD CAfe: Podcasts of PSAs, songs, and dramas about the cold war

"The government is functioning under certain extraordinary circumstances....until then, I urge you to stay in shelters and obey all local curfews. God bless you all." --Not the Real President of the United States from "The Day After", 1980s

"It's party time in my radiation station." Fallout Shelter, a rocking little PSA, sung by Peter Scott Peters.

CYBER USSR

Cyber Yugoslavia might have finally disappeared leaving behind a wave of cyber refugees with goofy ministerial titles, but Cyber USSR appears to have had a tiny update as late as September 2007. This site is very tongue in cheek, with a great deal of affection. You want to find a translation of an English story that children read in school that seems to leave a few of the minor (non horrific) details out? Absolutely HAVE to hear Stalin's favorite folk song, Suliko, now? Need comfort from Paul Robeson's English translation of the Soviet National Anthem? Want to see the hidden scripts of a film by Oliver Stonesky about a good man assassinated by the government so they could go on with their murdering ways....."Kirov"? (Hey, KIROV...that's my license plate! How did Olvier Stonesky know? asks Kelly Ivanovna).

Well, if these are your concerns, or if you just need a 10 letter Russian word for "denounce" for the Sunday Pravda crossword puzzle, keep http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/index.html close by on your favorites list. It is sort of a kinder, gentler People's Cube.

(Not that I'm saying that the People's Cube does not provide Correct Opinions for Progressive people...or that The Fearless Leader is in anyway unkind or ungentlewomanly....please don't turn me in.... I don't have warm clothes and a shovel....I will tow the line, I will tow the line....)

Russian Space Agency

Russian Archives (like, film archives, not. like, kgb archives) online

It's not that St. Cyril hates me, it's that I'm cursed.

2008-04-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

The story linked below will most likely appear, in some form or another, in the tome that is the goal of the Cold War kids' project (which, by the way, I'm seeking a name better than "The Cold War kids' project" for, so if you have an idea for the name of an apolitical book about children's experiences on both sides of the iron curtain during the cold war, please feel free to suggest them. Be forewarned that I will likely forget who suggested it unless you post it here un-anonymously, i.e. with your real name).

It partially explains, or gives a somewhat implausable excuse for, why I can't speak a lick of Russian after trying to learn it for 5 years. It also is a vignette from my experiences as a child during the cold war.

Why I Can't Learn Russian, and Why I'm Afraid to Go Back to France

"Everyone Thought They Were Captain Kirk"

2008-04-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

This is a line in a popular song during the "what if MADD doesn't work" years, "99 Red Balloons" ("99 Luftballoons" in the original German) that I don't think gets translated right into the English version.

Lyrics, translated into English by Kelly Ivanovna:

If you have some time for me
I'll sing a song for you
About 99 balloons on their way to the horizon
If you think sometimes about me
I'll sing a song for you
About 99 balloons
And what can come from something like that

99 balloons
Hielt man fuer UFOs aus dem All
Someone thought they all were UFOs
And sent that to a general
To give out an alarm to the flight corps
When on the horizon there were only
99 balloons

99 jetfighter pilots
Each one was a great warrior
Each thought himself Captain Kirk
There were great fireworks
Neighboring countries were caught off guard
They felt justified
At shooting at the horizon
At 99 ballons

99 war ministers: matches and gas canisters
They thought they were brave people
They smelled fattened prey coming near
And shouted to triumph and to keep power.
Man, who would have thought
That so much could have happened because of
99 balloons

99 years of war
Leave no place for winners
There are no war ministers.
Nor are their jetfighter pilots.
Today I'm walking around my place,
I see the world lying in ruins.
I've found a balloon;
I think of you and let it go.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

2008-04-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

There are some sobering details in an otherwise uplifting article by Tyler Wigg Stevenson in Christianity Today online this week entitled "A Merciful White Flash," insinuating we still have nuclear warheads aimed at Eastern European cities and on trigger alert.

One of Stevenson's readers begs to differ, hopefully the research in the article is a little off.

Regardless, it is an article that belies, in a more serious way than I have in the past, how frightening the possibility of nuclear war was during the Cold War and even afterwards.

Welcome to the new site of the Nuclear Cafe

2008-03-27T19:29:00.000-07:00

We hit a few bumps along the way here (sorry about that; those of you with missing relatives in Cincinnati or in Novosobirsk, please check with the men in bright yellow slickers over to the side). Somehow I managed to create an entirely new radioactive blog with the url "koolaidforall.blogspot.com" but can't figure out either how to get it on my dashboard or to disappear it. But "kooladeforall" will do pretty nicely, and soon I hope everything on the old "coldwarbaby" blog will be transferred here.

For those of you arriving from Live Journal, thanks for coming. It's a testament to your loyalty that, despite months of radioactive biscuits, you still come to the nuclear soda fountain seeking company and new treats. Or maybe it's a testament to your IQ, but we'll let that rest for now.

For those of you new to the place, you may wonder how the Nuclear Cafe got started. It had its beginnings in my 8 or 9 or 10 year old head when I began to become aware of the fact that there was a Cold War, and that there were 8, 9, and 10-year-olds living in the other party to that conflict, and was unable, despite my best efforts of asking my mother "Why" questions and turning the television dial, to determine whether or not they had access to the same luxuries we had. The same fine dessines animes, such as "Road Runner" and "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show"; the same fine cuisine (Burger Chef greasy fries and cheeseburgers); and above all, the same thirst-busting elixir that adorned every birthday party table: Kool-Aid.

I didn't worry very much about this, because I forgot about it after a few days until I had a chance to ask someone from the Soviet Union if they had Kool-Aid there, some twenty years later (answer: no, as far as he knew). But that and other informal formal exchanges proved so educating and interesting that I thought I'd make a whole project out of finding out about the cultural life of kids in the Soviet Union....while allowing a space for those of us who grew up in the states in the 70s to talk about our own experiences, especially when it came to how we dealt with the whole Cold War thing.

I drank a lot of Kool Aid.

Red was my favorite.