have been using emoticons for 18 years myself. find them useful — and fascinating, as a linguist. they may be used as emotionally laden punctuation marks or replace whole utterances, like, say, this one:

nah, it was regular life — like anywhere else — with its joys and its troubles.

you are very welcome.

it did — Cuba was sending bananas,together with brown sugar, to cover its debt. Morocco was selling to the USSR tangerines and oranges. as a matter of fact, oranges and bananas were available in Moscow all year round. not so much elsewhere.

the wages system was unified for the entire country.

the economic system was the same in all Soviet republics (did you know there were 15 of them, not just Russia?)

do you really think you Gulag joke is anywhere near funny?

nope. it was quite legal. the stand would belong to a local vegetable store.

there was a joke popular with post-Soviet intellectuals:

it is because it is the changing of the guards.

that is because most probably the photographer was not allowed to go to any fun places.

just to clarify, this is a mine truck. these were made in Belarus, and still are.

I assume you did not live in the USSR during the '80.

it is Slavoj Žižek, not Slovaj.

early days of the Revolution were in October 1917.

they were not offered to mass markets. they were used for theatrical costumes and presentations abroad.

that was a symbol of the Soviet rule. so no, it was not associated with socialism per se. it was supposed to show the unity between workers (hammer) and peasants (sickle).

as long as you remember that this is a manga adaptation it all starts to make perfect sense. watched it a couple of time, enjoyed the hell out of it each time.

a couple of days ago I came across a collection of pictures by Russian artist Cornacchia.

shiksa.