The Soviet Union produced some of the 20th century’s strangest political decisions, ambitious experiments, secret projects, and darker episodes. These 35 stories offer a revealing look at the ideas, people, and events that shaped life behind the Iron Curtain.
Bering Strait Dam Proposal
1. In 1954, the USSR put forward a dam proposal to the U.S. that would have shut off the Bering Strait. The Soviets said it would stop arctic cold currents flowing down over Korea and the Sea of Japan, making it as much as 30 degrees warmer. The U.S. declined.
2. The USSR declined to host the 1980 Summer Paralympics after the Moscow Summer Olympics. An official said “there are no invalids in the USSR”; the games were held in The Netherlands instead.
3. In 1972, the Soviet Union’s monitoring of communications calls between American wheat farmers and the Department of Agriculture led to “The Great Grain Robbery,” which allowed the Russians to secretly purchase record amounts of wheat at low prices, resulting in a U.S. grain shortage 18 months later.
4. The USSR had a televised song contest. Because few people had phones, viewers would switch their house lights ON if they liked a song and OFF if they did not. The state energy company tracked the size of each power spike and sent the results to the station to determine points for each contestant.
5. In 1961, the USSR renamed its rocket base Baikonur to keep the Soviet space program secret. Residents of the original Baikonur, hundreds of km away, used the confusion to order many valuable supplies for themselves before the scam was uncovered.
6. The Soviet Union staged elections to give the impression of democracy, but there was only one candidate on the ballot. In 1949, Ivan Burylov protested this ridiculous ritual by writing the word ‘Comedy’ on his secret ballot. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison camps for his ‘crime.’
7. The USSR backed a pseudoscientific farming approach that rejected genetic heritability for political reasons. Up to 3000 scientists who criticized Lysenkoism were imprisoned or killed for being “bourgeois”, fascist or anti-Marxist saboteurs.
8. The Soviet Union ended history exams in 1988 because greater government openness had exposed the fact that the textbooks were full of lies.
9. In 1974, the Soviet Union launched Salyut 3, a crewed military satellite equipped with a 30mm ‘self-defense’ cannon. It was fired several times and even used to destroy a test satellite in orbit. It remains the only armed, crewed spacecraft ever flown.
10. The Soviet Union concealed their flamethrowers to keep snipers from targeting them during World War 2.
Amphibious Hunter Plane
11. The USSR built a prototype amphibious aircraft, the Bartini Beriev VVA-14, to hunt American submarines. It could lift off vertically, travel on water, fly at high-altitude, land on runways or water, and would eventually have used “ground effect” to travel.
12. The Soviet Union made a laser pistol for it’s cosmonauts to use in space.
13. In the USSR, when you were sentenced to be “imprisoned without the right of correspondence”, it meant you were to be executed.
14. In 1973, the USSR missed out on the 1974 World Cup for refusing to play in a Chilean stadium that had been used to detain, torture, and execute political dissidents.
15. In 1976, the Soviet Union developed keyloggers for IBM Selectric typewriters that tracked the ball motion and transmitted content from American Embassy typewriters for years.
16. The Soviet Union tried to domesticate moose for cavalry use.
17. In the Soviet Union under Stalin, arriving more than 20 minutes late for work was a criminal offense.
18. The USSR sent so many scientists and engineers to the gulag prisons that the government established labs for them. While workers in the ‘Sharashka’ facilities did not have to perform hard labor like other inmates, their work was published under the names of more famous Soviet scientists.
19. The Soviet Union shut down many churches and reopened them as Museums of Atheism devoted to scientific education and anti-religious exhibitions.
20. The Soviet Union built chemical, nuclear, and biological defenses into its T55 battle tank. This would allow the crew to survive nuclear fallout if required.
Titanium Welding Workaround
21. The Soviet Union could not work out how to weld titanium without causing cracks, so 80% of the Mig-25 was made from stainless steel.
22. The USSR had expected to win the 1957 Ice Hockey World Championships final, held in Moscow, but lost to Sweden. Because the organizers did not have the Swedish national anthem ready for the medal ceremony, the Swedish players sang a drinking song, and it was played over the PA system.
23. In 1969, the USSR was seriously weighing a nuclear strike on China before Nixon said that the USA would nuke 130 Soviet sites in retaliation.
24. From 1929 to 1940, the Soviet Union introduced a 5-day week as a deliberate effort to eliminate religion.
25. The Soviet Union disapproved of Somalia’s 1977 invasion of Ethiopia, so it stopped supporting Somalia and began supporting Ethiopia. In reply, the United States stopped supporting Ethiopia and started supporting Somalia.
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