I don't miss the Soviet Union, but their stuff was sure cool.

Not many of you all remember the Soviet threat (the ever present, back of the mind overflowed garbage can of nightmare angst, mushroom clouded visions of worldwide annihilation), but we older people remember. We are the ones who learned in school to duck and cover. We knew not to look at the windows when there was a blinding flash.

Our terrorists were organized into nations and armies then. Our Osama was Nikita. Nikita, who banged his shoe against the speaker's podium at the United Nations screaming, "We will bury you; we will bury you." (kinda scarry, huh)?

Now that the U.S.S.R. (or in Russian -- C.C.C.R. -- pronounced: s, s, s, air), is, as an empire, gone to the trash pile of history like The Austrian Empire, The Persian Empire, The Roman Empire, for empire -- a shooting star. Their threat to the rest of the world came and went as a single breath in the life of other, longer lived empires.

BUT THEIR COOL STUFF WILL HANG ON THE WALLS OF HISTORY FOREVER.

They had the coolest stuff. The Chinese would weave huge silk tapestries of heroic comrads, not only Chinese heroes, but the heroes of their communist brother's revolution -- the heroes of the first revolt, the progenitors of all communist: Lenin; Stalin; The Proletariat of Russia.

The "art of the people" was cool. Almost all their art was about the state, all their artist -- state employees. They idealized on posters and in song their only national hero: The Worker. Of course, Lenin and Stalin somehow also managed to have their images produced, and reproduced, and reproduced from the reproductions.

I missed Soviet stuff so much I bought a bunch of it on Ebay. I just couldn't help myself. When my republican relatives come by, they cannot believe I have Russian political and ideological garbage on my walls. It's so Yesterday's Cold War for them (it seems, they prefer hot wars nowadays, even if we have to attack unprovoked). I am embarrassed by my Russian stuff because I cannot explain why I love it; it's like wearing bell-bottoms, which I can't do at my age, and not only because they don't fit.

I have thought about it and the only analogy I can draw is it is like keeping the skin of a snake that once bit you. The snake is dead, its power to frighten -- gone. It's only the shell of the thing that would harm you, it has long since stopped being able to do so, but as all fearful things, it is still beautiful.