At the end, you asked how people could recall this period fondly. Well, first off, let me be clear that I am speaking only generally, as it is not for me say how any of these parents feel about their losses; that's their prerogative, not mine. That said, my impression from listening to various interviews over the years is that there was more social cohesion in the Soviet days, and, especially prior to the stagnation and rot of the 1980s, that the government then provided more in the way of social security to the average person than it does now. This matters all the more given that many of the people who harbor such fond sentiments are elderly now and living in penury. I've even seen interviews from years ago of people nostalgic for Stalin. I have no doubt you're aware of this, but I mention it mainly because it seems natural to me that people who experienced such losses would bundle the fond memories of those they lost with such feelings. I enjoyed the video and subbed. Thanks.
This type of incident has happened a few times in china. There will be some accident with shoddy construction that will lead to the death of children. The outraged parents will then face significant opposition from the police, who will stop them from gathering/demonstrating/publicizing news about the incident, even sometimes to the point of using violence. It's kind of sad because a recurring theme you hear from the parents is that they believe that the corruption they are seeing must only be local, and that if the central government knew about it they would get justice, leading people to make "pilgrimages" to Beijing to try and get their story heard.
id point out this happens in the US all the time too, it is not unique to any one country but it does always highlight how uniquely stupid or careless people end up with more power/responsibility than they were ever capable of handling.
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000 "it happens in the us all the time" ....uh what? Since when is the US government crushing outcry and protest from it's citizens? Are there any laws against this in the US? No. Now check out China and Russia......do you see a difference in laws regarding speech against the government? YES. There is occasional nonsense here, but it's not even close to what happens in some countries. People just like to act like they are oppressed here, regardless of truth.
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000 Like the Bowling Green massacre? I thought the opposite happened in the US. and there were fake mass deaths so that Obama could take your guns?
Admittedly, given the way a lot of the Zampolits were...I could kinda see that actually happening. "Comrade Colonel, you will find me someone to fix my car." And lets be real: everything a Zampolit says has an unsaid threat behind it.
Regarding Slobodchikov: I've found, over the years, that witnesses who get small details wrong are, paradoxically, usually trying to tell the truth. Witnesses who tell the same story word-for-word, months or years later, are often either coached, or have subconsciously convinced themselves that their original story was the 'right' one, and get given undue evidentiary weight. (That said, I cannot vouch for this man's statements on this particular occasion.)
This is correct, at least in the sense of this being a recognised phenomenon. Indeed, (good) police training actually also emphasises this phenomenon, AFAIK - that "reliable" witnesses don't necessarily get all the facts straight, due to a multitude of reasons (like stress from a traumatic situation, human perception itself being inherently _very_ imperfect, post-event "rationalisations", etc.). However, given the totality of his behaviour - that is, including his obvious self-aggrandisement and appearing to be on an anti-alcohol crusade (which might skew his opinions/perceptions) - I still think his account, at best, only contains a _small_ nugget of truth, and at worst is entirely useless. He found himself the only surviving regular member of the aircrew, and could have realised the "benefits" to spin a story off of it. His narrative could even be said to be somewhat in support of the USSR's propaganda narrative, as the alcohol angle could be seen (spun) as individuals' incompetence, negligence and failures being the cause, and thus less so these things being _systemic_ (which they obviously were, but that looks even worse).
@@mnxsIndeed, this was Chernobyl. I had said that the IAEA even fell for it to some extent, but I'm not sure because I can't recall exactly. At any rate, the Chernobyl ministries even propagates this caricature of Anatoly Dyatlov as a criminally negligent, self-absorbed borderline sociopath, when, in fact, at least a fair number of his coworkers don't characterize him that way, and that he didn't even have access to the information that would have led him to act differently. It doesn't shy away entirely from illustrating the systemic dysfunction, but it does correspondingly paint the lead investigator (I forget his name) as a sort of maverick truth seeker when in reality he was appointed because he was squarely among the nomenklatura. This scapegoating of Dyatlov is entirely consistent with the way the system operated. I mean, you really gotta hand it to the KGB: over 30 years later and their machinations are STILL influencing the west lol.
@@bsadewitz Yes, Chernobyl is eerily similar in terms of USSR's response. But in the case of Chernobyl, the IAEA could only work with what they were given. AFAIK, they produced one or more reports as least as early as two years later, that examined independent evidence and analysed the Soviets' narrative, and concluded that the Soviets were either blatantly lying, or at best blatantly lying by omission. In other words, they weren't fooled, I think, but in the immediate aftermath couldn't outright, firmly reject the Soviet narrative. Edit: also, nice pfp!
@@mnxs Ah, yeah, that makes sense--they kinda had to buy it outwardly, initially, didn't they? I didn't mean to imply that they embraced it wholeheartedly, just that I had an oddly contradictory impression that they both did and didn't--somehow. But you explained why haha. And thanks. It's some iconography/mascot for the Rust programming language that I stole, I think. I saw it and thought to myself, "How many people are gonna even recognize that with the edges cropped off?!? Perfect!"(I can't code in the language lol).
@@bsadewitz They did have to give that appearance, to an extent, yes - as I understand it. We're entering the subject of international diplomacy now, which is hardly my specialty, but as I've come to understand it, in diplomacy (and the IAEA, while ostensibly a more technical organisation, still operates in the realm of international politics), outright telling someone they're full of shit is considered rather poor form, rather offensive, and is just something that isn't really done. (So when, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, told the Soviets that he was prepared to wait for an answer "until hell freezes over", he was _rather_ pushing it.) The rationale, I think, is something along the lines that nations are inherently proud, and by offending them you are offending their pride, and they will remember that, and now your future interactions will suck because of it - and as you might imagine, ostensibly neutral orgs like the IAEA has to be extra cautious here, as their ability to operate effectively is very, very much dependent on the goodwill of partner nations. Aha! I've been trying to get around to learning Rust proper, but still can't, however I've been following the community's development for years now. I just thought it was a nice use of its avatar combined with a 🤔-hand 👍
As for nostalgia for Soviet Union, there is a joke in Ukraine that goes something like: A kid asks his grandpa: "Grandpa, you lived through both world wars, soviet union and collapse, when was life the best?" "Oh in the 30s for sure" "But how come? There was poverty and holodomor" "I was young back then"
@@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis That's not the point. The joke is that all those periods had poverty and famine, so at least when he was young he was young and strong. It's a dark joke about how shitty the USSR was throughout its entire existence.
As a Kaliningrad native (albeit not living there anymore), I would like to thank you for bringing the memory of this tragedy to international audience. Being born in 1985 I could not have personal memories, obviously, but I can share what I heard from my parents. At that time, they lived in Kaliningrad city, which is about 40 km from Svetlogorsk. You need to know that Svetlogorsk was a very popular seaside resort. It was easy to reach by train. During the summer season, trains for Svetlogorsk departed every 30 or 20 minutes from the center of Kaliningrad, while in Svetlogorsk, the station was almost directly by the beach (you needed to descend the cliffs by stairs, or to take the cable way). The train ride itself took for less than one hour. The tickets were cheap as hell too. No wonder people would take the train to the seaside after the work to spend one or two hours there before returning home in the late evening. On weekends, it was even more popular, of corse. Now, imagine the reaction when all trains for the seaside were cancelled… for no reason, apparently. There were no explanations offered at all. Provided cars were extremely luxury, that made the town almost completely isolated. Believe be or not, my parents didn’t know what happened in Svetlogorsk until 90s! There were rumours that “something must have happened”, but they died soon. And it was not that far away, Setlogorsk was very well known to anyone in Kaliningrad. Yet, the cover up worked. There are enough legitimate reasons to be critical of the state of media/press in democratic countries, but I beg you never to forget that “bad” (corrupt, not impartial) media is always better to government information monopoly. Thank you for reading my story! If you are interested in other Soviet cover ups of disasters (not aviation-related), I recommend you to check out the 1957 Mayak nuclear facility disaster or the 1960 Kyiv mudslide disaster.
It seems to me that Slobochikov' story might be a "Fish That Got Away" situation. Maybe there was a kernel of truth there somewhere but, after years of telling the same story, the details have gotten more grandiose.
He is certainly suspect in his motivations and reliability as a witness. I said this elsewhere already, but: Firstly, he indeed seems to be wildly aggrandising himself and his importance, competence, etc., and secondly, he seems to be on a crusade against alcohol (which, in the context of the USSR, is perhaps admirable, but which might tend to skew his perception and opinions). I would think it best to disregard his entire account out of hand, unless another, more reputable source appears that backs him up.
@@bsadewitz Yes, perhaps that is taking it too far; I suppose I moreso meant that it shouldn't be considered a valid account (unless otherwise supported) but, at best, a speculative opinion (at its un-embellished core, it doesn't seem far-fetched at all - but confirmation bias is dangerous) that a thorough investigation could take up and look into, but otherwise, for practical purposes, it is useless and should not inform actions taken/policy made/etc. Tl;dr: a _potential_ clue, but hardly a proof.
In my headcanon he was an old man who finally got some attention and he craved for it. I assume he was not drinking alcohol, while the rest around him did, and he disapproved of it. But he was also of a low rank while most of his crew were officers, what made him feel not important enough. That's why he overexaggerated his own importance and professionalism, and lowers in his account the professionalism of his comrade pilots. Did they drink? Probably. But I really doubt, that they came hung over to fly. Would one probably show up to work not in top shape? Not impossible. But I doubt the whole crew shows up basically drunk or hungover.
As a Chinese born in Red China, your channel is one of my favourite , waiting every month to hear your interesting and similar story happened, dark jokes and tragedy are always with these two "countries", lucky enough I learned English myself and escaped that continent. Thank you for all your stories!
@@seanpetaia I hope your education is still continuing, as your comment shows ignorance. Note the OP's name, it's likely he/she is in Canada, not the US. And you, you doubtless voted for the incoming president, the man who himself got an illegal alien and her parents into the US for his own purposes. Grow up!
She is so nostalgic about the Soviet Union because, as you said, the kindergarten was exclusive for high ranking members. Her life was likely pretty good. Her connections were able to insulate her from the worst of the snowballing Soviet dysfunction. When the USSR collapsed, she got thrown into the fray with everyone else. And, let’s face it, for those in the Russian core, life in the USSR was better. Wealth extracted from the periphery flowed in through the Russian core towards Moscow. And, unlike modern Russia, the Soviet Union had a functional public education system and put emphasis on ensuring even smaller, more rural villages/ communities had access to basic education and employment. Today’s Russia has completely abandoned most rural villages like her’s. In a lot of villages there isn’t even a shop to buy groceries. The ppl don’t have reliable access to transportation. The nearest grocery is much too far to walk, especially during winter. You’d think the government would address something like this; at least send a weekly bus to take ppl to the shop to buy food, but nope! Despite these ppl’s constant, desperate pleas to the government to address the situation, the government does nothing. It leaves them there to rot. Ppl have started driving vans around to all these places that are set up as mobile shops. They come around once every couple weeks so these ppl don’t just die of starvation. It’s madness. Now, the larger rural towns aren’t to that point, but they aren’t that much better off. The farther you get from a city, the less has changed since the early ‘90s. In fact, for a lot of these places the only change has been for the worse. After the fall of the Union, Moscow was left without a non-Russian from which to pillage. So, what did it do? Did Moscow stop pillaging? Of course not! They simply began pillaging from their own, Russian periphery! One mustn’t look long to find proof of this dynamic. Just look at the demographics of those killed or wounded during the Very Special Little Leader’s Military Operation. The “volunteers” desperate enough to risk near certain death for a few thousand dollars almost exclusively preside from the periphery. There is a nearly 1:1 correlation between one’s likelihood of being killed in UA and how far one lives from Moscow. So, while I too find her attitude to be toxic, I can see how she got that way. And that’s not to mention the near lifetime of propaganda with little to no exposure to reliable information and what that will do to someone. She is a product of a toxic environment.
Blaming and coverup? Bullshit but not unexpected. Attempting to erase the tragedy from history by physically replacing the building overnight? That's just evil.
Clearly its fake. Probably propaganda so pilots stop drinking that much. How could they build a Park without cleaning the place? The face of the woman telling the story scream fake all over the place.
@@jp__878It'd be innovative if the entire lot had been rebuilt to as it was overnight. Just plowing everything away and sticking a bunch of flowers? That's literally how every "city renovation" in the US does it. I wonder what the Soviet version of Mexican labor was.
Usually these videos are kinda darkly funny. Just cavalcades of incompetence, corruption, and carelessness that leads to equally carelss, corrupt, and incompetent people getting hurt. But this is just a pure tragedy. A bunch of children having a bite to eat killed by a society of corruption and idiocy that failed them.
As a former aviator, I thought something was wrong with the altimeter as soon as PS mentioned the Cliff and the tree. Based on my experience in aviation, there’s a few holes in the official story. 1. The stated mission for the flight was radar operator training. If that’s true, why were two specialists in flight safety on board? ( in my experience with this sort of mission, the flight crew are the only people on board.) 2. The VOA (Голос Американского) covered the story almost as soon as it happened, with correct information because radio transmissions were being monitored. Why so openly validate that suspicion with proof? 3. Everyone on base except one guy were alcoholics who apparently couldn’t go an hour without getting black out drunk? 4. If western militaries were monitoring comms traffic and the aircrew was as drunk as Slobodchikov claims, why didn’t they say something about drunk pilots on VOA? 5. Did anyone check the maintenance logs for the aircraft? Conclusion: this was a maintenance evaluation flight after the altimeter was replaced and possibly other work done to the aircraft. There was a technical problem that forced the crew to cancel the flight early and RTB. The plane impacted terrain because a faulty altimeter led to interaction between the wing and vegetation. The coverup was intended to divert blame from the brainiac who thought up the modification the crew was evaluating.
You're using logic against the USSR. Your explanation*makes sense*, but knowing the Soviets, without even reading a page of the report, 101% vodka was involved.
A good analysis, the only thing that I'd add to it is the possibility of at least some of the crew being habitual drinkers and specifically hungover or otherwise ill-rested. That was likely a contributing factor to both the decisions made in the plane and the overall readiness of the aircraft.
If the flight was to test the altimeter, wouldn't it be a good idea to be higher than what it tells you it is just in case? Kind of weird to test a piece of equipment in an environment where it will 100% prove deadly if it were to be defective.
@@ohthatswild1755 exactly. It doesn’t make sense to test an uncertain altimeter in IFR conditions. Last time I saw that ended in what we in the business call CFIT or controlled flight into terrain.
@@ohthatswild1755Maybe there was some inane protocol they _had_ to follow? The USSR took famously bad to anyone deviating from protocol, even if said protocol, applied to current circumstances, is idiotic. Like, maybe it called for altimeter tests to be done at low altitude because then you could visually reference the ground, forgetting that this is _hard_ to do over water _(which was the local circumstance, but not necessarily something an inept protocol author would think of in the largely land-only USSR)_ and practically impossible to do if there is fog _(which might've been ignored because someone had decided that the test just had to happen, and you don't question/disobey orders)_ and, of course, as you point out, is stupid in general _(but the famously poor USSR might, say, not have had enough radars capable of determining altitude, thus protocol "had" to rely on the aircraft itself/aircrew themselves)._ Anyway, your counterpoint is certainly valid and a good one, yet I can't help but think that the inherent assumptions we often make about _some_ level of logic/competence being present in the overall system just have a tragic tendency to be inherently flawed when it comes to places like the USSR.
Not to mention the firefighters that responded immediately after the explosion were not informed of radiation and so wore no protection. True scale of the explosion was too obvious. Also residents of Pripyat were not evacuated until the second day after the explosion, meaning they were taking in huge doses of radiation while going about their day. If the authorities were more competent and didn't try to cover the disaster up, a lot less would die
They would probably still erect the sarcophagus, eventually since they would want to continue running the plants around it just like our timeline. Other than that, it would probably be like “normal”, higher birth defects? pfft, whatever. We clearly see this with other nuclear accidents, though some may have been evacuated, as we saw it with the Kyshtym disaster. Though I find it unlikely for it to not come out since the Americans had satellites by then and would almost certainly frequently check on Chernobyl, since it was supposed to become the largest power plant in the world if all 6 phases were completed.
Very good. The description of the air crash does read like an altimeter failure and a disorientated crew, something that happened in C20th due to maintenance failures or bad weather more than we should be comfortable with. The deaths of the senior military passengers in such a Western district of that country is probably why the USSR covered up the investigation. Replacing the crash site with a park so fast seems twisted, but if it was open land that was burned and covered over with a park, we’d think it normal, for Soviet Russia, to cover it over before anyone got to see the site. It smacks of an order given with no thought of the context from a 1,000 km away.
My dad was a really good welder and mechanic in the Soviet army and when things went wrong with somebody's car you know that they made him drop absolutely everything to go take care of it and it didn't matter the cost. Cars were extremely expensive and so rare that you had maybe one car $10,000 people if not worse. Thus the story is completely plausible.
Slobochikov doing the rounds telling his story, doesnt seem to care or realize that in his version of the story, he makes himself complicit in the tragedy by being the guy who fetches the flight permission from the regiment doctor, who would of course also bear responsibility. But the fact remains that Slobochikov carried out an illegal order that would have resulted in the death of all these people, the majority of which were children. If that story was true. Lets assume it is true, it reflects the mindset of the ordinary soviet servant: Do as you're ordered, dont question it, dont mind the consequences. And it lives on to this day in those who lived it back then.
yeah, we experience the same method in china now. the authority don't have enough resources or not efficient enough to prevent various tragedies to happen, but have ample resources and super efficient to 'deal with' anyone who dares to express anything about these tragedies, especially the family members of victims. sometimes the 'public employees' even invade those families' homes and live there for a period of time, just in case the victims' remain family would 'make troubles' we got a translated soviet joke to describe this situation:'to deal with the problems, the government just need to deal with those who pointed out the problems'（要解决问题，先解决提出问题的人）
Plane crashes in general were almost never disclosed to the Soviet public. And there was a lot of those. Only in 1989 there was around 40 plane crashes in USSR that we know of - for comparison, the United States "scored" just 7 the same year.
They didn't want the Soviet public to know how bad Soviet Civil Aviation. Aeroflot was an accident prone disaster. Yet, the late 1980s were actually a bright spot in Soviet aviation, thanks to Gorbachev's shakeup of Aeroflot management. During Brezhnev's reign, Soviet civil air accidents in the 1970s were so frequent the civil aviation accident investigation agency had two military transport aircraft outfitted as mobile crash laboratories to expedite investigations.
I'm just using the timeframe that I happen to factually know about because that's the year a plane crashed near a small town where my grandpa comes from, so I've read up on airplane disasters for that year - back then, in September of 1989, autopilot malfunctioned at 7500 meters on an An-32, and the plane dove down into a swampy marshland 13 km from the town, killing all 9 people on board. It was transporting missiles to a factory in Moscow, the missiles exploded upon impact creating a crater 15 ft deep.
Apparently, they achieved an incident rate that was five times the average for the industry. Between official incompetency (if it isn't my job it isn't my duty to question it even if I know it is being done wrong) to poor maintenance practices (this is the part I was given to fix the aircraft with and even though it doesn't fit or it is also broken I am going to install it because it is the part I was told to install) to poor design (we copied what worked well for others but decided to modify it without testing it) to poor workmanship (it isn't about quality, it is about quantity. Those Five Year Plans have quotas!) the Soviet aviation industry was a mess. But anyways, they celebrate the successful landing of Aeroflot Flight 366 on the Niva River in 1963 as an example of the excellence of Soviet Aviation and its heroic and skilled pilots, even to this day---- though I think the tugboat captain is the true hero. It is one of the few official "it really happened we didn't change the facts too much incidents," and likely the one example that will be brought up to say "Soviet Aviation isn't bad" in any discussion
One very unusual incident, as reported in Wikipedia: Date: 22 April 1947 Location: Volochanka (Taymyr Peninsula) Aircraft: C-47 Dakota tail no.CCCP-Л1204 Description (copied from Wikipedia):The aircraft was operating a domestic scheduled Kosisty-Khatanga-Dudinka-Turukhansk-Krasnoyarsk passenger service. Just after takeoff, the left engine began to overheat. Thirty-eight minutes into the flight, the left engine lost oil pressure and was shut down, but this also caused a loss of electric power, as the generator on the other engine was not working. The crew continued on the remaining engine, but a return to Kosisty was not possible due to poor weather. The crew flew towards Khatanga but were unable to locate the airport and continued to Volochanka. Five hours into the flight, the crew encountered icing conditions but changed course and left for better weather conditions. The number one engine overheated and failed, and the pilot then force-landed the aircraft in tundra on the Taymyr Peninsula. Three days after the accident, nine people (three crew and six passengers) left the crash site to seek help and were never seen again. The pilot's skeletal remains were found in a bog 120 km (75 mi) southwest of the crash site on 23 October 1953 by a reindeer herder; nothing is known of the remaining eight. The remaining 25 survivors were rescued on 13 May 1947 by a Li-2. In 2016, the aircraft was salvaged and transported by water to Krasnoyarsk for restoration and will eventually be on display at the future Museum of the Exploration of the Russian North in Krasnoyarsk [356]
26:18 Its not that surprising she looks back nostalgically on Soviet Union since like you mentioned, any child at that school was the progeny of the local party elite. Things were pretty good if you were a loyalist and in the ironically “upper-middle/upper class.” Silent/boomer gen Russians who were part of those inner circles are the only ones who rate the Soviet Union as something they miss in polls from 2010-2012. Obviously in stark contrast to you as a Ukrainian, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Poles, Siberians, Chechens, East Germans, etc. who definitely have a more negative view granted they weren’t in good with the party.
East Germans definitely don't belong on that list. There is a LOT of nostalgia for the Soviet times in East Germany for some reason. They're closer in attitude to Serbs, Croats, and other Balkan nations than they are Poles, Ukranians, and the Balts
@@robb1324 Exactly my experience. You just have to read the comments below videos about the GDR. They’re all like „The west is lying!“ „The GDR was the true Paradise for workers and peasants!“, etc.. My favorite was a former colleague, who told me: „In contrast to the West Germans, we were taught and encouraged to think critically.“
@@gudrunpfefferle6032 I havea coworker from the GDR who was born in 1959, who saw through the system in the late 70s, after she was desillusioned by the education system. Long story short, she wanted to study law, but was told that she can't, cause people from the lower strata were prefered, so she was told she could join some agrarian company for half a year, then she'd be considered a farmer, thus she could take advantage of that position to gain preferential treatment. That opened the eyes to the fact that her entire life had been a sham. She left the GDR shortly before it collapsed, which meant she had to go through hell for a decade while her petition to leave the nation was being worked on, just to come to Western Germany and see all the people who she suffered under getting a free pass of coming to the West and enjoy all the advantages, now that the border were gone... And these aparatchiks, that my coworker was being bullied for decades are the ones now claiming the GDR was the best thing ever. It's disgusting.
it tells you something about the soviet union. that even though people in the satelite states of the soviet union have been subject to propaganda from the day they were born. theys till hate the ussr
I don't recall whether it was directly thru this channel that I subscribed to Nebula or not. But this channel is in one of the top three reasons I did.
I was just thinking about that myself ... They had a chance to wipe the slate clean after the fall of the Soviet Union but instead veered back towards what they know .
@@MrCtsSteve That is because they were the core,the brains behind the whole mess and the "beneficiaries".The WP and other SSRs could say "not our fault,we were enslaved" and go on with their lives,but Russia knew it had no one to blame.So instead of confronting their past they preferred to do it the japanese way and act like they did no harm to anyone.
Are you sure you are talking about USSR? It literally fits today’s China every single word, just swap the USSR to China. From the stupid avoidable accident, to military arrive before ambulance, to the overnight park, to the “nothing happened here”(June 4 1989), and finally, to the victims that are still defending the regime. I sure hope you were actually talking about the USSR because China is totally different, it’s the most glorious country in the world with the best leader and taking over the USA and such. We don’t appreciate slander, comrade 😅❤
26:00 Accidents and tragedies happen. I doubt there is a nation on earth that has not had at least one government-caused accident that ended civilian, even children’s lives. We are so fragile. But covering it up, pretending it never happened, and offering no compensation, support, or recompense to the victim’s families is uniquely evil in the way the USSR was so good at being: inhumanity via paperwork.
I mean, it's not far off what the UK government did where I'm from when a coal tip destroyed a school, killing hundreds of children. They couldn't cover it up, but they did try and cover up the negligence and let the mine offer the families a pittance per child.
14:22 "Just ask yourself-would you get into a taxi if you saw the driver was drunk?" Yes... yes I would. In fact, when I was in St. Petersburg in February 2023, my wife and I called a taxi to take us to this church we wanted to see. The taxi driver showed up buzzed and stinking like he'd been drinking and sleeping on a bench for a week. On the way, in this 40 minute drive, he pulled out his bottle of whiskey from the glove compartment twice to take a swig out of it. I thought it was hilarious because I'm thinking this is normal Russian behavior. My wife was mortified.
I don't doubt what happened with the crash but I think as he gets older he's trying to distance himself from any criticisms that may be directed at him for not doing more to prevent the plane from flying or perhaps he feels guilty that he should have done something to stop the flight. He's old and has had this disaster rolling around in his head and hindsight can be a terrible thing. All these deaths of not only the children but his friends on the plane and coming so close to joining them probably left him with survivors guilt eating away at him for over 40 years.
I'm sort of an armchair Russian history nut and I can say, I agree with everything you said. The part that always seems to get me is they don't want something else, meaning, they want to keep the system they currently have. Putin certainly will never care for anyone other than himself. My heart goes out the children involved in this tragic accident.
Sadly is long ago, Brazil the country i live thankfully is not a Dictatorship but the leaders dont see so different in their interest, the chain will and always be weak in the side of people who has no power or influence in the system we live, independently if is Communism, Parlamentarism or Presidencialism, if the people who are in charge dont seem to bother or serve its people its a path of suffering and sadness.
Maybe you don't know too much about Russian mentality after all. . Inspite of everything Putin among others has improved the economy immensely. Russia is not a communist system like the Soviet union
There is bias in that thought, there are plenty of russians that are fierce critics of its past and present. Paper skies is just pointing out the fools. There is no shortage of fools outside and inside of Russia.
I had a feeling how it would turn out, when you said you looked up the social media profiles of the parents of the children. Russia never fails to disappoint.
Unfortunately Moskals don’t seem to have changed much over the last 50 years, they love repeating history like this verbatim while ignoring any that prevents them from maximising human suffering.
While you were trying to understand how someone who lost her daughter in an accident that was covered up by the system could love the same system I could only think of a single word: Brainwashing.
It is also just the effective strategy being employed, where structural problems are instead caused by local or personal issues and the system at large is fantastic. If it gets too bad they can imprison some people and shuffle the local government around and play the hero as the underlying issue isn't addressed.
We all are brainwashed to obey. No system is perfect. Soviet union was by our western standards very despotic and cold, but everybody in USSR had work. Golden age of soviet union was between 60's and mid 70's. Stalin was gone. The whole nation had strong belief in their superior technology, it was largest country in world with abundance of natural resources, they were first in space and had unlimited amount of electricity due nuclear program. There was food and arts, everything was basicly free and everybody could go up to universities. I can understand why old soviet citizens feel nostalgic of those days. Now they are again ruled with iron fist, whole country rampant with substance abuse, AIDS is as common as in every third world country. Only thing they still haven't felt is great famine, when people start to die of hunger in streets of Russia, then its all over 1930's again. History has a way of repeating itself. I hope that we all could avoid another world war, but its a sandcastle i built on seashore.
As someone mentioned, since it was an elite daycare, she (or someone in her family) must have had a government career. Not that people without government careers are not nostalgic, but that might be a factor.
About the cover-up of this accident I can only imagine that a plane flying low in the fog above the sea that got lost, could not get help from the radar station for guide because the radar being mounted on high cliffs, would get a blind zone on the sea at low altitude because of that cliff edge, and that a plane flying there too close and low would become invisible to radar.... I can not imagine them aknowledging in public that their radar coverage had blind zones so for example a NATO plane could also have been undetectable if taken the same route.... Possibly this accident made them realise that this was also a huge strategic weakness of the USSR against NATO attacks so the urge to cover all up at any cost regardless the victims and their families.... Same attitude they had after the sinking of the Kursk submarine
A reasonable explanation for most tragedies in the Soviet Union is "somebody was drunk" and everyone just shrugs and accepts it. It's oddly comedic is a sad way.
Intoxication back then was viewed as "softening" factor for prosecution, not the opposite like now. Nowadays being drunk can double your term, back then it could get you away scott free.
Its funny, i was searching your channel yesterday wondering if you had posted (have notifications on but RUclips is RUclips). Was sad when i found nothing. Then you post this. Super sad story but glad to see it presented in a thoughtful manner. Have an excellent xmas 🎄.
Thank you for your wonderful channel Paper Skies. I was born in the U.S. in 1960, and I remember the Cold War very well. After living in Japan for two years, I took the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Nakhodka to Moscow in 1989. (I and an American friend had a wonderful evening with some Russian college students in Khaborovsk. It was a very glasnost experience, and I cherish the memory to this day.) I can't fit everything into a RUclips comment, but what a tragedy for Russia that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to use World War I as a springboard to power.
Almost questioned the authenticity / originality of the animations at 1:21 (3 throttle and sets of engine instruments, seems like a tu154) when i realised that the AN24 does have a mini 3rd engine housed in the right narcelle. excellent quality, I can recognise the instruments from the X-Plane 11 FELIS Tu154.
how could Slobodchikov grab the controls of an AN-24 if he was a flight engineer? Anybody who has watched Mr Antonov fly an AN-225 or An-124 or other Antonov older airframe knows that the flight engineer sits well back of the pilot or co-pilots seats and you'd have to have arms longer than a giraffe's neck to do that. Wait- flight mechanic in an AN-24 would be sitting somewhere further back in fuselage near engines because radio takes priority and radio and navigtor sit behind the pilots. Flight mechanic i the guy who does the emergency repairs, etc.
While I always appreciate a video from our favorite Ukrainian aviation story teller, I would like to see a story about a competent Soviet operation or aircraft. Perhaps the Soviet pilots in Korea, or maybe even an interview with your father and his days as a pilot? Just a thought. Keep up the good work!
Absolutely love this channel. Reminds me of my polish/ Ukrainian/ Austrian grandparents telling me stories about pre WW2 days. Same great storytelling skills. ❤
Good thing russia wouldn't try to cover up crashed airplanes nowadays. Would be unimaginable today, that... to just choose something random, they'd try to force a plane down in the sea, so that no one can see that it was shot down by their AA.
This place is near me and it still blows my mind what they did to hide that tragedy. USSR was a piece of shait. It's sad that many people in Russia want to have it back.
While the whole situation is typical of the Soviet Union and not at all surprising, one aspect seems a bit suspicious and exaggerated to me. Knowing the typical efficiency of the Soviet system, it’s really hard for me to believe that they managed to prepare a new park - clearing away debris from a two-story building in one night. Even if they started working in the afternoon, that gives them 8-10 hours of work, requiring a well-lit construction site, and the noise would have been loud and noticeable from far away. If something like that truly happened at night, the whole city would have seen it, and I doubt the parents of the tragically deceased children would have been surprised by what they saw. I’m not questioning the accident itself or the fact that this brilliant and glorious system did everything possible to cover it up, but if they couldn’t even install an altimeter on an airplane, how did they manage a task a thousand times harder in just eight hours? Was this playground really set up the next day, or did it actually take a bit longer, but now it functions as one of the many urban legends of the Soviet era?
@@sorashirogami1729 Really. How much manpower do you need to carry the rubble of a two storey building at night and do it in a way that nobody noticed until the following day?
Man, you'd be surprised the lengths our governments around the world would go to cover up their shit. An overnight demo/construction would be on the lowest effort end
@@sorashirogami1729 Yeah. Ten thousand soldiers each carried a big chunk of concrete and nobody noticed them. Also according to the video those parents were pretty prominent figures. Second also, I grew up behind the Iron Courtain and nothing spread faster than the news of a secret operation. Was the night one time frame possible? Yes. Was likely and remain a secret? Nope I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm questioning the one night time frame for this miracle
The only part of the recycled altimeter story I don’t buy that you didn’t focus on is that the planes it was allegedly recycled from came from a different design bureau. I can buy them recycling the altimeters from one aircraft to another (an incident happened in the west with a ANT-72 crashing because it had been fitted with the fuel gauge of its smaller cousin ANT-42) but I am skeptical that the design bureaus had the level parts compatibility needed for this version of the crash.
@@p_serdiuk in old aircraft the "gauges" inside cockpits are self contained mechanical modules that do the measuring and interpreting sensor readings. There isn't a separate compartment that does all the measuring and then "sends" back the results to the cockpit. It's very possible that simply the difference in length/diameter of pressure lines or size of static pressure port caused the error.
In the planned economy of the USSR (as well as in all European countries dominated by the USSR back then) there was always a political, economical and technological drive towards standardization, i. e., striving to use only the smallest possible number of similar components in the largest possible number of applications. This did not always work as planned and intended, but typically you had only one manufacturer of a certain specific item (like an altimeter, in this case), or when you had a number of different manufacturers, they all produced the same standardized interchangeable items. The rigidity of the planned economical system also led to a high number of technical items being produced virtually unchanged for decades (only perhaps with decreasing complexity over time and correspondingly reduced requirements for manufacturing precision, again under the requirement of rationalization). For this reason you will find a lot of similarities in the equipment of different Soviet airplane types, thus it is absolutely possible that altimeters from an older Soviet airplane of a different era and make would have been used to replace the altimeters of the AN-72 in question. It is of course anyone's guess if these altimeters from an older/different plane would indeed have been exactly the same type of instrument in every detail, or if somebody simply decided that they were "good enough" for the job. In a planned economy you don't always get what you want - sometimes you have to make do with what you got, which may work most of the time, but not all of the time...
@ I knew they standardized but I figured it was mostly on the most important stuff like the engines are what the state says they should be the armament is what the state tells you to use but so long as you meet the requirements the state gave, you have wiggle room to make your unique stuff. An example is from the wider Eastern Bloc actually. While the Warsaw Pact standardized on 7.62x39mm, they didn’t all use the AK-47. Most of them used clones of that gun but Czechoslovakia used a rifle that wasn’t parts interchangeable with the AK platform. Even the magazines weren’t compatible. By contrast NATO managed to standardize their magazines so you can see where I believed the Soviet System failed in standardization.
I lived in former Soviet state. In a provincial town, a wooden school collapsed, killing many children. The town was not allowed to remember the tragedy. A new school was build, many new houses, as 'compensation'. Slabodchikov was probably kicked off, because the commander wanted to be with the two high officers.
I remember being in the 4th grade when a fighter jet slammed into the Ramada Inn just down the road from my school and my dad picked me up after school and we drove by there. It went what looked like right through the lobby doors and it's landing gear clipped the bank building across the street and I remember the landing gear laying in the parking or on the grass somewhere. It was a pretty wild sight to see
A sad / infuriating thing is, China has continued to "perfected" the Soviets "art" of the cover-up to this day. Their idea of First Responders in major crises is not well organised & equipped rescue teams, but squads that can block the line of sight to any area within minutes as well rapid blocking of words & phrases on the Chinese internet.
hey, thanks for posting further info and links to your sources in the description. (though the Ap Archive link makes my google chrome complain about this being an unsafe website)
i wonder if there was a specific budget set aside for covering up screw ups . they were so often , and the embaressment they cause was so undesirable that there must have been some emergency cover up plan for everything. but all that takes money to set aside .
The important people kindly asked some less important people to provide resources no questions asked. You don't need money to get trucks and bulldozers, you gotta know the boss of the city planning department, who can give orders and trucks magically appear. They'll be creative in their books like they always do (somebody is stealing fuel and using trucks for side hustles for sure). Or they just bill the air force wholesale (like for building an airstrip and such), the details of such contracts are classified anyway.
From what I’ve read this nostalgia for the Soviet Union is a result of soviet secrecy about accidents like this. These people think it means that there were no airplane accidents, when in reality during that time Aeroflot was one of the least safe airlines in the world.
Heard Sweden 😂 Those violations would probably primarily be by Draken. Viggen had only just been released in the SK version (training craft not really meant for active combat). Not sure why we were so hellbent on snooping around at that time, it's long before the submarine incidents and/or other aggressions.
I appreciate your scathing indictments of Soviet government crappiness as related to aircraft incidents as a commentator with the perspective of actually having lived in the USSR, while still also looking closely at the sources.
On 9th October 1962, after Warsaw Pact military excersises, to manifest the readiness for border defence and territorial integrity of communist Poland, there was a military parade consisting of Polish, Soviet and other block's troops returning from training. Tanks, artillery pieces and other equipment were moving through streets of Szczecin city that was given to Poland after the end of WW II. In order to create more favorable picture, local schools' officials were given the order to bring the students along the roads where the troops will drive through so they can greet them and create the image of crowds cheering on soldiers. The audience was so dense that children were standing on the roadway because there was no place left on the pavements. The very last tank's driver lost controls and drove right into the crowd killing 7 children, seriously mutilating 21 other and causing a panic in the crowd and 22 more battered individuals. The true number of wounded and killed people remains unknown because all the medical documentation from hospitals involving this accident was destroyed. Victims' families and every other person who was interrogated was to remain silent and threatened prison time in case of telling anyone what happened that fatal day. But, because this tragedy happened with hundreds if not thousands of witnesses, because of an absolute information blockade, rumours started to spread of about 30 or even 100 killed and many more wounded. To calm down the population, the local newspaper posted one laconic note about the incident including information about number of killed and the fact that tank's driver was Polish, because rumours included gossip that it was a Soviet tanker who did all of that. Nothing more ever appeared in any media after that for 27 years as long as communist regime was on power
A cruel story to be noted. Very heart moving story. Very good as always and great video material. I like your visual art style very much as much as story telling. Thank you.
Considering how much power a Commissar (Political Officer) can wield, it makes perfect sense to me that the base commander would move heaven and earth to use State resources to fix the Commissar's car ASAP so he does not get sent to Siberia/Gulag and maybe have a good word put in for him.
@@emberfist8347That's not true. Concentration camps existed even during Gorbachev's presidency - although there were fewer of those, and the conditions were less terrible.
@@emberfist8347 I don't really know what you mean by “they weren't gulags”; strictly speaking, no concentration camps were, since “GULag” is actually a name of a government department that ran them, “Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerej” (Chief Directorate for Camps). As for chances of getting their, well, maybe offending your political officer once won't get you there, but I'd be unwilling to try.
@ I said they weren’t gulags as strictly speaking, the Gulag system and the department that ran them were shut down by the USSR on January 25th, 1960 by MVD Order No.20. The prisons that remained in the post-Stalin-era of the USSR were more strict about who they sent to these prisons. So it was just political prisoners and the really violent types and no longer technically gulags even if some of the prisons from the Gulag system remained in operation like Perm-36 which was only closed in 1987.
I suspect Slobochikov stated at the party and called in sick the morning after because he did not fancy a flight over the sea with a bunch of very hungover men. Which leads me to ask: "If you suspected this could happen, why didn't you raise any objection?" Of course, I know that it would have been career suicide... But it is still a moment if cowardice. So,I can see why he rewrote the plot a bit. I may have done the same.
Oh, man, I agree with every word at the end. It's beyond comprehending how people justify and even love the very system taking the most valuable from them - life's off their kids
Get Nebula using my link for *40% off an annual subscription* : go.nebula.tv/paperskies
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Already have my Nebula subscription, love the platform
Bought it in early 2023
Best investment to feed my inner aviation nerd
At the end, you asked how people could recall this period fondly. Well, first off, let me be clear that I am speaking only generally, as it is not for me say how any of these parents feel about their losses; that's their prerogative, not mine. That said, my impression from listening to various interviews over the years is that there was more social cohesion in the Soviet days, and, especially prior to the stagnation and rot of the 1980s, that the government then provided more in the way of social security to the average person than it does now. This matters all the more given that many of the people who harbor such fond sentiments are elderly now and living in penury. I've even seen interviews from years ago of people nostalgic for Stalin. I have no doubt you're aware of this, but I mention it mainly because it seems natural to me that people who experienced such losses would bundle the fond memories of those they lost with such feelings.
I enjoyed the video and subbed. Thanks.
Do Nebula and Curiocity currently have automatic text translation into different languages, like RUclips does?
This type of incident has happened a few times in china. There will be some accident with shoddy construction that will lead to the death of children. The outraged parents will then face significant opposition from the police, who will stop them from gathering/demonstrating/publicizing news about the incident, even sometimes to the point of using violence.
It's kind of sad because a recurring theme you hear from the parents is that they believe that the corruption they are seeing must only be local, and that if the central government knew about it they would get justice, leading people to make "pilgrimages" to Beijing to try and get their story heard.
id point out this happens in the US all the time too, it is not unique to any one country but it does always highlight how uniquely stupid or careless people end up with more power/responsibility than they were ever capable of handling.
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000when has this ever happened in the us.
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000 "it happens in the us all the time" ....uh what?
Since when is the US government crushing outcry and protest from it's citizens? Are there any laws against this in the US? No. Now check out China and Russia......do you see a difference in laws regarding speech against the government? YES.
There is occasional nonsense here, but it's not even close to what happens in some countries. People just like to act like they are oppressed here, regardless of truth.
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000 Like the Bowling Green massacre?
I thought the opposite happened in the US. and there were fake mass deaths so that Obama could take your guns?
@@unfortunately_fortunate2000oh red rat. When it did happen last time in the US?
A pilot avoiding dying in a plane crash because they were ordered to go fix someone else’s car is one of the most Soviet things I’ve ever heard
But what if he survived because he was the hungover one and the rest were sober enough to fly. That sounds right too.
@@emberfist8347 Survival of the most alcoholic
@@hailexiao2770 due to alcoholic commander slamming his ride into the rhubarb lol
Admittedly, given the way a lot of the Zampolits were...I could kinda see that actually happening. "Comrade Colonel, you will find me someone to fix my car."
And lets be real: everything a Zampolit says has an unsaid threat behind it.
Mechanic, not pilot.
Regarding Slobodchikov: I've found, over the years, that witnesses who get small details wrong are, paradoxically, usually trying to tell the truth. Witnesses who tell the same story word-for-word, months or years later, are often either coached, or have subconsciously convinced themselves that their original story was the 'right' one, and get given undue evidentiary weight.
(That said, I cannot vouch for this man's statements on this particular occasion.)
This is correct, at least in the sense of this being a recognised phenomenon. Indeed, (good) police training actually also emphasises this phenomenon, AFAIK - that "reliable" witnesses don't necessarily get all the facts straight, due to a multitude of reasons (like stress from a traumatic situation, human perception itself being inherently _very_ imperfect, post-event "rationalisations", etc.).
However, given the totality of his behaviour - that is, including his obvious self-aggrandisement and appearing to be on an anti-alcohol crusade (which might skew his opinions/perceptions) - I still think his account, at best, only contains a _small_ nugget of truth, and at worst is entirely useless. He found himself the only surviving regular member of the aircrew, and could have realised the "benefits" to spin a story off of it.
His narrative could even be said to be somewhat in support of the USSR's propaganda narrative, as the alcohol angle could be seen (spun) as individuals' incompetence, negligence and failures being the cause, and thus less so these things being _systemic_ (which they obviously were, but that looks even worse).
@@mnxsIndeed, this was Chernobyl. I had said that the IAEA even fell for it to some extent, but I'm not sure because I can't recall exactly. At any rate, the Chernobyl ministries even propagates this caricature of Anatoly Dyatlov as a criminally negligent, self-absorbed borderline sociopath, when, in fact, at least a fair number of his coworkers don't characterize him that way, and that he didn't even have access to the information that would have led him to act differently. It doesn't shy away entirely from illustrating the systemic dysfunction, but it does correspondingly paint the lead investigator (I forget his name) as a sort of maverick truth seeker when in reality he was appointed because he was squarely among the nomenklatura.
This scapegoating of Dyatlov is entirely consistent with the way the system operated. I mean, you really gotta hand it to the KGB: over 30 years later and their machinations are STILL influencing the west lol.
@@bsadewitz Yes, Chernobyl is eerily similar in terms of USSR's response. But in the case of Chernobyl, the IAEA could only work with what they were given. AFAIK, they produced one or more reports as least as early as two years later, that examined independent evidence and analysed the Soviets' narrative, and concluded that the Soviets were either blatantly lying, or at best blatantly lying by omission. In other words, they weren't fooled, I think, but in the immediate aftermath couldn't outright, firmly reject the Soviet narrative.
Edit: also, nice pfp!
@@mnxs Ah, yeah, that makes sense--they kinda had to buy it outwardly, initially, didn't they? I didn't mean to imply that they embraced it wholeheartedly, just that I had an oddly contradictory impression that they both did and didn't--somehow. But you explained why haha.
And thanks. It's some iconography/mascot for the Rust programming language that I stole, I think. I saw it and thought to myself, "How many people are gonna even recognize that with the edges cropped off?!? Perfect!"(I can't code in the language lol).
@@bsadewitz They did have to give that appearance, to an extent, yes - as I understand it. We're entering the subject of international diplomacy now, which is hardly my specialty, but as I've come to understand it, in diplomacy (and the IAEA, while ostensibly a more technical organisation, still operates in the realm of international politics), outright telling someone they're full of shit is considered rather poor form, rather offensive, and is just something that isn't really done. (So when, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, told the Soviets that he was prepared to wait for an answer "until hell freezes over", he was _rather_ pushing it.) The rationale, I think, is something along the lines that nations are inherently proud, and by offending them you are offending their pride, and they will remember that, and now your future interactions will suck because of it - and as you might imagine, ostensibly neutral orgs like the IAEA has to be extra cautious here, as their ability to operate effectively is very, very much dependent on the goodwill of partner nations.
Aha! I've been trying to get around to learning Rust proper, but still can't, however I've been following the community's development for years now. I just thought it was a nice use of its avatar combined with a 🤔-hand 👍
As for nostalgia for Soviet Union, there is a joke in Ukraine that goes something like:
A kid asks his grandpa:
"Grandpa, you lived through both world wars, soviet union and collapse, when was life the best?"
"Oh in the 30s for sure"
"But how come? There was poverty and holodomor"
"I was young back then"
Basically, I had a hard dick and I fucked a lot. I think that kind of is true of all nostalgia.
Indeed, that isn’t so rare, people have nostalgia for their youth even if it was during a famine or war.
That's understandable. It's only a pity that said nostalgia rarely comes with the same degree of self-awareness as in this joke.
@@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis That's not the point. The joke is that all those periods had poverty and famine, so at least when he was young he was young and strong. It's a dark joke about how shitty the USSR was throughout its entire existence.
i wouldn't call that a joke but i understand
As a Kaliningrad native (albeit not living there anymore), I would like to thank you for bringing the memory of this tragedy to international audience. Being born in 1985 I could not have personal memories, obviously, but I can share what I heard from my parents. At that time, they lived in Kaliningrad city, which is about 40 km from Svetlogorsk. You need to know that Svetlogorsk was a very popular seaside resort. It was easy to reach by train. During the summer season, trains for Svetlogorsk departed every 30 or 20 minutes from the center of Kaliningrad, while in Svetlogorsk, the station was almost directly by the beach (you needed to descend the cliffs by stairs, or to take the cable way). The train ride itself took for less than one hour. The tickets were cheap as hell too. No wonder people would take the train to the seaside after the work to spend one or two hours there before returning home in the late evening. On weekends, it was even more popular, of corse. Now, imagine the reaction when all trains for the seaside were cancelled… for no reason, apparently. There were no explanations offered at all. Provided cars were extremely luxury, that made the town almost completely isolated.
Believe be or not, my parents didn’t know what happened in Svetlogorsk until 90s! There were rumours that “something must have happened”, but they died soon. And it was not that far away, Setlogorsk was very well known to anyone in Kaliningrad. Yet, the cover up worked.
There are enough legitimate reasons to be critical of the state of media/press in democratic countries, but I beg you never to forget that “bad” (corrupt, not impartial) media is always better to government information monopoly.
Thank you for reading my story!
If you are interested in other Soviet cover ups of disasters (not aviation-related), I recommend you to check out the 1957 Mayak nuclear facility disaster or the 1960 Kyiv mudslide disaster.
In 1992 and 1993, when I was 12-13, I was in a summer camp in Svietlogorsk with other children from Poland. It was great. 😄
But Comrade Paper Skies, such terrible things could never possibly happen in the glorious Soviet Union.
oh no no, Soviets intentionaly crashed into the daycare cuz communism means plane crash into daycare.
As unbelievable as an rbmk reactor exploding!
no no comrade, communism means plane crash into daycare
Luckily this isn't American where school shooting is still a thing 😱😱😱
However the Soviet Union would not be the Soviet Union if such things didn't happend in the Soviet Union.
It seems to me that Slobochikov' story might be a "Fish That Got Away" situation. Maybe there was a kernel of truth there somewhere but, after years of telling the same story, the details have gotten more grandiose.
He is certainly suspect in his motivations and reliability as a witness. I said this elsewhere already, but: Firstly, he indeed seems to be wildly aggrandising himself and his importance, competence, etc., and secondly, he seems to be on a crusade against alcohol (which, in the context of the USSR, is perhaps admirable, but which might tend to skew his perception and opinions).
I would think it best to disregard his entire account out of hand, unless another, more reputable source appears that backs him up.
@@mnxsI think disregarding it out of hand might be too extreme, but there certainly is reason enough not to defer to it and to tread with caution.
@@bsadewitz Yes, perhaps that is taking it too far; I suppose I moreso meant that it shouldn't be considered a valid account (unless otherwise supported) but, at best, a speculative opinion (at its un-embellished core, it doesn't seem far-fetched at all - but confirmation bias is dangerous) that a thorough investigation could take up and look into, but otherwise, for practical purposes, it is useless and should not inform actions taken/policy made/etc.
Tl;dr: a _potential_ clue, but hardly a proof.
In my headcanon he was an old man who finally got some attention and he craved for it. I assume he was not drinking alcohol, while the rest around him did, and he disapproved of it. But he was also of a low rank while most of his crew were officers, what made him feel not important enough. That's why he overexaggerated his own importance and professionalism, and lowers in his account the professionalism of his comrade pilots. Did they drink? Probably. But I really doubt, that they came hung over to fly. Would one probably show up to work not in top shape? Not impossible. But I doubt the whole crew shows up basically drunk or hungover.
As a Chinese born in Red China, your channel is one of my favourite , waiting every month to hear your interesting and similar story happened, dark jokes and tragedy are always with these two "countries", lucky enough I learned English myself and escaped that continent. Thank you for all your stories!
bless you, my brother (or sister). hope you got a better life in your new homeland.
I hope you came into United state legally. 🇺🇸
A russian here... I hear you, i "escaped" myself. 😅 although in my case it wasnt from ussr so it was an easy compared to you. All the best!
@@seanpetaia I hope your education is still continuing, as your comment shows ignorance. Note the OP's name, it's likely he/she is in Canada, not the US. And you, you doubtless voted for the incoming president, the man who himself got an illegal alien and her parents into the US for his own purposes. Grow up!
@@seanpetaia Who said they are in the US tho
She is so nostalgic about the Soviet Union because, as you said, the kindergarten was exclusive for high ranking members. Her life was likely pretty good. Her connections were able to insulate her from the worst of the snowballing Soviet dysfunction. When the USSR collapsed, she got thrown into the fray with everyone else. And, let’s face it, for those in the Russian core, life in the USSR was better. Wealth extracted from the periphery flowed in through the Russian core towards Moscow. And, unlike modern Russia, the Soviet Union had a functional public education system and put emphasis on ensuring even smaller, more rural villages/ communities had access to basic education and employment. Today’s Russia has completely abandoned most rural villages like her’s. In a lot of villages there isn’t even a shop to buy groceries. The ppl don’t have reliable access to transportation. The nearest grocery is much too far to walk, especially during winter. You’d think the government would address something like this; at least send a weekly bus to take ppl to the shop to buy food, but nope! Despite these ppl’s constant, desperate pleas to the government to address the situation, the government does nothing. It leaves them there to rot. Ppl have started driving vans around to all these places that are set up as mobile shops. They come around once every couple weeks so these ppl don’t just die of starvation. It’s madness. Now, the larger rural towns aren’t to that point, but they aren’t that much better off. The farther you get from a city, the less has changed since the early ‘90s. In fact, for a lot of these places the only change has been for the worse. After the fall of the Union, Moscow was left without a non-Russian from which to pillage. So, what did it do? Did Moscow stop pillaging? Of course not! They simply began pillaging from their own, Russian periphery! One mustn’t look long to find proof of this dynamic. Just look at the demographics of those killed or wounded during the Very Special Little Leader’s Military Operation. The “volunteers” desperate enough to risk near certain death for a few thousand dollars almost exclusively preside from the periphery. There is a nearly 1:1 correlation between one’s likelihood of being killed in UA and how far one lives from Moscow. So, while I too find her attitude to be toxic, I can see how she got that way. And that’s not to mention the near lifetime of propaganda with little to no exposure to reliable information and what that will do to someone. She is a product of a toxic environment.
Thanks for the clarification!
I was going to state this plus the fact that the USSR ended on December 25 in 1991 so it's pretty new (less than 50 years ago)
Blaming and coverup? Bullshit but not unexpected. Attempting to erase the tragedy from history by physically replacing the building overnight? That's just evil.
Clearly its fake. Probably propaganda so pilots stop drinking that much.
How could they build a Park without cleaning the place?
The face of the woman telling the story scream fake all over the place.
Idk pretty innovative imo
@@jp__878It'd be innovative if the entire lot had been rebuilt to as it was overnight. Just plowing everything away and sticking a bunch of flowers? That's literally how every "city renovation" in the US does it. I wonder what the Soviet version of Mexican labor was.
Russia and coverup go hand in hand right there next to China
Oh, you know. Prisoners from your local gulag @@DavidRichardson153
Usually these videos are kinda darkly funny. Just cavalcades of incompetence, corruption, and carelessness that leads to equally carelss, corrupt, and incompetent people getting hurt.
But this is just a pure tragedy. A bunch of children having a bite to eat killed by a society of corruption and idiocy that failed them.
As a former aviator, I thought something was wrong with the altimeter as soon as PS mentioned the Cliff and the tree.
Based on my experience in aviation, there’s a few holes in the official story.
1. The stated mission for the flight was radar operator training. If that’s true, why were two specialists in flight safety on board? ( in my experience with this sort of mission, the flight crew are the only people on board.)
2. The VOA (Голос Американского) covered the story almost as soon as it happened, with correct information because radio transmissions were being monitored. Why so openly validate that suspicion with proof?
3. Everyone on base except one guy were alcoholics who apparently couldn’t go an hour without getting black out drunk?
4. If western militaries were monitoring comms traffic and the aircrew was as drunk as Slobodchikov claims, why didn’t they say something about drunk pilots on VOA?
5. Did anyone check the maintenance logs for the aircraft?
Conclusion: this was a maintenance evaluation flight after the altimeter was replaced and possibly other work done to the aircraft. There was a technical problem that forced the crew to cancel the flight early and RTB. The plane impacted terrain because a faulty altimeter led to interaction between the wing and vegetation. The coverup was intended to divert blame from the brainiac who thought up the modification the crew was evaluating.
You're using logic against the USSR. Your explanation*makes sense*, but knowing the Soviets, without even reading a page of the report, 101% vodka was involved.
A good analysis, the only thing that I'd add to it is the possibility of at least some of the crew being habitual drinkers and specifically hungover or otherwise ill-rested. That was likely a contributing factor to both the decisions made in the plane and the overall readiness of the aircraft.
If the flight was to test the altimeter, wouldn't it be a good idea to be higher than what it tells you it is just in case? Kind of weird to test a piece of equipment in an environment where it will 100% prove deadly if it were to be defective.
@@ohthatswild1755 exactly. It doesn’t make sense to test an uncertain altimeter in IFR conditions. Last time I saw that ended in what we in the business call CFIT or controlled flight into terrain.
@@ohthatswild1755Maybe there was some inane protocol they _had_ to follow? The USSR took famously bad to anyone deviating from protocol, even if said protocol, applied to current circumstances, is idiotic.
Like, maybe it called for altimeter tests to be done at low altitude because then you could visually reference the ground, forgetting that this is _hard_ to do over water _(which was the local circumstance, but not necessarily something an inept protocol author would think of in the largely land-only USSR)_ and practically impossible to do if there is fog _(which might've been ignored because someone had decided that the test just had to happen, and you don't question/disobey orders)_ and, of course, as you point out, is stupid in general _(but the famously poor USSR might, say, not have had enough radars capable of determining altitude, thus protocol "had" to rely on the aircraft itself/aircrew themselves)._
Anyway, your counterpoint is certainly valid and a good one, yet I can't help but think that the inherent assumptions we often make about _some_ level of logic/competence being present in the overall system just have a tragic tendency to be inherently flawed when it comes to places like the USSR.
If Chornobyl disaster was not caught by the Swedish NPP employees, there'd be a beautiful amusement park near Pripyat today.
Not to mention the firefighters that responded immediately after the explosion were not informed of radiation and so wore no protection. True scale of the explosion was too obvious. Also residents of Pripyat were not evacuated until the second day after the explosion, meaning they were taking in huge doses of radiation while going about their day. If the authorities were more competent and didn't try to cover the disaster up, a lot less would die
There is a beautiful amusement park already there, there’s an abandoned one in Pripyat
They would probably still erect the sarcophagus, eventually since they would want to continue running the plants around it just like our timeline.
Other than that, it would probably be like “normal”, higher birth defects? pfft, whatever.
We clearly see this with other nuclear accidents, though some may have been evacuated, as we saw it with the Kyshtym disaster.
Though I find it unlikely for it to not come out since the Americans had satellites by then and would almost certainly frequently check on Chernobyl, since it was supposed to become the largest power plant in the world if all 6 phases were completed.
Very good. The description of the air crash does read like an altimeter failure and a disorientated crew, something that happened in C20th due to maintenance failures or bad weather more than we should be comfortable with. The deaths of the senior military passengers in such a Western district of that country is probably why the USSR covered up the investigation. Replacing the crash site with a park so fast seems twisted, but if it was open land that was burned and covered over with a park, we’d think it normal, for Soviet Russia, to cover it over before anyone got to see the site. It smacks of an order given with no thought of the context from a 1,000 km away.
My dad was a really good welder and mechanic in the Soviet army and when things went wrong with somebody's car you know that they made him drop absolutely everything to go take care of it and it didn't matter the cost. Cars were extremely expensive and so rare that you had maybe one car $10,000 people if not worse. Thus the story is completely plausible.
Slobochikov doing the rounds telling his story, doesnt seem to care or realize that in his version of the story, he makes himself complicit in the tragedy by being the guy who fetches the flight permission from the regiment doctor, who would of course also bear responsibility. But the fact remains that Slobochikov carried out an illegal order that would have resulted in the death of all these people, the majority of which were children. If that story was true.
Lets assume it is true, it reflects the mindset of the ordinary soviet servant: Do as you're ordered, dont question it, dont mind the consequences. And it lives on to this day in those who lived it back then.
What Fauci said too
yeah, we experience the same method in china now. the authority don't have enough resources or not efficient enough to prevent various tragedies to happen, but have ample resources and super efficient to 'deal with' anyone who dares to express anything about these tragedies, especially the family members of victims.
sometimes the 'public employees' even invade those families' homes and live there for a period of time, just in case the victims' remain family would 'make troubles'
we got a translated soviet joke to describe this situation:'to deal with the problems, the government just need to deal with those who pointed out the problems'（要解决问题，先解决提出问题的人）
Like the Chinese doctor who was one of the first to raise the alarm about covid and was deleted from existence?
@@IreneWY basically yes
"they replaced the altimeters with those from Ilyushin Il-14s"
*immediate "gosh darnit" reaction is immediate*
Plane crashes in general were almost never disclosed to the Soviet public. And there was a lot of those. Only in 1989 there was around 40 plane crashes in USSR that we know of - for comparison, the United States "scored" just 7 the same year.
They didn't want the Soviet public to know how bad Soviet Civil Aviation. Aeroflot was an accident prone disaster. Yet, the late 1980s were actually a bright spot in Soviet aviation, thanks to Gorbachev's shakeup of Aeroflot management. During Brezhnev's reign, Soviet civil air accidents in the 1970s were so frequent the civil aviation accident investigation agency had two military transport aircraft outfitted as mobile crash laboratories to expedite investigations.
I'm just using the timeframe that I happen to factually know about because that's the year a plane crashed near a small town where my grandpa comes from, so I've read up on airplane disasters for that year - back then, in September of 1989, autopilot malfunctioned at 7500 meters on an An-32, and the plane dove down into a swampy marshland 13 km from the town, killing all 9 people on board. It was transporting missiles to a factory in Moscow, the missiles exploded upon impact creating a crater 15 ft deep.
Apparently, they achieved an incident rate that was five times the average for the industry.
Between official incompetency (if it isn't my job it isn't my duty to question it even if I know it is being done wrong) to poor maintenance practices (this is the part I was given to fix the aircraft with and even though it doesn't fit or it is also broken I am going to install it because it is the part I was told to install) to poor design (we copied what worked well for others but decided to modify it without testing it) to poor workmanship (it isn't about quality, it is about quantity. Those Five Year Plans have quotas!) the Soviet aviation industry was a mess.
But anyways, they celebrate the successful landing of Aeroflot Flight 366 on the Niva River in 1963 as an example of the excellence of Soviet Aviation and its heroic and skilled pilots, even to this day---- though I think the tugboat captain is the true hero. It is one of the few official "it really happened we didn't change the facts too much incidents," and likely the one example that will be brought up to say "Soviet Aviation isn't bad" in any discussion
One very unusual incident, as reported in Wikipedia:
Date: 22 April 1947
Location: Volochanka (Taymyr Peninsula)
Aircraft: C-47 Dakota tail no.CCCP-Л1204
Description (copied from Wikipedia):The aircraft was operating a domestic scheduled Kosisty-Khatanga-Dudinka-Turukhansk-Krasnoyarsk passenger service. Just after takeoff, the left engine began to overheat. Thirty-eight minutes into the flight, the left engine lost oil pressure and was shut down, but this also caused a loss of electric power, as the generator on the other engine was not working. The crew continued on the remaining engine, but a return to Kosisty was not possible due to poor weather. The crew flew towards Khatanga but were unable to locate the airport and continued to Volochanka. Five hours into the flight, the crew encountered icing conditions but changed course and left for better weather conditions. The number one engine overheated and failed, and the pilot then force-landed the aircraft in tundra on the Taymyr Peninsula. Three days after the accident, nine people (three crew and six passengers) left the crash site to seek help and were never seen again. The pilot's skeletal remains were found in a bog 120 km (75 mi) southwest of the crash site on 23 October 1953 by a reindeer herder; nothing is known of the remaining eight. The remaining 25 survivors were rescued on 13 May 1947 by a Li-2. In 2016, the aircraft was salvaged and transported by water to Krasnoyarsk for restoration and will eventually be on display at the future Museum of the Exploration of the Russian North in Krasnoyarsk [356]
(Clicking on the video)
"No way, even for the Soviets this would be too much."
(Reaches the end of the video)
"Oh NO it gets WORSE?!"
Do not underestimate the power of Russian to make it worse.
You know the Russian Moto:
"But wait, it got worse"
@@Adrian23138 ...but there is always Russia
26:18 Its not that surprising she looks back nostalgically on Soviet Union since like you mentioned, any child at that school was the progeny of the local party elite. Things were pretty good if you were a loyalist and in the ironically “upper-middle/upper class.” Silent/boomer gen Russians who were part of those inner circles are the only ones who rate the Soviet Union as something they miss in polls from 2010-2012.
Obviously in stark contrast to you as a Ukrainian, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Poles, Siberians, Chechens, East Germans, etc. who definitely have a more negative view granted they weren’t in good with the party.
Sadly, a lot (30%+) of East Germans are also Putins Cock suckers and wish for the Russians to invade again
East Germans definitely don't belong on that list. There is a LOT of nostalgia for the Soviet times in East Germany for some reason. They're closer in attitude to Serbs, Croats, and other Balkan nations than they are Poles, Ukranians, and the Balts
@@robb1324 Exactly my experience. You just have to read the comments below videos about the GDR. They’re all like „The west is lying!“ „The GDR was the true Paradise for workers and peasants!“, etc.. My favorite was a former colleague, who told me: „In contrast to the West Germans, we were taught and encouraged to think critically.“
@@gudrunpfefferle6032 I havea coworker from the GDR who was born in 1959, who saw through the system in the late 70s, after she was desillusioned by the education system. Long story short, she wanted to study law, but was told that she can't, cause people from the lower strata were prefered, so she was told she could join some agrarian company for half a year, then she'd be considered a farmer, thus she could take advantage of that position to gain preferential treatment. That opened the eyes to the fact that her entire life had been a sham.
She left the GDR shortly before it collapsed, which meant she had to go through hell for a decade while her petition to leave the nation was being worked on, just to come to Western Germany and see all the people who she suffered under getting a free pass of coming to the West and enjoy all the advantages, now that the border were gone...
And these aparatchiks, that my coworker was being bullied for decades are the ones now claiming the GDR was the best thing ever. It's disgusting.
it tells you something about the soviet union. that even though people in the satelite states of the soviet union have been subject to propaganda from the day they were born. theys till hate the ussr
I don't recall whether it was directly thru this channel that I subscribed to Nebula or not.
But this channel is in one of the top three reasons I did.
Another great story exposing the Soviet lies and how modern Russia sticks to its "legacy". Thank you, Paper Skies, and happy holidays!
I was just thinking about that myself ... They had a chance to wipe the slate clean after the fall of the Soviet Union but instead veered back towards what they know .
@@MrCtsSteve That is because they were the core,the brains behind the whole mess and the "beneficiaries".The WP and other SSRs could say "not our fault,we were enslaved" and go on with their lives,but Russia knew it had no one to blame.So instead of confronting their past they preferred to do it the japanese way and act like they did no harm to anyone.
Every country has lies.
@@jojocactus7815Indeed. But few countries are as insecure about them as Russia is.
@jojocactus7815 for real ???
Aw man that’s a grim story even by Soviet Union standards 😢
USSR has many more grimier stories in it's closet. Russia too
And Chyna
ah average vodka ruining life, who shocked
Merry Christmas 2024 Paper Skies.
Dziękujemy.
Thank you!
Are you sure you are talking about USSR? It literally fits today’s China every single word, just swap the USSR to China. From the stupid avoidable accident, to military arrive before ambulance, to the overnight park, to the “nothing happened here”(June 4 1989), and finally, to the victims that are still defending the regime.
I sure hope you were actually talking about the USSR because China is totally different, it’s the most glorious country in the world with the best leader and taking over the USA and such. We don’t appreciate slander, comrade 😅❤
I’ve got my eye on you
Beautifully written :D
26:00 Accidents and tragedies happen. I doubt there is a nation on earth that has not had at least one government-caused accident that ended civilian, even children’s lives. We are so fragile.
But covering it up, pretending it never happened, and offering no compensation, support, or recompense to the victim’s families is uniquely evil in the way the USSR was so good at being: inhumanity via paperwork.
I mean, it's not far off what the UK government did where I'm from when a coal tip destroyed a school, killing hundreds of children. They couldn't cover it up, but they did try and cover up the negligence and let the mine offer the families a pittance per child.
14:22 "Just ask yourself-would you get into a taxi if you saw the driver was drunk?" Yes... yes I would. In fact, when I was in St. Petersburg in February 2023, my wife and I called a taxi to take us to this church we wanted to see. The taxi driver showed up buzzed and stinking like he'd been drinking and sleeping on a bench for a week. On the way, in this 40 minute drive, he pulled out his bottle of whiskey from the glove compartment twice to take a swig out of it. I thought it was hilarious because I'm thinking this is normal Russian behavior. My wife was mortified.
I don't doubt what happened with the crash but I think as he gets older he's trying to distance himself from any criticisms that may be directed at him for not doing more to prevent the plane from flying or perhaps he feels guilty that he should have done something to stop the flight. He's old and has had this disaster rolling around in his head and hindsight can be a terrible thing. All these deaths of not only the children but his friends on the plane and coming so close to joining them probably left him with survivors guilt eating away at him for over 40 years.
Have to wake up for work in 5 hours but it looks like I’ll be getting 4.5 hours of sleep now
4h29m34s, mate. Same fluffing problem here 😀
History of the USSR page one: it was 1917 and it was bad.
page two: it got a lot worse.
I'm sort of an armchair Russian history nut and I can say, I agree with everything you said. The part that always seems to get me is they don't want something else, meaning, they want to keep the system they currently have. Putin certainly will never care for anyone other than himself. My heart goes out the children involved in this tragic accident.
Sadly is long ago, Brazil the country i live thankfully is not a Dictatorship but the leaders dont see so different in their interest, the chain will and always be weak in the side of people who has no power or influence in the system we live, independently if is Communism, Parlamentarism or Presidencialism, if the people who are in charge dont seem to bother or serve its people its a path of suffering and sadness.
Maybe you don't know too much about Russian mentality after all. . Inspite of everything Putin among others has improved the economy immensely. Russia is not a communist system like the Soviet union
There is bias in that thought, there are plenty of russians that are fierce critics of its past and present. Paper skies is just pointing out the fools. There is no shortage of fools outside and inside of Russia.
@@travian821 Nope they are not🎉
I had a feeling how it would turn out, when you said you looked up the social media profiles of the parents of the children. Russia never fails to disappoint.
I was about to go to sleep but I guess not now XD
Same
Damn, not exactly nice bedtime story... Imagine being those parents
Same xD
Same
Same
Unfortunately Moskals don’t seem to have changed much over the last 50 years, they love repeating history like this verbatim while ignoring any that prevents them from maximising human suffering.
True
While you were trying to understand how someone who lost her daughter in an accident that was covered up by the system could love the same system I could only think of a single word: Brainwashing.
In the end, Russians will be Russians.
Shoutout to Al Gore for helping me realize what brainwashing is from a very young age
It is also just the effective strategy being employed, where structural problems are instead caused by local or personal issues and the system at large is fantastic. If it gets too bad they can imprison some people and shuffle the local government around and play the hero as the underlying issue isn't addressed.
We all are brainwashed to obey. No system is perfect. Soviet union was by our western standards very despotic and cold, but everybody in USSR had work. Golden age of soviet union was between 60's and mid 70's. Stalin was gone. The whole nation had strong belief in their superior technology, it was largest country in world with abundance of natural resources, they were first in space and had unlimited amount of electricity due nuclear program. There was food and arts, everything was basicly free and everybody could go up to universities. I can understand why old soviet citizens feel nostalgic of those days. Now they are again ruled with iron fist, whole country rampant with substance abuse, AIDS is as common as in every third world country. Only thing they still haven't felt is great famine, when people start to die of hunger in streets of Russia, then its all over 1930's again. History has a way of repeating itself. I hope that we all could avoid another world war, but its a sandcastle i built on seashore.
As someone mentioned, since it was an elite daycare, she (or someone in her family) must have had a government career.
Not that people without government careers are not nostalgic, but that might be a factor.
About the cover-up of this accident I can only imagine that a plane flying low in the fog above the sea that got lost, could not get help from the radar station for guide because the radar being mounted on high cliffs, would get a blind zone on the sea at low altitude because of that cliff edge, and that a plane flying there too close and low would become invisible to radar.... I can not imagine them aknowledging in public that their radar coverage had blind zones so for example a NATO plane could also have been undetectable if taken the same route.... Possibly this accident made them realise that this was also a huge strategic weakness of the USSR against NATO attacks so the urge to cover all up at any cost regardless the victims and their families.... Same attitude they had after the sinking of the Kursk submarine
A reasonable explanation for most tragedies in the Soviet Union is "somebody was drunk" and everyone just shrugs and accepts it. It's oddly comedic is a sad way.
Intoxication back then was viewed as "softening" factor for prosecution, not the opposite like now. Nowadays being drunk can double your term, back then it could get you away scott free.
I thought Russians always being drunk was a joke.
Probably nobody was drunk, and the guy who was not on the flight was the one who installed the altimeter.
25:00 Любовь Сопотько
Люди холопского звания
Сущие псы иногда
Чем тяжелей наказания
Тем им милей господа
Much awaited, much appreciated excellent insights as always from you.
Thank you for publishing this.
Its funny, i was searching your channel yesterday wondering if you had posted (have notifications on but RUclips is RUclips). Was sad when i found nothing. Then you post this. Super sad story but glad to see it presented in a thoughtful manner. Have an excellent xmas 🎄.
This channel is a treasure.
Merry christmas and happy holidays to you all.
💛💙
Thank you for your wonderful channel Paper Skies. I was born in the U.S. in 1960, and I remember the Cold War very well. After living in Japan for two years, I took the Trans-Siberian Railroad from Nakhodka to Moscow in 1989. (I and an American friend had a wonderful evening with some Russian college students in Khaborovsk. It was a very glasnost experience, and I cherish the memory to this day.) I can't fit everything into a RUclips comment, but what a tragedy for Russia that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were able to use World War I as a springboard to power.
Almost questioned the authenticity / originality of the animations at 1:21 (3 throttle and sets of engine instruments, seems like a tu154) when i realised that the AN24 does have a mini 3rd engine housed in the right narcelle. excellent quality, I can recognise the instruments from the X-Plane 11 FELIS Tu154.
I guess only An-24RV had the boosters, but that's nitpicking.
This is no different than Russia building a parking lot over the Wagner group cemetery.
Amazing work, as always!
Joined Nebula with your link - love your content! Regards from Germany
As usual, this video is fantastic. Hell of a message at the end, too.
The conclusion was really well written, appreciate all the work put into the research and presentation of these videos
how could Slobodchikov grab the controls of an AN-24 if he was a flight engineer? Anybody who has watched Mr Antonov fly an AN-225 or An-124 or other Antonov older airframe knows that the flight engineer sits well back of the pilot or co-pilots seats and you'd have to have arms longer than a giraffe's neck to do that. Wait- flight mechanic in an AN-24 would be sitting somewhere further back in fuselage near engines because radio takes priority and radio and navigtor sit behind the pilots. Flight mechanic i the guy who does the emergency repairs, etc.
Dementia or lying/overexageration to look good
Had to work this Sunday, so finding another Paper Skies story out is the perfect ending to an exhausting day in retail!
While I always appreciate a video from our favorite Ukrainian aviation story teller, I would like to see a story about a competent Soviet operation or aircraft. Perhaps the Soviet pilots in Korea, or maybe even an interview with your father and his days as a pilot? Just a thought. Keep up the good work!
Open the video about Мары, titled "Soviet Topgun". Or about MiG-27. Those were just a few videos ago.
There's also the zero zero seat story where pilots got watches
Absolutely love this channel. Reminds me of my polish/ Ukrainian/ Austrian grandparents telling me stories about pre WW2 days. Same great storytelling skills. ❤
That's one of the most insane stories I've ever heard. Great video. The animations are excellent.
Good thing russia wouldn't try to cover up crashed airplanes nowadays. Would be unimaginable today, that... to just choose something random, they'd try to force a plane down in the sea, so that no one can see that it was shot down by their AA.
This place is near me and it still blows my mind what they did to hide that tragedy. USSR was a piece of shait. It's sad that many people in Russia want to have it back.
While the whole situation is typical of the Soviet Union and not at all surprising, one aspect seems a bit suspicious and exaggerated to me. Knowing the typical efficiency of the Soviet system, it’s really hard for me to believe that they managed to prepare a new park - clearing away debris from a two-story building in one night. Even if they started working in the afternoon, that gives them 8-10 hours of work, requiring a well-lit construction site, and the noise would have been loud and noticeable from far away. If something like that truly happened at night, the whole city would have seen it, and I doubt the parents of the tragically deceased children would have been surprised by what they saw.
I’m not questioning the accident itself or the fact that this brilliant and glorious system did everything possible to cover it up, but if they couldn’t even install an altimeter on an airplane, how did they manage a task a thousand times harder in just eight hours? Was this playground really set up the next day, or did it actually take a bit longer, but now it functions as one of the many urban legends of the Soviet era?
It's just a matter of manpower. The Soviet Union was never short on manpower.
@@sorashirogami1729 Really. How much manpower do you need to carry the rubble of a two storey building at night and do it in a way that nobody noticed until the following day?
Your assuming their were housing in the immediate area
Man, you'd be surprised the lengths our governments around the world would go to cover up their shit. An overnight demo/construction would be on the lowest effort end
@@sorashirogami1729 Yeah. Ten thousand soldiers each carried a big chunk of concrete and nobody noticed them. Also according to the video those parents were pretty prominent figures. Second also, I grew up behind the Iron Courtain and nothing spread faster than the news of a secret operation.
Was the night one time frame possible? Yes. Was likely and remain a secret? Nope
I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm questioning the one night time frame for this miracle
It’s insane that they hit a kindergarten bang on! The odds are tiny for this to happen yet it did happen.
The only part of the recycled altimeter story I don’t buy that you didn’t focus on is that the planes it was allegedly recycled from came from a different design bureau. I can buy them recycling the altimeters from one aircraft to another (an incident happened in the west with a ANT-72 crashing because it had been fitted with the fuel gauge of its smaller cousin ANT-42) but I am skeptical that the design bureaus had the level parts compatibility needed for this version of the crash.
Altimeters are simple gauges, what is there to be incompatible
@@p_serdiuk in old aircraft the "gauges" inside cockpits are self contained mechanical modules that do the measuring and interpreting sensor readings. There isn't a separate compartment that does all the measuring and then "sends" back the results to the cockpit.
It's very possible that simply the difference in length/diameter of pressure lines or size of static pressure port caused the error.
@ Different designers so different standards. A speedometer in a Honda and a Toyota are not identical.
In the planned economy of the USSR (as well as in all European countries dominated by the USSR back then) there was always a political, economical and technological drive towards standardization, i. e., striving to use only the smallest possible number of similar components in the largest possible number of applications. This did not always work as planned and intended, but typically you had only one manufacturer of a certain specific item (like an altimeter, in this case), or when you had a number of different manufacturers, they all produced the same standardized interchangeable items.
The rigidity of the planned economical system also led to a high number of technical items being produced virtually unchanged for decades (only perhaps with decreasing complexity over time and correspondingly reduced requirements for manufacturing precision, again under the requirement of rationalization).
For this reason you will find a lot of similarities in the equipment of different Soviet airplane types, thus it is absolutely possible that altimeters from an older Soviet airplane of a different era and make would have been used to replace the altimeters of the AN-72 in question.
It is of course anyone's guess if these altimeters from an older/different plane would indeed have been exactly the same type of instrument in every detail, or if somebody simply decided that they were "good enough" for the job. In a planned economy you don't always get what you want - sometimes you have to make do with what you got, which may work most of the time, but not all of the time...
@ I knew they standardized but I figured it was mostly on the most important stuff like the engines are what the state says they should be the armament is what the state tells you to use but so long as you meet the requirements the state gave, you have wiggle room to make your unique stuff. An example is from the wider Eastern Bloc actually. While the Warsaw Pact standardized on 7.62x39mm, they didn’t all use the AK-47. Most of them used clones of that gun but Czechoslovakia used a rifle that wasn’t parts interchangeable with the AK platform. Even the magazines weren’t compatible. By contrast NATO managed to standardize their magazines so you can see where I believed the Soviet System failed in standardization.
I lived in former Soviet state. In a provincial town, a wooden school collapsed, killing many children. The town was not allowed to remember the tragedy. A new school was build, many new houses, as 'compensation'. Slabodchikov was probably kicked off, because the commander wanted to be with the two high officers.
never heard of this but already know theyll deny it happened or blame the west
What a great video gift for Christmas! Thank you! Excellent as always!
3:48 honestly I would not be surprised if that was true
I remember being in the 4th grade when a fighter jet slammed into the Ramada Inn just down the road from my school and my dad picked me up after school and we drove by there. It went what looked like right through the lobby doors and it's landing gear clipped the bank building across the street and I remember the landing gear laying in the parking or on the grass somewhere. It was a pretty wild sight to see
Honey wake up Paper Skies dropped before Christmas
How the fluff do you know if he's even a Christian? Maybe even an orthodox?
Another episode of the Soviet Union screwing crap up?
Bah, humbug!
Let him sleep.
yesss paper skies dropping new videos!!
A sad / infuriating thing is, China has continued to "perfected"
the Soviets "art" of the cover-up to this day.
Their idea of First Responders in major crises is not well organised
& equipped rescue teams, but squads that can block the line of sight
to any area within minutes as well rapid blocking of words & phrases
on the Chinese internet.
hey, thanks for posting further info and links to your sources in the description.
(though the Ap Archive link makes my google chrome complain about this being an unsafe website)
I live near Svetlogorsk and found wikipedia article about this cash this year. I never heard about this tradegy before.
This was a hell of a horror story! Thank you, Paper Skies, for sharing.
Damn, that's... really cold.
you make such great videos man, easy to send to friends with a high recommendation behind it. have a great holiday season!
Your hypothesis seems to pass occam's razor.
Great video!
This is such amazing channel! Thank you
It's 01:26... Damn you Paper Skies! I need to watch it. now.
I was ten when this happened. The tragedy hits hard still for those innocent lives.
Just imagine what Russia is covering up in Mariopol and other places 😮. We should remember how CCCP operated because Russia is the same. Good video
Always a pleasure watching Your videos, thank you for another one!
i wonder if there was a specific budget set aside for covering up screw ups . they were so often , and the embaressment they cause was so undesirable that there must have been some emergency cover up plan for everything. but all that takes money to set aside .
The important people kindly asked some less important people to provide resources no questions asked.
You don't need money to get trucks and bulldozers, you gotta know the boss of the city planning department, who can give orders and trucks magically appear. They'll be creative in their books like they always do (somebody is stealing fuel and using trucks for side hustles for sure).
Or they just bill the air force wholesale (like for building an airstrip and such), the details of such contracts are classified anyway.
From what I’ve read this nostalgia for the Soviet Union is a result of soviet secrecy about accidents like this. These people think it means that there were no airplane accidents, when in reality during that time Aeroflot was one of the least safe airlines in the world.
Heard Sweden 😂
Those violations would probably primarily be by Draken. Viggen had only just been released in the SK version (training craft not really meant for active combat). Not sure why we were so hellbent on snooping around at that time, it's long before the submarine incidents and/or other aggressions.
I imagine that Chernobyl would top the list of USSR attempted cover-ups.
I appreciate your scathing indictments of Soviet government crappiness as related to aircraft incidents as a commentator with the perspective of actually having lived in the USSR, while still also looking closely at the sources.
On 9th October 1962, after Warsaw Pact military excersises, to manifest the readiness for border defence and territorial integrity of communist Poland, there was a military parade consisting of Polish, Soviet and other block's troops returning from training. Tanks, artillery pieces and other equipment were moving through streets of Szczecin city that was given to Poland after the end of WW II. In order to create more favorable picture, local schools' officials were given the order to bring the students along the roads where the troops will drive through so they can greet them and create the image of crowds cheering on soldiers. The audience was so dense that children were standing on the roadway because there was no place left on the pavements. The very last tank's driver lost controls and drove right into the crowd killing 7 children, seriously mutilating 21 other and causing a panic in the crowd and 22 more battered individuals. The true number of wounded and killed people remains unknown because all the medical documentation from hospitals involving this accident was destroyed. Victims' families and every other person who was interrogated was to remain silent and threatened prison time in case of telling anyone what happened that fatal day. But, because this tragedy happened with hundreds if not thousands of witnesses, because of an absolute information blockade, rumours started to spread of about 30 or even 100 killed and many more wounded. To calm down the population, the local newspaper posted one laconic note about the incident including information about number of killed and the fact that tank's driver was Polish, because rumours included gossip that it was a Soviet tanker who did all of that. Nothing more ever appeared in any media after that for 27 years as long as communist regime was on power
It's 1:30 AM here, "Oh, Paper skies have released something!" 🎉❤
Guess i must watch then
These little souls.
It breaks my heart.
The tragic of being born in a political system as russia...
It's ok, corrupt western politicians and wannabe oligarhs sold the West integrity to Russia. Now Russia and stories like this will be everywhere.
A cruel story to be noted. Very heart moving story. Very good as always and great video material. I like your visual art style very much as much as story telling. Thank you.
Considering how much power a Commissar (Political Officer) can wield, it makes perfect sense to me that the base commander would move heaven and earth to use State resources to fix the Commissar's car ASAP so he does not get sent to Siberia/Gulag and maybe have a good word put in for him.
The gulags were all long shut down by this point. That practice ended after the de-Staliniziation of the late 1950s.
@@emberfist8347That's not true. Concentration camps existed even during Gorbachev's presidency - although there were fewer of those, and the conditions were less terrible.
@ But they weren’t gulags and you couldn’t get thrown in there anymore just for getting on a political officer’s bad side.
@@emberfist8347 I don't really know what you mean by “they weren't gulags”; strictly speaking, no concentration camps were, since “GULag” is actually a name of a government department that ran them, “Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerej” (Chief Directorate for Camps). As for chances of getting their, well, maybe offending your political officer once won't get you there, but I'd be unwilling to try.
@ I said they weren’t gulags as strictly speaking, the Gulag system and the department that ran them were shut down by the USSR on January 25th, 1960 by MVD Order No.20. The prisons that remained in the post-Stalin-era of the USSR were more strict about who they sent to these prisons. So it was just political prisoners and the really violent types and no longer technically gulags even if some of the prisons from the Gulag system remained in operation like Perm-36 which was only closed in 1987.
I suspect Slobochikov stated at the party and called in sick the morning after because he did not fancy a flight over the sea with a bunch of very hungover men.
Which leads me to ask: "If you suspected this could happen, why didn't you raise any objection?"
Of course, I know that it would have been career suicide... But it is still a moment if cowardice.
So,I can see why he rewrote the plot a bit. I may have done the same.
Kings & Generals ending theme, is that you? 😂
I always wandered - do you draw those animations yourself or you have animation guy?
Today is a good day. And because you uploaded at half two I guess the good day counts for the entire monday
Thank you :)
Great video! Really admire your research in finding the truth!
The advertisers are gonna love this one
Oh, man, I agree with every word at the end. It's beyond comprehending how people justify and even love the very system taking the most valuable from them - life's off their kids
Wish you a Merry Christmas, and stay safe.
As a father, I feel ill and I feel profound sadness for these people I never met. Words fail me.