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> Not an expert, but my understanding is that Soviet education & propaganda idealized Sparta. Not really, the Spartakiad was named after Spartacus, not Sparta.
by orthoxerox 2y ago
> Not an expert, but my understanding is that Soviet education & propaganda idealized Sparta.
Not really, the Spartakiad was named after Spartacus, not Sparta.
- bell-cot 2y ago(Yes, I know about the Spartacus thing. In the bigger picture - he is a great individual hero. Though having your military idealize somebody whose uprising was brutally crushed in just 2 years might fail to encourage a victory-oriented mindset.) From a few quick searches, I'm not getting anything about Soviet views on Sparta - just crap about the US-based "Sparta vs. Athens" Cold War analogy, or Soviet takes on (modern) Greek communism, or Eastern Orthodox ties between Greece and Russia, or Imperial Russian views on the Greek War of Independence, or ... This being HN - there is probably someone who either knows, or is fluent in Russian to be able to effectively search on the topic.
- 082349872349872 2y agoFWIW, searching for Спарта or Лакедемoн on https://diafilmy.su https://diafilmy.su turns up nothing (albeit a couple of Spartacus filmstrips), while searching for Афины does turn up https://diafilmy.su/7799-afiny.html https://diafilmy.su/7799-afiny.html . (I had wondered why there was a "Star City" filmstrip included in the search results; it appears to be because of a cosmonaut using a Spartacus-named fitness machine: https://diafilmy.su/uploads/posts/2015-04/1429074979_08.jpg https://diafilmy.su/uploads/posts/2015-04/1429074979_08.jpg ) Someone with better cultural knowledge will do better than I, but I'm getting the feel that the closest approach to Sparta was that the Soviets didn't gender-separate their scouting programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrS6z4tUtI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvrS6z4tUtI