I figured with the 2012 Olympics having come to an end today, it might be interesting to reflect on games of the past.  I have quite a few QSLs that my dad got around 1980 from the USSR. Here are three of them. The USSR was clearly touting the fact that the 1980 Summer Olympics were being held in Moscow.  I don't remember much about the games that year, I was 4 years old.  Reading over the wikipedia entry on it is advisable.  One of the interesting things that happened that year was that the US boycotted the event because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  There is a lot of history to take in as a backdrop to the "Games of the XXII Olympiad".  However, I just want to focus on the intersection of ham radio comrades and the olympics.

I have been a little bit obsessed with Germany ever since Laura and I returned from Berlin. With that in mind, here is a card from Berlin. This one is from 1978. One thing I have noticed about some qsl cards is that they feature some sort of product. Some of them show ham gear and some of them feature things that are seemingly unrelated to Amateur Radio. Are these hams employees of the companies that make these products? Maybe the cards are cheaper to buy because they are a promotional tool? This card features a Barkas van. Apparently it was an impressive engineering feat at the time. I guess hauling 2,200 pounds with a 46 HP engine isn't too shabby.

I have a battleship!

This is a pretty nationalistically entertaining card. Many of the soviet era cards were. This one is from 1979. My dad actually exchanged music in the late 80's with a gentleman he met on the radio. I don't think it was this ham necessarily. The guy from Russia sent dad a couple of LPs and dad sent him my old Whitesnake cd! Dad said that there were only a few people in that town in Russia that had cd players. It was apparently a town of about 250,000 people. I asked my friend Rachel Stauffer what the astronaut boy's flag says. Here is her response! "The phraseology used here is the same as for the expression "Glory to God", used in the Russian Orthodox Church. During the Soviet era, Russia was an atheistic state, and religious tradition was replaced with the political and social doctrines of the communist regime. This poster is clearly evident of that, since the word "God" "bog" from the traditional Orthodox refrain "Glory to God", "Slava bogu", is replaced by the word "October" in the phrase "Slava okt'abr'u".

Why are they praising October, you might ask? In celebration of October Revolution Day, of course - one of the most beloved holidays of the USSR (people still celebrate it in Russia - it's kind of a weird nostalgic reflection on the way things used to be). On this day, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 (more commonly called the "Okt'abrskaja Revol'utsija" or October Revolution in Russian) was commemorated, celebrated, and glorified. Thus - the expression "Glory to October". (The name of the film/submarine "Red October" is also reference to this holiday.) This revolution was the one led by Lenin that ended hundreds of years of monarchy in Russia and resulted in the establishment of the very literal Marx-Engels application of Communism that defined the USSR for over 70 years.

The most interesting thing about the poster to me is that you have an army guy, a navy guy, and an astronaut - clearly the astronaut is representative of the time (late 1950s-mid 1960s) and the space race between the U.S. and the USSR. The battleship is awesome. And it's interesting because there were no battleships in the October Revolution. Russia is pretty much a landlocked country and the October Revolution sought to overthrow the monarchy in its own country, so a battleship wouldn't have been necessary - so it's great that he's holding up the battleship like it is also being praised. My assumption is that the battleship has less to do with the Revolution - that the three guys are supposed to represent the military strength and power of the Soviets in the USSR at the time of the poster's creation, which, in the view of the Soviets, would not have happened without the October Revolution."

Weissenburg

I am getting excited about our honeymoon trip to Berlin. Here is a neat card from 1981.

Although this is technically from South Korea, it still might make the IAEA a touch nervous.

Ha! This one came from Amsterdam. For those who are unfamiliar with the term DX, it basically means long distance radio communications. This guy actually sent this card with copulating cartoon rabbits to people all over the world. I love it.

This one is from Feb. 1985. I am not sure what else to say about this one. If you need a Cuckoo-Clock, holler at this guy.