I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

  • Frank Diekman

    What’s Russian for “There’s GOT to be a better way!”

    • Preston Sturges

      I’m not sure anyone in Russia ever actually said that. 

    • niktemadur

      In Soviet Russia, a better way’s got YOU!

    • Dmitriy Zombak

      Dolzhen byt’ droogoy put’ – Должен быть другой путь. 

  • oasisob1

    Estonian sounds more like Finnish than Russian.

    • twianto

       That’s because it is. Very similar to Finnish anyway and certainly not related to Russian.

    • Preston Sturges

      Not an accident.  Estonia bills itself as a Scandanavian country these days, no doubt to make sure nobody thinks it’s in the Balkans. 

      • CH

        They want to be a Nordic country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_countries , but anyway… I don’t quite see how it has anything to do with the languages being related. Estonian and Finnish are Uralic languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_language_family , and closely related to each other. The other Nordic/Scandinavian languages and Russian are not related.

      • http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski

        Well, Estonia isn’t in the Balkans. It’s in the Baltics. The Balkans are where Greece and Croatia are, so a long long way south from a Baltic state like Estonia.

        • Preston Sturges

          Yes, I know.

          • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

            Because Hungarian.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            You mean Ugric?

          • http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski

             Alright, then I didn’t get your joke? Do people regularly get Balkans and Baltics mixed up? What’s the punchline?

          • Preston Sturges

            Most Americans would pretty much assume Estonia was a neighbor of Romania, if they even knew where Romania is.

    • Preston Sturges

      It’s also a genetically distinct population, closer to Scandanavia. 

    • dnebdal

       According to the Finns and Estonians I’ve asked, Estonians generally understand Finnish (though they think it looks old-fashioned and full of umlauts), while the Finns struggle with Estonian (which they think is full of words that sounds like Finnish – but have a completely tangential or unrelated meaning).

      Supposedly, this reflects the way the Estonians have imported more Finnish culture than the opposite the last decades. We’ll see if it slowly changes as Estonia catches up. :)

      • folkclarinet

        My sister lived in Finland for a year (we’re from the USA) and her impression of Estonian was that it sounded like Finnish spoken when drunk.

        • Wreckrob8

          Exactly what I was going to say. Estonian looks like Finnish written by a drunk non-Finn who’s forgotten their grammar. Finnish grammar seems nice and regular compared to unpredictable Estonian.

        • jackie31337

          A family friend from Latvia once commented that she had never met a sober Finn, so that may be influencing some people’s impressions of the languages.

          Having learned Finnish as a second language, my impression of the Estonian language is that it’s closer in structure to spoken Finnish than “book writing” Finnish. The vocabulary is often similar to Finnish, but has a lot of German influence thrown in. In the old days, Tallinn was an important trading city in the Hanseatic League, so Estonia had more contact with Germanic cultures. If you are familiar with both Finnish and German, I think you can manage Estonian fairly well.

    • Taavet Ropp

      Why would it sound like Russian? They’re not even related.

  • lavardera

    I bailed at the first sight of Russian big hair.

    • Navin_Johnson

      Then you missed some unexpected bathtub sexy time.

      • euansmith

         Pinguin… naughty, naughty Pinguin… its as bad as Cadbury’s Flake…

  • alexminev

    They put a semi naked lady next to just about anything, very creative indeed

    • Preston Sturges

      Apparently these countries are still training thousands of young ballet dancers who then become too curvy and go into modelling without ever straining for the American “emaciated junkie” body type. 

    • Antinous / Moderator

      If Pussy Riot’s experiences are an indicator, policies have changed.

  • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

    Estonia?
    This is like the no name brand of Sovietism.

  • theophrastvs

    after this try listening to a dated but very pleasant rendition of Катюша (very militaristic, because it’s also the name of the weapons, but still a very sweet song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggHrz00jjEY

  • FourFeetOfCurl

    From watching these ads, it’s quite clear that Estonia never should have been part of the Soviet Union in the first place.

    • Martin355

      That’s like saying “It’s clear that occupied France never should have been a part of Nazi Germany in the first place.”

      • abstract_reg

         Which is true. Mind you, neither should have Germany, but hindsight is 20/20.

  • timquinn

    These are very cleverly designed and executed to give western watchers the impression that The Soviet paradise was merely a bad copy of New Jersey and decisions were made by a small group of thugs. This was, of course, only a ruse and the reality was that the USSR was run by military industrial complex of great sophistication and lethality. Also, western pop music belongs to everyone.

    • millie fink

      Yay Trade School Number 16! (I doubt the Stones got any kind of royalty for that one.)

    • rocketpjs

      “This was, of course, only a ruse and the reality was that the USSR was also run by military industrial complex of great sophistication and lethality.”

      fixed it for you

    • euansmith

      “And I know that they make fun of New Jersey all the time, but I don’t care. ‘Cause they’re just snubs. ‘Cause Jersey is where America’s at! Yeah!”

    • http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski

      Still better than New Jersey.

  • Mutation_Engine

    Interesting, but i have to admit that the sentence “For objective reasons, most subjectively and commercials, produced by the company, did not survive.” in the quoted summary is one example where punctuation actually makes a somewhat confusing sentence even harder to parse. Is it a literal translation and Estonian sentence structure is right at that borderline where it’s both similar and different enough from English to be really confusing to read when the words are automatically translated?

    • Taavet Ropp

      Sentence structure and other common errors point towards it being a machine translation from Russian, not Estonian.

  • renerebane

    Was this text google translated from youtube? For example Harry Egipta is actually Harry Egipt and Eedu Ojamaa is Peedu Ojamaa.

    • dnebdal

      If Taavet Ropp is right and it’s been (auto-)translated from Russian, those are probably an artifact of the cyrillic->latin transliteration?

      • renerebane

        It seems like it yes!

    • Rich Keller

      I blame Ojamaa.

      • noah django

         he still hasn’t produced an Estonian birth certificate

  • http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

    May need a NSFW tag. Bare breasts at 8:00!

    • twianto

      This is just further proof that Estonia is in fact in Europe and not in the US.

      But seriously, most of those commercials could just as well have been from Western Europe. Amazing.

    • Preston Sturges

      Hello!

    • euansmith

       That’s for the heads up. I never seem to be able to find bare breasts on the Internet.

    • Bart

      Not only an NSFW tag at 8:00, but also a Chicken Dance Polka warning at 10:50.

    • Jake Rennie

      And again at 30:00. 38:25 as well.

  • paulcarcosa

    The video on this page is blocked by YouTube because it contains copyrighted material from UMG and WMG?

    Seriously?

    • Josef Stalin

      Yes, I had to do that to you.

      • euansmith

        Say it ain’t so, Joe…

  • BarBarSeven

    Did any of you naysayers actually watch this? There is a commercial for an Estonian machinery company done to the Rolling Stone’s “Honky Tonk Woman” with some dancers in it around 3:50. Didn’t watch it? Sux 2 B U.

    • http://twitter.com/jere7my jere7my

      Followed at 6:30 by some Floyd.

      • http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

        I like the “Thriller” water commercial at 41:12.

        • BarBarSeven

          Wow! Thanks! That one just blew my mind!

        • Preston Sturges

          Also Donna Summer’s “Gloria” is in there some place

    • tomatometrics

       i watched the whole.damn.thing.  I have never seen so many commercials for specific factories, specific fruits and vegetables, and for kerchiefs.

    • Rich Keller

      And there’s some Art of Noise.

  • blueelm

    I could not stop laughing at the ice cream video. That needs to be a music video. It really does.

    • timquinn

      I am left craving blond ice cream. I mean vanilla ice cream, vanilla . . .

    • BarBarSeven

      I don’t think I have ever seen a commercial with so much subtext in my life.

      • euansmith

        “Only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate, tastes like chocolate never tasted before.”

        If you were a young lad growing up in Britain during the later part of the 20th Century, your earliest, and confused, sexual fantasies would have revolve around the Cadbury’s Flake girls… or the Cadbury’s Caramel Rabbit…

  • TimRowledge

    But – but- but! We was told that the damn GodlessCommieReds had nothing because commie-nism couldn’t produce nothin.

    • http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

       They were pretty good at producing commercials!

      But… that packaging and label design? Poor large-size pomegranate juice. Poor green onions.

      wait, green onions and lemon wedges? Who has to advertise green onions and lemon wedges? Were those for real?

  • http://soundcloud.com/pocketsquare grumble-bum

    So: Apparently, life in the USSR conglomerate was an idyl of shoe manufacturing, constant snacking, frequent (highly skilled) dance parties, and reverse-engineered Western pop music.

    Unfortunately, the amazing 8-2 female/male ratio was marred by instances of processed chicken-induced demonic insanity. But, on balance, it was a good life.

  • http://twitter.com/ocschwar ocschwar

    So, were standards of living in the Baltic states materially better in the Soviet era, comapred to the rest of the USSR? 

    • blueelm

      Yes. Markedly, and famously so. In fact, IIRC, these were the highest standards of living in the USSR.

  • http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

    Psychedelic chicken paste commercial at 13:34. I’m lovin’ it.

    • James Churchill

      That chicken ad did the rounds a few years back – I was half expecting this whole showcase to be similarly creepy. Not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.

    • jackie31337

      I just skimmed through the commercials, but I think that one was my favorite. In addition to the psychedelic style of the commercial, there were many WTF moments when I saw the serving suggestions for chicken. I think one of the recipes involved coating the chicken in cheese cubes and deep frying the whole thing!

  • Lolotehe

    52 watts per channel, babycakes. 

  • moehh

    I remember most of those commercials when they were actually on TV. ETV (http://www.etv.ee) had then even special program called Reklaamiklubi where new commercials were presented. There were probably moments when people watched TV only for those clips – like some people watch now-days Superbowl in US. 

  • Paul Renault

    What, no one is saying anything about the birch juice?

    That, and blya, did they ever use a lot of Western popular music in the ads.

    • BarBarSeven

      They hate us for our freedom. We hate them for their Birch juice. It all evens out in the end.

    • Jake0748

       I was thinking the same thing.  I bet birch juice tastes like root beer.

      • blueelm

        I’ve had birch juice (well in a soft drink, not straight out of the tree) and it had some herbal notes to it like root beer does, but it was a totally different taste and had mint in the mix. Also it’s not fermented. It’s really good, but it doesn’t taste like sarsparilla itself. In fact, it doesn’t taste anything like root beer, unless you put the things you put in root beer into whatever you’re making with birch juice (which people do when they make birch beer).

        You can get it in the US pretty easily, it’s made here as well I think.

  • happybubbles

    Beacuse there are in Estonian (not Russian) these is so much funnier to all who speak Finnish! Estonian sound like a hilarious parody of Finnish. Wish there was a way to conway how funny the “KANA KANA KANA Hakk-liha!” comes across! Chicken Chicken Chicken Chop-meat!

  • tomatometrics

    chicken dance at 10:31!

    • tomatometrics

       that LET YOUR CHILDREN BE BORN ALIVE spot near the end was a surprise.

      • http://twitter.com/cjporkchop cjporkchop

         Was that supposed to be an anti-smoking PSA? I thought smoking during pregnancy tended to make infants underweight, as opposed to dead.

        • tomatometrics

           I assumed that was what they meant – it wasn’t very subtle!

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=8834925 Chauncey Scott

    Hey Cory, may want to toss a NSFW next to the link. At the 8min mark there are BOOBIES!!!!!!!! Nice ones at that.

    • euansmith

      Boobies have got to be pretty far off the main sequence before they cease to be nice.

    • Jake0748

       Have to say… again… don’t look at BB while you are at work. You should be working. 

      • BijouxBoy

        Good POINT.

      • CH

        Yea… a 53 min video is NSFW. If you can watch that at work then I would guess watching a pair of boobies wouldn’t be much of a problem, either.

  • Preston Sturges

    Sort of like “Weird Science” meets a Union Carbide commercial, with accordion music. 

  • http://profiles.google.com/tim.m.holt Tim Holt

    Funny, I’d just come to BB to suggest a link.  I found a photo site with a bunch of old (grim) CCCP safety poster images at http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/sensyor/album/164892/?  The idea of bad things happening if you’re not safe didn’t start with those 1950′s safety films.

  • BunnyShank

    Maybe it was just the 80′s fashion, but a lot of it, with the hair styles and the shoulder pads, the cut of the dresses and the factory worker clips, remind me of a 1940′s time capsule. Like the marketing you would see within a commune that was established in the 1940′s. Which I guess is exactly what it is.

  • Sigmund_Jung

    Let me distill my ignorance here: I never thought about “consumer goods” in a Soviet state. To my defense, I don’t think this was ever a topic discussed before the Wall came down, and no Internet back then. So how did it work? You had companies selling stuff and competing against each other? Did they have profits? Were they all state-owned? (All right, I’ll google it, but maybe someone’s got a more interesting abbridged version…)

  • zombiebob

    I’m just now coming out of a seizure caused by involuntary laughter clashing with the douche chills brought on by Miss Glorious People’s Eyebrows 1985′s performance at 00:30

  • JoshP

    at__Sigmund
      from what I read(a bit) at Uni, the system worked more vertically than ours did.  That is to say, there were one or two models of a product, say a radio, that were produced.  The inferiority/superiority of said product depending on what components were produced at what factory, where it was manufactured, how much the line had had to drink that day, etc.  You didn’t have lots of competition in a scale of quality, you had the state product, which could be good, depending, which sold at a fixed price and then you had stuff that you could get from outside the Soviet system for whatever legality. 
      The old Soviet makers were legendary, during the Krushchev(i think??) era they pumped out these building that were so fundamentally unsound you could almost predict when they would fall in on themselves… the solution??  The Soviets post engineered big steel bands around the buildings to hold them in place internally,  like big metal zip ties or really like enormous duct tape for fifteen story tenements.
      What’s not in the video?  The shadow of the MIRVs.  That’s my explanation for the 80′s.

  • cstatman

    thank you Cory, for once again proving, no matter where in the world you are?    80′s hair and big cans still do it for me!   YAY!

  • http://www.facebook.com/hawgey Chris Buentello

    I don’t know about you guys but I cant get enough of the two gals doing some weird moonwalk at 1:18-1:27 mark. Anyone know whats the name of the dance :D   

  • Preston Sturges

     I liked the “Bistro” commercial – apparently they specialized in airplane  food.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Shane-Simmons/100000053744641 Shane Simmons

    Got as far as the ice cream before I was laughing.  Man, that was some ham-fisted sexuality thrown in there.

  • rtresco

    Pure tumblr gold. Whelp – looks like I have a night of GIF making ahead of me.

  • Preston Sturges

    My dad had a slide projector like the one at 45:00 except it dated to about 1960.  I think it was an Argus. 

  • http://www.mondoklause.com/ E. Arricciatura

    I’d love to see that but unfortunately i live in germany and all i get is this msg from youtube:
    “This video contains content from WMG and UMG, one or more of whom have blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”

    Why exactly does Warner Music and Universal Music own the rights to soviet commercials?

    • http://twitter.com/brendonbouzard Brendon Bouzard

      Some of these ads use Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones and Beatles songs (almost certainly without licensing). 

      • http://www.mondoklause.com/ E. Arricciatura

        Ah ok, thanks. That makes sense … i guess

        • http://www.facebook.com/marko.raos Marko Raos

           No it doesn’t. :(

  • http://twitter.com/adamhruby Adam Hrubý

    If you want to see more crazy advertising, check the Czech from the socialist era. (No subtitles, unfortunately, but still hilarious.)

    Best of generic goods advertising (honey, cabbage, crazy milk, state lottery and desserts made from apples) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc_eF6PIWBo

    Generic Watermelon
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xg6onLMvJI

    Sugar syrup (creepy SFX), 7 delicious flavours and “expresso tea”
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2lDCJb1018

    Instant Pizza (claim: “A bold accord in the colorful melody of Italian cuisine. Instant Pizza from Vitana”)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnvzU90-SwE

    Another mix (generic cooking fat, various jams from LIKO, carpet cleaner TEP, state lottery, BAJO chewing gums, generic sardines in oil, generic washing soap, BARBUS aftershave, TESLA radio, state lottery again)
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxfnDjH_3uc

  • mrlapage

    Is that Molly Ringwald at 16:30? Sure looks like her…

  • jackie31337

    That last commercial for the frost insulation was cheating: it had a web page URL, so it’s much more recent. It’s a nice reminder that the WTF continues though.

  • billstreeter

    None of those look much worse or more cheesy than American commercials of the same era. 

  • http://twitter.com/qazwart David Weintraub

    It’s no good! Not one commercial about amazing 1983 beet crop and the heroic masses that made it possible. All here is commercial with women without tops which is western decadence designed to make the proletariat forget about oppression under capitalists and glorious revolution. 

    I report it to central committee. They thanked me for my patriotism and tell me they are investigating it themselves. They would like phone numbers of women for further questioning.

  • Kenmrph

    The Spirt of Estonia is the Spirit of the Soviet!

  • bo1n6bo1n6

    In Soviet Russia TV watches you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/michael.trei Michael Trei

    @7.08 you see an independent Estonian flag, which was banned during the Soviet era. This commercial must be from 1991 or later.

  • http://twitter.com/STELLALUNAio9 STELLALUNA

    Wow, I only watched 10 min. of this but I learned 5 important, life-changing things:

    1) The USSR was not protected from 80s hair.
    2) It’s totally ok to use electric hair-styling tools while standing in a river.
    3) Green onions on toast is delicious.
    4) Aerobics are best done in a shoe factory.
    5) The Penguin is a pedo. Do not get in his ice cream van.

  • Sigmund_Jung

    That was great. Thanks for the time!