Category Archives: Diary 2023

Diary 2023 is a subcategory of Kaliningrad: Mick Hart’s Diary. Mick Hart is an expat Englishman living in Kaliningrad, Russia. The subcategory belongs to the blog expatkaliningrad.com

It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

May this fair land we love so well in dignity and freedom dwell

28 May 2023 ~ It’s that man in the Russian hat in Bedford!

Great news! That is, great news if you are a dinosauric socialist or a politically challenged liberal: the results of the UK local elections suggest that Labour are back on track to break into Number 10 next year. It is rumoured that when this catastrophe happens, the first item on Queer Stammer’s agenda will not be to reverse rampant crime on our streets or stem the terrorist threat but to reverse Brexit in all but name. A politician, who wishes to remain Anonymous, as he hasn’t had a sex change, has disclosed that a bill will be produced (abracadabra!) that will ensure that whilst officially the UK is no longer a vassal state of the Evil bully-boy Union, the bureaucrats in Brussels will be firmly back in the driving seat.

Beyond rumour is the sure certainty that the UK’s immigration crisis, that is the one the Conservatives are powerless to prevent because, and I quote, of ‘legal challenges’ ~ time for Sorryarse’s UK legal-system to be investigated and overruled ~ is about to go from bad to worse.

The lefties have always been advocates of open-door immigration. After all, it was introduced by Mr Blair and his cronies as a pre-emptive measure to shore up the loss, which they rightly anticipated, of the white-working-class vote when the old grassroots socialists finally cottoned on, which eventually they did but only after it was much too late, that under Mr Blair’s stewardship New Labour had ceased to be the party of whippets, flat hats and pigeons, and that they and their tired old Marxist policies had been well and truly shafted. No one, not even the Neanderthal socialists, asked for multiculturism, and yet many just went along with it because since their grandads voted Labour they hadn’t the gump to ask themselves why they should do the same.

Neither did we ask for a free-for-all immigration fiasco. In fact, the majority voted Brexit to call for a halt to immigration, and what did we get in return? The net result under Tory rule is that immigration has soared to hitherto inconceivable heights. We also voted Brexit to loosen the pseudo-liberal stranglehold on every law that governs our land, particularly countercultural laws that originate from and are weaponised by the European Convention of Human Rights, the sole-serving purpose of which are to pave the way for mass immigration, a move that Britons pay dearly for, always in cash, often with lives. This, we are told, is social enrichment, when all that is enriched by uncontrolled third-world migration are the symbiotic coffers of the UK’s legal profession, the political mannequins on the end of the strings and the shadowy globalist figures whose hands control the strings that make those mannequins dance to their tune.

We will greet them on the beaches!
Sir Winston Chapelcliff

The proof is in the political pudding: You can vote as much as you like in Britain, but you’ll never get what you voted for. Other democracies around the world are routinely dismissed in Britain by its media and its political class, who refer to them as ‘managed democracies’, the implication being that we should think ourselves jolly lucky that the democracy in which we live is perfectly mismanaged.

At the end of the day, and every day on the political agenda, the people that govern our country, whichever party to which they belong, happily and arrogantly ride roughshod over all we believe in and all that we hold dear. Even now, as Enoch Powell’s predictions of ‘Rivers of Blood’ inexorably flows from cerebral to credible, the British media continues to praise the heinous migration chess game of a man whom it applauds egregiously as a ‘philanthropic billionaire and champion of human rights. They over egg the diversity soufflé whilst putting down the culinary critics who see it for what it is, as sickly as sick can be, by labelling them as conspiracy theorists and disciples of the far right. And should everything else in their trick bag fail, leaving nothing to dissemble with, they fall back on their second-rate act, drop Putin’s name into the mix and blame it all on the Russians.

Hats enough of hat!

You have just read the preface of two seemingly disconnected but actually interdependent actions: the singing of a song entitled There Always Was an England and an overwhelmingly strong compulsion to put on my Russian hat.

Look, it’s that man in the Russian hat!

Earlier this month I took my autocratic Russian hat for a test drive in the English countryside. On a date not to be disclosed for fear that they might travel back in time and attemp to rewrite history (the lefties are always at it), I plonked my hat on my head and went for a stroll around Bedford. Now, at any other time in the glorious history of our sovereign country, this would have posed no problem, but today, with almost every English town and city looking, sounding and feeling like the asylum version of Noah’s Ark, keeping a firm hand on one’s tiller is a crucial prerequisite for navigating dangerous urban waters.

This, as it happens (Jimmy Saville was fond of this phrase) is a convenient water-related metaphor, because the first place that my Russian hat took me was along the side of Bedford’s Embankment, next to the River Great Ouse.

Noah is not an English name, so there is a very good chance that he was one among a group of men idling near the water’s edge looking as though they had landed from Eastern Europe. Perhaps Noah himself had brought them?

You could tell that they all belonged to the Tracksuit Bottom Club, because they were all wearing tracksuit bottoms. They were gathered in a circle, and one of the men, the one with the most superior tracksuit bottoms, was addressing the rest in earnest, or possibly Lithuanian, or it might have been Ukrainian (do they have a language?). The group was listening so attentively that its leader must have been giving them tips on how to work the benefit system, which was fortunate for me, as I glided past them in my hat as though it was hypersonic and, undetected by enemy radar, arrived at Bedford’s Suspension Bridge without comment, let or hinderance.

A thing of beauty!

It was a lovely day to be standing above the River Great Ouse wearing a Russian hat. A couple of swans went by, who must have been working for border security because they took as much notice of me loitering in my Russian hat as they would a flotilla of boat people steaming into Dover.

A bus pulled up outside The Embankment Hotel, and a gaggle of shadowy personages alighted and went inside. Was it one of those freebee buses paid for by the government? Sorry, I meant paid for out of the British taxpayers’ pocket? “Don’t go to the Embankment bar,” I heard a prophetic voice whisper. It was the same voice that long ago had told me “Avoid the BBC licence fee as one would avoid the plague!” Besides, as an Englishman in England, I had to watch my step!

Where did you get that hat?

If there is one thing that never ceases to amaze me, and it’s not the Labour party, it is just how useful bridges are when you want to cross from one side to the other, and Bedford Town Bridge is no exception. Bedford Town Bridge was built in 1813 and expanded in 1938. Time for a photo in my Russian hat!

You can tell it is not a selfie, for, if it was, I would have been pouting at the lens, looking like a ten-year old thanks to the camera’s filter. Not having any tats, well, not that I can show you, and without a ring through my snout or a bolt through my lip, the risk of doing something like that was slim to say the least.

I had my photo taken, and I pressed on, passing numerous people both young and old alike who didn’t even see me let alone my Russian hat because every zombie one of them was twiddling on their mobile phones as if they’d sold their soul to Bill Gates, which in effect they had.

Within less time than it takes to invent a pandemic and cash in on those fatal jabs, I came at last to the High Street, which was busy, busy, busy. As I had not been asked to produce my passport, I assumed I was still in England. It’s just not that easy to tell anymore.

I crossed over the zebra crossing, well why not? Like bridges, that’s what they are there for, and continued in the same direction in which I had been going. All of a sudden, a strange looking fellow dressed in a pea-green T-shirt clutching a first-prize trophy that had been given gratuitously to him by the world’s most apolitical club, Eurovision, turned tail and ran. Had he seen my hat? The last thing I saw of him, he was heading towards the offices of the Government in Exile located on Britain’s ‘Take Anyone Street’. Man, that’s an awfully crowded street ~ innit!

I was now standing in one of Bedford’s most populated thoroughfares, next to Debenhams, that has closed, not far from Beales, which has closed, just around the corner from Eurovision Stores, many of which, like borders, are open (A round of applause from the Liebour party!). So far only two people had noticed my hat. I don’t know how they did it, as both have silly great faces of metal and all they do all day long is stand and stare at one another. These ‘statues’ in the centre of Bedford are worth every penny that you, the taxpayer, paid for them: trust me, I’m a politician.

From here it was all downhill to Ethnic Street, or Midland Road as it is sometimes known. Surely someone here would be specialists in Russian hat spotting? But no, so off we went to Wetherspoons. It being at this juncture not just as good a place to stop as any but the best place at which to stop, and that’s a fact! — as you wouldn’t want to walk any further, believe me you really wouldn’t.

Over a thoughtful pint in Wetherspoons we, my camera crew and I, did think about chancing our hat in Bidenham, er sorry I meant to say Biddenham, the home of the Ukrainian flag, but came to the conclusion that as the people who live there exhibit an obvious difficulty in recognising the truth, the likelihood of any of them understanding Cyrillic was much less in their favour as was looking silly in the eyes of the world.

Perhaps I should start a beginner’s course in reading Russian hats at Bedford College. First come, all served! Special discounted fees for people voting Green or Labour. Hurry, as places and brain cells are limited! Just quote the password dorac!!

It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

I take my Russian hat for a walk in the English countryside

18 May 2023 ~ It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

Now, you are probably wondering what I am doing standing in the English countryside wearing a Russian hat. The object of the exercise could have nothing to do with incongruity, for, if so, I might just as well have donned a bowler hat, a top hat or a jester’s cap with bells on. Perhaps I wanted to court controversy among the thistles and the cow slips or rehearse for the main event, which is to strut my stuff through the centre of town dressed in Russian hat and wearing my Putin T-shirt. Don’t forget your trousers!

It, the hat, happened shortly after accidently watching UK news’ latest coverage of that overinflated load of old codswallop the Eurovision Song Contest. The commentator, who was an Indian woman, was ‘informing’ the studio news anchor, who was a black woman, that many people were disappointed that Eurovision’s organisers had decided not to give top billing to Mr Zelensky. Presumably, the plan had been not to parachute him in to join a stage full of second-rate performers but to feed him to us by videolink. What a treat that would have been: Ukraine’s Mr Zelensky emblazoned across our screens yet again. I wonder had he not been rejected if he would have been wearing his signature pea-green T-shirt. Had it been a fashion show I am sure he’d have won first prize. Let’s thank our lucky stars that such technology as widescreen monitors was not around in Hitler’s day: imagine the propaganda advantage at events like the Nuremberg rallies.

In case you have forgotten, but how could you? Last year’s winner of the Ukrainian-vision Song Contest was Ukraine. Now there’s a surprise. But not as surprising as the statement issued this year, an official statement no less, that the Eurovision Song Contest is a strictly apolitical event, hence the spurning of Mr Zelensky.

All well and good, except it wasn’t. From that moment onwards, every other word on the telly and every second image relating to the contest had a Ukrainian slant and every colour was the colour of the Ukrainian flag. They even managed to conjure up a troupe of Ukrainian refugees, who swirled around in fancy dress whilst saying, ‘It’ [the contest venue and by default the UK] was so Ukraine-oriented that ‘It’ felt like a piece of Ukraine itself.

“Huh,” someone snorted, the UK feels like anywhere else except England, so why not give a piece to Ukraine.”

“It’s all so peculiar,” remarked our old friend and colleague, retired scientist, Dr Martin T. It was certainly that and more and so unfair to Mr Zelensky that in protest at one of the sickliest dollops of televised tripe for years, I took to the great outdoors ~ wearing my Russian hat!

By the way, if by some strange miracle Ukraine does not win this year’s Ukroney Visible Song Contest, what’s the chances of them coming second just behind Croatia. Apolitical event my arse!

It’s that man in the Russian Hat!

I suspect you may be thinking that wearing a Russian hat in the middle of the English countryside is not particularly brave of me. However, wearing a Russian hat in the middle of the English countryside does not necessarily preclude you from being noticed.

Mick Hart in Russian hat in the English countryside

England, as you know, is critically overpopulated. Due to lax immigration laws, meaning bogus immigration laws, there are arguably more people to the square foot in the UK than anywhere else in the world ~ land mass considered. The situation is so dire that hotels in England now require that you share a room with an illegal immigrant ~ his mum, his brother and his auntie ~ and foot the bill for the whole caboodle. Taxes are on the rise; it must be Putin’s fault!

Take the day, for example, when I went frolicking across the English countryside wearing my Russian hat. At a sly guess, I estimate that I must have spotted and been spotted by at least 10 people, all well-to-do middle class ladies, walking their dogs and their husbands, each done up to the nines in those cloning country clothes that they buy and which costs them an arm and a leg. (There are other bits to the clothes as well. They are not that unaffordable that you have to buy them in installments.) Even their dogs were wearing Barbour jackets!

Not so much escaping from Johnny foreigner than from Innit Abdul and his boating chums, not only did these country folk, mainly from the city, have the right to be where they were by birth and by decree of cultural lineage, they were all to a man and a woman (no gender deviants here) of certified prime-beef middle-class stock.

Take note: The English middle-class are not just highly amusing in every which way imaginable, they are also extremely versed in the art of not concealing the fact that wherever they might meet you, in the countryside or anywhere else, they really would rather not. And should such a misfortune arise, which in a country as overcrowded as ours it is odds on favourite it will, they really, really and very much really would rather they did not acknowledge you.

Fortunately, however (or not, depending on your point of view) common decency and civility have yet to be so completely destroyed by the age in which we live that a watery smile, nod of the head even perchance a forced ‘good morning’ are considered permissible exchanges before the two parties go hurrying past in opposite and opposing directions.

It is this inability of the English middle class, the inability to be natural, open and honest always and at any time, which might explain why no one recoiled in abject horror at the sight of my Russian hat. I cannot begin to tell you how disappointing it was that no one in a state of shock fell headlong into a ditch, in spite of there being around us some very deep ditches indeed, stepped backwards into a cowpat, went screaming hysterically across the fields or produced a Ukrainian flag, cunningly concealed about their person, and proceeded to wave it in front of my face as if it was a crucifix and I the evil count. (Incidentally, looking like a right count is an inherent problem for many British MPs.) It was all so disappointing. “Morning!” they muttered, through stiff upper lips and then full steam ahead, they were gone.

This resilience to reaction, this tightrope walk between thought and the spoken word, is indicative of the extent to which the English, particularly those who like to be thought of as ruralites, have slipped and missed the net. The war generation, real people with real values, have sadly faded away, leaving in its place an inferior gene pool of hand-me-downs, some browbeaten by political correctness and bottle fed on woke, others who read the Daily Mail and as a result spend their days in a perpetual state of inert fulmination, still labouring under the dangerous delusion that an Englishman’s home is his castle rather than accept the truth that it is the last refuge of an endangered species.

In my grandparents’ day, indeed in my parents’ day, someone certainly would have asked, “What are you doing in that Russian hat?” Your average English country bumpkin, unschooled in the art and social science of snotty middle-class snobbism, would have certainly asked the question, and even in today’s UK, with white middle-class flight gathering momentum from such horrible places as Londonistan as the third-world hoards romp freely in, every English village is still able to boast at least one Village Idiot whose legacy role it is to ask important questions like ‘What are you doing in that Russian hat?’ even if the hat you are wearing is a Eurovision sponsored one adorned in the avatar colours of the ubiquitous Ukrainian flag.

A welcome in the hill sides!

Having failed dismally in the heart of the English countryside to elicit the faintest response to my Russian hat ~ a flock of sheep went ‘mare’, they must have been liberal lefties ~ I then decided to take my hat through the centre of the nearby village, stopping on the way to harangue people in their gardens as they mowed the lawn or dug up dandelions, but not one of those I encountered mentioned my Russian hat, perhaps because they were all pretending that they could not read Cyrillic, thought of me as a football hooligan or had jumped to the conclusion that I was one of those who had come ashore in an inflatable rubber dinghy, thanks to the village idiots who get paid a lot of money for falling asleep in the Palace of Westminster.

If this was phase 2 of Russian Hat in Provincial England, then phase 3 was Russian Hat in an English pub. Admittedly, the optimum pub to have tested the hat would have been The Three Tonnes in Biddenham.

Biddenham is a small village once sequestered on the outskirts of Bedford which has in more recent years, like so many villages outlying towns, suffered the misfortune of having been swallowed up by a greedy backhander-facilitated urban sprawl. Nevertheless, judging by the type of houses and the toffee-nosed people who own them, imagining Biddenham as anything else than a bastion of British Conservatism is as difficult to grasp as a turd you might try to polish. And yet for all its aspirations to be a snooty upper-class English village, it has allowed itself to become a pole for flying Ukrainian flags. Biddenham is a prime example of the extent to which middle-England has been infiltrated by the snidey politics of erosive liberal left woke and the sabre-rattling inertia of those who live by the Daily Mail and who will no doubt eventually die of it.

As such, Biddenham’s Three Tonnes would have been the perfect pub in which to wear my lovely Russian hat. But as we were somewhere not so near, we had to go elsewhere.

In total, we visited two pubs and in both my hat went with me. The first of the two hat venues was rather busy. Here, eyebrows were raised and inquisitive glances passed, but whether this was my hat at work or the photographs we were taking as we took it in turns to wear the hat, is a matter for conjecture.

The second pub was quieter than the first and the only reaction that we got in here, Russian hat or not, was the typical ‘strangers in town’ scenario. For a moment it rained excitement, but once everyone was satisfied that we posed no threat to man or beast and that we had not just rowed up the high street in a Royal Navy-assisted dinghy or jumped out of the back of a lorry from France, ‘normal’ service was quickly resumed.

Mind you, had the latter been suspected we might have been given a pint or two, plus free accommodation for as long as we didn’t deserve it and for which we certainly would not be entitled.

On emerging from the pub after a thoroughly hard day’s hat wearing, I commissioned this innocent photograph of me in my Russian hat looking peaceful, reposed and quite at home in the company of a traditional English phone box. Aww, now ‘aint that a lovely picture …

Mick Hart in Russian Hat next to a British telephone box

Episode 2 of It’s that man in a Russian hat, takes us next to the African/Caribbean/Asian/Lithuanian and Ukrainian town of Bedford. Stay tuned to this channel folks!

Related things
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Have a good Victory Day Russia!

It looks different on British TV, but that’s what you pay your licence for

9 May 2023

This is the first time in four years that I am unable to attend the 9^th May Victory Day celebrations in Russia, as I am ‘over here’ at the moment as distinct from ‘over there’.

Olga sent me an email from Kaliningrad this morning, saying: “It is a lovely morning today and the sun is shining for us to put the flowers to the monument of the fallen in the Second World War. Praying for peace and love in the world.🥰❤”

In my reply, I asked her to say hello from me to our mutual friends and let them know that although I am over here, I am thinking of them over there and am certain that Russia will prevail.

Have a good Victory Day Russia!

As I may have mentioned once or a hundred times before, I do not watch telly, but in the past few weeks I have had access to a television set. My first reaction to this novel but invasive experience was, as I had been forewarned, every other commentator, reporter, news anchor, every TV programme, no matter what it is, and every second advert features a person of colour. Said my brother, “Is this what they mean by a colour TV?” I mused on this question before replying judiciously, “When I was young, there was only black and white. We couldn’t afford a colour TV.” Can we afford one now?

In one sense, however, it, TV and life, is more black and white than it ever was. Take, for example, the Eurovision Song Contest, that once flagship of European propriety and conservatism. The last time I watched this programme, someone was jumping up and down to the innocent refrains of ‘Puppet on a String’, now, it would seem, we in the West are all puppets umbilically attached to somebody else’s lifeline, fed on televised pap poisoned with propaganda. Eurovictim is no exception. The song and prance programme has gone the same way as everything else in the West ~ a festering fest of genderism and mass consumption politics for those who like to be told what to think rather than think for themselves.

The other leitmotif of British TV, apart from the black and white issue, is, of course, Ukraine. Am I mistaken or has the ‘o’ in Eur’o’vision assumed the shape of a heart with an infill of colours taken from the Ukrainian flag? What is apparent is that Mr Zelensky gets an awful lot of British TV air space, either through open or covert reference, or in the unastounding character of himself.

“If it ‘aint c…s!” someone cries, glaring at the pub TV, “It’s that f…..g w….r!”

When Mr Zelensky appears on our British TV sets, he does so wearing his ubiquitous T-shirt. There is much talk of the need to defend universal democracy couched in such a way that it sounds like an appeal for more money and more weapons. In the meantime, Mr Z, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us, we the British people, to which charity we can turn to pay our gas and electric bills?

And on that note, I’d better switch off the computer, as I can see the metre whirring round like a member of the transvestite left at a real-fur coronation.

My message to the Russian people on 9^th May 2023 is simply this: stay firm, trust in your convictions and keep the faith. The importance of your heritage, past and history is non-negotiable. When it’s gone, it’s gone. And don’t we English know it!

Have a good 9th May!

LINKS
Victory Day 2022 Brings Record Turnout
9th May Kaliningrad Victory Day 2021
9th May Victory Day Kaliningrad 2002 & 2020
Immortal Regiment Alexei Dolgikh

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Brings Out the Soviet Guns

Mick Hart stars in his own Soviet version of Guns and Poses

Published: 5 March 2023 ~ Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Brings out the Soviet Guns

Every year, on the 23^rdof February, Russia celebrates what is officially known as Defender of the Fatherland Day. Originally called Red Army Day, it was granted public-holiday status in recognition of the Red Army’s 1918 inauguration during the Russian Civil War. Known thereafter as the Day of the Red Army and the Navy, and later the Soviet Army and Navy Day, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the holiday was given its current name by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At state level, the day honours the patriotism and sacrifices made by Russia’s military veterans. A formal ceremony is held in Moscow and in other Russian cities, with daytime parades and processions and evening concerts and firework displays. At national level, custom has morphed the day into a time when women honour their menfolk ~ not only military men but all men. Presents are given by Russian women to husbands/boyfriends, fathers, sons, brothers and also to male work colleagues, turning Defender of the Fatherland Day into the better known generic name of “Men’s Day”.

In the UK, liberals encourage ethnics to spit at our troops, not serve them in corner shops and berate them for wearing their uniforms in public. Transgenderism is rife and misandry encouraged. But the one thing that the UK does have that Russia doesn’t is Gay Pride Month …

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad Soviet Exhibition

Russia’s Men’s Day plays host to a variety of events, and this year we were invited to attend a display of Soviet militaria at the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club’s HQ, a former aircraft parts repository of historic Luftwaffe origin.

The exhibition was organised and delivered by a group of Soviet history enthusiasts/re-enactors.

Soviet Re-enactors Men's Day Kaliningrad

On display were documents and printed ephemera relating to WWI and Soviet uniforms from both WWII and postwar periods. To generate the spirit of the occasion and to provide the public with a better idea of the look, style and fit of the uniforms, each re-enactor was dressed either in an officer’s or other ranks’ uniform and most were equipped with combat gear.

De-activated antique guns

The mainstay of the exhibition was a display of small arms, predominantly WWII in character, ranging from handguns to tripod-mounted machine guns. The cache was diverse and impressive and included within the Soviet mix were weapons of German origin. All of the guns displayed were deactivated collector’s pieces.

Although I have handled an extensive variety of classic vintage firearms thanks to my early and enduring interest in all things historic and later in my role as a dealer in militaria, some of the guns in today’s exposition fell into the category of ‘known but not encountered’ and others had eluded me.

The Browning automatic, which was the standard sidearm in WWII for both Allied and Axis forces, was an old friend: it was one of the handguns I have actually fired.

The semi-automatic Mauser, whose production dates to the 1870s, is one of the most distinctively profiled and therefore easily recognisable handguns of all time. The copy on today’s menu was interesting in that it could be fitted with a hardwood stock, a useful accessory upgrading its stability to that of a short rifle and being hollow in part it doubles as a storage case or holster.

Another familiar gun, and one that I have also fired, is the PPSH. The PPSH-41, a submachine gun instantly identifiable by its high-capacity drum magazine ~ 71 rounds when fully loaded ~ was one of the Soviet army’s most widely used infantry weapons. An icon of the period, it features extensively in photographic depictions of Soviet soldiers in battle, is often incorporated into figural war monuments and regularly appears on commemorative badges. Weighing around 12 pounds (5.45 kg), full magazine included, the first reaction of the inexperienced gun user on picking up the PPSH is usually how heavy it feels. It is without doubt a weighty specimen, but, unless you are a seasoned gun user, all guns when first encountered seem surprisingly heavy and also surprisingly clunky.

Although in many respects the Soviet PPSH bests the M1A1 U.S. Thompson, on the UK shooting range some years ago I felt less comfortable firing the PPSH than I did the Thompson. Weight for weight, there is not much difference, but the absence of a pistol grip or side grips on the PPSH means that the weapon has to be held with the supporting hand behind the drum or by cupping the drum itself, a necessity which I personally found impinged upon its accuracy. That said, the PPSH drum mag with its superior load capacity is compensation enough in any realistic performance-related comparison of these two iconic weapons.

Mention iconic firearms in the context of Soviet history and the buzzword is likely to be not the PPSH or the Mosin-Nagant but, yes, you’ve got it, the Kalashnikov. No Soviet firearms exhibition would be worth its salt without the presence of this gun, a weapon universally revered for its outstanding reliability under conditions of an adverse nature and a gun which ticks almost every box, if not ticks every box, as best in its class in the assault rifle category.

Used the world over, the Kalashnikov was and continues to be one of the most popular weapons ever produced. No serious gun collector would regard his collection complete without one. Today’s exposition featured two AK versions, fixed wood and folding-stock variants. We sold both types, deactivated of course, through our UK vintage/militaria emporium.

Another old favourite, which whenever I see it reminds me of the times we spent with the UK re-enacting group, the Soviet 2^nd Guards Rifles Division, was the Degtyaryov machine gun. The Degtyaryov, DP-27/DP-28, was the standard light machine gun of the Soviet military in WWII. The large rotating drum magazine mounted on the top of the gun shaped its unique appearance, inspiring Soviet soldiers to nickname it the ‘record player’.

The Makarov pistol, or PM as it is known, which in 1951 became the Soviet military’s standard sidearm, is, in its definitive form, so well-known and accessible that the sight of one is unlikely to rock the gun community’s world, but you never can tell with guns what variants are out there; specific demand and experimentation are capable of producing the most unusual hybrid version of otherwise commonplace guns. Take the example displayed today. This version of the ubiquitous semi-automatic Makarov had undergone a modification that makes it look as incongruous as a woman’s body defaced with tats.

Makarov with drum mag at Men's Day Kaliningrad exhibition

In details of proportion, the erstwhile small firearm seems to have taken leave of its senses. Strapped beneath its pistol grip is a drum magazine every bit as big and as chunky as the one that is used by the PPSH. However, as wild, whacky and clumsy as it appears, and although the variant was never widely produced, for a while at least this ambitious conversion was heralded as a useful addition to Russia’s law-enforcement armoury, since it enabled officers carrying shields who only had one hand with which to hold their gun to sustain fire over longer periods before needing to reload.

Today’s small arms cache in the old Luftwaffe building was a window on the world of Soviet weaponry. From my point of view, having handled a fair amount of military weapons over a lifetime’s interest in all things history, some were old acquaintances but others took their place in the never-ending learning curve ~ the converted Makarov is a case in point. The past is littered with revelations waiting for someone to pick them up. There is always something new to discover, always something new to learn and the joy of both never grow old. It is one of the enduring delights of the antique/vintage scene.

Soviet Uniforms

The uniforms displayed also brought back memories of our vintage shop and the re-enactments that we took part in as members of the 2^nd Guards group.

As I believe I mentioned in a previous post, re-enactment is a serious historical business. Everything has to be just so, an exact replica of what it was like back in the 1940s. Considerable time and effort is diligently expended in researching and getting the uniforms right and in allocating to those uniforms the correct insignia worn and where and how it was worn. Anything less than perfect is sure to be met with a stern rebuke from the re-enactment group’s leaders and spark derision in those who purport to know more than you do about such important details, one’s group peers especially and, more embarrassingly, military veterans.

At first sight, the Soviet uniform looks pretty basic, and it was. At the time the Second World War broke out It hadn’t changed much since the First World War. It certainly does not compare with the rigid formality of British wartime uniforms and the flash, Hollywood modernity of their American counterparts, whose uniforms and equipment had a certain style all of their own. But what the Soviet uniform lacks in formality and also in panache it more than makes up for in functionality, being lightweight, durable and easy to wear.

As a re-enactor and military clothes dealer, I have worn the uniforms of both Allied and Axis forces, both officers’ and other ranks’, and if I had to sum up each country’s uniform using one definitive word for each, my choice of words would be: American, ‘stylish’; British, ‘itchy’; Soviet, ‘comfortable’.

When re-enacting, the only bone I had to pick with the Soviet uniform was the inclusion of fresh, white, linen neck-liners, which have to be changed and sewn with irritating regularity into the underside of the tunic collar. As an actor on a film set, someone does this for you. It is altogether different when you have to do it yourself: for example, when cold and bleary eyed after a night beneath the rainy skies with only your canvas poncho for protection. Warning: Re-enactment is a serious business.

Men’s Day in Kaliningrad

The reals stars of the Soviet military display held at the Kaliningrad Retro Car Club HQ were the guns, but it would be inexcusably remiss of me if I was to leave the show without giving credit where credit is due for one of the best collections of Soviet gas masks that I have ever seen exhibited at a militaria event.

The impressive collection was the inspiration and work of a young bloke called Valordia. He confided in me that the official requirement of wearing masks during the coronavirus scare had added impetus to his collecting zeal and that during those two surreal years he had substituted cloth masks for gas masks from his collection. Good for him! I thought. I often tried to be different, too, by wearing my mask around my knee. It’s never been the same knee since. It seems to wheeze a little!

Valordia’s gas-mask collection begins with a fairly basic item from WWI, extends through the interwar years, encompasses WWII and finally comes to rest with a state-of-the-art modern mask, modelled by last years’ model (and some) me. In case you didn’t want to recognise me, there I am in the photo, standing as large as life and twice as beautiful in my designer gas mask next to Valordia. This mask has some interesting gimmicks, such as interchangeable this and that’s, and also features a drinking tube for the wearer to take in liquid refreshments (Mine’s a pint of Landlord, please.) whilst remaining safely enveloped in rubber.

Mick Hart modelling a modern Russian gas mask on Men’s Day in Kaliningrad

It’s food for thought, but the accessorising capability of this mask stands it in good stead for nomination as the Gates/Davos prototype ~ the first live-in coronavirus and other nasty man-made-diseases facemask, a must-have accessory for the globalist’s reset future. With a built-in smartphone as standard, which I think we can safely assume it would have, proud wearers will continue to be urged to post their selfies to social media, thus preserving social media’s ongoing cloning affect. The beauty of the mask will be that even more than ever none of your ‘friends’ will know who you are and what you really are, which when assessed at its most fundamental level is what social media is all about: a world of revolving masks in a hall of revolving mirrors. The ‘Like’ tickers and back-slappers will function as before, seeing nothing and knowing less, there mutual appreciation assured as they woo each other with fulsome comments about how young and lovely each of them look hidden behind their filters. Don’t mock! It could happen. It could be a win-win situation, for those who are steadily losing.

But I digress: In an age when everything and everybody seems smartarsephoned, it is reassuring to discover that there are others in the world who share your ardent belief that there is no time like the past, and reassuring again when the other parties concerned are considerably younger than yourself. Keep up the good work, chaps!

Whilst my response to the Soviet exhibition was one of unreserved enjoyment, I completely understand why some people cannot understand why guns, old or new, should be a source of fascination. Unlike my youngest brother, who holds several medals and trophies for marksmanship in most small-arms categories, I do not. It is true that in my youth, I would occasionally run around armed in the middle of the night, not I hasten to add in an urban setting but for the perfectly reasonable purpose of poaching his lordship’s estate. In my dotage, however, guns, have taken their place among the many varied man-made objects invested with an intrinsic ability to stimulate appreciation for their craftsmanship, aesthetics and historic interest alone. And yet, despite such commendable sensibilities and the reservations from which they stem, come the day of the exhibition I could not resist the alpha temptation to pick up and tote a sawn-off or two. Both the shotgun and the rifle, even with modified barrels and stocks, were surprisingly tactile and disturbingly balanced.

Disturbingly unbalanced is the expression on my face captured in the photo where I am holding one of these guns. In that photograph I seem to have achieved a curious manly man hybrid somewhere between Clint Eastward and Bop Hope, either that or my pants are too tight.

Mick Hart with sawn-off gun in Kaliningrad

Looking at my photo (above), I think we can safely conclude that a manly image is not so easily come by as convention would have us believe, even when its Man’s Day and even when you are holding a gun. But you’ve got to admire Squint Westwood’s brass and, if only as an act of charity, give me six out of ten for trying.