"Rubber Product No.2" and other Soviet retro items on display

Time-travel back to the USSR at a summer exhibition in Kouvola

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By Mika Parkkonen in Kouvola
     
      There it is, nestled in its original packaging: a genuine Soviet condom, vintage 1978. The size number is 20. It is not possible to work out what the retail price was.
      This innocent prophylactic device is a key that helps prize open, even just a little way, the door back into the mystical world of the former Soviet Union.
     
It was one of the great legends of our eastern neighbour that there was "no sex" in the Soviet Union.
      This dramatic revelation burst on the world from the famous Soviet-American TeleBridge broadcast live on TV in 1986 during a particularly warm period of détente. Viewers from both nations were able to ask each other questions during the programme, in the name of better mutual understanding.
      The Americans were concerned about sex. When they enquired about the subject, a Soviet lady with her hair in a neat, severe bun replied that there is no sex in the Soviet Union. This answer generated guffaws of laughter among the Moscow studio audience.
     
The condom is irrefutable evidence that people had "needs" in this department, even in the land of the Soviets.
      Sex was a taboo subject, and contraceptives were extremely scarce. They were manufactured, however. All the same, you could not go into a shop or even a pharmacy and buy condoms as such.
      "Since there was no sex, condoms had a code-name. You had to go to the pharmacist and ask for 'Rubber Product No.2'. Everybody knew that", explains entrepreneur and collector Seppo Mäkinen.
      Mäkinen is a trader with a long history of dealing with the East. He has also put together an impressive collection on Soviet life that went on show at the Tykkimäki Amusement Park in Kouvola on Saturday.
     
The Back to the USSR summer show offers an opportunity to peek into life in the socialist state through everyday items. On display is Mäkinen's private collection of more than 8,000 individual objects, with some real gems among them.
      One such is a golden (or perhaps gilt) brooch belonging to Member 114 of the Upper House of the Soviet Parliament, and another is a giant wall-poster on which has been marked all the travels of revolutionary leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, along with their dates.
      The poster was acquired from the artist who drew it, and is a unique piece. It also shows all the places Lenin visited in Finland.
     
The Bolsheviks attempted to seize power in Moscow already in 1905. The coup attempt failed, and Lenin went into exile. While he was in Finland, the revolutionary leader was protected and kept out of sight by a Finnish communist named Eino Rahja, who later served as an officer with the Red faction in Tampere during Finland's Civil War of 1918.
      After the Civil War, Rahja fled across the border into Russia, where he became Lenin's personal bodyguard.
     
The story of Lenin's Finnish minder was known well in the Soviet Union, and it was also deemed a suitable subject for the official art that worshipped Lenin's person. Among the items on display at Tykkimäki is a painting by Arkadi Alyamovski, a court painter of Lenin, which depicts the Soviet leader and Rahja, who is dressed in a commissar's uniform.
      Another item is a small statue that shows Lenin while in flight in Finland, accompanied by the faithful Rahja, who is looking behind him to see if they are being followed.
     
A significant part of Mäkinen's collection is made up of thousands of medals and decorations. In the Soviet Union these were routinely handed out to citizens in lieu of money and in recognition of a variety of good deeds done. They were greatly valued among the general population, at least while the Soviet regime was still in place.
      When the system collapsed in upon itself in the late 1980s and early 1990s, things changed abruptly and people began to carry all their Soviet-era paraphernalia to the dump. Mäkinen recognised a window of opportunity and collected for posterity a small part of one era of human history.
      He was diligent in his work, and he now has probably the world's largest private collection of items from the Soviet era. It has drawn interest from as far away as the United States.
     
But let's go back to where we began.
      If the condom was No.2, then what was "Rubber Product No.1"?
      A gas-mask, naturally.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.5.2006


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Aimo Minkkinen, director of world´s only Lenin museum, studied in Moscow (31.1.2006)
  What if Lenin had drowned here? (8.12.2004)

Links:
  Tykkimäki - "The coolest amusement park in Finland"
  The Lenin Museum, Tampere

MIKA PARKKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
mika.parkkonen@hs.fi