I Was A Commie Writer!!!

Self (Shameless Vanity Post) | December 4, 2001 | PJ-Comix

[PJ-Comix]

Sorry for the shameless vanity post but I was just reminiscing with someone about the time I was a COMMIE writer and it brought back a lot of memories. So was it during a period when I was some sort of wild-eyed liberal? No. Actually I was just as conservative then as I am now. So how did I manage to be a COMMIE writer?

More precisely, I was a writer for a COMMIE magazine (it had Lenin's seal in it). Or to put it more accurately it was officially a Commie magazine although almost none of the writers were really commies (although officially they had to be). The magazine was Krokodil Magazine which was the largest circulation magazine (10+ million) in the old Soviet Union. Krokodil was a humor magazine and they were able to get away with a bit more in the way of criticising their system than the other magazines. Also this was on the tail end of the Evil Empire so their critiques of Soviet life were more biting than in previous years.

Mr. Leonid Florentiev (who really hated the Soviet system with a passion) was their Foreign Editor and it was he who made Yours Truly the American Correspondent for Krokodil. I will provide more details about this strange episode in my checkered career in the near future. However, it sure was nice to know at the time that I had over 10 million readers looking at my stuff. (The pay stunk since a ruble back then was worth nothing----However, 5386 rubles were also worth nothing.)

[Revolting cat!]

Fascinating! I assume you wrote in American and they translated into Russki, da? How did the humour translate? Idioms, Americanisms, puns? Baseball references? Hey, what's a "freeway" in Russian? Supermarket? Or did you write about the birds and the bees, dirt and mud and such universal subjects? More, more, please!

[alcuin]

From the title, I was afraid that this was going to be another Horowitz confession.

LOL.

[PJ-Comix]

Fascinating! I assume you wrote in American and they translated into Russki, da?

Yes. Although I learned Cyrillic, I didn't know Russian so I always wondered about the translation. For example, I wrote a satirical piece about how the true enemy of the USA was that "Colossus to the North"---Canada. I wrote it completely straight but in English we would definitely know it is a parody. However, did they take this seriously when reading the Russian translation? I don't know. Of course, I always fantasized that maybe the Politburo members, from reading that article, noted a large seachange in American attitudes towards Canada with the result that perhaps we Americans did not consider the Soviets our primary enemy any longer since those dangerous Canucks were threatening our border as I implied in the article.

[parsifal]

I think you made a boo-boo. This appears NOT to to be a "Krokodil" cover. It is a "Kapokoana" magazine cover. Was life in the USSR so dull that youse guys had magazines about coat filling material? Is there perhaps a Goretex or Goosedown magazine? Just curious. parsifalinksiovich.

[ozzymandus]

I've see some cartoons from that magazine on occasion.

[PJ-Comix]

Even though I don't know Russian I can read Cyrillic and that cover I posted definitely says "KROKODIL."

[parsifal]

Are you sure? "Krokodil" doesn't have a "p" in it or an "n". Are Russians bad spellers? Is it all that vodka, or Commie educational system? Glass Smetana. parsifalonova.

[PJ-Comix]

I'm referring to the pic in Reply #14. It is definitely "KROKODIL."

[fish hawk]

I was a commie reader: I read newspapers.

I was a commie t.v.watcher: I watch CNN ABC CBS NBC

[PJ-Comix]

This post brought back a lot of memories so right now I am in the process of finishing up a long article about my experiences as a Krokodil correspondent. Actually the highlight of the article isn't about me. It is about an amazing confrontation that Leonid Florentiev had with his KGB handler and a liberal American audience when the Krokodil staffers visited Los Angeles. Since this confrontation was never covered in the news, I am writing about it for the first time. It should be online in a couple of weeks.

[summer]

Very interesting! :)

[PJ-Comix]

Made even more interesting by the fact that George Carlin himself was present at that confrontation at UCLA. Also Robert Easton the character actor was there. I spoke to both of them and Easton told me some really fascinating things about the filming of "The Loved One" in which he portrayed a hillbilly James Bond. However, both those gentlemen played only peripheral roles in the events of that evening.