April
2006
Country birds
Gather around, boys and girls, for today I’ll tell you a story about how it was to be a kid in commie times.
The little girl you see in the pic (taken from here), sporting her best psycho killer smile, is dressed in her Soimul Patriei uniform. What’s that? A rough translation would be “Hawk of the fatherland”. It was the organisation in which all the kids aged 3-7 had to be enrolled in, whether they liked it or not, if they were going to the kindergarden. After you went to school, you were upgraded from the bird business to being a “Pionier“, a scout-like organisation, only with less wilderness skills and more far-left brainwashing. Note the small plastic ring which holds the tie - you were the essence of uncool if you had the tie knotted instead of being held properly by the ring.
Around the time you turned 14, it was time to leave the pioneers and join the UTC - that being the Union of Communist Youth. Even less fun, and a lot more indoctrination. They didn’t have uniforms, as far as I remember. I never got to join them, since the regime was overthrown when I was 12. Not that I regret that 
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