Soviet Hi Fi

As one who has a very useless Master's Degree in History, Poland and the other countries of the old Warsaw Pact (i.e. Eastern Bloc) were never members of the Soviet Union but rather under the economic and political dominance of the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from about 1945-1990. By such logic Eastern Germany would have been considered a part of the Soviet Union. Under its influence and perhaps a client of the USSR yes but never officially a Soviet Republic by a long shot. The USSR consisted of various "Soviet Republics " within certain geographic areas of the Russian part of the European Continent and Asia (all of the Islamic republics such as Tashkent, the various "Stans", and other Slavic European regions like Ukraine and Georgia, etc.). Do not confuse that entity with the Warsaw Pact.

TASHKENT is not a republic, but is the capital of UZBEKISTAN.
 
alright we've split hairs on what is and what isn't soviet, what we haven't seen is much in the way of soviet gear. For automobiles there were Vaz, Zaz, and Zil. here is a '60's Zaz, the proud owner of this vehicle must have had a record player...
 

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It's all about proper definitions. Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics. However so called Eastern Block included USSR, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Chekoslovakia and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia was a bit apart.
There was a similar thread with a lot of pictures, but I can't find it.
If I will I'll post them here.
 
Some of the Soviet tubes are fantastic. I LOVE my SET 6c33c's, and the 6p1p-ev's and 6n2p-ev's in my headphone amp aren't too shabby either.

Here's a triple nipple, MiG 25 spec'd 6c33c in HiFi action. The damn things are massive.
tube1.jpg
 
There were EB states that weren't part of the Soviet Union - Poland, Yugoslavia, etc.

You got it, here it is he correct hierarchy.

Eastern block - Contains all countries behind the iron curtain, like East Germany (former), Poland, Czech Slovak, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union.

Soviet Union - Contains Russia, Kazachstan, Latvia, Lithuania etc

Russia - A former state within the Soviet Union, now standalone like Latvia Lithuania etc.

Yugoslavia was not part of the Block after Tito's war of independence though they greatly relied on the Block and were communist sycophants so to say, like Cuba.

As a kid I travelled a lot behind the curtain through the various check points, police stations etc due to my dad's curiosity. All throughout the 70's when the cold war was at it's height and Czech's had been reigned back in by the Soviets after their streak of independence.
 
Living in eastern europe i had a lot of the soviet hifi. Many were tho replaced later by western or japanese brands. What i still kept tho is a nice reel to reel machine Rostov 105:

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Also there were some pretty decent speakers from Radiotehnika models S-90, S-30B i owned a while ago.

http://www.rw6ase.narod.ru/00/35as012_212.html
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3170/2561788960_1f5fa57d9c_o.jpg

Also had a Tesla reel to reel model CM130: http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/tesla_cm130cm_13.html

From what i can tell the biggest trouble with soviet hifi were bad capacitors and bad PCBs. The quality of pcb was also terrible, so many had their coupper traces unfold from the board. I always liked the build tho, so strong. Every component had their legs bend on the board, heavy strong chasis.

Here are some speaker drivers i still have:

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