It’s not even an octopus

  • Red_Scare [he/him]@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’ll also take an issue with the whole “vatnik” meme which is very classist.

    Vatnik is a quilted coat with extremely simple design: cotton wadding sewn between two sheets of fabtic, square torso, patch pockets sewn through with stiching showing on the other side, much like French chore coats. It originates from Cental Asian quilted robes and was worn in Russia since the 19th century.

    It was mass produced in the USSR since 1932, initially for the Red Army but quickly became ubiquitous - it was warm, sturdy, cheap, easy to produce, so it was used by hunters, construction workers, street sweepers, night watchmen, farmers, and virtually anyone who had to spend a lot of time outdoors in the Russian weather. It quickly spread all over Eastern Europe and Asia, widely used from Poland to Mongolia. As an item of the Eastern Block “heritage workwear”, vatnik is as iconic as denim for yanks.

    https://cdn.ren.tv/cache/960x540/media/img/05/7f/057f370d0d9f5874b99e367779d398637edddddc.jpg

    People wearing this cheap, crude coat pushed Nazis all the way back to Berlin. Incidentally, Hugo Boss designed Nazi coats didn’t fare quite as well in the Russian winter.

    https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2014-07/1405566239_3366354.jpg

    In the 60s and 70s as the USSR economy provided better looking winter garments for its army and citizens, vatniks lost some of their use, but were still common in the rural areas, amongst poorer urban population, and as workwear, well after the dissolution of the USSR.

    People who use this word as an insult simply hate the workers and the poor.