Soviet "Civil Defense" Regiment 1963... riiiiiight

[Guest Rick Research]

Having spent part of October 1962 under my school desk with the rest of the little 'uns waiting to be vaporized, I have my own memories of civil defense in that era.

Civil defense in MY town was a WW2 air raid siren mounted on the roof (under the aerial between the 2 chimneys) of the Grand Army of the Republic meeting hall/town hall/arsenal/jail (photo taken in the late '90s):

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Our civil defense director was a midget. Our supplies dated from the Korean War. Think "The Off Islanders" aka "The Russians Are Coming" and you would not be far off.

Little Ricky was handed THIS and told to carry it for the rest of my school years:

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That banshee waaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllll sound like no others still haunts my dreams. Sniffle.

Soooo.... when I came across THIS "4-F" fellow in SOVIET "civil defense" I got a good case of the retroactive heebiejeebies:

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Didn't he fight Rocky Balboa in one of the early remakes?

Now according to his shoulder strap, Senior Sergeant Myagky is in construction etc engineers...

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though those tabs and straps aren't black-- I'd lay odds they are the same sky blue as his SpetsNaz eyes...

[Guest Rick Research]

But according to the attested reverse, he belonged to the

"122nd Independent Engineer Civil Defense Regiment."

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WHY do I get the feeling that Yeduard Grigorievich was NOT manually cranking alarm sirens for drills?

(By the 1990s our siren was electronically activated, no longer hand cranked. It has since been done away with... like the Berlin Wall, just a "thin air" fading memory for those of us who lived with it for decades... though the dam breach foghorn still plays its heart-stopping Monster In The Night song...)

[Guest Rick Research]

Not that there were not Soviet Small Rickies doing the same "duck and cover" routine.

On the far right, "Excellent Civil Defense Worker" 1970s

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With document

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[Guest Rick Research]

But though there is NOTHING on this Kiev Military District issued document to indcate that this was NOT to somebody with an armband and a gas mask in a sack who sat on a roof with binoculars, this was one of those "mandatory management example" situations:

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because Air Force Major General of Engineer Technical Services Petukhov was the Commandant of the 2nd Kharkov Air Force Technical (Aviation Engineering) School... which "Suvorov" identified as the cover name for secret photo recon interpretation training.

So...

if scanning the skies for incoming bombers was still "traditional" civil defense...

one wonders about Stalin's derisive comment about "how many divisions does the Pope have?" only...

how many "civil defense" regiments did the USSR have...

and what did they REALLY do, 7x24?

[Dudeman]

I can't tell if you're being tongue in cheek, but I don't think Civil Defense was as nefarious as you're painting it.

If the good general Petukhov received a Civil Defense badge while at the Kharkov photo interpretation academy, it may have been one of those favors Soviet generals granted to each other, similar to the foreign awards like the Mongolian/Warsaw Pact medals.

This badge was probably like a Voroshilov Strelok, sports badges, or DOSAAF awards - commonly handed out, especially to generals for any justification like donating blood or paying dues to the Civil Defense fund.

[Ed_Haynes]

As Rick (and I) had to undergo silly civil defense drills ("duck and cover"), why is it surprising that the "other side", who also feared attack from their version of "the evil ones", had similar establishments and silliness?

[Dudeman]

As Rick (and I) had to undergo silly civil defense drills ("duck and cover"), why is it surprising that the "other side", who also feared attack from their version of "the evil ones", had similar establishments and silliness?

Yes, the Soviet Union did have drills like you mention.

I am raising the point that unless I've misinterpreted the humor, he's tying a benign Civil Defense organization to spetsnaz, secret photo imagery interpretation centers, and other activities (i.e. Civil Defense, yeah riiiiight, and "how many Civil Defense battalions and what were they really doing?", etc.) as opposed to a vanilla organization similar to the his experience here in the US.

[Guest Rick Research]

What did a "Civil Defense REGIMENT" do? Yes, I am being humorous, because here C.D. was the too old, the too young, the physically unfit "left overs" like our very dedicated town Director, and the laughably under-equipped. My uncle's house was, for no apparent reason, a neighborhood "bomb shelter"= it had a sign for the front lawn... and A gasmask. I still have both, because You Never Know.

REGIMENTS of fit young TROOPS we did not have.

So my serious point is/was: what did 122 "Civil Defense" REGIMENTS do? I am assuming this was a cover name for some sort of classified unit doing OTHER things. (ABCD or the like and presumably for Command & Control Headquarters et cetera and NOT saving mere civilians)

Civil Defense in the U.S. of my boyhood was completely civilian.

PS I knew the Cold War was over when my mother took THIS down after 40 years:

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But then we used to get overflown by "Bears" fairly often. It's amazing how quickly some people have forgotten.

[Dudeman]

The civil defense regiments, and your "spetsnaz" engineer, were probably building bunkers and bomb shelters, stocking them, etc. Even during the cold war, the US always identified the USSR's civil defense capabilities as much more robust than that of the US, as described in your reminiscences. The USSR overclassified everything, but I don't think the Civil Defense was doing much more secret than building hidden bomb shelters.

[Stogieman]

The "Air Raid" Sirens actually still rang in my home town in the early 1960's, but we were spared the "Duck & Cower" in the basement of the school like my Mom did.

I like your CD Instructions, ours were very different though. It went something like this: Grasping both knees securely, firmly plant your lips on your arse and kiss it goodbye"

Later in life, living within 1/2 mile of a First-Strike Target during the naughty "Evil Empire" Days, we instituted a new plan that consisted of a bottle of Bombay in a glassed-in cabinet on the wall. A small silver hammer hung down and the sign said: "In the event of Nuclear holocast, Break Glass".

I cannot even begin to tell you how many "False Alarms" there were.......