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Comment by vl | Hacker News Reader

Full quote is a bit better:

(Location/time: early days of Soviet Russia, old and young doctor talking at dinner)

"If you care about your digestion, my advice - do not discuss bolshevism and medicine at dinner. And, god be with you, never read soviet newspapers before dinner."

"But... there are no any other."

"So, don't read any. You know, I performed 30 experiments at my clinic. And you know? Patients, that don't read newspapers, feel great. I forced others to read "Pravda" on purpose, they lost weight."

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This is from the amazing book A Dog's Heart (Собачье сердце). There is an equally amazing movie (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whHySar4EoY), but I am not sure if there is a version with English subtitles. For me it's one of the best Soviet movies. To be fair it was created near the end of the USSR—in 1988. The novel itself was officially published for the first time only in 1987.

It was on the list of anti-Soviet literature for a long long time before that, and possessing it could get you into real trouble.

I have not seen many Soviet movies but https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091341/?ref_=nv_sr_1 is amazing in many ways. Also I can't help but wonder how it could be made. I find the last decade of the Soviet union incredibly interesting, probably because I was a child at the time.

There's an autobiography book by Danelia (the director) where he explains how some of the things in that movie were filmed. I doubt it was translated, tho.

E.g. they used half of a plane hull with construction foam on top of it.

This is so cool: that exact movie is an another one in my short "amazing Soviet movies" list. I still remember the first time I saw it. I was a teenager, it was a summer. I was on my way out, but the movie started and I decided to see what it's about. I don't think I moved for the entire duration of it. It was so different and so captivating.

Prime Video has it with English subtitles: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071PF4WCM

The official Lenfilm YouTube account has it also, but for some reason only with French subtitles. It looks like less of their catalogue there is English subbed, compared to Mosfilm, which has English subs for basically everything.

You'd think Youtube would put auto-translated subtitles everywhere by now, the technology is here. They have automatic text-to-speech for some videos too, which isn't perfect but if there's good French subtitles there's no reason to not use that for other languages. If only to get the gist of it.

When it comes to Russian->English translation, the technology is most definitely not here.

In fact it's readily available with English subtitles:

https://sovietmoviesonline.com/comedy/87-sobache-serdce.html or https://www.reelhouse.org/vintagefilmclub/the-heart-of-a-dog...

To each according to their need etc.

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