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"We were stationed in Russia at the time"

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  • "We were stationed in Russia at the time"

    This has been bugging me for a few weeks now.

    Assuming that our Lois is in her 20's, we'll say that she was born in 1983. Ellen said to her on the tape that Sam was stationed in Russia when they found out they were pregnant with her. This would have been before the fall of the Iron Curtain, so would there have even been US military bases IN the Soviet Union at the time?

    Sorry if this is terribly nerdy-4th year history major here.

  • #2
    He could have been part of the guard detachment at the US Embassy or something like that.

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    • #3
      Well according to Al Gough and Miles Miller when they brought Lois on the show she was a year older than Clark, she was 19 when he was 18. Given Clark and Chloe were the same age and Chloe was born in 1987, Lois would have been born in 1986. So would they have been there in 1986? Well I guess it could have been 1985 when Ella found out she was pregnant.

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      • #4
        The Berlin Wall didn't fall until 1989, so the USSR still existed when Lois was born. Is it even correct to say they were in "Russia"?

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        • #5
          ^ And even then the USSR was officially broken in 1991. And yeah, Russia isn't really the right term either. It's either the Soviet Union or Russians (if you're talking about the people)

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          • #6
            Originally posted by BoyScout-ManOfTomorrow
            ^ And even then the USSR was officially broken in 1991. And yeah, Russia isn't really the right term either. It's either the Soviet Union or Russians (if you're talking about the people)
            I hate to disappoint youngsters who regard their elders as more pedantic on such matters, but "Russia" was commonly used as a synonym for "Soviet Union" or "USSR" by English-speaking Westerners between 1917 and 1991, so that isn't an anachronism. As for the Lane's being stationed in Russia in 1985/86, apart from the obvious possibility that Sam could have been a military attache at the US Embassy in Moscow, the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as Communist Party General Secretary in 1985 ushered in a new era of openness towards the West. One result of this was that there were increasing contacts between NATO and Soviet military, including visits to each others' bases (by 1988, the Soviet Union was allowing its new MIG29 fighter to be displayed at Western air shows, with the chief designer and test pilots giving press conferences where the talked openly about an aircraft that had been top-secret only five years before). Therefore, it is possible that a US Army colonel could have been in the Soviet Union on some sort of "exchange visit" in 1986.

            The other point is that Smallville exists on a sort of "AU Earth" with a similar, but not identical, history to our own pre-1989 (post 1989, it increaingly becomes more divergent, not least because of the addition of events dramatised in Smallville). Therefore, it is possible that in the "Smallvilleverse", relations thawed between the US and the Soviet Union slightly earlier than in real life.

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            • #7
              ^ Okay, guilty as charged. I did look at the situation entirely based on how the terminology was taught to me in Finnish schools. So do Americans still refer to the Soviet Union as Russia today like was done in the tape?

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              • #8
                Yes, because the Soviet Union is it's political identity and Russia is it's geographical identity. I spent the late 70's and all of the 80's in the USMC. Every year we got an official debrief on the state of the USSR from it's political situation to how much corn we sold them last year. Interesting reading now.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by newbaggy
                  I hate to disappoint youngsters who regard their elders as more pedantic on such matters, but "Russia" was commonly used as a synonym for "Soviet Union" or "USSR" by English-speaking Westerners between 1917 and 1991, so that isn't an anachronism. As for the Lane's being stationed in Russia in 1985/86, apart from the obvious possibility that Sam could have been a military attache at the US Embassy in Moscow, the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as Communist Party General Secretary in 1985 ushered in a new era of openness towards the West. One result of this was that there were increasing contacts between NATO and Soviet military, including visits to each others' bases (by 1988, the Soviet Union was allowing its new MIG29 fighter to be displayed at Western air shows, with the chief designer and test pilots giving press conferences where the talked openly about an aircraft that had been top-secret only five years before). Therefore, it is possible that a US Army colonel could have been in the Soviet Union on some sort of "exchange visit" in 1986.

                  The other point is that Smallville exists on a sort of "AU Earth" with a similar, but not identical, history to our own pre-1989 (post 1989, it increaingly becomes more divergent, not least because of the addition of events dramatised in Smallville). Therefore, it is possible that in the "Smallvilleverse", relations thawed between the US and the Soviet Union slightly earlier than in real life.
                  Thank you. I feel like your answer really clears things up a lot.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by malft
                    Yes, because the Soviet Union is it's political identity and Russia is it's geographical identity. I spent the late 70's and all of the 80's in the USMC. Every year we got an official debrief on the state of the USSR from it's political situation to how much corn we sold them last year. Interesting reading now.
                    Okay, thanks.

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by BoyScout-ManOfTomorrow
                      ^ Okay, guilty as charged. I did look at the situation entirely based on how the terminology was taught to me in Finnish schools. So do Americans still refer to the Soviet Union as Russia today like was done in the tape?
                      People do, but it's not technically correct. They are not the same thing, as was stressed to me through the years. Russia was (the biggest) part of the Soviet Union, not its entirety. Hence the name, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. That said, far be it from me to dispute what people commonly called it back in the day, as I wasn't there.

                      In my previous post, I was thinking of the fact that Russia had a fancy name while under the reign of communism, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. That's getting pretty nitpicky, though, like expecting people to refer to Rhode Island as "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations". Even modern Russia is officially named the Russian Federation.

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                      • #12
                        "Russia" is just a synonym for that big country on the map. Just like "America" refers to the US and not Canada, Mexico or even the south american countries. People tend to simplify things that's just the way it is.

                        Originally posted by nate-dog1701d
                        People do, but it's not technically correct. They are not the same thing, as was stressed to me through the years. Russia was (the biggest) part of the Soviet Union, not its entirety. Hence the name, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
                        We germans tend to call The Netherlands "Holland" even though that's just one region in The Netherlands.

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