Now, putting aside these side comments, focus on the fine pattern of the upper layer of the boots of the Russian-Red-Soviet-(and, yes, again) Russian armies. Well, how about it? Objectivity will not allow one to deny the impeccable accuracy of the unofficial nickname 'kirzukha' for the traditional barley feed in the aforementioned armies.
It is not surprising that this similarity prompted soldiers on the brink of starvation to boil the shafts of their boots. As it happened on a small barge carried by storms into the Pacific Ocean, where it became a plaything of currents and winds for 49 days before being spotted by a US Navy aircraft carrier off the coast of California.
Four emaciated Soviet sailors were offered political asylum in the United States. They did need some rest from the Cold War, declared by the British hereditary star on the political firmament, Winston Churchill, in his Fulton Oratorio, had not yet given way to the Greenhouse Effect and other global shifts.
However, Sergeant Ziganshin remembered the beauty of both sunsets and sunrises in the steppes of his native Tatarstan and refused. The other three sailors followed his example (even though they were not Tatars).
Later, they were all nominated for the highest orders and decorations of the Soviet Union, after appropriate verification to ensure they had not become CIA agents while in the process of regaining normal body weight in the notorious 'horn of planty', aka state of California.
[It wasn't until the mid-1990s that Askhat Ziganshin finally managed to recover from the alcohol addiction he'd developed through endless drinking during interrogations disguised as all sorts of celebratory patriotic events.]
All this happened in 1960 and inspired the then-popular folk-rock song:
Beware the boogie man!
Ziganshin's on the loot!
The night before
He chomped his buddy’s boot!
And this is the strangest fact in this whole story, since there wasn't a single vocal-instrumental ensemble in the USSR at the time…)
. .. .
The porridge also turned out thin and as hot as borscht. The compote, poured into mugs from a dented aluminum teapot, wasn't hot, but still thin. The deep hum of bustle at the train station served as a backdrop to the chomping and slurping.
Occasionally (though not daily), the peaceful symphony of animal feeding was pierced by the loud curse of someone hurling something and the whining clink of a mug as it bounced and splashed across the floor of the central aisle.
Nothing to startle at! The soldier simply noticed that he'd received a defective mug—it was worn beyond its capacity to hold a full cup—and he expressed his indignation at the current situation, since, according to time-honored prison tradition, using leaky utensils is both a prerogative and, at the same time, a mark of a buttboy, whose holes are used by other prisoners, even if he's not homosexual, but rather a degraded one, regardless of his straight sexual orientation outside the walls…
After eating, the implements of personal nourishment are to be carried to the dishwasher window and left in piles or heaps of similar items on the shelf. As they accumulated, the dishwashers themselves would dump these piles into the appropriate sections of the trough, under the scalding water from the taps.
Now we could leave the mess hall and stagger back to the training barracks, wary of missing the next command, 'Form up!'
