50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 862 is about a Finn who keeps drinking.
When Sun Zhiwei set off in the morning, he saw the two students being taken away by the police. When he returned at noon, news came from the hotel that the court was preparing to sentence them for "serious hooliganism".

"Gross hooliganism" was a crime that had been in Soviet law since the 1920s, and it was considered a political crime.

Running naked in public is a serious crime, but Sun Zhiwei found it a bit strange that the process from the police station to the court was so fast.

It's only been half a morning, when did the Leningrad police become so efficient?

When he heard on the evening news that the Finnish Prime Minister was about to make a state visit, he realized that the Russian leadership must have intervened in the incident and wanted to teach the Finns a lesson.

This wasn't the first time the Finns had gotten completely drunk in Leningrad.

For Russia, Finland is a friendly country. Although the two sides fought a war, it did not stop Finns from traveling to Leningrad.

As early as the 1930s, the Soviet Union could see Finnish tourists because the two countries were directly adjacent. Even in the decades of East-West conflict, Finland and Russia have maintained a very friendly relationship.

At that time, most of Finland's overseas trips were to Sweden, Spain, or the Soviet Union.

Because everything here is cheap: food, lodging, and transportation are all affordable—especially drinks.

Some Finns come here as tourists and do nothing but head straight to the nearest bar after getting off the bus. They spend 10 euros to order a large glass of vodka and drink from morning until the bar closes.

This group comprises about 1.5% of Finnish tourists, and they call this type of tourism "vodka tourism."

But it's important to know that in the 1980s, 300,000 Finnish tourists visited the country every year.

This means that every year, tens of thousands of drunk Finnish men roam the streets of Leningrad, and the impact of this situation on local security is self-evident.

But these Finnish drunks didn't care about spending a night at the police station to sober up, since they were too drunk to remember anything anyway.

When their detention period is over and they are released from the police station, they will be sober and can have one more drink before leaving.

The two students who were arrested this morning were the kind of drunkards among the vodka tourists. It was probably arranged by the mayor of Leningrad to teach these drunkards a lesson.

That very evening, the court sentenced the two Finnish students to a year of hard labor.

However, Sun Zhiwei guessed that this was probably just for show.

Because the Finnish general is coming soon, and if they plead for leniency, they can grant a pardon and release the person, thus avoiding any impact on Leningrad's tourism industry.

But how effective is this kind of warning?
Haha, it turned out to be completely ineffective; the Finnish drunkards who were supposed to be drinking still ended up completely drunk.

Finns really love vodka. It was so cheap in the Soviet Union that it was worth the trip for them to drink their fill.

If you're Finnish, you'll keep drinking!

In the end, the mayor of Leningrad had no choice but to let the matter drop.

Because tourism is so important to local development, they cannot allow a few drunkards to cause trouble and affect the local tourism economy.

In the Soviet Union at that time, there were very few cities that could be sustained by tourism. The citizens had no choice but to put up with these Finnish drunkards in order to keep their livelihoods.
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Three days later, after visiting the main attractions, the tourists began to disperse, and Sun Zhiwei also began to explore the city according to the guidebook "Nine Days in Leningrad".

His destination: the Admiralty Shipyard, located right next to the port of Leningrad. It not only housed a shipyard but also a naval base, serving as the home port of the Baltic Fleet. Sun Zhiwei strolled leisurely to the port and could see many warships in the harbor from afar. The two largest were the Soviet Union's first-generation "aircraft carriers": the "Moskva" and the "Leningrad."

Calling them aircraft carriers is an exaggeration; they are actually cruisers capable of launching helicopters, officially known as the Moskva-class helicopter carriers.

With a displacement of 1.5 tons, it is even smaller than some large frigates and cannot launch or recover fixed-wing aircraft; it can only carry 14 Ka-25 anti-submarine helicopters.

What's bizarre is that it's equipped with all sorts of anti-submarine, anti-air, and anti-ship weapons, including missile launchers and torpedo launchers.

In short, this hybrid helicopter carrier was an emergency measure and was only responsible for anti-submarine missions in the fleet.

In any case, at least it carried an aircraft; before that, the Soviet Union didn't even have an aircraft carrier.

Because Khru believed in the "missile supremacy" theory, he thought that as long as missiles were powerful, aircraft carriers would be nothing more than mobile coffins at sea.

But when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, and the Soviet Union's submarines were trapped at sea by America's carrier battle group, they realized that they really couldn't do without aircraft carriers.

Thus, the "Moskva-class helicopter carrier" was born. This ship can be considered a test of aircraft carrier construction technology, and it was not entirely useless.

The Russian navy still has a proper aircraft carrier, namely the Kuznetsov-class heavy aviation cruiser, which was launched last year and is the same type as the later Varyag.

It was also the only aircraft carrier that was later left to Russia.

Sun Zhiwei was somewhat dismissive of the two helicopter carriers in front of him. He thought they were better off not having them at all, as they were just using the name of aircraft carriers but were completely useless.

Strictly speaking, the Soviet Union built a total of nine aircraft carriers, of which only three were true aircraft carriers.

This includes two conventionally powered aircraft carriers: the Kuznetsov and the Varyag (6 tons).

And the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Ulyanovsk (7.3 tons), which was dismantled before it was even built.

As a modern person, Sun Zhiwei may have looked down on helicopter carriers, but at the time, it was actually a comprehensive exploration of both aircraft carrier and cruiser development paths.

Even in the 21st century, it cannot be said that the cruiser approach was wrong.

The Russian Frunze large nuclear-powered missile cruiser, and our own Type 055 destroyer decades later, are both capable of going toe-to-toe with aircraft carriers.

But that's all in the early stages. Right now, the only thing that can attract Sun Zhiwei here is the shipyard next to the naval base.

The Admiralty Shipyard, founded during the reign of Peter the Great, has a history of over 280 years and is one of only two shipyards in the Soviet Union capable of assembling titanium alloy submarines (the other being the Severodvinsk Shipyard).

The chubby Type 705 attack nuclear submarine was built here.

The Type 705 attack nuclear submarine, NATO designation: Alfa-class, was built in a total of 7 ships, all of which are in service with the major fleets of the navy.

However, due to frequent breakdowns, one or two ships would occasionally return to the shipyard for repairs. Sun Zhiwei came today to try his luck and see if there were any ships under repair so he could take advantage of the situation.

(End of this chapter)