13 Comment

1. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-18 16:13

   hmm, that's a long way from Leningrad!!

2. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-18 16:17

   ah! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Mikhail_Lermontov

3. 
   lizkoppert · 2020-09-19 01:08

   @aleatorius, I know right! It sank in French Pass (not far from where the photo was taken) in 1986. At the time I was about 8 years old, and the funny thing is I don't remember the Mikhail Lermontov sinking, but I remember the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior 10 days before my birthday the year before...

4. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-19 15:02

   @lizkoppert oops, never heard of this event! I guess it was so scandalous so it was hard for you to not notice even as 7 years old ;) For me, in the USSR it was probably just another usual day in the West where one bad thing happened after another, not a big deal.

5. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-19 15:06

   Btw, Lermontov was an interesting poet and writer, the main example of the Russian byronism. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hero_of_Our_Time

6. 
   lizkoppert · 2020-09-20 00:55

   @aleatorius, the boat named after the poet?...

7. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-20 08:41

   @lizkoppert yes, according to wiki there was a whole series of ships named after poets %-)
   "MS Mikhail Lermontov, launched in 1972, was the last of the five "poet" ships: Ivan Franko, Taras Shevchenko, Alexandr Pushkin (now Marco Polo), Shota Rustaveli and Mikhail Lermontov, named after famous Ukrainian, Georgian and Russian writers (Ivan Franko and Taras Shevchenko being Ukrainian, and Shota Rustaveli being Georgian), built to the same design at V.E.B. Mathias-Thesen Werft, Wismar, East Germany. Mikhail Lermontov, born 1814 and died 1841, was known as the "poet of Caucasus.""

8. 
   lizkoppert · 2020-09-20 10:21

   @aleatorius, I noticed that... I followed the link and had a read. :) As an aside, one of my favourite musicians did a piece on Yuri Gargarin. Said track also references Sputnik.

9. 
   aleatorius · 2020-09-20 13:10

   @lizkoppert hehe, we are binge-watching "community", yesterday there was an episode with "tell me about Woodstock and sputnik" %-))) memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1c6154c6-0f1d-427b-82cd-c2c0e0c6…

10. 
    aleatorius · 2020-09-21 18:22

    I asked around, nobody heard about this story with MS Lomonosov. Maybe USSSR propaganda considered that people would start asking questions concerning why there were any ships to entertain capitalists in the first place %-))))

11. 
    lizkoppert · 2020-09-22 06:43

    @aleatorius, who knows... although they can't deny it; we have the proof! :)

12. 
    aleatorius · 2020-09-22 09:51

    @lizkoppert huh, it seems one major newspaper of that time did report on it: "MOSCOW -- The navigator of a Soviet luxury liner that struck submerged rocks off the New Zealand coast and sank last Feburary was sentenced to four years in prison for negligence, the Soviet Union said Saturday.

    The government-run newspaper Izvestia said the captain of the Soviet cruise ship, the 20,000-ton Mikhail Lermontov, was dismissed and transferred 'to work on the coast.'

    Izvestia said navigator Sergei Stepanishchev was convicted of negligence by a Leningrad City Court and sentenced to four years in jail with labor and a fine of the equivalent of $30,000."

    quite a huge fine!

13. 
    lizkoppert · 2020-09-22 11:04

    Oooooh! I reckon. And I don't think they were ever able to salvage the boat, so that would go some way to paying for it.
    As an aside, I'll be heading to Picton with the other half tomorrow for a job, and will most likely using the carpark next to this lifeboat. :)