Bending Back in the USSR

Lift your head, Comrade! In Soviet Russia, the rules stretch YOU! :3

"Rubber has a thousand and one industrial uses. Rubber, no less than oil, is an apple of discord in the world of nations. The British Empire is rich in rubber. Together with Holland, which possessed 30 per cent of the world's rubber plantations, England, which possesses 30 per cent, can dictate her terms to the world.

The Soviet Union lacked rubber plantations. "We will have our own caoutchouc," said Stalin; and they have it. Rubber-bearing plants--the Tau-sagiz, the Kok-sagiz, and the Krim-sagiz--have been discovered which grow wild in the U.S.S.R. and yield as much as 38 per cent of pure rubber."

Johnson, Hewlett. "The Soviet Power: The Socialist Sixth of the World."

Marina was born in 1956 and was an avid performer of "caoutchouc" (rubber girl), bending her hard-working back in the Big Soviet Circus since the tender age of five. In her teen years she performed in a belly dancer's outfit that was very popular among acrobats in the 1950-60s thanks to the movies about Sinbad the Sailor.

She left circus school at sixteen and held a variety of jobs before entering Komsomol (the Communist Youth League) in 1975 and finally pinning the shiny red flag to her official coat. Since then, she's been working to tighten up discipline at the All-Union Young Pioneer camp Artek. She's a real devil what comes to pulling up the kids to a better standard, as demonstrated in the illustration. Even adults fear her ability of bending your will sometimes.

Despite her devilish nature, each and every boy in the camp dreams of marrying her, so they all naturally compete to become her best pupil and always do their homework well. Sometimes the most hard-working boy is rewarded with a photograph from her album, depicting part of her performance or sensational achievements during the training sessions where she was used to wear a white leotard with shamelessly high cut legs ("To allow for a wide range of movement", her coach explained). But that's rare and so these gifts are treasured and sometimes shared between friends. Before going to sleep, boys look at these pictures with a flashlight under their pillows, dreaming to be that good one day. In terms of flexibility, of course...