What were the school supplies in the Soviet Union

Politsvet pencils, metal rulers and protractors, wooden pencil cases and the famous Kohinor pencils - let's remember together what Soviet schoolchildren used in drawing lessons, geometry and other subjects.

Go to any stationery store — what's not there! But remember how things were with school supplies in Soviet times? What did our parents or ourselves write and draw? Today we will take a nostalgic journey through the world of school supplies that every child had.

Automatic pencils with replaceable pencils, but not thin, as it is now, quite common. Some schoolchildren even extracted pencils for them from ordinary pencils split in half.

A cheap plastic pencil case-a case for pens or pencils, which opened with a ringing sound of "bang".

And in this wooden pencil case there was also an eraser with a small ruler.

Although with the help of a cover made of thin plastic (which was also pasted over the desks), it was possible to draw straight lines if there was no ruler at hand.

An automatic pen is a luxury that not every schoolboy had. A special short rod with small "ears" was made for it, which, if it was necessary to insert it into an ordinary handle, was lengthened with a match.

Usually they used simpler non-automatic handles, which could also be gnawed.

They stopped using ink back in the 70s, but they continued to use ink and ink for drawing posters and for other artistic purposes much longer. Not everyone had special self-leveling pens that wrote with ink.

The erasers were of poor quality and could leave sloppy spots or even holes on the paper. To make the gum soft, the heroine of the movie "The most charming and attractive" advised soaking it in kerosene.

Legendary Czech-made Kohinor pencils were valued much more than domestic ones, as, in fact, all the products of this manufacturer, such as erasers, which are also mentioned in "The Most charming and Attractive".

Another variant of the school "capacity" for stationery is a multifunctional cartridge case made of oilcloth, which eventually aged and cracked.

Mandatory accessories for geometry lessons, as well as boys' wars at recess.

The biggest mystery for schoolchildren is the "adult" slide rule. The average seventh grader could only guess how this Soviet "computer" functions.

Colored plastic paper clips were valued much more than ordinary metal ones, although they were inferior in functionality. And buttons and paper clips were also used as ammunition in school showdowns.

The tactical ruler was much loved by Soviet schoolchildren, who were happy to draw all kinds of figures with its help, emphasized the subject and predicate and drew curly brackets in math lessons. And it also turned out to be an excellent "smoke box" — small pieces of the ruler smoldered for a long time, giving out a huge amount of white acrid smoke.

A set for drawing lessons is a plywood box-stand, where a sheet of paper was attached with special buttons, an assortment of rulers and pencils with different degrees of hardness.

Two variants of counting "machines" are old-school wooden abacus and "Electronics MK-33". It was very prestigious to have such a calculator.

A wide range of product lines. At the top there are patterns for drawing complex geometric shapes, which few people have used.

Such scissors with a green handle were probably in every house.

The stencil is a schoolboy's dream of the 1980s.

With his help, they drew wall newspapers, ads and much more.

The Soviet waste paper "flash drive— is a stationery folder that migrated to the school from Soviet offices. Smaller folders were used exclusively for the diary and notebooks.

Such a ready-made room was expensive and was worth its weight in gold. Less high-quality cheap models were also sold in plastic boxes, which most schoolchildren had.