If the equivalent of the Pioneer movement is called "Little Bears," then what would the Octobrists (young Soviet children’s organization members) be called? It has to be something even smaller than a bear cub. Cute. Fluffy. "Micro-pandas," "Grandpa Pooh’s koalas," or "Kremlin wombats" won’t do — that’s unpatriotic, since there are no wombats or pandas in Russia. Running through the native fauna in my head, I come to the conclusion that it could be a hamster. "The regime’s little hamsters." Though there is an unpleasant political double meaning here: as everyone knows, a hamster is basically the same as a rat — it just has much better PR.
Tags