No Souvenirs #2

A few people asked me if there were anymore non-souvenirs from Finland, so here's a few more.

First up one that I have no idea about. It could be a zoo badge or a fan of monkeys generally. I had thought it might be a salute to Soviet space simians, but the USSR sent monkeys into space between 1983 and 1996, which hardly seemed worth making a badge over.

This one seems a salute to the Soviet capital. My Finnish friend said she remembers her parents returning from visits across the border with badges like these of cities or regions. In a time when travel was limited, a badge like this would have been exotic. There are also badges for Baltic states like Estonia which citizens of the USSR would bring home as gifts or as proof they'd travelled throughout the union.

This guy looks like a classic post-war gent - much like the Maggie Thatcher badge. I think he may be Sergey Korolyov, a Ukrainian born rocket scientist who was called the father of the Soviet space program and designed the Sputnik rockets. Oddly he did all of this after six years imprisionment in the Siberian gulags that Solzhenitsyn chronicled in such horrifying detail.

Finally what looks like a medal, which was awarded for something. Perhaps it was just a patriot medal or for a specific endeavour. Well done to patriots who read this far.