АлександрД ---Russian Dive Manual 1968

[Sam Miller III]

I had previously mentioned in a casual remark I had a 50 year old, 1968, copy of a translated from Russian to English Russian Diving Manual, It is ;

S,Ye, Bulenkov, etal,
' Spravocknik Plovtsa- Podvodnika"
Publishing house of the ministry of defense
Moscow, Russia
1968 - 278 pages

As you recall our nations mutual history at that time there was what was known as the cold war. The western world and especially the US obtained very little information from or about Russia.

In the 1960s and at that time of publication I was the CDO & SIO of a deep diving submarine program that was cancelled a short time later. But we wanted to know about what the Russians were doing and where their SCUBA diving was in relation to the US and the western world.

So some one in Washington DC had obtained a copy of ' Spravocknik Plovtsa- Podvodnika" which we had translated into English and printed.

All these 60 years I have had it in my dive library next to all the US diving manuals as sort of a time capsule

Perhaps you can comment on the author, the publication and the Russian equipment of that time frame ?

Cheers from California - where recreational diving began in the US

Sam Miller, 111
@АлександрД
@Akimbo

 

[АлександрД]

here is original book 10444_[armyman.info].zip
I also have this book on paper.

What are you interesting about equipment? There is too much of different models.
All of our SCUBA at 1968 was doublehose. Some - single staged (Like Ukraina), some double staged (like AVM-1m)

second edition of this brief manual http://padaread.com/?book=20007 had information about "modern", single hose SCUBAs.
All of them had contra flow second stage.

Also first edition had some information about foreign SCUBAs, like Mistral, Aquamatic, Divator, Hydro-pack etc.

This manual had detailed information (with drawings) of any spare parts for most popular AVM-1m

Suits... thoose time we had problems with rubber foam, and most of suits was dry
There described GKP-4 (with pants and shirt with hood, and thick rubber "wheel" to connect it together), Sadko (on the SB is many pictures of it) and GKL (this name is absent in the book, but this is it )

This book contains brief theory of diving phisics, some information about equipment repair, Usage of compressors, and educational matherials for sport divers and commercial divers. Some articles about underwater hunting and photography.

Last big part is dedicated to medical problems and safety of the diving.

If you gave me page number (from our edition) I can describe you more details about...

Do you have this translated book in file to upload? Can you share it?

 

[Roger Hobden]

Awesome !

 

[Sam Miller III]

My copy is a 8 x 11 paper size copy of the original book
It was translated from Russian to English by the US Department of Commerce
It is 231 pages in length
therefore difficult to copy

Never the ess interesting reading ...
SAM

 

[David Wilson]

An English translation of the 1969 edition of Bulenkov's work (above) is available from Amazon at Soviet Manual of Scuba Diving: S. Ye. Bulenkov, et al.: 9781410216014: Amazon.com: Books. The paperback is published by the University Press of the Pacific (Honolulu, Hawaii: 2004). 230 pages. The text can be viewed online at Soviet Manual of Scuba Diving.

I have a copy, which I find invaluable not only for Soviet diving history study purposes but also as a reference point for translation of certain Russian terms. My special interest lies in basic diving equipment and suits. Despite having an academic background in foreign languages, I still struggle with rendering into English terms such as "гидрокостюм", which may translate as "diving suit" within a diving context but elsewhere "гидрокостюм" can denote protective aquatic apparel worn by surface water users such as water-skiers, sailors, fishermen or even cavers. I'm minded to translate "гидрокостюм" as "immersion suit", but that rendering comes with a different set of cultural baggage in English. The literal translation, "hydrocostume", just sounds too outlandish. Parts nomenclature for the "гидрокостюм" can pose problems too, e.g. the word "шлем" can be mistranslated as "helmet" when we in the English-speaking diving world would use "hood" instead for a "шлем" made of soft material. Rendering Soviet diving manuals into English demands higher-order subject-matter knowledge as well as advanced language skills from the translator and whoever translated Bulenkov's œuvre into English had a brilliant stab at the near-impossible task of being true to the Russian original while interpreting every detail sufficiently to inform an educated Anglophone readership. As the Italians say, traditore traduttore, "the translator is a traitor" because expressions with multiple meanings in one language hardly ever have corresponding expressions with the same multiple meanings in other languages. When we do find what the French call "le mot juste", the translator's Holy Grail, it's a cause for celebration.

 

[АлександрД]

btw - Гидрокостюм (Hydro Suit) - we also use slang words as Гида (Hydra), Гидрач, Гидрик (Hydrach, Hydrick) - all this words means the same - suit, to protect body from water
And good translation is Suit. And than you can add more detailing words, content related - Diving S., Hydro S., Dry S., etc. For kayak (eg) we also call it гидрокостюм. For ice diving same, but add Dry S.

About Шлем - we use same word for Helmet and Hood - hardhat divers use Helmet, and we call it Shlem. Recreational divers use neoprene Hood, and we call it Shlem

very pity, it was impossible to find english ediotion for free in the internet... just some pages on Google books.

 

[David Wilson]

I had previously mentioned in a casual remark I had a 50 year old, 1968, copy of a translated from Russian to English Russian Diving Manual, It is ;

S,Ye, Bulenkov, etal,
' Spravocknik Plovtsa- Podvodnika"
Publishing house of the ministry of defense
Moscow, Russia
1968 - 278 pages
Perhaps you can comment on the author, the publication and the Russian equipment of that time frame ?

Sam Miller, 111

According to Глава четвертая ПО СИГНАЛУ «SOS». Служба особого назначения, this is a picture of S. Ye. Bulenkov (С. Е. Буленков), the name of the author of the Soviet Manual of Scuba Diving, whose original Russian title was Справочник пловца-подводника:

 

[David Wilson]

Suits... thoose time we had problems with rubber foam, and most of suits was dry

I just wanted to expand a little on what АлександрД has said about the introduction of wetsuits in the USSR. I can confirm first that there is no mention of wetsuits in my copy of the translation of the 1969 edition of Bulenkov's manual and I can't find any references to them in my small collection of Soviet diving manuals from the 1960s. So far as I can tell, mass production of the first practicable domestically manufactured wetsuits began in the Soviet Union as late as the early 1970s.

I found a 1971 article by A Nekhoroshev announcing the mass production of the first Soviet wetsuit in the 25th issue of the journal СПОРТСМЕН-ПОДВОДНИК, which was the USSR's equivalent of Skin Diver magazine. A scan of this issue can be found online at http://www.scubadiving.ru/biblioteka/Knigi/sportsmen_podvodnik_025.pdf. The wetsuit came in two versions: "Нептун-1" (Neptune-1) and "Нептун-2" (Neptune-2):

The main difference between the two versions was that the Neptune-1 was supplied with a shirt donned like a pullover while the Neptune-2 (above right) came with a zippered jacket. As АлександрД has mentioned, the Soviet manufacturer in Yaroslavl made the suits from foam rubber, because neoprene was unavailable for this purpose. Foam rubber was last used in the West for the manufacture of wetsuits during the 1950s, famously by France's Beuchat company, which patented a "shorty" wetsuit made from the material.

At the time, the Neptune must have been a game-changer for Soviet spearfishermen, who then made up the bulk of the civilian diving population of the USSR. The style was compared to the "Calypso" wetsuit made in the West. In hindsight, however, the quality of the suits was not great and better Ukrainian-made wetsuits eventually came along in the shape of the "Чайка" (Chaika - Seagull) wetsuit (note the seagull logo on the chest):