You May Not...

 ... remember this girl from Vancouver, B.C.? But she was huge in Hollywood when Hollywood, actually, was making great films. Yvonne De Carlo is said to be a sex bomb then, but who cares, she was drop dead gorgeous. When Song of Scheherazade came out in 1947 it was big. Disregard "gay" term, then it meant joyful and fun;)))

Remarkably, the movie describes, sort of, at least they portrayed Russians as not subhumans, events after the Russian Fleet came to New York during the American Civil War and how both Russian squadrons of Admirals Lesovsky (NYC) and Popov (San Francisco) influenced the outcome of war. As my dear friend Byron King wrote about it a few years ago:

These powerful fleets remained in the U.S. for over seven months. Theyanchored-out, or in some instances tied up to piers. While in U.S. waters, theyfired no cannon except for occasional practice rounds. Ashore, U.S. militarybands feted and serenaded the guests. Russian sailors paraded down Broadway,while Russian naval officers were hosted at official functions and privateparties. Their role was to be highly visible… showing off Russian support forthe Union cause.

Of course, the greatest cultural testament and monument to these times was the movie which was about the Russian Naval Cadet Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov's desire not to fight the war, but to write a beautiful music, which we all know today as...

Russian Navy turned out to be not just a great wars' firefighter, when helping people (how about Messina AND San-Francisco), but also as a stabilizer, but also something of a completely off-the-wall cultural thing for Russians. And when you see legendary Moyiseev's Dance Ensemble doing good ol' Russian Naval Dance Yablochko and looking at the reaction of Russian people from young to old a month ago at the Victory Day, that gives one an insight which they do not teach in "Russian Study Field" in the West.

 

You can also see them in 2015 in the legendary Concert at the Red Square. 

This was also the brigade of the cadets, marines from my naval academy (how do you think you get a Red Banner title--only two of academies) who simply went to stand their ground in Stalingrad, and then fight in Berlin. Russians don't start wars, they finish them...