In 1930 the global economic crisis was deepening ominously sucking
countries one after another into its deadly maelstrom of destruction and
collapse. The Western governments, all proponents of individualism and
self-reliance, found themselves presiding over a major economic crumble
which severely undermined the state finances leading to money-saving layoffs
and across-the-board spending cuts. All these things only added to the
general state of economic disrepair. Instead of coordinating their efforts
to combat the global crisis, the governments were trying to sit out the
lean times behind sky-high customs barriers they were busily erecting along
their borders.
Millions of people, displaced by the crisis, were living off
occasional jobs, crammed into cardboard shacks. Millions of families were
ruined by the hard-hitting crisis and many traditional values were gone
with the wind. The high hopes of a better future people held out for during
the Twenties had made way for hopelessness and desperation, where dull
apathy degenerated into occasional outbursts of blind fury by people deeply
disappointed in the Establishment. Just like it was after World War One,
this general sense of insecurity was adding fuel to all-out radicalism.
The Communists, who were on the upswing during the crisis, were calling
for an immediate socialist revolution while members of the fast-growing
fascist movement considered replacing democracy with dictatorship as the
sole means of putting the nation back on its feet again.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union, then largely isolated from the rest
of the world, was busily grappling with its own problems. In early January,
the government put a time frame on its plans to bring the country's millions
private farms into collective ownership. The process of establishing the
so-called collective farms occasionally turned ugly with the opponents
of the reform being deprived of their possessions and, starving, exiled
to the north. Exasperated by what was going on, the peasants staged a number
of revolts throughout the country eventually forcing Josef Stalin and his
government to back down and cool their collectivization fervor.
In 1930 Fyodor Tokarev designed his trusty semi-automatic TT
pistol which has since been extensively used in many countries across the
world. In that very same year there was born the man destined to become
the first human being to walk on the Moon. The US astronaut Neil Armstrong
commanded the Apollo 11 spaceship on its groundbreaking 1969 flight to
this planet's natural satellite. His words about a step on the Moon being
a little one for a man but a quantum leap for mankind are still remembered
in the world.
The year 1930 was the last in the life of the great English detective
storyteller Arthur Conan Doyle whose main character, the greatest detective
of all time, Sherlock Holmes, has since become a household name the world
over. They now even have a Sherlock Holmes museum at 221,B in London. In
Russia, the famous poet Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself under circumstances
yet to be revealed. Along with his poems extolling the revolution and the
Soviet rule, Mayakovsky penned a number of satirical poems making fun of
the ignorance and hypocrisy shown by some members of the Soviet bureaucracy
and their notorious penchant for red tape.
1930 ushered in the new ladies' profession of attending to passengers
on commercial flights. The first woman flight attendant in history was
Helen Chotch from Iowa. She advised the management of the United Airlines
company to hire young ladies to attend to the passengers during long flights.
As it happened, Helen not only got the job right away but they also asked
her to find at least seven more young ladies to work for the company. On
May 15, 1930, Helen Chotch, donning an elegant uniform, was already welcoming
her first passengers. Shortly after, the airline instructed their personnel
department to only hire young ladies under 25 years of age, weighing under
53 kilograms and standing at no more than 163 centimeters tall. Everyone,
besides, perhaps the pilots' wives, happily welcomed the idea ...
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series
of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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