The inspiration of this art pice is the stories that my mom used to tell be from the Soviet era of Romania. So I wanted to draw Suika in traditional school clothes from that Era.

The school uniform is a common Soviet Union girl uniform. In Romania the school uniform was simpler, a black dress, white thights/stockings, a white shirt, a red necktie(that looked like a scarf and had the colors of the Romanian flag). I chose to draw Suika into a Russian uniform, because of the fact that their girl uniforms included an apron and I thought that it was quite cute.

Meaning of the symbols

The badge on her apron is “insigna pionierilor” which means the badge of the pioneers. It was given to school kids from the age of 8-14. The yellow braid means that her rang is the “commander of the detachment of the pioneers”. Her necktie is in the colors of the Romanian flag: red, yellow and blue. Her school bag is a Soviet style bag. As for the stickers on the bag it is quite an adorable story that my mum told me: “under the Comunist Regime you were able to buy only a set amount of food no more no less: 100g of bread daily, 500g of pig meat/month, 1kg of bird meat/month, 100g of butter/month, 1kg of salt/month, 1kg of flour/month, 1 liter of oil/month, 1kg of cheese/month. But very rarely, usually near the winter holidays shops usually sold bananas and oranges. The company that exported the produse was usually DOLE. So kids when they got their hands on this fruits they usually took the stickers form the fruit and put it on their schoolbags/notebooks and who was able to have these stickers were considered very cool.” So that’s why I put the Dole and the Bananas united fruit co stickers on her bag.

The post stamps are both a stamp from Comunist Romania, with the specific ink stamp from that era and a Soviet post stamp and ink stamp

As for her bow, is the bow that she wears because I thought it would look cute combined with this school uniform.

The text on the letter is in Romanian and is an imagined story about a father that was at work in the Soviet lands writing a letter to her daughter from Romania that started the 5th grade and encouraged her to learn well in school and by the time the winter holiday begins he will come home to see her.

Hope you enjoyed this art pice and that you learned a bit about my country’s history!

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/touhou/comments/1gmv57b/suika_in_soviet_era_romanian_school_uniform/