Kids' literature tends to reveal as much, if not more, about a culture as the grown-up stuff. While American children feast on rags-to-riches stories like Cinderella, their German peers thrill to Grimm tales such as “The Story of the Youth Who Went Forward to Learn What Fear Was.” So it's fitting that the most popular children’s characters to arise from the U.S.S.R.—Cheburashka and Gena—are steeped in wistfulness and melancholy.

You may recall a short scene from the 1995 film GoldenEye, starring Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, in which 007 travels to Russia to meet up with a bumbling CIA agent played by Joe Don Baker. While the agents talk, Baker bangs at a squat little blue vehicle with a sledgehammer to start the engine. “Nice car,” Bond sniffs. The American replies, “She’s an ugly little bitch, but she gets you there.” Little did Western viewers know that this “ugly little bitch” was one of the Soviet Union's most recognizable, loved, and ridiculed cars: the Zaporozhets.

Russia’s military has a new unmanned drone — The Pchela-1, or if translated, “The Bee” — and it looks kind of a like a Nintendo Wii-inspired take on a military apparatus. With its charming, family-friendly vibe and sharp design, this critter puts the “cute” back in “surveillance aircraft.” We feel pretty good about something so adorable potentially hunting us down like wild, helpless prey with nowhere to hide.

Could this have been some perverse joke of the Soviet educational system on its unassuming young women? One cannot help but notice the unmistakable resemblance of the Soviet schoolgirl uniform, developed in the 1920s, to the iconic French maid costume. Observe: a brown wool dress, accessorized with a lacy white pinafore over the chest, white tights and a cartoonishly large chiffon bow. And we thought Catholic schoolgirls had it rough.