damnit, I saw this too late! I remember torvalds_says_linux.wav being a rite of passage for getting ALSA to work, along with days of strife and increasingly desperate modprobing. ahh, the bad old days.

interesting. I’m most interested in the Khruschev era, during de-Stalinization and when the USSR was at its peak, and the satellite countries (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, etc.) the collapse just makes me sad.