Oh, well, to be honest, it was not specifically a SNOOKER game that we played back then, during my years in the flight college. As far as I remember, we had fun with some ‘amateurish’ version of BILLIARD. Stakes weren’t too high. Actually, I couldn’t recall if we ever put the money on stake. Maybe, some did. On the quiet. ‘Cause, ‘you never know’.. Lenin was always.. kinda watching us 
The billiard picture goes back to the summer of 1981, when we had our first ‘flight semester’ at the Aqtyubinsk Flight College’s training base called ‘Khlebodarovka‘.
‘Khlebodarovka’ base got its name after a nearby village situated some 40 km North-West of the Aqtyubinsk city. On this aerial shot which I took from the AVLUGA (Aqyubinsk Civil Aviation College) web-site, you can see some facilities on the base’s premises. Watch also those rows of the YAk-18Ts parked on the field. It is just a fraction of the entire trainer fleet in the college. Roughly, we had almost 200 of them.
Billiard game took place in one of those barracks visible on the picture. Can’t remember though, which one exactly. The billiard table itself was placed in a so-called ЛЕНИНСКАЯ КОМНАТА (’Leninskaya Komnata‘, ‘Lenin Room‘) - sort of standard ‘propaganda kiosk‘ which could be routinely found in a variety of places across the country, such as schools, institutions, army deployments, - i.e., at any organization where the communist power considered that ‘a bit of brain-washing wouldn’t do any harm to the members, or participants of a ’so-and-so socialistic society cell‘
Once in a while the Leninskaya Komnata would be used ‘directly’ for its purpose - either for a meeting, or a political seminar or briefing called ‘polit-informatsiya‘. But most of the time the room served as a common use spot for less formal activities, such as reading, self-studying, or mere socializing. It should be noted, however, that having a billiard table in such a special room was a bit ‘off-line’ by the ’strictly polit-correct standard’ But it seemed nobody cared.. Or, we rather did, but in respect to the table: as I can recall, the table sat outside for almost entire summer, but eventually, as the fall was approaching, it began raining, and a decision had been made to put the table in. It’s funny, in this case, how the common sense cared more about something ‘earthy and tangible’, prevailing over any abstract importance of the ‘ideological righteousness’
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