"Can you tell what it is yet?"

To get this you would have probably been in telecommunications for a number of years, before the age of digital PABX's and Message Switching.

I spent two weeks in Comsomolk, Ukraine, in January 1996 (yes, it was very freezing!). Teaching about a dozen telecomm engineers how to programme the software features (there's hundreds and hundreds of them) on the Nortel Networks Meridian 1 telephone system that they had installed.
Some of them had previously attended a 2 week course in Maidenhead where I taught them the hardware, power, software loading etc. so the installation/maintenance course was 4 weeks long in all. The ones that were quite good at English translated for the other students that didn't know any English.

I was quite shocked at the poverty in Ukraine, and the demonstrations in Kiev demanding they become part of the Soviet Union again and dispense with Ukranian and speak only Russian.
The students asked me not to throw away the paper backing from the acetate slides as they can use the paper for writing on, such things were, probably still are, valuable as they were expensive and in short supply.

As a memento of my visit the company gave me a polished raw iron ore obelisk (about 8 inches tall) as the company, GOK, mined iron ore in a gigantic open cast mine 1k deep, 1k wide and 7k long! It was presented to me during a meeting where much vodka was consumed due to the continuous toasts!

The students gave me the object in the blip and I was overwhelmed as I didn't expect anything at all, and I know how poorly paid they are.

When I first arrived I was told to go through to the equipment room where I could check out the system that we were going to work on.
A young Ukranian woman, Svetlana, was up a stepladder wearing a white smock and white headband to prevent any hair falling into the equipment.
What she was doing was adjusting the Uniselectors on the old system as they weren't ready to cut over to the new Meridian system that I was going to teach them on.
So, the item is a Uniselector and when you dialed using the old pulse telephones the selector would move along those copper 'arms' corresponding to the number of clicks received from the dial, or pulse, telephone.
Note the electrical contacts that need to be adjusted, rather like the points on a cars distributor (not nowadays of course with electronic ignition).
This was, of course, a Russian made system although it was identical to systems being used by BT and other Western telecommunication public exchanges!

Apologies for the long text, I do get carried away occassionaly.