Monthly Archives: February 2010

21+ Depressing Photos of Post-Revolutionary Russia by Arkady Shaikhet

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When the new Soviet coun­try was born, the peo­ple were promised a won­der­ful future under the social­ism — just a few more years, the bill­boards boasted — and we’ll live in a glo­ri­ous state. How­ever the early days were more than gloomy: the  run­down econ­omy, dis­ori­ented soci­ety, the reek of fear and uncer­tainty — and that clearly can be seen through the pho­tos of a promi­nent Soviet pho­tog­ra­pher Arkady Shaikhet.

This col­lec­tion of pho­tos starts off with nice, clearcut images of what the coun­try was por­trayed as by the media and pro­pa­ganda — and pro­gresses to a unsweet­ened world of the sim­ple folk, vagrants, and peas­ants. Please let us know if there is a photo below that has touched your heart — we always value your feedback.

photoshare 003 500x373 21+ Depressing Photos of Post Revolutionary Russia by Arkady Shaikhet

Gym­nasts. Red Square. 1924

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Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

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28 500x333 Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?

Image cour­tesy of Léonard Gianadda, a Swiss pho­togra­her who vis­ited Moscow in 1957.


This is prob­a­bly one of the length­i­est and most con­tro­ver­sial top­ics to attempt, yet it is very impor­tant for our blog to  answer — or at least to raise  this ques­tion. If you have been fol­low­ing us for a lit­tle while, you would know that by mid 1980s the atmos­phere in Rus­sia was tense. The mir­a­cle of doing well in the WWII had been wear­ing out. The total deficit of every­thing and the black mar­kets did not con­tribute to keep­ing the morale up. The Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter as well as war action in Afghanistan had drained the coun­try both finan­cially and psy­cho­log­i­cally. The pub­lic resent­ment was grow­ing: the com­mon joke was that you could find truth any­where except in Pravda and the news any­where except in Izves­tia. (both are the Russ­ian news­pa­pers, the first one lit­er­ally mean­ing truth and the lat­ter one – news). For years the gov­ermnent had been run­ning in the red but it did not catch up with them till late 1980s – and it was too lit­tle too late for a change.

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Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

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komm most 500x329 Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

The Com­mu­nal Bridge, back then (late 1970s)

komm mostt 500x375 Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

The Com­mu­nal Bridge, nowadays.

The unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of Siberia, the city of Novosi­birsk was founded in 1893 with the ini­tial pop­u­la­tion of only 8,000 peo­ple. By the time of the Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917,  it grew to the pop­u­la­tion size of 80,000. The name, lit­er­ally mean­ing New Siber­ian City, was adopted in 1926 — and since then, the town had become to grow and prosper.By 1962, Novosi­birsk became the youngest city in the world to have the pop­u­la­tion of 1 mil­lion — it only took about 70 years. Now it is an impor­tant indus­trial, cul­tural and socioe­co­nomic hub of the country.

We realise that today’s post is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our usual for­mat, as the mod­ern pic­tures of the city are, well, mod­ern and not of the Soviet epoch. It is still nice to see, how­ever, how the city has been chang­ing over the past hun­dred years — and the old pho­tographs are still full of life and very easy on the eye.

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