Category Archives: 1981-1991

May, 1st: Soviet Labour Day.

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1984 marochkin May, 1st: Soviet Labour Day.

Parade of 1984, city of Ufa. Photo by N. Marochkin.

Day of Inter­na­tional Sol­i­dar­ity of the Work­ing Class, or Labour Day — was cel­e­brated in Rus­sia on May, 1st  from 1919 to 1990. A pub­lic hol­i­day for each every city, every town­ship or vil­lage had a parade organ­ised: flags were car­ried, posters and ban­ners were up, kids had red bal­lons and por­traits of the gov­ern­ing men were on dis­play. The atten­dance usu­ally was com­pul­sory, but judg­ing by the pho­tographs now, I don’t think any­body minded: it looks like peo­ple had fum there. By May the weather was usu­ally sunny and crisp, and this hol­i­day was a lit­tle more that a pro­pa­gan­dist activ­ity: it was a uni­fy­ing event. Please read on to see some faces behind the crowd.

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Behind the Myth Veil

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Please wel­come our new author Vadim Costyrin with his first but seri­ous post on the present days of those born in the USSR, brought up by the Yeltsin’s coup and now left to seek their national and cul­tural iden­tity all by themselves.

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A per­for­mance at a kindergarten.

Once the USSR inspired us with fear, now this coun­try does not exist. We have the big Rus­sia and a lot of small and not so small, whim­si­cal republics, for the right to include which in the sphere of their influ­ence there fight politi­cians of the super­pow­ers. Together with the Soviet Union we have lost Rus­sians — our antipodes — against whom we willy-nilly matched. It may seem that it is a vic­tory — but Rus­sians want the USSR back, and after only two decades there are much more fears and threats.

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Best of Winter 2009 – 2010

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Mil­i­tary Dis­charge Hand­made Scrap Book and Comics Album

11 365x500 Best of Winter 2009 2010

You’re in the army now

The com­pul­sory two years of mil­i­tary ser­vice was a rite of pas­sage for every Soviet guy. When one turned eigh­teen — unless for sick­ness or injury — it was time to be called in for the mil­i­tary life — two years in the bar­racks. The guys usu­ally bonded well and dur­ing their spare time cre­ated so called “Dis­charge Albums” — like scrap­books, they were full of pho­tos, songs lyrics, quick notes from the bud­dies etc.

Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbe­liev­able Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

kurilov2 Best of Winter 2009 2010

The only per­son to escape the Iron Cur­tain by swimming.

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

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Military Discharge Handmade Scrap Book and Comics Album

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11 365x500 Military Discharge Handmade Scrap Book and Comics Album

You’re in the army now

The com­pul­sory two years of mil­i­tary ser­vice was a rite of pas­sage for every Soviet guy. When one turned eigh­teen — unless for sick­ness or injury — it was time to be called in for the mil­i­tary life — two years in the bar­racks. Usu­ally away from home, this period of time was meant to train and edu­cate the men should there be a war. It included phys­i­cal train­ing, polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, cur­rent affairs, weaponry and so on — a good many posts can be writ­ten on life in the army! Today, how­ever, we want to take a dif­fer­ent look on this sub­ject. The guys usu­ally bonded well and dur­ing their spare time cre­ated so called “Dis­charge Albums” — like scrap­books, they were full of pho­tos, songs lyrics, quick notes from the bud­dies etc. This par­tic­u­lar one has a very neat selec­tion of wee hand drawn episodes of the army realities.

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Moscow Winters, Fragments of the 20th Century.

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Here is a fine col­lec­tion of images of Moscow win­ters, dat­ing from 1920s till 1991. Sadly many places por­trayed on these pho­tographs are gone now, just like the Soviet Union itself, yet lest we for­get.  Please read on to see the image of the first set of traf­fic lights in Moscow CBD in late 1930s, which was oper­ated by a spe­cially trained per­son; or the largest fresh­wa­ter out­door  swim­ming pool in the world -  as well as peo­ple, wooden houses, old boule­vards cov­ered with the vir­gin snow.

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1925. A pri­vate house on the bank of the Tarakanovka river

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Wrap Your Baby in Old Newspapers — the 70 Years of Deficit of Everything.

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1111 500x375 Wrap Your Baby in Old Newspapers the 70 Years of Deficit of Everything.

A typ­i­cal Soviet shop with bare shelves.

One of the main criti­sisms of the Soviet Union now, from an every day per­spec­tive, was the huge deficit of every­thing. The planned econ­omy failed to sup­ply a con­stant flow of goods nec­es­sary for the well being of peo­ple. It was not the mat­ter of inca­pac­ity — no, the means cer­tainly allowed to build space shut­tles or cre­ate extra strong tanks.  The short­age for goods was cre­ated arti­fi­cially — due to the rea­sons of the strange Soviet ideology.

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