Tag Archives: American

Calendar of 1964: Us and Them.

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An old cal­en­dar of 1964 pic­tur­ing a set of remark­able cit­i­zens of the world: a Soviet per­son next to its Amer­i­can coun­ter­part. Sadly there is no anno­ta­tion left to fig­ure what the mes­sage was — infor­ma­tive, pro­pa­gan­dist or other, so the faces below are torn out of con­text. But it is still nice to have a look at some Soviet artist’s work.

It would have been a brief post, so we thought we’d include the major achieve­ments of these great men.

001w26gh1 370x500 Calendar of 1964: Us and Them.

Movie Pro­duc­ers: Sergey Eisen­stein & David W Grifith

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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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A Rough Guide to Moscow from the Daughter of the American Ambassador

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Joseph E. Davies was the sec­ond Ambas­sador to rep­re­sent the United States in the Soviet Union in 1937 – 1938.

His daugh­ter, the twenty years old Emlen Knight Davies, took some pic­tures of the sur­round­ings. These images, cour­tesy of her pri­vate col­lec­tion, were on dis­play in Moscow for the anniver­sary of the Spaso House — the offi­cial diplo­matic residence.

These 19 images por­tray Moscow in a slightly dif­fer­ent view — the entire pre-war epoch ended was just about to end, and those times, still full of life and char­ac­ter, still look very charming.

0 1bbd6 215ff57b XL 500x444 A Rough Guide to Moscow from the Daughter of the American <span class=search everything highlight style=>Ambassador</span>

Emlen Knight Davies, at the age of 20 (ish)

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Russian Ice Cream In Winter — Bring It On!

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In the USSR, the very first ice cream fac­tory was opened in 1932 — when the Min­is­ter of Food Sup­ply (if trans­lated not too lib­er­ally) Anas­tas Mikoyan vis­ited the United States of Amer­ica and was so impressed with their ice cream, he decided that Rus­sia needed some­thing of the kind. So the ice cream mak­ing tech­nol­ogy and equip­ment were imported and the ice cream sup­ply to all and every­body began. The process was highly reg­u­lated and, indeed, the qual­ity of Soviet ice cream was envi­able. If  in 1932 the total amount of ice­cream pro­duced was about 300 ton, then 10 years later it grew about 270 times — in 1940 there were  82 thou­sand ton of ice cream produced.

habarr 497x500 Russian Ice Cream In Winter Bring It On!

The city of Khabarovsk, 1970.

This num­bers were lost dur­ing the WWII as the fac­to­ries had to cease work — but it quickly recov­ered and by 1950 there was a 20% increase of what was made before.

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The Patriotic Education in USSR. Part 2 — Pioneers, Soviet Boy Scouts

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pioner1 The Patriotic Education in USSR. Part 2 Pioneers, Soviet Boy Scouts

We are the pio­neers, sons of work­ing class (a pop­u­lar song)

As you remem­ber from the pre­vi­ous post, at the age of 9 the Soviet Kids grew out of their Octo­ber Kids affil­i­a­tion. The next ide­o­log­i­cal rite of pas­sage was pio­neer­ing which the Soviet coun­try placed a huge impor­tance on. Loosely based on the Amer­i­can Boy Scout’s move­ment, pio­neer­ing cov­ered all kids till the age of four­teen and worked in close rela­tion with schools. Just like any­thing else Soviet style, it had its idiosyncrasies.

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The 50th Anniversary of the Soviet Union in Old American Mags

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coeer 500x335 The 50th Anniversary of the Soviet Union in Old American Mags

Life and Look on the 50th Anniver­sary of the USSR, 1967.

In 1967, when the USSR turned 5o, it was a big day for both the coun­try and the world. The Soviet Union had made it through, despite every­thing — and the world now had to take it seri­ously. The Cold War, which was at its high­est at the time, kept the USSR in the spot­light, too, so the media were more than inter­ested in the young Russ­ian coun­try.  It really is a shame that the writ­ing can­not be deci­phered due to the low res­o­lu­tion of these scans. How­ever, these images  con­vey the atmos­phere of the times quite well — a wild yet sophis­ti­cated coun­try in the eyes of the civilised world.

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