Hard work and no play
A good-sized Soviet factory usually consisted of up to a hundred industrial divisions, with 200 – 800 workers in each. They had to be accommodated, fed, and often educated, and typically to the Soviet way of doing things, that often wasn’t handled very well. So if you ever wondered what it would be like to be a young engineer at a large factory in the Soviet Russia — please read on.
“New Moscow”, by Tschusev and Zholtovsky, was developed in 1917 – 1924.
We have come across a few private scans of a book “New Moscow” published in 1982. Just after the Revolution of 1917 the new government officials were very keen to change everything around — even more so, they wanted to raze the existing system to the ground and build a new one. So the architects were busy thinking big — and bigger — for the new Soviet country.
My iPad has really got me reading recently. On iBooks almost all of classic literature is free, so I am reading a book by Arthur Conan Doyle — The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Man with the Twisted Lip. There was a passage that struck me as remarkable (or, as Conan Doyle would put it, rather singular):
One night — it was in June 1889 — there came a ring to my bell. … We heard the door open, a few hurried words, and then quick steps upon the linoleum. Our door flew open, and a lady, clad in some dark-coloured stuff, with a black veil, entered the room.
The Soviet movie illustration of this book. 1979. Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Dr Watson.
Really. In June 1881, just like that, Sherlock had linoleum, which was nothing extraordinary at the time — given he was presumed to somewhat struggle financially, and thus his need to share a flat. In the USSR — and this is the point I am making now — linoleum was one of the highest sought-after products until at least early 1980. I wouldn’t believe it myself, but I remember how excited my Mum was when in 199o we managed to “secure” some of this precious material to floor the kitchen in our apartment.
What was the price of those space exploration programmes if linoleum was a scarce commodity at least for a century after it became widespread in the rotten, capitalistic West? You feel my pain?
Chemical photography as we know it today was not invented in a day — one of the stages in developing was the glass negatives photography, when the glass plates were covered with a protein emulsion — invented in 1841, the process was clunky and difficult to reproduce. Those images can now be identified by the uneven coat of emulsion, rough edges, thick glass and maybe even photographer’s thumbprint on it.
All in all, below are the 20+ images from the glass negatives — the shots of Soviet countryside life, shot around 1928. People, harvests, views, tools — whatever the photography aficionado encountered. Considering that this is pre-film, the spirit of these photos is mind blowing. We hope you’ll share our excitement.
A fashionista.
The Griboedov Channel. The bridges St Petersburg is so famous for.
By many, St Petersburg (Leningrad in 1924 – 1991) is often considered to be so beautiful due to its architecture of Italian origin. Quite strange to see these fine buildings embellished by the symbols of the Soviet Era. Let’s take a walk around this fine city in the summer almost 30 years ago.
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.
Gymnasts. Red Square. 1924