Tag Archives: in the streets

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.

0 1f292 1f8e2207 XL 500x331 Moscow Winters, Fragments of the 20th Century.

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

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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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Enthusiastic Photography from Soviet Russia, 1950s — 1960s.

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Just a very pleas­ant col­lec­tion of pho­tos from a pri­vate fam­ily archive. All pho­tos were taken in 1950s — 1960s, in the streets of Yaroslavl, a small town not far from Moscow. Sim­ple things — out­door sports, fish­ing, swim­ming, enjoy­ing the music or spend­ing time with the fam­ily — these 38 pho­tos are rel­ish­ing small plea­sures and bring­ing a smile to a face.

As always, click on the mag­ni­fy­ing glass icon to see the pho­tos in detail. All pho­tos are cour­tesy of Sergey Kulikov, a grand­dad of one of our con­trib­u­tors. He is 86 years old now, and pho­tog­ra­phy has been his hobby all along. Let us know which ones you like — or if you have pho­tos in your fam­ily archive which you’d like to share.

1 500x329 Enthusiastic Photography from Soviet Russia, 1950s 1960s.

Wait­ing for the play off.

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Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

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serov1918 provozlashenie sov vlasti 376x500 Happy Birthday Dear USSR! The Great October Socialist Revolution. November 7th 1917.

The Announce­ment of the Soviet Gov­ern­ment. By Vladimir Serov, 1918.

The Soviet Union was offi­cially cre­ated in 1922, how­ever, if there was a date which could be con­sid­ered as a birth­day of the USSR, that would have had to be Novem­ber 7th of 1917  — this was the day when in St Peters­burg the Bol­she­viks — the organ­ised mil­i­tary rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, who later became the Com­mu­nist Party of the USSR — came to power. The Russ­ian Pro­vi­sional Gov­ern­ment which were the head of the coun­try after the Tsar Nicholas II had resigned, was over­thrown and the Sovi­ets, tak­ing the gov­ern­ment build­ings one by one, had finally cap­tured the town.

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Technological Advance of the Classic Rocking Horse

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Wooden Toys Horse On Wheels1 500x375 Technological Advance of the Classic Rocking Horse

The Wooden Horse on Wheels

This myth­i­cal crea­ture of the Soviet kids’ child­hood, some­thing between a Cen­taur and a bicycle, has come into being within a Soviet man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try dri­ven by an over­pow­er­ing desire to “give all the best” to chil­dren. Most bril­liant minds of the Soviet sci­en­tists were work­ing on the cre­ation of the ideal cross-breed. The mutant was offi­cially labeled a “Pedal Horse” and its large-volume pro­duc­tion was finally kick-started by the end of 1950s. It became very pop­u­lar quite fast as it was really excit­ing to own a “real” horse that could move around in the street, a horse more real than a wooden rock­ing horse.

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Christian Dior in Moscow: a Fleeting Sense of Happiness

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19 500x329 Christian Dior in Moscow: a Fleeting Sense of Happiness

1959. The offi­cial photo shoot, images cour­tesy of LIFE archives (Howard Sochurek)

The Khrushchev’s Thaw was to bring change to many aspects of the Soviet life, and fash­ion was  one of them. The deci­sion to allow the Soviet fash­ion design­ers to learn off their French coun­ter­parts was made as high as at the gov­ern­ment level, which implic­itly put fash­ion above pol­i­tics or inter­na­tional ide­o­log­i­cal regimes. The colour of the Soviet Union, a generic grey, was about to be mixed up with the mot­ley and lithe palette of the French fashion.

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