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 I was 7 years old, there was a flower market just like that next to our house. By Erhard K.

Image by Erhard K.

Peterhof, the Russian Versailles, by Erhard K.

Peterhof by Erhard K.

Peterhof by Erhard K.

The Smolny Cathedral, by Erhard K.

The Neva River embankment, Rostral Pillars. Image by Erhard K.

The Dvortsovaya Embankment. Image by Erhard K.

Summer river cruises. By Erhard K.

St Isaac’s Cathedral, the monument of Peter the Great. By Erhard K.

The Winter Palace close up, Dvortsovaya Embankment. By Erhard K.

The Winter Palace, from the Palace Bridge, by Erhard K.

Peter the Great was the one to build this city on the swamps. During the Khruschev Era, the city was further decorated.

Nevsky Avenue, by Erhard K.

The Neva embankment, the Aurora cruiser, by Erhard K.

In 1925, the Aurora cruise ship played a major part in the October Revolution: the city was flaming with revolutionary spirit and so the Revolutionary Committee was created. On 25 October 1917, Aurora refused to carry an order to take off to sea, which sparked the Revolution. At 9.45 p.m. on that date, a blank shot from her forecastle gun signalled the start of the assault on the Winter Palace.

The Church of the Saviour on Blood (Spas na Krovi), by Erhard K.

The main street: Nevsky Prospect (Avenue). By Erhard K.

The Dvortsovaya Square, Aleksandriysky Stolp, by Erhard K.

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2. Best of Winter 2009–2010
3. A Swissman in Moscow: Leonard Gianadda, 1957.

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.

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

1991. Swimming pool “Moscow”, no longer exists.

1968. “Fili” stadium, the opening of Winter Olympics between the dwellers of the nearby apartment blocks

1947. Moscow central.

1960. Rozhdestvensky Boulevard.

1960. The Red Square skiing

1960. The Sverdlov Square.

Late 1940s. Leningradsky Road

1059. A kiosk not far from “Borovitskaya” Metropolitan station.

Mid1950s. Kolomenskoe.

1959. The Kremlin Embankment.

1959. The Sokolniki Park

1959. Gogol Boulevard.

Late 1930s. The very first set of traffic lights in Moscow central.

Late 1940s. Dorogomilovo

1959. The Arbat Square.

1959. A food market, next to the “Dairy” pavillion

1959. Next to National Hotel

1962. Ice hockey match on the Novodevichy Pond.

Close to 1920. The Red Square.

1976. Phys Ed lesson, Mt Poklonnaya

1959. Next to Metropole Hotel.

1959. Next to Metropole Hotel

Late 1950s. The contrasts of Koutuzovsky Street.

1959. Bersenevsky Embankment.

1959. Manezh.

1959. Moscow State University

1959. Yaroslavsky Railway Station.

1957. Petrovka Street

1959. Chistye Prudy Boulevard.

1959. Vasilievsky Slope.

1990. Varvarka Street

These images courtesy of Carl Mydans, Edward Clark, Marc Riboud, Thomas D. Mcavoy. As always, please click on the magnifying icon to see the images in detail. Follow us on twitter and stay tuned. Thanks a bunch!

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3. Best of Winter 2009–2010

A good example of how the ideas to make a new car were born is the story of the factory “Communar”. The Minister of Car Manufacturing made a call to the factory where designers thought over the scheme of a new Ukrainian car and literally said: “I heard you were going to make a spring suspension from the “Volkswagen” but I actually like the Italian Fiat-600”. Shortly the factory commenced the production of ZAZ-965 –nearly the exact copy of the Fiat.

ZAZ-965

By the way, the next model of ZAZ was the replica of German NSU Prinz 4. This car was remembered by the nicknames “Soap Box” and “Big-eared”.

The car for the middle class which replaced “Pobeda” was labelled  in the honour of the great Russian river “Volga”. The design of the car was very much identical to the design of Ford Mainline, 1954, purchased by GAZ as a pattern alongside with Chevrolet Belair and Plymouth Savoy. Even before the new car was put into production, the popular Soviet magazine “Ogoniok” awkwardly published pictures of these three cars with an arrogant headline: “New Soviet cars for the middle class”.

Volga

Despite the popularity of Volkswagen around the world their Soviet copy was not really popular among the consumers. To produce another mass car the Soviet government signed the  contract with Italian Fiat. The capacity of the factory allowed to produce about five thousands cars per year.

At the time, Leonid Brezhnev was ruling the country: he was passionate about cars and racing. In 1965 he got an exclusive American Lincoln Continental sent to USSR right from the Car Exhibition in New York.  The car was purchased by the Soviet Ambassador and was built by the company Lehman & Peterson. This had brought stretch limousines into the fashion.  Lincoln was sent to ZIL where the engineers made a copy which was sent to production by the anniversary of the Great October Socialistic Revolution in 1967.  No doubt, the original Lincoln was much more elegant and graceful than its replica ZIL-114.  Nevertheless, the new Soviet limo was not that bad.  In early 1970s the car was redesigned, based on another American sample. A Cadillac Fleetwood 75 was turned into a ZIL-115 — to serve the aged and weak-minded Soviet leader.

Right up to the collapse of the USSR the Soviet car industry used the same procedure of shameless copying. In order to build “Moskvich-1241″, the engineers slightly disfigured Chrysler 1501. Famous “Zhiguli” was copied from Nissan Sunny 1978 although later they were slightly modernized by the engineers of Porsche.

Probably, “Niva” were the only exception – it was made in a way to make people to cry. That car was ‘too-Russian’ to be good.

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During the Soviet times fashion was first and foremost, an instrument of propaganda of hard work attitudes and education of good taste. Therefore the way people were dressed was very strictly regulated – just like anything else, fashion had to be “planned” and “approved”.

Officially the most popular designs were the classic ones. Not only were they set out to promote the good taste of the clean cut and reserved elegance, it was also a very convenient way of production:  once designed and approved, the classic dresses and suits were not as responsive to changes in the trends and hence inexpensive to maintain. The often boring-looking pieces of clothing were labelled as never going out of fashion and promoted as “eternally youthful”.

Eternally youthful, isn’t it?

The Soviet era catwalk model — not too skinny, is she? C1960.

Such clothes were meant to also have a disciplinary influence over the regular folk, as they would set the “right” attitudes and lines of behaviour. That, in 1960s, had developed into the state regulations over the school uniform, which was standartised across the country.

School boys

But back to the adults now. Generally, due to the lack of new designs and the limited stocks of the department stores, most Soviet people had more than a humble wardrobe, compared to their Western counterparts. Usually it consisted of two parts: the winter one (had to be solid, warm and inextricably expensive):

Pupils and mother with child

Another queue. Even winters never stopped the Russians from queuing up.

… and the summer wardrobe. Presumably these ones are dressed up for the occasion.

A group of graduating highschool students celebrate graduation by singing and dancing in the Red Square.

A good half of summer clothes anyone owned could have been handmade.

Oh, DIY was very popular in the USSR. Literally everybody would dream of owning a sewing machine and then the patterns of standardised garments would be shared among many and treasured for generations. The apt ones would make everything, from aprons (pictured) to bras and swimsuits. Note: this is not a modern-day pattern collection, those Soviet ones were scaled down so you’d have to reconstruct it to the real size.

Oh well, no wonder every second Soviet was an engineer.

The most suffered were, understandably, the younger ones, as their fashion ambitions and desires often went unnoticed. Since in the late 1960s it was decided that jeans are unwelcome in the USSR, the practicality and comfort of the denim garments were outlawed. However, the denim failed to become ostracised – quite to the contrary, it was well sought after: often a pair of jeans could cost as much a month’s salary.

This is obviously a later photograph, when the regulations were loosened and the “fashion neighbourhood watch” became less vigilant. Scary, really.

The younger ones

As the Iron Curtain was lifting, the Western ways of dressing were getting more exposure through the movies and tourists. As you can see the envious faces on the background, foreigners did stand out.

Foreigners in Moscow

The funniest thing is that the Soviet fashion is very hard to break into time periods. Apart from separating the pre-war era fashion from the post war (the later one being non-existent), the bulk of it stretches for over 40 years right up to the 90s. Since then fashion has taken the form of a sexual competition — just like anywhere else in the developed world.

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1. British Fashion in Moscow, June 1956.
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In the Soviet times there was a great shortage of all consumer products. Clothes or food were no exception. In order to buy some bread people were ready to spend hours and hours queuing up.

1983. A long queue into the footwear store. The length of the line implies that people would expect to buy imported footwear  which was of better quality and fashioncompared with the Soviet stuff.

Queue in front of footwear store

(Year unknown). Long queue  in front of the store with a simple signboard “Bread”. It actually meant that there was nothing else sold in there apart from the bread.

Queue in front of the Bakery

(Year unknown). People force their way into a liquor store (Rus: “Vino”). Probably it is happening right after the lunch break so the alcohol could be consumed after work.

Liquor Store

And one more queue…

Source: germanych.livejournal.com (in Russian)

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