Tag Archives: playthings

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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An Old Curiosity Shop: The Museum of Soviet Life

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Ear­lier this year, a unique in its pecu­liar­ity museum was opened in Novosi­birsk, the Siber­ian cap­i­tal of Rus­sia. Pri­vately owned, this museum offers an insight into the days long gone, yet long­ing to be remem­bered: a col­lec­tion of the Soviet every­day arti­facts; sim­ple things that still matter.

Please wel­come our new author Maria Yukhi­menko, who has vis­ited this place and and pre­pared this report exclu­sively for the realussr readers.

DSC 0208 499x334 An Old Curiosity Shop: The Museum of Soviet Life

The USSR Museum: the facade.

The museum occu­pies a 1917 villa and is opened by appoint­ment only. The story goes that a long time ago this build­ing was used as an NKVD head­quar­ters (the KGB pre­de­ces­sor, that is). Well, it cer­tainly feels like it – the atmos­phere is gloomy enough: dark rooms, high stud ceil­ings, squeaky wooden floors.

How­ever, it turns out to have quite a bit of character…

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Funtime with Soviet Playthings

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1236427036 371 500x336 Funtime with Soviet Playthings

Red Army models

Just like chil­dren any­where in the world, the Soviet kids needed toys to play with. Cer­tainly the range of toys designed and pro­duced was an envi­able one, by some stan­dards. How­ever, the aes­thetic appear­ance of toys was not a pri­or­ity for Soviet design­ers — toys had to be func­tional and edu­ca­tional. Any­thing beyond that, like pleas­ant looks, was not con­sid­ered to be impor­tant and, more­over, it was seen as an unnec­es­sary indul­gence. The lack of com­pe­ti­tion from the imports due to the  planned econ­omy and severe short­ages  of qual­ity prod­ucts in the shops actu­ally resulted in the very poor deliv­ery and lim­ited vari­ety of toys. The Soviet par­ents were able to get only these kinds of toys as imported toys were lit­er­ally impos­si­ble to buy.

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