Calendar of 1964: Us and Them.

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.

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Movie Pro­duc­ers: Sergey Eisen­stein & David W Grifith

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Oleg Popov, The Sad Clown

In about six weeks this remark­able man will cel­e­brate his 80th Birth­day. Who is he? The most pop­u­lar clown of the Soviet Union, also known as the Sun­shine Clown, Oleg Popov is true icon of its own. Born in 1930, he had on of the tough­est upbring­ings ever — yet he man­aged to become one of most recog­nis­able peo­ple of the 20th cen­tury: he also was in Guin­ness Records Book for “being pop­u­lar in the West and in the East”.

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On top of his game. Oleg Popov in 1976.

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We Bet Peter Jackson Never Saw This Hobbit!

A fun post for you today — a series of illus­tra­tions for a Russ­ian edi­tion of The Hob­bit, 1989. The artist Belom­lin­sky por­trayed the char­ac­ters in a funky man­ner. The book was pub­lished at 300,000 copies and it was a suc­cess —  I had itas a kid and it had me scared. I could never get over the fact that some­one needs to leave their won­der­ful cave full of jars with pickles!

See how you like Bilbo, Gan­dalf, Gol­lum, the Trolls, the Big Peo­ple and the Dragon — let us know if it makes you smile.

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The Hob­bit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. The cover.

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Are You Deathproof? Then Listen Up!

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Let those peo­ple cross: respect the pedestrians

As the Soviet Union could pos­si­bly be named the coun­try of pro­pa­ganda, this array of fun edu­ca­tional posters only sup­ports this notion — albeit this time in quite a pos­i­tive sense. A Ukrain­ian author­ship of the road rules and safety in a funky and engag­ing man­ner teaches dri­vers to give way to pedes­tri­ans, respect the zero tol­er­ance limit, reminds of the school zone rules as well as the neces­sity to get the car checked reg­u­larly. Pos­si­bly kitschy, but it does get the mes­sage across. Enjoy!

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Good-Natured Humour Postcards from the 1950s

…and we are back on air after our short break! Sorry it was unan­nounced, but very much needed — and we are delighted to recon­nect with you again. We’ve got lots of great stuff com­ing — from kids sum­mer camps through to some amaz­ing ama­teur pho­tog­ra­phy as well as we shall look at each decade in detail — what 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and so on meant to the Soviet Union, and how it lived dif­fer­ently to the rest of the world. So — thanks for your feed­back and stay tuned!

Just a very light post for today, before we dig any deeper — a very neat col­lec­tion of humor­ous post­cards — great to see some good natured jokes all the way from 1950s and 1960s.

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Future Cham­pi­ons. By G. Valk.

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Military Discharge Handmade Scrap Book and Comics Album

11 365x500 Military Discharge Handmade Scrap Book and Comics Album

You’re in the army now

The com­pul­sory two years of mil­i­tary ser­vice was a rite of pas­sage for every Soviet guy. When one turned eigh­teen — unless for sick­ness or injury — it was time to be called in for the mil­i­tary life — two years in the bar­racks. Usu­ally away from home, this period of time was meant to train and edu­cate the men should there be a war. It included phys­i­cal train­ing, polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, cur­rent affairs, weaponry and so on — a good many posts can be writ­ten on life in the army! Today, how­ever, we want to take a dif­fer­ent look on this sub­ject. The guys usu­ally bonded well and dur­ing their spare time cre­ated so called “Dis­charge Albums” — like scrap­books, they were full of pho­tos, songs lyrics, quick notes from the bud­dies etc. This par­tic­u­lar one has a very neat selec­tion of wee hand drawn episodes of the army realities.

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