Cold Clone War

Shpagin Rifle VS Suomi Rifle (Finland)

Accord­ing to the Soviet pro­pa­ganda, every­thing which wasn’t invented by the ancient Chi­nese, was invented by the Soviet engi­neers in the USSR. Ah, they were said to invent the best weaponry, the best tanks and the best cars.

Experimental Soviet Homemade Photography

Check and mate

These pho­tos are from a pri­vate col­lec­tion of a typ­i­cal Moscow fam­ily. They are dated back to 1936 – 1940 -  the years known as the  period of Stalin’s most cruel polit­i­cal repres­sions.  Sev­eral mil­lion peo­ple are said to be affected: sen­tenced, shot or sent off to labour camps.

The Very First Miss USSR

Yulia — the first Miss USSR, 1989, Gettyimage

The very though of women com­pet­ing for the title of the most beau­ti­ful was a fairly adver­sar­ial con­cept for the Soviet ide­ol­ogy. A woman, first and fore­most, was a worker, an achiever, a mother and a wife, and nobody would con­sider judg­ing one on the phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness — let alone allow women spend the valu­able time and money on point­less fash­ion, cos­met­ics and hair styling.

Wanted: Austronauts. Pay: Average. Perks: World Fame.

Paper Soldier.

In the late 1950s, when the Cold War between the USSR and the USA was at its peak, the next step of flex­ing the power mus­cle was the space explo­ration. Since both coun­tries were try­ing really hard to outdo each other, it was only a mat­ter of time before one would take over.

The way it hap­pened, the USSR got ahead. When in April 1961 the first man went into the outer space and orbited the Earth, the world went berserk over the new, well, horizons.

But what took him so long?

The Soviet Video Arcade Machines

Soviet Slot Machines

While the chil­dren from Europe and USA used to play with Mickey Mouse and Don­ald Duck, their Soviet coun­ter­parts enjoyed the char­ac­ters of Souzmultfilm’s car­toons – the ana­logues of the Amer­i­can Tom and Jerry – the Hare and the Wolf. The Soviet slot machines were an inte­gral part of enter­tain­ment in the USSR. For an ordi­nary Soviet cit­i­zen these slot machines were insep­a­ra­bly linked to walks with par­ents and friends in the amuse­ment parks,  eat­ing ice-cream and candy floss, and feed­ing end­less coins to the slots to get some great enter­tain­ment value.

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Related posts:

1. The Soviet Video Arcade Machines
2. Summer in Gorky Park, Moscow of late 1960s
3. A Swissman in Moscow: Leonard Gianadda, 1957.