Mil­i­tary Dis­charge Hand­made Scrap Book and Comics Album

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. 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.

Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbe­liev­able Way to Escape the Iron Curtain

By job he was an oceanog­ra­pher, by heart he was a dreamer, by nation­al­ity he was a cit­i­zen of the planet Earth — in short, he was an extra­or­di­nary guy. Yet his per­sonal file in the USSR was stamped as “not wor­thy of an exit visa” so he was not allowed to leave the coun­try, even if it was for a hol­i­day. So in Decem­ber, 1974 he jumped a cruise boat “The Soviet Union” off the coast of the Philip­pines islands — and he swam to freedom.With no food or drink, no swim­ming equip­ment apart from flips and gog­gles, he swam to the shores about a hun­dred kilo­me­ters for three days — com­pletely alone at sea.

A Rough Guide to Moscow from the Daugh­ter of the Amer­i­can Embassador

Joseph E. Davies was the sec­ond Ambas­sador to rep­re­sent the United States in the Soviet Union in 1937 – 1938. His daugh­ter, the twenty years old Emlen Knight Davies, took some pic­tures of the sur­round­ings. These images, cour­tesy of her pri­vate col­lec­tion, were on dis­play in Moscow for the anniver­sary of the Spaso House — the offi­cial diplo­matic residence.

So! What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

The Pro­fes­sional Ori­en­ta­tion in the USSR meant, first and fore­most, a process of advis­ing the youth on the future career choices. A group of teach­ers and fresh grad­u­ates of a col­lege would go to high schools to give talks to school kids in order to deliver the first hand infor­ma­tion on voca­tional choices. Every occu­pa­tion is regarded highly in the Soviet Union  — well, this slo­gan turned out to be quite untruthful.

Moscow Win­ters, Frag­ments of the 20^th Century.

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.

Labour Riots in Novocherkassk: Soviet ‘Tiananmen’

Novocherkassk is a small town in the South of Rus­sia, also known as the unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of the Cos­sacks, the Slavic mil­i­tary com­mu­nity. Unfor­tu­nately this town was the place of a huge tragedy, when in 1962 the civil­ian demon­stra­tion was opened fire on.

Russ­ian Ice Cream In Win­ter — Bring It On!

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.

Novosi­birsk: Then and Now.

The unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of Siberia, the city of Novosi­birsk was founded in 1893 with the ini­tial pop­u­la­tion of only 8,000 peo­ple. By the time of the Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917,  it grew to the pop­u­la­tion size of 80,000. The name, lit­er­ally mean­ing New Siber­ian City, was adopted in 1926 — and since then, the town had become to grow and prosper.

The Fear­some Three­some – Lenin and His Lovebirds

The offi­cial his­tory often misses a very impor­tant and inter­est­ing point in the course of the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion – not every­body knows that Vladimir Lenin, a for­mi­da­ble mind behind the Great Octo­ber Patri­otic Rev­o­lu­tion and the leader of all com­mu­nists, had less than straight­for­ward love life – apart from a wife, he had a mis­tress – and not only that, these two women knew each other and got on very well!

21+ Depress­ing Pho­tos of Post-Revolutionary Rus­sia by Arkady Shaikhet

When the new Soviet coun­try was born, the peo­ple were promised a won­der­ful future under the social­ism — just a few more years, the bill­boards boasted — and we’ll live in a glo­ri­ous state. How­ever the early days were more than gloomy: the  run­down econ­omy, dis­ori­ented soci­ety, the reek of fear and uncer­tainty — and that clearly can be seen through the pho­tos of a promi­nent Soviet pho­tog­ra­pher Arkady Shaikhet.

Related posts:

1. Best of Fall 2009
2. Russ­ian Ice Cream In Win­ter  —  Bring It On!
3. A Glance at the Soviet Lifestyle, Cap­tured by Marc Riboud.
4. 21+ Depress­ing Pho­tos of Post-Revolutionary Rus­sia by Arkady Shaikhet
5. May, 1^st: Soviet Labour Day.