From now on each Wednes­day Real USSR will try to bring you enter­tain­ing rather than infor­ma­tive posts – let us know how you like it.

Sur­real NKVD: Catch me if you can

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.

There is a Russ­ian movie about those times – “Burnt By The Sun” (Utom­len­nye Sol­ncem), which in 1994 won the Acad­emy Awards as the best for­eign lan­guage film (imdb rat­ing 7.9÷10). The story is about love in the times of polit­i­cal tur­moil, the love that sur­vives all fears of purges and uncer­tainty. Sur­pris­ingly enough, peo­ple still man­aged to try and have a few laughs dur­ing those harsh times.

The method is known as “dou­ble expo­sure”, when the aper­ture opens twice but the photo ele­ment stays in place. You might remem­ber the prin­ci­ple from the days when you had a film cam­era and for­got to rewind the film. Neat, really.

Play­ing cards

Close-up: Pack of cigarettes

Freeze!

Details: Toy pistol

Another one?

Details: Famous in those days vodka ‘Zubrowka’

Would you like a cup of tea?

Close-up: Tea pot

Lis­ten­ing to the music

Got a lighter?

Hard to pick one

After­party

All by myself!

A card game

Chess was very pop­u­lar in Soviet Russia

Danc­ing

A band

Men are all the same

Embroi­der­ing

Check and mate

We would appre­ci­ate your com­ments, back­links and retweets on this weirdly beau­ti­ful pieces of photography.

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Related posts:

1. Enthu­si­as­tic Pho­tog­ra­phy from Soviet Rus­sia, 1950s  —  1960s.
2. A Glance at the Soviet Lifestyle, Cap­tured by Marc Riboud.
3. The 50^th Anniver­sary of the Soviet Union in Old Amer­i­can Mags
4. The Beauty of a Soviet Body
5. Pho­tos of Moscow and Sur­round­ings by Marc Riboud, 1960s