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.

That’s why, when across the globe beauty con­tests became pop­u­lar and wide­spread after the Sec­ond World War, the USSR had its ban on such events. Until 1989, when the very first beauty con­test took place in Moscow — try­ing to find the pret­ti­est of them all.

Need­less to say, the pub­lic inter­est and antic­i­pa­tion for the per­for­mance were huge: the tick­ets for the show never came on sale, but were dis­trib­uted only to the peo­ple “in the know”. At the same time the ordi­nary peo­ple could enjoy the show live broad­cast on the TV dur­ing the six long hours (and that’s the run­ning time, as TV com­mer­cials did not exist in the USSR back then). The final­ist of the com­pe­ti­tion was a 16 years old school­girl from Moscow Julia Suchanova. Julia was granted theright to par­tic­i­pate fur­ther in “Miss World”  but her par­ents refused point-blank to sign the con­tract on her behalf. When the young beauty came of age she moved to the USA where she started the mod­el­ling career and later owned a com­pany spe­cial­is­ing on the sport equipment.

The inter­est for the sec­ond beauty pageant was just as huge as to the first one. Con­tenders for the title “Miss USSR — 1990” were selected from over the coun­try. The win­ner was the 17 years old Maria Kezha from Belorussia.

The beauty pageant “Miss USSR” took place only twice as in 1991 the USSR col­lapsed. Nev­er­the­less, the com­pe­ti­tion resus­ci­tated under the new name “Miss Rus­sia” in 1993. Sadly, just like Yulia Sukhanova, Maria never pur­sued the mod­el­ling career to the full. She got mar­ried shortly after the con­test and later emi­grated to Germany.

It can­not be helped to note that the first “offi­cially” recog­nised Soviet beauty by the West was the win­ner of pageant “Moscow Beauty” Masha Kalin­ina from Moscow in 1988. Masha was in good graces with the des­tiny also after the com­pe­ti­tion -  she con­tin­ued to work as a model for the well-known Ger­many Com­pany “Burda-Moden”. Later Masha enrolled into the act­ing school in Hol­ly­wood where all her expenses were paid by an elderly Amer­i­can cou­ple who she met at the recep­tion at the White House, where she was invited by George Bush-Sr.  Visit Masha’s offi­cial web­site.

Have a look at this 26 min inter­view with Masha for Rus­sia Today. What does it take to be one of these girls and how do you obtain a crown, and, most impor­tantly, what hap­pens next.

Related posts:

1. A Glance at the Soviet Lifestyle, Cap­tured by Marc Riboud.
2. More pic­tures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud
3. Pho­tos of Moscow and Sur­round­ings by Marc Riboud, 1960s
4. Fash­ion in the USSR. DIY.
5. A Trip Around the USSR: Leningrad 1972