Here is a set of old Soviet photos. Private stories in the whole history of the country.
A street photographer, 1920.
“Do not sing songs. Do not drink vodka. Be quiet”. A fight in the courtyard of a dosshouse, 1895, Mikhail Dmitriev.
The first Russian revolution. Writer Maxim Gorky prods opera singer Feodor Chaliapin with a broom, 1905.
Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1920, Abram Shterenberg.
A carrier waters a horse, 1924.
A lesson of physical culture in the Uzbek school, 1935, George Zelma.
Funny and scary. Young pioneers greet Stalin, 1935, Ivan Shagin.
“We aren’t going to stand still”. A parade of athletes on the Red Square, 1936, Ivan Shagin.
An Uzbek athletes parade? No, these are builders of the Grand Fergana Canal, 1939, Max Alpert.
Trams stopped at Nevsky prospect, people with smiles on their faces ran to a shelter. One of the first bombing of Leningrad, June 24, 1941, Gregory Chertov.
Three months before the occupation of Kharkov by Germans. A service in a city church, 1941, Semen Friedland.
Collective farmers are viewing a crushed German plane, 1944, George Zelma.
The end of the war. The victory salute on the Red Square in Moscow, May 9, 1945, Boris Kudoyarov.
Football players of the Moscow “Dynamo” in London, 1945, Ivan Shagin.
Assembly of cars ZIS-110 at the Moscow automobile factory, 1946, Ivan Shagin.
Marshal Semyon Budyonny in the parade on Red Square, November 7, 1947.
Leningrad prospect near the “Dynamo” stadium before a football match, 1949, Ivan Shagin.
Famous football goalkeeper Alex Khomich, 1950, Michael Botashev.
Stalin died – someone was crying, someone was happy. The funeral of the leader on Red Square, 1953, Peter Chernov.
The topic for the decade – the development of virgin lands. Virgin landers cook dinner at a field camp, 1955, Isaac Tunkel.
An unprecedented event – a week of a French film in Moscow! Gerard Philippe among Muscovites, 1955, Jacob Berliner.
A hunter with a wounded duck, 1956, Nikolay Kozlovsky.
In a Moscow synagogue, 1956, Yakov Berliner.
The Youth Festival. Thousands of festival delegates from all over the world came to the factually closed country. It was fun and unusual ,1957, Ivan Shagin.
“Students at a lesson.” However, if you look closely, the students do a written exercise in Hindi: in the late 50s Russia was a big friend to India, and apparently somewhere children were taught the language of the friendly state. Vladimir Minkevich.
The boys call on a street phone, 1961, Oleg Neelov.
Incomparable Maya Plisetskaya, 1963 , Alexander Tikhanov.
Physics and lyrics – the theme of the early 60s. The famous, iconic image of Vladimir Tarasevich “Duel”, 1963.
Moscow schoolchildren, 1963, Mikhail Ozersky.
Severe occupation weekdays of the Baltic. Vilnius art school students play football after school, 1964.
Miniskirts in Vilnius, 1965, Marius Baranauskas.
Dmitri Shostakovitch, 1965, Mikhail Ozersky.
A fantastic photo of a hunter from Kyrgyzstan, 1966, Edward Wilchynski.
“Prague Spring”. A hard dialogue on the street, 1968, Valery Shustov.
Trainer Stepan Isaakyan (on the right) on the Black Sea beach, 1967, Yuri Somov.
Repair works, 1969, Alexei Shcherbakov.
In the late 60′s Lyudmila Turishcheva was famous to the whole country. At the age of 16, she became the Olympic champion at the Olympic Games 1968 in Mexico. Dmitry Donskoy.
The 70s were flowering times for the Soviet aviation. Alexei Polikashin.
Military pilots at the airfield, 1970.
Missiles before the parade on Red Square on the 7th of November, 1970.
Great doctor Nikolay Amosov, 1973, Max Alpert.
Leonid Brezhnev, 1973, Vladimir Malyshev.
Alla Pugacheva, the lovely singer of Soviet people in the 70s. 1979, Andrew Naydenov.
An elk farm, 1979, Vyacheslav Bobkov.
Friends, 1981, Viktor Chistyakov.
Grandmaster Mikhail Tal, 1982, Dmitry Donskoy.
Restoration works on Mamayev Kurgan, 1986, Vitaly Arutunov.
Soldiers returned from Afghanistan, 1986, Yuri Somov.
The earthquake in Spitak, 1988, Alexander Ma.
“Go away, KGB!” Moscow, August 22, 1991, Alexey Fedoseev.
fantastic photos for real
Brilliant pictures. Love the extra arm on Stalin!
Trainer Stepan Isaakyan (on the right) on the Black Sea beach, 1967, Yuri Somov.
haha
LOL! I was going to post that, but you beat me to it.
Great post, ER! Great photos.
Earthquake in Spitak is a moving photo.
Great photos, fantastic post, thank you.
a bunka here. excellent stuff
Excellent pictures, indeed. Don’t think I have seen any of them before. Thanks!
GReat photos. The earthquake one is terrible
Is there any more information on the picture of the downed German Bf-109? By the shape of the propeller hub and engine cowling that is a E model they would not have been in front line service in 1944 maybe the date for the picture is wrong?
Also like the picture of Brezhnev smiling in the west they almost always shown him looking stern.Love one of the Soviet officers looking back at the young ladies walking past them shows that people are the same everywhere.
stalin died, then next picture is in color! many (most) people must have breathed sigh of relief and been happy.
Thanks ER. Great post.
GOOD OLD BEAUTIFUL DAYS.
WE NEVER EXPERINCE AGAIN THESE MOMENTS ! ! ! !
Comrade Mayakovsky was such a true, intellectual Socialist he couldn’t survive Stalinism. Comrade Gorky was also destroyed by Stalinism (lied to and isolated).
Reading more and more into the Russian Revolution has made one issue very clear to me: that the process was completely undermined by supreme intolerance of dissent of any kind. Krivitsky on Kronstadt:
From Kronstadt during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the sailors of the Baltic Fleet had steamed their cruisers to aid the Communists in capturing Petrograd. Their aid had been decisive… They were the first Communists to realize their mistake and the first to try to correct it. When they saw that Communism meant terror and tyranny, they called for the overthrow of the Communist Government and for a time imperiled it. They were bloodily destroyed or sent into Siberian slavery by Communist troops led in person by the Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, and by Marshal Tukhachevsky, one of whom was later assassinated, the other executed, by the regime they then saved. Krivitsky meant that by the decision to destroy the Kronstadt sailors, and by its cold-blooded action in doing so, Communism had made the choice that changed it from benevolent socialism to malignant fascism.
It was not ALL Stalin’s fault.
Arch, in hindsight we can shake our heads but had you been living then, you would have seen that the Bolsheviks DID have the majority of the people’s support. The Bolsheviks did not slaughter and instill fear in millions in October 1917-1918. The majority of Russians in the North and a significant number in the South supported the Bolsheviks. How did the Reds win? Support from millions of Russians. No revolution or civil war is clean. I would have supported a Bolshevik-Menshevik-SR coalition but that didn’t occur. And no, it was not all Stalin’s fault but it was the STALINISTS’ fault for the dismantling of Soviet Socialism: Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, Zdanov, Budyonny, Voroshilov, Malenkov, Yagoda, Khrushchev, etc.
Well, one thing we agree upon on is that we agree to disagree…
Before critzicung any Revoulution, you have to balance the regime that ruled before.
Hello
All above photos shows History of Russia.These photos shows old beautiful days.I am a photographer and really love these photographs.Each and every photo tells story of the country….
Thank you
I love the last picture, I wonder what happened to that guy? Sibir?
more likely he died in poverty and hunger of “new democratic russia”
>1991
>Sibir
lol
All these pictures reflect real history of the former USSR, not Russia only. Thanks a lot!
Last
You lose.