Color Photos of Stalin-Era Soviet Union Taken by a US diplomat

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-era-soviet-union-pictures-martin-manhoff/

by Octabrain • 3 years ago

235 214 3 years ago

rarehistoricalphotos.com

liampulles• 3 years ago

From Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: https://www.rferl.org/a/the-manhoff-archive/28359558.html

Manhoff archive: https://manhoffarchive.org/

Archelaos2• 3 years ago

At least some of the photos contain indications that they are post-Stalin-Era, ie. after 5 March 1953.

pastacacioepepe8• 3 years ago

indications

such as?

flohofwoe8• 3 years ago

One of the photos shows an "Agitpunkt" with a date "Sunday, 14th-March 1954".

(interestingly "Agitpunkt" sounds like a German loanword)

eesmith2• 3 years ago

Which agrees with how the text mentions May Day 1953 several times, including in the caption of a picture taken from the new US Embassy building, opened shortly after that May Day.

The "parade in front of the former U.S. Embassy building on Manezhnaya ploshchad, Moscow" would be from the old embassy, but could still be after Stalin's death.

There's also "18 Novinsky bulvar under construction in Moscow" and http://wikimapia.org/12359967/Novinsky-bulvar-18 says it was constructed in 1953.

FWIW, Manhoff was in Russia when Stalin died. "From a balcony with a view to the Kremlin, Major Manhoff shot the only known independent footage of Stalin’s funeral." "U.S. Army Major Martin Manhoff had been in Moscow for more than a year when on March 5, 1953, after several days of ominous reports in the Communist Party mouthpiece Pravda, Josef Stalin died." - https://www.rferl.org/a/manhoff-archive-part-one-stalins-fun...

Many of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty images are the same as those on Rare Historical Photos. That's because at the bottom of the Rare Historical Photos page you'll read "Photo credit: Courtesy of Douglas Smith, via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty / Martin Manhoff’s Archive / Bored Panda / Pinterest".

So if you want more old pictures of Moscow, and video, see the RFE/RL link too. Then go to part 3 and see places outside of Moscow - after Stalin's death, travel was easier.

merek• 3 years ago

Is anyone able to translate the left hand banner of the first image? I tried a free OCR tool but it missed most of it.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OPV-iBDM_es/WN5R0JXjX1I/AAAAAAACn...

ajg4• 3 years ago

Трудящиеся Советского Союза! Ещё теснее сплотимся вокруг коммунистической партии и советского правительства, мобилизуем наши силы и творческую энергию на великое дело построения коммунистического общества в нашей стране. Да здравствует нерушимое единентне партии, правительства и народа!

Workers of the Soviet Union! Let us unite even more closely around the Communist Party and the Soviet government, mobilizing our forces and creative energy for the great task of building a communist society in our country. Long live the unbreakable unity of the party, the government, and the people!

chromoblob• 3 years ago

you typoed "единение"

yaakov34• 3 years ago

Sure, have fun:

"Workers of the Soviet Union! Let us consolidate ourselves even more around the Communist Party and the Soviet Government, mobilize our forces and our creative energy for the great work of building a Communist society in our country! Long live the unbreakable union between Party, Government, and People!"

timaios• 3 years ago

So, where is the "fun"? is it about going to other countries to make "regime" changes? I bet, Yasha, that also your grandparents wanted to build a just and equal society. Do you think that their dream was less noble than the "american dream"?

quotz• 3 years ago

I dont speak russian but I speak another slavic language and know cyrillic. Its more or less about solidarity with communism and unity of the communist peoples or smth like that

CoBE10• 3 years ago

There are many more photos on Manhoff site https://manhoffarchive.org/ https://manhoffarchive.org/around-moscow

willyt• 3 years ago

Some of the buildings look quite decrepit but if you look at photos of Britain or France or Germany from the 50’s you will see many similar buildings that need painted and cleaned.[0] People don’t look like they are dressed in rags. If anything I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos.

I didn’t think they illustrated what it felt like to have secret police looking over your shoulder. If you weren’t in trouble with the state or an upper class westerner I don’t think there was a huge difference in lifestyle between East and West Europe for most people until the late 60’s / early 70’s

Remember state housing was common in Britain as well. E.g 80% of the population of Glasgow lived in state owned housing until the 1980’s.

[O] E.g. look at 1960’s London in the film ‘The Ipcress File’.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

E.g. look at 1960’s London in the film ‘The Ipcress File’.

Look at that film in general. It's brilliant.

mahathu• 3 years ago

E.g 80% of the population of Glasgow lived in state owned housing until the 1980’s.

It's not too late to go back to this utopia!

bradleyjg• 3 years ago

Maybe talk to someone that lived in Glasgow in the 80s before deciding it was a utopia rather than starting with an ideology and choosing your facts to match?

golergka8• 3 years ago

As far as I can tell, all of these photos are taken in Moscow's center. It was (and still is) the wealthiest and most privileged place of all the nation. And Russia is a much more centralized country than US/UK, with bigger wealth disparity which is very correlated with geography, so even if I told you to compare to Manhattan or London of the same time, it would still be apples to oranges.

thriftwy16• 3 years ago

USSR was more centralized than US but definitely less than UK. For starters, it had Leningrad, Kiev and Baku, which were large cosmopolitain cities with their own culture, whereas UK has its second city slot vacant.

fennecfoxy7• 3 years ago

Even then it's hard to compare because different places go through different culture shifts. Since moving to London I've learnt that several time through history that "living in London" has shifted from unpopular to unpopular and vice-versa many times.

Through history sometimes you'd find the extremely well-off people in London, other times they'd not be caught near the place, it seems.

lp4vn2• 3 years ago

Some of the buildings look quite decrepit but if you look at photos of Britain or France or Germany from the 50’s you will see many similar buildings that need painted and cleaned.[0] People don’t look like they are dressed in rags. If anything I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos.

You don't have to go back to the 50's. You can see buildings like that in any european capital today. Moscow from the 50's looks very in line with most european capitals by the way.

I didn’t think they illustrated what it felt like to have secret police looking over your shoulder. If you weren’t in trouble with the state or an upper class westerner I don’t think there was a huge difference in lifestyle between East and West Europe for most people until the late 60’s / early 70’s

Sometimes I have the impression that Hollywood movies gave people a permanent wrong perception about what it really means to live in a dictatorship with a secret police. For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics. That was the case in Latin America at least.

I guess the biggest losers in the Soviet Union were the poor farmers and the industry workers who were forced to work, but you will barely hear about their drama because people don't really identify with them. It's much easier to sell police states from the past as low tech minority report scenarios for an urban middle class even if that was not really the case.

leereeves3• 3 years ago

what it really means to live in a dictatorship with a secret police. For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics.

18 million people were sent to gulags. 1.6 million died.

I doubt they were all "involved in politics" beyond expressing an opinion Stalin didn't allow.

kome• 3 years ago

Sometimes I have the impression that Hollywood movies gave people a permanent wrong perception

yes, people have a very strange image of the soviet union somehow. the 90s have been the worse period by far in the ex-soviet union. before the system was in crisis, but sort of worked for most. and in the 50s, 60s was working fairly well. 70s decline, 80s crisis.

adrian_b3• 3 years ago

I was surprised by the number of cars in some of the photos.

It is very unlikely that any of those cars was owned by an individual.

Most likely all cars were state-owned and they were used by various important-enough officials. During that time in USSR, many of those who made efforts to ascend through the hierarchy of the Communist Party hoped to reach a position high enough to be provided with a Pobeda car. Even if the cars were claimed to be "property of all the people of the USSR" those who received them as an official car frequently did not hesitate to use them for their personal interests. It was one of the main perks of such positions.

Only a couple of decades later, after a few more car factories for cheap cars, like "Lada", started production, cars owned by individuals became common in the USSR.

vkou• 3 years ago

The big losers were the farmers - industrial workers (in the later years) had reasonably good pay for the work they were doing.

The farmers did not. They worked incredible hours, for little pay[1], and had very few options for leaving for a better life in the city.

Access to non-staple consumer goods was, of course, very uneven. The party gets first crack at it, and if anything's left, there's a dograce to pick up the scraps.

[1] Gosh, that part sounds just like being a farmhand today. Weird how farming is universally a shitty job.

bitcurious2• 3 years ago

For the urban middle/upper class it didn't mean much except if you were involved in politics.

This was not the case in the Soviet Union, certainly not under Stalin. The secret police was not only a means of subjugation but a means of extraction - if you had a house, a job, an apartment, or even a wife, that someone in the system wanted, you would be accused, tried, and repressed.

yostrovs• 3 years ago

Analyzing the look of external things near the center of the capital of a country obsessed with centralizing power, leads to the wrong conclusions. At the time of the taking of these pictures, somewhere else in the Soviet Union my mother, who was still a child, developed a number of health conditions due to malnutrition. She is still psychologically scarred from that and has, like many of her generation, a strange relationship with food. Her parents, both educated, lived at the poverty level we usually associate with poor places in Africa. That's how the country lived outside even the possibility of western cameras taking a picture.

huhtenberg2• 3 years ago

I don’t think there was a huge difference in lifestyle between East and West Europe for most people until the late 60’s / early 70’s

For what it's worth, the difference was huge.

At the consumer, daily-grind kind of level the whole country was basically living just above the poverty level. Very few struggled, but the quality of things was shit as was their availability. Those who lived well and had access to the luxuries were still barely on par with the middle Western class. The only way up the ladder was through the party line, which required faking belief in the bright communist future in order to advance. It also restricted what you could and couldn't say, even if the truth was blatantly obvious. Everyone knew that everyone was faking it and that left a profound imprint on generations of people. It wasn't 1984 exactly, but it wasn't that far off either.

yogthos4• 3 years ago

That's just completely false. Here's some actual research comparing quality of life between USSR and the west.

Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth.

* https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.50...

Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:

* https://www.jstor.org/stable/2672986?seq=1

A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amj...

This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.

* https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/

chiph• 3 years ago

People went to extraordinary lengths to escape. Here's a group swimming across the Spree river, with a police boat trying to stop them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7CWajaOx4E

Everyone knew that everyone was faking it

I think that's what ultimately did them in - the fundamental dishonesty in the system as everyone told lies about their productivity. And this happened all the way up the reporting line, so any amount that was claimed above the plan got magnified. By the time the numbers arrived at Gosplan, Soviet farmers were the most productive in the world (despite widespread hunger).

bjourne2• 3 years ago

Moscow isn't representative for Russia and wasn't representative for the Soviet Union. The quality of living of a farmer in Ukraine or an oil-field worker in Turkmenistan would have been significantly lower.

ChuckNorris892• 3 years ago

This needs to be repeated 100 times. People in Moscow and Sankt Petersburg to an extent were the elite and had much better living standards than those from smaller cities. Better loving, better education, better healthcare, less shortages, more access to goods.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

This is still true today... eg. an average n-th generation parisian vs someone who lives in a small village in the south of france... their lifestyles, fashion choices, house design and access to "stuff" (culture,...) differ a lot. "The internet" is a great equalizer, where you don't have to travel half a day to paris to buy something not available elsewhere, but you can order it online, but otherwise a lot of other differences remain.

tomohawk2• 3 years ago

Even today, Russia has the largest percentage of their population without access to indoor plumbing of any industrialized country.

https://www.reddogplumbing.com.au/plumbing-non-existent-russ...

And they still choose to spend all of their money and prestige on a war of aggression against Ukraine.

thriftwy16• 3 years ago

"According to Water Aid, less than a quarter of Russian households have a centralised sewage system (where their toilets empty into a publicly owned treatment system). Of these households, less than 17% are connected to pit toilets (equivalent to Aussie outdoor dunnies), whilst the remainder aren’t connected to any type of sewage system at all."

Sounds like nonsense and also does not seem to relate to the rest of the article.

Whatever real problems Russia might have, toilet access is not one of them.

moltar• 3 years ago

Keep in mind that these photos are from just a bit less than a decade after the WW2 ended. It took a lot out of the region in both the capital and human terms.

Just think how long it took to recover from the 2008 crisis and then multiply that by 10.

eterevsky• 3 years ago

Another great glimpse into the everyday life of the Soviet Union of an earlier period, the 1920s, is the movie "Man with a Movie Camera" from 1929: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZkvjWIEcoU. It is an experimental documentary which is considered a classic of cinema.

psychphysic• 3 years ago

accused of espionage

Surely it should say his "espionage was detected" if he's a spy as per the title?

Although the article does not suggest he is a spy. Perhaps the title should be changed his deportation might have been a sore spot and it seems unfair to label him definitively a spy if it's not so certain.

eesmith2• 3 years ago

https://www.rferl.org/a/manhoff-archive-part-four-spy-or-art...

Spy Or Artist? / Part Four / The timing and location of Martin Manhoff's work suggest spy. The artistic images he left behind suggest something else. ...
There is no direct evidence that Manhoff was a spy during his time in the U.S.S.R. His military records contain no indication that espionage was a formal part of his duties. After the Soviet newspaper Trud alleged that the Americans had been taking note of various infrastructure while traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway, U.S. authorities declined to comment. And to this day U.S. intelligence agencies refuse to discuss the issue.

cubefox6• 3 years ago

I found these interesting:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-86xo22o6jeE/WN5Rye49UvI/AAAAAAACn...

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cc6ZoLe139M/WN5RzS1AhCI/AAAAAAACn...

Woman doing such manual labor would have been highly unusual in Western countries at the time (and still are). They probably were assigned these jobs by the system.

Also curious: Selling ice cream in winter?

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JgJPVcAaAwo/WN5R7tuIlLI/AAAAAAACo...

markdown• 3 years ago

Also curious: Selling ice cream in winter?

I live in a tropical country, and it's quite common to drink hot tea in the heat of summer, to help one cool down.

Perhaps the opposite effect works in the cold regions of the world.

alvarezbjm-hn• 3 years ago

"I live in a tropical country, and it's quite common to drink hot tea in the heat of summer, to help one cool down"

I can vouch for the veracity of that claim. Some members of my family drink hot coffee to cool down. (I drink frosted diet coke)

Klaster_1• 3 years ago

Never heard of "eating cold in winter warms you up" while growing up in Siberia. We had an ice cream factory in my town, which sold cheap and delicious ice cream all year round in very ubiquitous ice cream stands, my neighborhood had four of these. All the kids I knew used to buy ice cream all year round, I remember eating a can when it was -25c outside.

pavel_lishin• 3 years ago

It doesn't. It just tastes good!

ljf• 3 years ago

Really? When travelling in Northern Portugal in the late 90s I saw women manually pulling ploughs on their allotments with their husbands, female builders, rubbish collectors and taxi drivers.

In the 2000s saw very similar sights in Bulgaria - gender roles seem far less fixed than you might imagine if you only watch TV or films.

bboygravity• 3 years ago

Can confirm female garbage collectors (and factory workers and fisher women) are definitely still a thing in 2023 Portugal.

alephnerd2• 3 years ago

Tbf, Portugal in the 1990s wasn't comparable to other countries in Western Europe.

In the 90s, Portugal's HDI was comparable to Poland and a number of other Eastern European states and still is to this day.

Salazar's dictatorship did a severe number on Portugal's development.

And ime, housewife type experiences definetly skew towards those who can afford a household on a single income - especially looking at countries c. 2010-2023 with similar developmental indicators as Portugal and Eastern Europe in the 90s.

MichaelZuo3• 3 years ago

That seems to be the general case for most countries.

It's only in a few countries where there's a large gender difference for outside labourers, ironically it seems to be inversely proportional to how much it's talked about in a given society.

defrost• 3 years ago

The UK and Australia both utilised women in WWII and post WWWII "Land Army" roles to replace the essential manual labor roles on farms and infrastructure vacated by men off at war and left vacant post ware due to death and injury.

AWLA (Australian Women’s Land Army) was formerly disbanded 31 December 1945 but women stayed on as farm workers in some number for a good few years following.

https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/homefront/land_...

https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/awas

petesergeant3• 3 years ago

But in the UK they unreplaced them post war too though; both of my grandmothers in the Land Army were unceremoniously dumped out of it after the war, in preference to Commonwealth immigration

fennecfoxy7• 3 years ago

With the men sent away to go die (for freedom/to fight evil, at least). The same thing is happening to male Ukrainians unfortunately; no choice in the matter (though many of them do want to fight, it's not my belief that one should be forced to just because one has a penis).

cpursley2• 3 years ago

Don’t forget how many men the USSR lost in the war. They went years without even having weekends just to rebuild.

thx-2718• 3 years ago

Also not to be forgotten the USSR lost a lot people beyond just through the war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

reillyse• 3 years ago

Women are more than able to do manual jobs and it’s very common that they do. Strange ideas about gender roles are coloring your perception of what is normal.

petesergeant3• 3 years ago

I think this is still true of the West though. I have spent many, many years in Southeast Asia, and construction sites there are 50% female — I think it’s a stretch to suggest that’s normal in the West though.

That said, certainly in Thailand commercial driving is still very, very male dominated, and job ads will explicitly insist on men; I’d estimate less than 1/100 motorsai drivers I’ve seen were female, and 90% of those were “Tom”[0].

0: Kinda like F2M trans but also it’s own thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_identities_in_Thailan...

cubefox6• 3 years ago

It's very common? I have never seen a single woman repair a street, let alone a female only group.

Strange ideas about gender roles are coloring your perception of what is normal.

It's rather that your perception is off. See for example

https://external-preview.redd.it/RqUXzaQhvPVuJ3Qw6-7hHfsCinn...

Edit: Of course it could have been very common in the Sowjet Union at the time.

fennecfoxy7• 3 years ago

"Very common" not from what I've seen. Would be awesome if they did get more involved, from my perspective.

https://careersmart.org.uk/occupations/equality/which-jobs-d... and plenty of other sources if you search for it. Which is kind of interesting because most searches result in the "gender pay gap" stuff, yet they kind of answer their own question with the stats.

I think there are a couple of outlying issues even these days: 1: "boys clubs" some men trying to get women to not work in certain industries (although sometimes just men working together is perceived as a boys club, in the tech industry I've seen male friendship/camaraderie killed because it's seen as "boys club-y" even though anyone's free to join) 2: women may or may not choose to work in certain industries, even if it's 100% possible for them to do so 3: societal pressure (from both men and women) on women (and men) to fill certain roles/be perceived certain ways in society.

golergka8• 3 years ago

It's early 50s, so most of the Soviet men of generation that would be in their 20s or early 30s are dead.

epolanski2• 3 years ago

Also curious: Selling ice cream in winter?

In Italy ice cream is sold in winter too in all Gelateria.

The good thing about winter ice cream is that it is better, it doesn't melt that fast and artisans tend to do it with more care and quality while in summer there's an offset for quantity.

cubefox6• 3 years ago

I'm Italy it's is generally much warmer though than in Russia.

eduction• 3 years ago

Perhaps partly due to much more severe loss of men during ww2 which at the time of these photos was only ~8 years in the past. But also still trying to catch up to the west in overall wealth (tools in use are fairly crude).

forgotmypw17• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/aYCRZ

nologic013• 3 years ago

It is particularly interesting to track the use of the bright colors. Pre-consumerist societies did not have a marketing sector so everything was more natural color tinted (which to our eyes looks drab).

So if you focus for example on the color red you find it is used extensively in political signaling context (not totally surprising given the location and era :-), to differentiate gender clothing and, in one instance, a religious building.

true_religion2• 3 years ago

This isn’t really true. I think you maybe seeing things from a capitalist perspective.

Usage of bright color is culturally dependent, and also geographically dependent when it comes to sourcing dye.

For example west African counties have always used bright colors in fabric due to culture.

nologic013• 3 years ago

I think you maybe seeing things from a capitalist perspective.

The argument is that marketing has made cities more intensely colored. Its not a value judgement (maybe calm natural colors are better for the soul).

It is also not a universal rule, there are places here and there that have a tradition of painting, e.g., house exteriors in intense colors (these days they are invariably tourist attractions - precisely because they are exceptions).

For example west African counties have always used bright colors in fabric due to culture

Red appears in these photos in clothing context so not sure what this (dis)proves. Sourcing dyes for clothing has been a global trade mainstay from the earliest days of human civilization.

flohofwoe8• 3 years ago

How does this consumerist-society-color-theory explain that car colors have mostly converged to drab black, gray and white though instead of distinguishable 'brand colors'? ;)

midasuni• 3 years ago

Because they sell better. Consumers want to drive grey cars. They won’t go to a shop with a grey sign though.

nologic013• 3 years ago

Cars used in marketing context (advertising some brand) are definitely not gray :-)

People generally like color in some measure and it obviously serves as sending a more intense signal. But in various contexts other factors may prevail (e.g maximizing the market for eventual sale)

The interesting question is when does color get used more extensively (above average) and why.

jen20• 3 years ago

Those are the colours that you can choose without paying extra on most new cars.

dan-robertson2• 3 years ago

I don’t really think your reasoning is correct.

I think it’s more that Victorian fashions (and later) favoured those drab colours. Compare to eg medieval dress which was colourful (though limited by dyes) or the way old (catholic) churches were decorated.

You can see the brightly coloured roofs from Red square for example. It was just taken on an overcast day with a 70+ year old camera. I think part of the drabness is limited by the technology, in the same way that Turner’s paintings are less colourful than those by Van Gogh.

Another thing is the soot in the cities making everything generally dirty and perhaps also causing people to prefer darker outer layers.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

The bright colors made me wonder they are partly a result of the photos having been shot in early Autochrome. I didn't see mention of it in the article but the photos definitely remind me of photos in this YouTube video about the early color (and particularly Autochrome) film processes:

https://youtu.be/QsN2PBhYMPI

flipthefrog• 3 years ago

Autochrome was a much earlier process used around the turn of the century. These are most likely Kodachrome, a legendary slide film from Kodak with a very particular, pleasing color palette, whose colors hardly fade for decades.

asats• 3 years ago

Pre-consumerist russia had incredibly colorful dresses: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=traditional+russian+dress&t=ffab&i...

If anything it's the communists that turned everyone into a gray mass, mostly because you had a very limited number of items of clothing that the state manufactured and you could buy, and the state decided on the color, and second because standing out in any way was at best frowned upon, and at worst dangerous, especially during stalin's times.

baud147258• 3 years ago

Pre-consumerist societies did not have a marketing sector

Soviet Russia totally did have a propaganda sector. And they sure used bright color, though limited by what colors were available.

pastacacioepepe8• 3 years ago

The bias in the writer is so absurd. It's like in order to talk about the enemy you constantly have to remark how ebil they are compared to us. Obviously, we modern liberal democrats possess none of their defects.

This juxtaposition of BBC reporting on DPRK overlaid on the british queen funeral procession[0] brilliantly demonstrates the kind of bias I'm talking about, and how it's more often than not a form of projection of one own issues on others.

A few examples of the bias I'm talking about and how it can as easily be applied to "liberal" societies:

One notable event chronicled in Manhoff’s diary is his participation in the May Day parade of 1953. He vividly describes the grandiosity of the event, with its elaborate displays of military might and the orchestrated enthusiasm of the Soviet people.

It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world.

Literally any parade involves a "choreographed spectacle" as it's always about showcasing power to the world.

Despite the pervasive atmosphere of control and suspicion, Manhoff’s diary also reveals moments of genuine connection and warmth between him and the Soviet citizens.

This pervasive atmosphere is nowhere to be seen in the pictures, but of course they had to remind you that these are the ebil commies. The pictures alone look too human otherwise.

The secret police played a crucial role in maintaining the conformity necessary for the survival of the socialist regime.

Easily reversed: The NSA and FBI played a crucial role in maintaining the conformity necessary for the survival of the capitalist regime.

Understanding life in the Soviet Union during this era requires delving into the intricacies of the state-controlled society, the hardships faced by ordinary citizens, and the pervasive ideology that permeated every aspect of life.

Easily reversed: Understanding life in the USA during this era requires delving into the intricacies of the capital-controlled society, the hardships faced by ordinary citizens, and the pervasive ideology that permeated every aspect of life.

.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9y-jabN5sg

cpursley2• 3 years ago

If you think that’s bad, read or watch any western coverage of anything to do with Russia - pre or post invasion. And I mean topics even far outside the realms of politics or war. It’s being happening since the Great Game geopolitical competition.

petesergeant3• 3 years ago

Interesting to me that the French have no issue at all with military parades, but it would raise a lot of eyebrows in the US, and in the UK any such thing is much more a silly hats and swords affair. I wonder if the French take on the military is more that it’s a tool of the people and in the Anglosphere it’s considered more a tool of the state.

pastacacioepepe8• 3 years ago

Just had a big one yesterday in Italy[0].

Look what a "carefully choreographed spectacle" that is.

.0: https://stream24.ilsole24ore.com/video/italia/2-giugno-migli...

golergka8• 3 years ago

This pervasive atmosphere is nowhere to be seen in the pictures

You could have just asked any survivor of these times.

As yourself: would you write a similar comment about Nazi Germany? May be you would consider it insensitive to the millions of its victims? Well, your comment about USSR is insensitive exactly for the same reasons.

I was born in that country, many members of my family have had to survive through it, and many didn't — just as many others have been killed by the Nazis. And westerners who, out of mistrust to their government, begin to whitewash Soviet union make my blood boil. You're as bad as holocaust deniers.

flohofwoe8• 3 years ago

would you write a similar comment about Nazi Germany?

This is spot on, if anything, the 'grandiose' May-parade photos remind me of 1930's Nazi Germany (and back then - before Germany invaded Poland - there was a similar fascination in some corners of western society with this sort of aesthetics).

epolanski2• 3 years ago

This pervasive atmosphere is nowhere to be seen in the pictures, but of course they had to remind you that these are the ebil commies.

My mother was an avid polish communist born and raised in communist Poland and there isn't a communist country that she didn't travel from east Germany to Uzbekistan and Yugoslavia.

Yes, as you point out, people living in the Soviet Union were just normal people with their everyday problems: the boss, the colleagues, groceries, buying some new tech (e.g. radio), family, health, etc.

I think it is very false to depict secret police as having such a huge role in everyday's Russia life. What was slightly different in Soviet Russia compared to other countries members of the Warsaw Pact is that there was more control on movement.

She and my father too recollect how going to some village 80 miles from Moscow had them stopped and controlled for documents and purpose of their trip like 4 times.

That tended to fade the further you went and increase around major cities like Moscow.

I wouldn't really say secret police had such a huge role in day by day, but the "police state" of control did. Other things that were quite heavily controlled were phone calls. People had all kinds of secret codes when communicating with people abroad because everyone assumed someone was listening and recording.

But I really cannot stress how average Ivan didn't really care or felt all of that control nor cared unless he did something heavily (politically) risky.

I often ask my family that lived in the Warsaw Pact countries, either in Russia, mostly Poland and Ukraine if they didn't feel there was a lack of freedom, etc, and they all said they didn't care nor think about it at all. They were thinking where to go to vacation, what to prepare for lunch or sporting activities, etc.

It should also be noted that all of those countries never experienced a much "different" state of affairs. My grandmother was born in Nazi Germany, her mother under the Haubsburg's Austrian empire, her husband was born in Prussia. And they all were born in a 30 miles radius. There was always a ruler, repression and control.

If anything, for those people, communist regimes brought the most freedom and best standard of lives they ever even dreamed of. It only got in the late 70s and early 80s that the system started tracking, people weren't blind and could see that people in western countries had it much better and kept growing while communist countries capped in their economic and social evolution. New generations didn't even remember the Tsarist or Prussian times, they looked at America, at West Germany at France and thought the situation was bad.

southernplaces7• 3 years ago

The kinds of freedoms that your family members don't remember worrying too much about often only become visible along the edges of behavior. Sure, if you're an average person living an average life of non-political, squared-away activity, you probably won't notice many of these absences. This applied in the USSR as it did in Nazi Germany. But if you do anything to stand out, move against the system or complain outside of official channels, and especially complain very publicly, then you'd quickly notice the repression. In the west, you'd have and still have far, far more leeway for doing all of these things. Insinuating that a country isn't so bad on authoritarian strictures just because someone can visit relatives or go grocery shopping and enjoy a vacation is flatly disingenuous. These aren't the qualifications that really matter for definitions of freedom. They're a blandly complacant sideshow for distracting from what does.

meghan_rain• 3 years ago

looks like cuba today

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Photos: fascinating

Article: dry, empty, trite, derivative. Was it written by an AI? I suspect it was.

egometry• 3 years ago

Yeah, the cadence of the article also felt AI-ey to me.

alphaursaemin• 3 years ago

The picture captioned "Driving down Novinsky bulvar, Moscow" does anyone know the automobile brand from the hood ornament? Search engines spat out Ford Victoria or Fairlane from the '50s (text not image search) but the wings don't quite match.

adrian_b3• 3 years ago

Most cars existing at that time in USSR, except for those belonging to visiting foreigners, were different models of the locally produced "Pobeda".

justsomehnguy2• 3 years ago

https://imgur.com/a/rUgfLbk

neom• 3 years ago

Shame they don't mention the film used, the tonal range here is super! Of course it looks like they were shot well, never the less... The quality of whatever film was used here is great!!

Synaesthesia• 3 years ago

This is the country which the Nazis thought nothing of, they thought it would just collapse when they attacked.

bjourne2• 3 years ago

This period is interesting because of the incorrect perceptions that dominated in the West. The US vs the USSR, two giants of roughly equal strength. Never was that the case and the US was always much more powerful than the USSR. The view was maintained by red scare propaganda, western communists (who exaggerated the benefits of socialist economy), and "shows" the USSR put together to impress. For example, the Afghan war was a much heavier burden on the USSR than the Vietnam war on the US. One can imagine that the West currently holds similarly distorted views of the relative strength of the US vs China.

GartzenDeHaes• 3 years ago

During the Start II treaty compliance process, we also learned that much of the Soviet strategic forces were not operational. I knew someone who was on one of the inspection teams and a Soviet Strategic Forces officer involved let him look in the missile silos at some of the sites, which he wasn't supposed to do. There was standing water at the bottom of the silos. This means that the missiles were not launch ready and were not being maintained.

xgbi• 3 years ago

I like the photo with the trash: except for the bike which is in steel and probably a few bottles in glass, I bet the rest of the f the pile would be completely compostable and gone in 2-3 years.

Today a pile of trash is 50% plastic and will linger around for centuries

washadjeffmad2• 3 years ago

I lived in an older city for a while and met an antiques dealer who turned me on to old maps. "Honey pits", as they called them, were not just informal garbage dumps, but the local latrines!

Today, we separate them, but in the not so distant past (our family's house in West Virginia, not excepted, didn't get telephone or electricity until the 1970s), you just dug a new outhouse when it got full.

When I asked if that meant the rare bottles he dealt in had been fished out of former toilets, the antique dealer just gave me an amused smile.

cubefox6• 3 years ago

Yeah, and glass isn't toxic. It's just a mineral, essentially a rock which is shaped funny.

Plastic degrades to microplastics and goes into the water cycle and the air, where we breathe it in and drink it. There is suspicion that microplastics could contribute to cancer, autism, obesity, and gender dysphoria. Partly directly, partly because some of the chemicals in plastics resemble hormones, changing prenatal hormone levels, affecting the development of kids as they grow up.

This stuff is hard to study academically, as microplastics is everywhere nowadays. Particularly in household dust due to textiles made out of synthetic fibers.

082349872349872• 3 years ago

For a (1970s?) sample of the other direction:

https://diafilmy.su/3646-nyu-york.html

https://diafilmy.su/3665-nyu-york-2.html

(amusingly enough, I'm pretty sure the first picture of the first part is on the other side of the north american continent from New York, but I didn't notice any other obvious howlers)

BLanen• 3 years ago

harsh realities

This looks normal. What typical American spin.

thriftwy16• 3 years ago

"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle"

You don't say?

I visited St. Patrick's day parade in SF and it was definitely choreographed. It's not like people just walked as they see fit. If it isn't it's not a parade.

fennecfoxy7• 3 years ago

I don't think that there has been a single communist nation that hasn't just been a thinly veiled dictatorship.

Color Photos of Stalin-Era Soviet Union Taken by a US diplomat

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