Back in the USSR

Soviet TV Commercials from my youth

Stakhanovite — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 12:19:41 +0000

I learned that TV commercials are very bad in capitalist countries as well as communist countries. When I was young the TV adverts looked like this. My family was ‘lucky’ to have this kind of lamp provided by the Soviet state, although the button didn’t work so good afater some time.

Aeroflot was the world’s sexiest airline in the 1960s

Stakhanovite — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 12:11:51 +0000

I travelled many times on Aeroflot in my youth and I don’t remember any of these girls. I just remember frightening clunky noises from engines.

Soviet Life magazine: October, 1984

Stakhanovite — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 07:01:31 +0000

Download (pdf format – 140mb)

Contents:

SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY

2 UZBEKISTAN SIXTY YEARS OF PROGRESS
Interview with Inamdzhan Usmankhodzhayev
4 SURKHAN: THE VALLEY REBORN
by Eparid Khodzhayev

COMMENTARY

49 SOVIET STAND ON THE PROHIBITION OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS
by Lev Semeiko
54 BRINGING UP CHILDREN
by Simon Soloveichik

ECONOMY AND SCIENCE

15 THE MAGICAL BIP-BIP OF THE FIRST SPUTNIK
by Andrei Tarasov
16 NIKOLAI TIKHONOV: THE ONLY THING WE NEED IS PEACE
VIas Viktorov Reviews Nikolai Tikhonov’s Book
21 THREE HOURS AND THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES IN THE LIFE OF SVETLANA SAVITSKAYA

PEOPLE

12 “IT’S A CHALLENGE TO CONDUCT AN ORCHESTRA”
by Vladimir Mizhiritsky
56 DIALOGUE ON THE KITCHEN PARADOXES
by Lorisa Kuznetsova and Zoya Yankova

PEACE

10 THE DICTATES OF CONSCIENCE
by Sergei Kharchenko
55 INTERNATIONAL PHOTO EXHIBIT PEACE TO THE WORLD” LITERATURE

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

8 DOCUMENTARY: FIFTY YEARS OF MY LIFE
by Malik Kayumov
55 MEETING OLD FRIENDS AGAIN
by Drnitri Urnov
57 A WRITER MUST LIVE WHERE SHE WAS BORN
by Yelena Zonina
60 THINGS CULTURAL

SOVIET-AMERICAN CONTACTS

40 “MAY WE ALWAYS HAVE PEACE AND WORK TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE IT”
by Eduard Alesin
40 ARTISTS MUST UNITE IN THEIR EFFORTS FOR PEACE
by Yuri Katsnelson
41 DR. SIDNEY ALEXANDER: “NUCLEAR WAR HAS NO TREATMENT”
by Anna Nikolayeva

SPORTS

52 SIX METERS ISN’T REALLY THAT MUCH
by Nikito Shevelkov

MISCELLANEOUS

42 AROUND THE COUNTRY

Soviet Life magazine: August, 1983

Stakhanovite — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:58:10 +0000

Download (pdf format – 200mb)

Contents:

2000TH ANNIVERSARY OF TASHKENT

II WHERE THE CITY STARTED FROM
by Ergosh Nabiyev
2 TASHKENT IS 2000 YEARS OLD AND STAYS YOUNG
Interview with Sharof Rashidov
8 EARTHQUAKE AND REVIVAL
by Fyodor Ovechkin
26 BLUE SHIPS
by Utkir Abdullayev
30 THE FIRST IN CENTRAL ASIA
by Victor Rudenko
46 IN THE SKY OVER TASHKENT
by Shokhabutdrn Zainutdinov
48 EXPRESS SERVICE BELOW GROUND
by Abdullo Sobirov
55 THE RELIGIOUS CENTER OF MUSLIMS IN THE USSR
by Vladimir Mizbiritsky

COMMENTARY

19 STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
Excerpt from the book How to Avert the Threat to Europe
24 SOVIET ECONOMY NEWS, EVENTS, PROBLEMS
by Gennadi F’isarevsky

SOVIET PEOPLE

6 VICTORY DAY
by Bakhtiyar Turayev
1 2 A WEDDING IN TASHKENT
by Gao Korimov
20 ACADEMICIAN, A PEASANT’S SON
by Omar Fergani
58 VISITING A CHAIKHANA
by Solim Akhunov
60 CHOOSE, TASTE AND BUY
by Tursun Salimov
64 THE STORY OF A BOXER
by Eduard Avanesov

ECONOMY AND SCIENCE

15 ALL-ELECTRONIC TV WAS TESTED HERE IN 1928
by Bonn Alexeyev
40 HARNESSING THE SUN

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

38 MOVIE STARS MEET IN TASHKENT
by Boris Berman
42 LET’S SMOKE THE PIPE OF PEACE
by Makhmud Yunusov
45 TASHKENT, SEATTLE’S SISTER CITY
63 OPEN LETTER TO THE REVEREND JOSEPH T. BOULET
by Vladlen Kuznetsov

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

51 EVERYBODY KNOWS TAMARA
57 THE HUNDRED ROLES OF SHUKUR BURKHANOV

Soviet arcade games of the 1980s (#2)

Stakhanovite — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:37:34 +0000

I know you enjoyed ‘Highway‘, so here is another 1980s era arcade game. This game was called ‘The seaman fight’(моряком бой). This was an incredibly popular game because of the the interface was designed so that you felt like you were looking out of the submarine telescope.

You can now enjoy the chance to play this Soviet classic here.

The first Soviet McDonald’s

Stakhanovite — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:00:03 +0000

January 31, 1990 was a sad day for me. The first Soviet McDonald’s opened in Moscow. At the time it was the largest McDonald’s in the world. The Big Mak, kartofel-fries and koktel cost about 5.5 rubles, which was about twice the cost of a meal in a state-run cafeteria at that time. This was approximately half a days wage for most people.

For political reasons, McDonald’s Canada was responsible for the opening, with no clear input from the U.S. company. In fact, a wall display inside the restaurant showed only the Canadian and Soviet flags. At the time the Soviet economy was grinding to a halt, so to solve supply problems, the company created its own supply chain, including farms, within the USSR. This was an incredibly revolutionary thing that would have been unthinkable a decade before. Unlike other foreign investments at the time, the restaurant accepted rubles, not dollars, and was therefore extremely popular with regular Soviet citizens, with waiting lines of several hours common in its early days.

When the McDonald’s Soviet adventure began, it had no way to convert the rubles that customers paid for hamburgers into another currency. The company therefore spent the rubles buying farmland and constructing office towers, a distribution center and a factory in the Moscow suburbs, which became known as McComplex. By 1993, the company had built its first office building, just two blocks from the Kremlin. Tenants like Coca-Cola and Upjohn moved in. The arrival of McDonald’s in Moscow to me symbolized the end of the Cold War. Progress?

Also around the same time, Pepsi Cola started being sold. It was the only foreign soft drink: there were no other cola or other soft drinks of any kind. The number of outlets selling the drink was also limited, because of this there were long lines.

Soviet Life magazine: February, 1969

Stakhanovite — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:34:14 +0000

Download (pdf format – 200mb)

Contents:

SOVIET PEOPLE

1 HOBBY? NO, SECOND PROFESSION
by Myuda Derevyankina
14 THE THREE: COMPOSER, SKIPPER, CHEMIST
16 WOULD D’ARTAGNAN RETURN?
by Leonid Likhodeyev
38 SEA DOGS RETIRED
by Marina Khachaurova
60 … AND THE FRIEND OF THE STEPPES, THE KALMYK
by Yuri Rosenbium

ECONOMY AND SCIENCE

9 ONE LANGUAGE FOR SCIENCE
by Aksel Berg, Dmitri Armand, Yevgeni Bokarev
36 INERT OR LIFE-GIVING?
by Eleonora Gorbunova
37 VSEVOLOD STOLETOV: FROM HYPOTHESIS TO DISCOVERY

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS

11 VARDZIA
30 THE BOLSHOI THEATER, BUT IN SIBERIA
by Nafalya Lagina
42 FAME CAME LATE TO NIKO PIROSMANI
by Konsfantin Paustovsky
50 THE EARTH GROANS BEYOND THIS WALL
by Irma Kalitenko
54 SCHOOL LUNCH IN ’43
by Vasili Aksyonov

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

6 NEW LAW ON MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY
by Israel Marfkoyich and Yelena Rozanova
22 LEISURE TIME IN THE USSR AND THE USA
by Anna Pusep and Vladimir Turcherrko

INTERNATIONAL CONTACTS

24 ROOSEVELT-LITVINOV: MAN TO MAN TALK
by Zinovi Sheinis
27 LENIN AND LITVINOV: FIRST STEPS OF SOVIET DIPLOMACY

RECREATION AND SPORTS

18 STUDENTS’ WINTER VACATION
48 BORIS SPASSKY: TWO-TIME BIDDER FOR WORLD CHESS CROWN
by Yevcjeni Bebchuk
62 BAD DAY FOR A WILD BOAR
by Alexander Chernonin

Soviet arcade games of the 1980s (#1)

Stakhanovite — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:46:32 +0000

This was a 1980s era arcade game. It was fabulously known as ‘Educational driving’(Учебная езда). On the side of the game you can also see the word ‘Highway‘ (Магистраль). I never got to play the game, but it is very similar to late 1970s American Atari games like ‘Night driver‘.

You can now enjoy the chance to play this Soviet classic here.

Pre-Revolution Russia in colour

Stakhanovite — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:59:50 +0000

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorskii (Серге́й Миха́йлович Проку́дин-Го́рский) was a Russian chemist and photographer, best known for his pioneering colour photography from early 20th Century Russia. Some time around 1905, Prokudin-Gorskii created a plan to use the emerging technology in colour photography to systematically document the Russian Empire. Through this ambitious project, his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia about the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the Russian Empire.

He set off with a specially equipped railroad-car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II and with special permits that granted him access to restricted areas, as well as cooperation from the Empire’s bureaucracy, Prokudin-Gorskii thus documented the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1915. His photographs offer a vivid portrait of a lost world on the eve of World War I and the oncoming Russian Revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of this emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia’s sundry population.

Before leaving Russia, Prokudin-Gorskii’s personal inventory is estimated to have been about 3500 negatives. While leaving the country and attempting to export all his photographic material, about half of the photos were confiscated by Russian authorities for containing material that was strategically sensitive for war-time Russia. According to Prokudin-Gorskii’s notes, the photos that he left behind were not of interest to the general public. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s negatives were merely given away, while some he hid on his departure. He and his family eventually settled in Paris. Apart from those in the possession of the American Library of Congress collection, no other examples of his work have yet been found.

By the time Prokudin-Gorskii’s death, the tsar and his family had long since been executed during the Russian Revolution, and Communist rule had been established over what was once the Russian Empire. The surviving boxes of photo albums and fragile glass plates the negatives were recorded on were finally stored in the basement of a Parisian apartment building, and the family was worried about their getting damaged. The United States Library of Congress purchased the material from Prokudin-Gorskii’s heirs in 1948 for $3500–$5000 on the initiative of a researcher inquiring into their whereabouts.

The twilight of the Russia Empire was a time of incredible transition in the country. With the onset of industrialization, class lines were starting to blur, and dissatisfaction with the tsar was spreading. Capturing the ethos of that moment was Prokudin-Gorskii, shooting colour photos (a technology still in its infancy) through a method of his own invention. He took three consecutive photographs of his subjects with three separate filters – red, green, and blue – and then combined them into full-color projections, thereby capturing a huge range of architecture, infrastructure, and people. Here are some of the more stunning examples of his work.