This blog is about old postcards, book illustration, history and culture of Russia and the Soviet Union. I'm a long time collector, and this blog is 10 years old.
Mountains of Kamchatka, Far East of Russia. Photo by Vsevolod Tarasevich (1979).
Moscow, February 4, 1990. The most massive protest in the history of the Soviet Union. 300 thousand people marched from the Crimean Bridge along the Garden Ring and Gorky Street (now Tverskaya) to the 50th Anniversary of October Square (Manezhnaya). The main demand of the protesters was to abolish Article 6 of the USSR Constitution that declared the leading role of the Communist Party.
August 9 is Tove Jansson’s birthday! The first photo here is the first of her books ever published in the Soviet Union (Moomins and the Comet Chase). The second photo shows all of her books published in the USSR. Most of her works were published in 1991-1992 - after the Soviet era.
You can find a comprehensive list of all Jansson’s book published in Russian here.
Students taking a commuter train for a KSP song festival. Photos by Igor Shelaputin (April 14, 1979)
KSP—club of amateur song—was a whole thing in the Soviet Union. People all over the country got out of the city, spent nights in tents, played guitars, performed and sang together.
Waitresses in the banquet hall of the Kremlin Palace of Congresses during the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Photo by Yu. Sadovnikov (1976)
Drinking kvass from the barrel on the street (USSR, 1970s).
In the summer, local bread factory made kvass and sold it from steel barrels around the city (barrels have a tap). This tradition is still alive in Russia, only barrels are sometimes smaller and made of plastic. Oh and they use single-use plastic cups now instead of glasses.