i have editorialized the title here just a bit because this is but one facet of what the soviet union was like and, just as relying purely on economic data sometimes doesn't tell the whole story...
i have editorialized the title here just a bit because this is but one facet of what the soviet union was like and, just as relying purely on economic data sometimes doesn't tell the whole story of how a country lives, photographs don't inherently do so either. there are probably negative aspects of everyday soviet life that can be pointed to that aren't exactly in this album, obviously, so it's not exactly a one-for-one.
that said, there is a lot of neat ass architecture that looks almost retrofuturist in this album, and if you dislike that architecture you are a coward because that is a good aesthetic, no i will not be taking questions at this time. (but seriously, it's a neat album.)
A very interesting album for sure. A lot of the photos seem staged, but they're still interesting. Things like how people go camping, what products they show off, what (fully stocked and...
A very interesting album for sure. A lot of the photos seem staged, but they're still interesting.
Things like how people go camping, what products they show off, what (fully stocked and pre-prepared) stores look like, what people were wearing etc. is fascinating.
The shots of buildings were especially interesting.
(In terms of what daily life was actually like in the Soviet Union, I think it's telling there are no pictures of rural living or manual labor in an economy where that was the life for a majority of people. The weather's also always good, and there's an overwhelming amount of leisure pictures when reportedly people had little time or access to leisure.)
Completely anecdotal, but just the other day, I was talking to a friend who grew up in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) but later lived in Moscow, and she conveyed that exact sentiment. She also...
Completely anecdotal, but just the other day, I was talking to a friend who grew up in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) but later lived in Moscow, and she conveyed that exact sentiment. She also mentioned that the half of her family from Moscow feels some nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but the half of her family from Volgograd was happy to see it dissolve. One side lived a normal life, the other had to wait in line for food.
oh absolutely. of all the soviet architecture, by far my least favorite subsection of that is the apartment blocks, because the overwhelming majority stick out like sore thumbs. you can tell, even...
oh absolutely. of all the soviet architecture, by far my least favorite subsection of that is the apartment blocks, because the overwhelming majority stick out like sore thumbs. you can tell, even if you just glance at a lot of the photos in that album, which buildings are probably the apartment blocks because of how they look and how they often stick out. and i get that it's mostly a utilitarian thing but like, jesus, you couldn't make these a bit less conspicuous and awful looking? i'm sure there are ways to make apartment blocks blend in with the landscape or cityscape adjacent or surrounding it without also severely diminishing their ability to actually give people places to live.
(that said: the green spaces in that one are good and more apartment complexes should have them. green space is important, folks!)
The general problem with them is that they're examples of bird shit architecture. They're designed more to look cool in a master plan map than actually be nice places to live, work, play, etc. The...
The general problem with them is that they're examples of bird shit architecture. They're designed more to look cool in a master plan map than actually be nice places to live, work, play, etc.
The green spaces are a great example. They look pretty as concept art, but there are no walking paths in them! There aren't even any tall trees to provide shade. It's literally just lawns in between pavement sprawl of cars. The apartment blocks themselves are remote from everything.
It's all part of the fetish that modernists had for clearly delineating everything to its proper place and having this sense of clean lines and "neatness." It's pretty on a map, but it's deeply and profoundly inhuman and inefficient. You can sense this just on an aesthetic level when you point out how conspicuous and awful looking it is. It's conspicuous because it doesn't blend at all into its surroundings, because whatever was there before has been utterly scoured from the Earth.
I mean it was done on purpose, for aesthetic reasons. That was an era where Brutalist architecture was more popular, and it represented -- to the people designing them -- the "brutal" (in a good...
I mean it was done on purpose, for aesthetic reasons. That was an era where Brutalist architecture was more popular, and it represented -- to the people designing them -- the "brutal" (in a good way, like brutally effective, clean, efficient) efficiency of modern society.
Probably worth noting here that the origin of the word "brutalism" is actually the French phrase "béton brut," meaning "raw concrete." (Not the English word "brutal.")
Probably worth noting here that the origin of the word "brutalism" is actually the French phrase "béton brut," meaning "raw concrete." (Not the English word "brutal.")
This is a folk etymology. "Brutalism" comes from the French term, "béton brut," referring to the raw/unadorned concrete. But the issue isn't even really the brutalist buildings, it's the complete...
the "brutal" (in a good way, like brutally effective, clean, efficient) efficiency of modern society.
This is a folk etymology. "Brutalism" comes from the French term, "béton brut," referring to the raw/unadorned concrete.
But the issue isn't even really the brutalist buildings, it's the complete isolation and indifference of those buildings to the world around them. That's what makes them look so unnatural. Brutalism that blends into its surroundings with natural, tree lined streets and regular walking paths looks fine since it's built at a scale for humans.
This is a great photo collection. I really enjoyed a lot of the interior designs showcased in there, as alyaza noted they have a distinctively retro-futuristic style. I'm particularly interested...
This is a great photo collection. I really enjoyed a lot of the interior designs showcased in there, as alyaza noted they have a distinctively retro-futuristic style. I'm particularly interested to know more about the spire in the background of this picture.
I'm also curious, as an uninformed westerner, about the economic system on display here. All the scenes of people shopping appear to be typical capitalism, to my eyes. How did the experience of shopping for clothes, toys, or groceries differ in the USSR from doing the same in the rest of the world? Were cashiers accepting money for goods? Were there limits to that? I know Soviet literature denounced capitalistic excess, but what I see in these staged photos seems almost to endorse it.
Same here. I did a brief look into the matter just now, so I would love it if someone could correct/expand on anything. I mostly looked into the Soviet Union from the 1960s-1970s (whats shown in...
I'm also curious, as an uninformed westerner, about the economic system on display here
Same here. I did a brief look into the matter just now, so I would love it if someone could correct/expand on anything. I mostly looked into the Soviet Union from the 1960s-1970s (whats shown in these photographs might very well be from later, but that could be perestroika stuff and I didn't bother with that)
Were cashiers accepting money for goods
Yes, goods cost money. The prices would largely be set by the state's central planning bureaucracy.
Were there limits to that?
Rationing could happen, but was not the default state after the world wars. One example I came across was bread being rationed in farm communities due to it being "subsidized" to cost less than grain meant for animals.
How did the experience of shopping for clothes, toys, or groceries differ in the USSR from doing the same in the rest of the world?
Grocery shopping would tend to be done at specialty stores for groups of products (bread, dairy, meat). Many products would have no packaging and many stores would receive deliveries of a lot of fresh food at once that would only be available for a little bit.
One thing that everything I looked at confirmed was that luxury goods (including some food) was largely under-produced. Cities received these products according to their priority (Moscow being first) and people would travel to Moscow to buy goods they couldn't where they lived. Stores in Moscow wouldn't necessarily run out, but would be crowded.
There were also stores that would be available to different people, so the elites of the party could access better stocked stores with lower prices.
Don’t forget the infamous lines. Today, western consumers stand in line for hours to buy an iPhone or watch the new Harry Potter movie or whatever. Soviet consumers had to stand in interminable...
Don’t forget the infamous lines. Today, western consumers stand in line for hours to buy an iPhone or watch the new Harry Potter movie or whatever. Soviet consumers had to stand in interminable lines for everything, all the time, because there was sure to be a shortage of something(s) at any given time.
There’s a great late-Soviet satirical novel called The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin that takes place in one of these lines. Hundreds of people line up to buy some hot new product, but nobody knows quite what it is. The queue lasts for several days, and becomes a social arena. People gossip, somebody sets up a kvass stand to sell beverages to the people in line, someone else arranges an impromptu ticket system to let people keep their spot through the night. It’s obviously exaggerated for satirical effect, but isn’t far from the truth. Standing in line was a Soviet institution as much as the Comintern was. The pictures from the opening of the first McDonald’s in Russia are iconic, and that was less than two years before the Soviet Union was dissolved.
If you like this sort of thing, check out 'Man with a Movie Camera'. It's a 1929 Soviet documentary, exploring everyday urban life. Again, there is a bit of a propaganda angle --- none of the...
If you like this sort of thing, check out 'Man with a Movie Camera'. It's a 1929 Soviet documentary, exploring everyday urban life. Again, there is a bit of a propaganda angle --- none of the horrors are documented --- but even so I think it is valuable. What makes it particularly unique is the cinematography; it's very artistic, borderline avant-garde, displaying a dizzying array of techniques. The aesthetic is spectacular. If you can, watch the 2004 remaster, which has an amazing soundtrack.
LFTL: Man with a Movie Camera And thanks for the recommendation! I have watched a fair bit of Soviet-era Russian made films (e.g. by Tarkovsky, Daneliya, etc.) but never actually a Russian made...
And thanks for the recommendation! I have watched a fair bit of Soviet-era Russian made films (e.g. by Tarkovsky, Daneliya, etc.) but never actually a Russian made documentary from the same period.
p.s. Do you have any other similar recommendations?
Yeah there are a number of excellent Soviet movies I've seen, although I've never made a serious effort to watch them. I kinda just stumbled across MWAMC a couple of years ago and don't know of...
Yeah there are a number of excellent Soviet movies I've seen, although I've never made a serious effort to watch them. I kinda just stumbled across MWAMC a couple of years ago and don't know of anything similar, unfortunately.
Wow. I live in Russia, but am not old enough to have lived in the USSR, and seeing these pictures is kinda fascinating. Btw, is it the New Arbat in the first pic?
Wow. I live in Russia, but am not old enough to have lived in the USSR, and seeing these pictures is kinda fascinating.
Btw, is it the New Arbat in the first pic?
I don't think it counts as an ordinary life when it's evidently curated to be at least to some extent idyllic.
Nice album though.
i have editorialized the title here just a bit because this is but one facet of what the soviet union was like and, just as relying purely on economic data sometimes doesn't tell the whole story of how a country lives, photographs don't inherently do so either. there are probably negative aspects of everyday soviet life that can be pointed to that aren't exactly in this album, obviously, so it's not exactly a one-for-one.
that said, there is a lot of neat ass architecture that looks almost retrofuturist in this album, and if you dislike that architecture you are a coward because that is a good aesthetic, no i will not be taking questions at this time. (but seriously, it's a neat album.)
A very interesting album for sure. A lot of the photos seem staged, but they're still interesting.
Things like how people go camping, what products they show off, what (fully stocked and pre-prepared) stores look like, what people were wearing etc. is fascinating.
The shots of buildings were especially interesting.
(In terms of what daily life was actually like in the Soviet Union, I think it's telling there are no pictures of rural living or manual labor in an economy where that was the life for a majority of people. The weather's also always good, and there's an overwhelming amount of leisure pictures when reportedly people had little time or access to leisure.)
Completely anecdotal, but just the other day, I was talking to a friend who grew up in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) but later lived in Moscow, and she conveyed that exact sentiment. She also mentioned that the half of her family from Moscow feels some nostalgia for the Soviet Union, but the half of her family from Volgograd was happy to see it dissolve. One side lived a normal life, the other had to wait in line for food.
This is an abomination and must be purged with fire.
oh absolutely. of all the soviet architecture, by far my least favorite subsection of that is the apartment blocks, because the overwhelming majority stick out like sore thumbs. you can tell, even if you just glance at a lot of the photos in that album, which buildings are probably the apartment blocks because of how they look and how they often stick out. and i get that it's mostly a utilitarian thing but like, jesus, you couldn't make these a bit less conspicuous and awful looking? i'm sure there are ways to make apartment blocks blend in with the landscape or cityscape adjacent or surrounding it without also severely diminishing their ability to actually give people places to live.
(that said: the green spaces in that one are good and more apartment complexes should have them. green space is important, folks!)
The general problem with them is that they're examples of bird shit architecture. They're designed more to look cool in a master plan map than actually be nice places to live, work, play, etc.
The green spaces are a great example. They look pretty as concept art, but there are no walking paths in them! There aren't even any tall trees to provide shade. It's literally just lawns in between pavement sprawl of cars. The apartment blocks themselves are remote from everything.
It's all part of the fetish that modernists had for clearly delineating everything to its proper place and having this sense of clean lines and "neatness." It's pretty on a map, but it's deeply and profoundly inhuman and inefficient. You can sense this just on an aesthetic level when you point out how conspicuous and awful looking it is. It's conspicuous because it doesn't blend at all into its surroundings, because whatever was there before has been utterly scoured from the Earth.
I mean it was done on purpose, for aesthetic reasons. That was an era where Brutalist architecture was more popular, and it represented -- to the people designing them -- the "brutal" (in a good way, like brutally effective, clean, efficient) efficiency of modern society.
Probably worth noting here that the origin of the word "brutalism" is actually the French phrase "béton brut," meaning "raw concrete." (Not the English word "brutal.")
This is a folk etymology. "Brutalism" comes from the French term, "béton brut," referring to the raw/unadorned concrete.
But the issue isn't even really the brutalist buildings, it's the complete isolation and indifference of those buildings to the world around them. That's what makes them look so unnatural. Brutalism that blends into its surroundings with natural, tree lined streets and regular walking paths looks fine since it's built at a scale for humans.
This is a great photo collection. I really enjoyed a lot of the interior designs showcased in there, as alyaza noted they have a distinctively retro-futuristic style. I'm particularly interested to know more about the spire in the background of this picture.
I'm also curious, as an uninformed westerner, about the economic system on display here. All the scenes of people shopping appear to be typical capitalism, to my eyes. How did the experience of shopping for clothes, toys, or groceries differ in the USSR from doing the same in the rest of the world? Were cashiers accepting money for goods? Were there limits to that? I know Soviet literature denounced capitalistic excess, but what I see in these staged photos seems almost to endorse it.
There's a great answer that talks about this on an old /r/AskHistorians thread about the question How could you spend a million rubles in the USSR?
Same here. I did a brief look into the matter just now, so I would love it if someone could correct/expand on anything. I mostly looked into the Soviet Union from the 1960s-1970s (whats shown in these photographs might very well be from later, but that could be perestroika stuff and I didn't bother with that)
Yes, goods cost money. The prices would largely be set by the state's central planning bureaucracy.
Rationing could happen, but was not the default state after the world wars. One example I came across was bread being rationed in farm communities due to it being "subsidized" to cost less than grain meant for animals.
Grocery shopping would tend to be done at specialty stores for groups of products (bread, dairy, meat). Many products would have no packaging and many stores would receive deliveries of a lot of fresh food at once that would only be available for a little bit.
One thing that everything I looked at confirmed was that luxury goods (including some food) was largely under-produced. Cities received these products according to their priority (Moscow being first) and people would travel to Moscow to buy goods they couldn't where they lived. Stores in Moscow wouldn't necessarily run out, but would be crowded.
There were also stores that would be available to different people, so the elites of the party could access better stocked stores with lower prices.
Don’t forget the infamous lines. Today, western consumers stand in line for hours to buy an iPhone or watch the new Harry Potter movie or whatever. Soviet consumers had to stand in interminable lines for everything, all the time, because there was sure to be a shortage of something(s) at any given time.
There’s a great late-Soviet satirical novel called The Queue by Vladimir Sorokin that takes place in one of these lines. Hundreds of people line up to buy some hot new product, but nobody knows quite what it is. The queue lasts for several days, and becomes a social arena. People gossip, somebody sets up a kvass stand to sell beverages to the people in line, someone else arranges an impromptu ticket system to let people keep their spot through the night. It’s obviously exaggerated for satirical effect, but isn’t far from the truth. Standing in line was a Soviet institution as much as the Comintern was. The pictures from the opening of the first McDonald’s in Russia are iconic, and that was less than two years before the Soviet Union was dissolved.
If you like this sort of thing, check out 'Man with a Movie Camera'. It's a 1929 Soviet documentary, exploring everyday urban life. Again, there is a bit of a propaganda angle --- none of the horrors are documented --- but even so I think it is valuable. What makes it particularly unique is the cinematography; it's very artistic, borderline avant-garde, displaying a dizzying array of techniques. The aesthetic is spectacular. If you can, watch the 2004 remaster, which has an amazing soundtrack.
LFTL: Man with a Movie Camera
And thanks for the recommendation! I have watched a fair bit of Soviet-era Russian made films (e.g. by Tarkovsky, Daneliya, etc.) but never actually a Russian made documentary from the same period.
p.s. Do you have any other similar recommendations?
Yeah there are a number of excellent Soviet movies I've seen, although I've never made a serious effort to watch them. I kinda just stumbled across MWAMC a couple of years ago and don't know of anything similar, unfortunately.
Ah, bummer. Thanks for the recommendation anyways though. I'm looking forward to watching MWAMC now, if I can find it that is. :P
No worries!
Wow. I live in Russia, but am not old enough to have lived in the USSR, and seeing these pictures is kinda fascinating.
Btw, is it the New Arbat in the first pic?
Please don't post comments when you have nothing to say. That's just useless clutter.