In the USSR, a personal car was a luxury, and for only a few, it was a common means of transportation. Even if you had enough money, you still could not freely buy it at a car dealership like today.

To do this, you had to wait your turn for several years, since the number of cars produced at the factories was significantly lower than the potential demand. Until the early 1970s, the main priority was given to trucks, in particular, army multi-axle tractors and four-wheel drive dual-use trucks.

1961. ZAZ-965 “Zaporozhets”.

Soviet advertising in all its glory

Tags: Soviet past · Tolyatti city

The following filmstrip titled “Shelters, Covers and the Rules for Using Them” was released as a civil defense lessons workbook for pupils of the 5th grade of primary schools (10-11 years old) on request of the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) Ministry of Education in 1970. Source: humus. Copyright: Russian State Children’s Library (RGDB).

be ready for a nuclear war

Tags: Soviet past

The following book “Anti-Religious Alphabet” was published in Leningrad in 1933. The author of the pictures was Mikhail Mikhailovich Cheremnykh (1890-1962) – a Soviet graphic artist, cartoonist, book illustrator.

Each word in the poetic phrases accompanying the pictures begins with the corresponding letter of the Russian alphabet. Translation gives just a general meaning of these short phrases, but of course, if you know Russian, then this historical document is especially interesting. However, the illustrations themselves give some insight into the attitude to religion during the first decades of the Soviet regime. Source

1. Anti-Religious Alphabet.

godless ABC

Tags: propaganda · Saint Petersburg city · Soviet past

The Moscow Transport Museum has a unique collection of retro models of all types of Soviet urban transport. Here you can see a lot of different cars and trucks, taxis, trams, buses, trolleybuses that carried passengers along the streets of Moscow, as well as cars of various city services: police, firefighters, ambulance.

Let’s look only at a part of the presented vehicles. The museum is open daily from 10:00 to 21:00. Address: Moscow, Rogozhskiy Val Ulitsa, 9/2. The Moscow Transport Museum on Google Maps. Photos by: Stanislav Konstantinov.

great technical museum

Tags: Moscow city · museum · Soviet past

Ivan Alekseevich Vladimirov (1869-1947), a Russian painter and draftsman, became known as the artist of the realistic school of painting.

In 1917-1918, he worked in the Petrograd militia. This experience helped him to create a unique cycle of documentary sketches of the events of these years. Source: humus.

1. 1917. Dismantling of imperial coats of arms (Down with the eagles!). The signs on the building – Drugstore. February.

turning point in the history of Russia

Tags: Saint Petersburg city · Soviet past

The monument to V.I. Lenin at the depot of the October Railway known simply as “Lenin on Wheels” is located near the Leningrad Station in Moscow (Komsomol’skaya Square, 3/36).

Mounted on a railway trolley, it is one of the first monuments to Lenin in Moscow and the only Lenin in the world on wheels. Lenin on Wheels on Google Maps. Photos by: babs71.

very unusual and cool monument

Tags: Moscow city · Soviet past

Atheism, as a worldview denying religion, without being formally declared in the USSR as an element of state ideology, was actively supported by the Communist Party and state bodies until 1988.

Propaganda was actively used for these purposes. Here are examples of anti-religious posters that you could see in the times of the USSR.

1. There is no God!

religion is poison?

Tags: posters · propaganda · Soviet past

Propaganda in the USSR was diverse and covered almost all spheres of life. For example, the following posters educated readers how to handle books rightly. Pictures by humus.

1926. Protect the book from rain and snow.

read books rightly

Tags: propaganda · Soviet past

S-189 is a submarine of Project 613 moored at Lieutenant Schmidt Embankment in St. Petersburg and converted into a museum.

Project 613 submarines (according to NATO classification: “Whiskey”) are Soviet medium-sized diesel-electric submarines built in 1951-1957. This series became the most massive in the Soviet submarine fleet (215 submarines). Photos by: deletant.

The conning tower of S-189.

explore the submarine

Tags: museum · Saint Petersburg city · Soviet past

The second part of unique photos taken by Major Martin Manhoff, who spent more than two years in the Soviet Union in the early 1950s as an assistant to the military attache in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

The first part of the photos.

View of the Kremlin from Moskvoretskaya Embankment.

Moscow in the early 1950s

Tags: Moscow city · Soviet past