Tag: USSR

Deterrent In The Deep 1960

From TIME, Vol. 76, No. 5, August 1, 1960, p.18.

Soviet Era Mass-Produced Housing

[Found in here.]

Having a blast at the Soviet May Day Celebration 1968

[Found here.]

Urban Soviet Apartments

Interior design studio Gyva Grafika took photos of “Urban Soviet” apartment buildings in Kaunas, Lithuania and created appliqués for a restaurant.

[Image found in here, story here; Reddit comment here.]

Doktorskaya kolbasa

Russian Докторская колбаса (Doctor’s sausage) had it’s origins in the United States.

The Bolsheviks mismanaged food production resulting in a widespread famine, so in 1936 Josef Stalin sent his food industry administrator to find out what the Americans were doing. Anastas Mikoyan found a lot of bologna.

Here is the exact recipe of Doktorskaya kolbasa that was used as industry standard from 1936 till 1974:

Quantities of ingredients to produce 100 kg of Doktorskaya kolbasa:

    • 25 kg of beef meat
    • 70 kg of semi-lean pork meat
    • 3 liters of milk
    • 2 liters of eggs
    • 2 kg of salt and 200 gr of sugar
    • 30 gr of cardamom
    • 50 gr of ascorbic acid (color stabilizer)

Manufacturing technology included dicing and mixing all ingredients in a homogenous paste, filling the tubes and later drying and boiling the sausage. Final product was incredibly tasty and quite healthy.

At least it was tasty and healthy enough for those who hadn’t starved to death during the famine, or slaughtered during Большой террор.

[Image found in here, story here.]

Державне підприємство “Антонов” 1961

“In the mid twentieth century there was made a series of photographs advertising Soviet “An” planes to western buyers. Some of these photos have been revealed just recently. Party leaders didn’t allow them to be used abroad and the photos were kept in the archives of “Antonov” company.”

[Image and caption found in here. More about the Ukraine-based company here.]

Soviet Volga 1962 GAZ-22 Low Rider Prototype Mod

Here’s an un-modified 1962 Volga GAZ-22. I don’t think it had a cast-iron carburetor, but who knows?

From Wiki:

“Only those shipped abroad for export were sold to private customers. All domestic station wagons/estates, with rare exceptions, were never available for private ownership. The Soviet rationale was that allowing such a car to citizens would also make it too available and popular with dealers in the grey market economy [which] was allowed but limited by the state.”

[Found here.]

1964 Soviet Taxi Prototype

1964 Soviet Taxi Prototype 5

Even a babushka with a baby carriage full of pea soup fits in, without a drop spilled. The car never made it to production, but the concept is interesting, given the state of automotive manufacturing in the USSR at the time.
[Click the images below for full size.]

This unique test car was designed in 1964 based on components of “Moskvich-408”. It successfully passed performance tests in Moscow and was recommended for serial production In Yerevan, but due to different reasons it didn’t go this far…

[Caption with more photos here.]

Socialist Merry Go Round

Playground USSR

[Found here. The original image comes from a Russian website according to Tineye.]

Some Toe Tapping Music

USSR Xray Vinyl

“Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, people in the Soviet Union began making records of banned Western music on discarded x-rays.”

[Image and caption found here.]