The Kalinin K-7 was a giant flying fortress that might have redefined aerial combat in the 1930s. The hugely expensive and trouble-prone prototype was scrapped by Stalin and its designer was later executed. Here are some renderings of the planes that might have been, with spacious lounges, battleship-sized cannons, and the ability to defend us from UFOs.
posted by Joe in Australia on Nov 8, 2009 - 66 comments

Mad Men: Soviet Style. Beautiful advertising posters from the USSR.
posted by grumblebee on Nov 4, 2009 - 54 comments

After the Wall: Traces of the Soviet Empire
posted by vronsky on Nov 1, 2009 - 12 comments

Real USSR is a blog containing commentaries on everyday life in the former Soviet Union. The liberal use of family and other amateur photos provides unusual insight into the daily experience of Soviet life. Topics range from 1940s homemade double-exposure photography to queueing to USSR - the birthplace of feminism. via
posted by Rumple on Aug 5, 2009 - 23 comments

70s/80s Soviet album covers. Until today, I had no idea Soviet hair metal existed. Prepare for keytars, mall hair and proof that 80s cheese was not solely a product of degenerate kepitalist decadence.
posted by DecemberBoy on Jun 23, 2009 - 54 comments

Peasant! Free your pregnant wife from work, don't allow her to pick up heavy items since this will harm her and the child. An excellent collection of vintage soviet propaganda, public health, and infographics posters from 20s to 30s, many with full translations.
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 7, 2009 - 17 comments

Interested in Soviet era spying by the KGB in the United States? Bummed that you cant get into the KGB archives? Well it turns out that someone copied all the good stuff already, and you can take a peek. [more inside]
posted by shothotbot on Apr 23, 2009 - 6 comments

Soviet Army dance ensemble + Run DMC = the invention of breakdancing in the mid-1900s. (slyt, via kottke)
posted by swift on Feb 13, 2009 - 36 comments

"This is a regular Russian school biology textbook owned by some Russian school. He has modified some illustrations so now it’s hard to say sometimes what was there originally and what has appeared as a result of his imagination."
posted by squalor on Feb 12, 2009 - 24 comments

"I am Russian so, obviously, I like this film. It has typical Russian humor, it is a farce, so do not look for higher meanings in the jokes, it makes fun of the social standards of the Soviet regime as well as the people who served it so well. It features some of the best Russian actors that we love seeing and acting; they sing in the movie and it is lovely as well. If you are a tough judge of movies, then please make sure you know Soviet history a bit and understand that the humor differs from what you see in American movies before you call it crap." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Feb 1, 2009 - 18 comments

In 1969, Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm released Nu, Pogodi! (Well, Just You Wait!), a series that followed the multitalented and comical Wolf in his quest to capture the Hare. Having very little dialogue but considerable music, it was an international hit across eastern Europe. Most who followed the show will tell you that despite attempts to portray Wolf as anti-authoritarian and decadent, Wolf had a much greater fanbase. Why else would the Nu Pogodi game be based on him, and not Hare?
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Sep 24, 2008 - 14 comments

Soviet Music "You are browsing a resource which is devoted first of all to the history and culture of the Soviet Union, the country which the West for a long time usually named as "The Empire of Evil", the country to which some people in the West perceive as "something big and snowy". I offer you to try to look outside the frames of usual stereotypes, to try to understand life of a unique country, with its interesting history, beautiful culture and miraculous relations between people. The music submitted on this site - is an evident sample of a totally new culture, which completely differs from all that, with what Hollywood and MTV supply us so much. This culture, being free from the cult of money, platitude, violence and sex, was urged to not indulge low bents of a human soul but to help the person to become culturally enriched and to grow above himself." [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Sep 23, 2008 - 16 comments

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died. ( BBC ) The great author and opponent of totalitarianism lived to see the end of Communism in the Soviet Union and almost everywhere else. He survived WWII as a commander in the Soviet army before being put into gulags where he spent 20 years. He went on to write the Gulag Archipelago and win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.
posted by sien on Aug 3, 2008 - 75 comments

When people think of Soviet culture in the Stalin era, jazz usually isn't the first music to come to mind. But it was there, and some of it was pretty good, whether adapting Western standards, partying with a Russian twist, or just being adventurous. If that's a little too old-school for you, try some Soviet funk.
posted by StrikeTheViol on Jun 9, 2008 - 14 comments

Comrades! Glory once again in the display of Soviet Russian military might at the revitalized May Day Victory Day Parade!
posted by fearfulsymmetry on May 11, 2008 - 52 comments

Soviet Lemonade Labels
posted by interrobang on Apr 17, 2008 - 15 comments

In soviet russia... screw drives you! (via)
posted by phrontist on Apr 15, 2008 - 46 comments

On February 19, Armenia hosted a presidential election. The winner with 52% of the vote was (as expected), current Prime Minister and BFF to the current president, Serge Sargsyan. The runner-up with 21.5% of the vote was former president (taken out by the current president in 1997), Levon Ter-Petrossian. The elections were flawed, lots of people protested over the past week, the protests have gotten violent, LTP is under house arrest and the government has issued a 20 day state of emergency. At least 3 (including a police officer) have been killed. [more inside]
posted by k8t on Mar 1, 2008 - 20 comments

Russian cold war bombers - The Tu 95 Bear and Tu 160 Blackjack, based in central Russia, which resumed long range patrols in August.
posted by Artw on Dec 23, 2007 - 52 comments

Vintage Soviet-era Christmas Cards. They're certainly cheerful! (via)
posted by Jimbob on Dec 20, 2007 - 43 comments

Out of work? The Shooting Range is hiring. No, not the Firing Range. The Shooting Range.
posted by TrialByMedia on Sep 27, 2007 - 4 comments

GULAG: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom. An online exhibit which includes photographs of work in the gulag, women in the gulag, living in the camp, what were their crimes, Perm-36 Gulag Camp, the history of the gulag system, the inspiring stories of dissidents and what happened after the fall of the Soviet Union. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Sep 21, 2007 - 16 comments

Some photo galleries (and youtube video) of Buran, the USSR's space shuttle program (previously) from the 1980's, long since abandoned. Bonus: A comparison between Buran and the US space shuttle. Double Bonus: More on Buran from russianspaceweb.com, which is awesome. Combo breaker: An official page with NASA's take on Buran, (and their photos), frozen in time a decade ago.
posted by dersins on Sep 13, 2007 - 25 comments

Recently deceased Leona Helmsley left $12 Million to her dog, as predicted by Soviet propagandists in 1963. Other predictions have been less than accurate.
posted by TrialByMedia on Aug 30, 2007 - 35 comments

A Soviet Poster A Day delivers what it promises, one propaganda rich helping of Soviet art every day to help you on your daily doings.
posted by jonson on Aug 20, 2007 - 14 comments

That the first space race was politically motivated shouldn't detract from your enjoyment of Soviet propaganda space art. More here and here.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Aug 2, 2007 - 21 comments

Robbery American Style. Robbery French Style. Robbery Italian Style. Classic Soviet animation from Soyuzmultfilm.
posted by TrialByMedia on Jul 14, 2007 - 26 comments

Norilsk is a big city in northern Siberia. On the permafrost. It was built by slave labor in the 1930s. Norilsk Nickle, a very profitable company, wants you to invest there. Some think it's a hell hole. Others think it was the downfall of the Soviet economy.
posted by MarshallPoe on Jun 21, 2007 - 30 comments

The Soviet Union’s answer to Saturn V, the massive, complex, and top-secret N1 rocket, failed win the moon race after four disastrous launch explosions between 1969 and 1972. In 2004, Polecat Aerospace had much better luck launching their 1/16 N1 scale model.
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jun 13, 2007 - 17 comments

Russia in photos: 1941-1945.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on May 11, 2007 - 32 comments

Metafilter's own Fake, Dan Reetz, recently spent several months in the former Soviet Union; while there he managed to round up this great selection of Soviet Movie posters from 1921-1973, as well as this interesting 1952 set of food drawings from the government produced book "Tasty & Healthy Eating." Finally, bonus content for anyone jonesing for more soviet content, this Russian Winnie the Pooh cartoon from the 1970s is fantastic. (via)
posted by jonson on May 2, 2007 - 29 comments

A 10 minute home movie taken by an SS officer has been discovered in an English church. It shows SS officers and secretaries relaxing in the summer of 1942 in southern Russia. The last couple of minutes shows footage from a slave labor camp in that area. The footage was taken at the height of the German success in Russia, a few months before the turning point in the Russian campaign - and probably the turning point in the Second World War.
posted by bobbyelliott on Oct 26, 2006 - 51 comments

USSR Posters. Gallery of over 1400 posters from the Soviet era.
posted by plep on Sep 28, 2006 - 44 comments

Moscow's decadent post-Communism nightclub scene. Stalin's yacht pushes up the Moscow River at eight a.m., and nobody cares if you missed it. The world's longest-running after-party just keeps going. In a shipboard ballroom, Russia's lucky few tend to their good time. Music like a lot of loud nothing pounds through the girls lathered in Valentino, Gaultier, and Bulgari. Defying you with their eyes, they throw off a kind of heat that has never burned you before. The men with money and new style hang around the edges with satisfied smiles, their low-vibrating calm punching through thousand-dollar sunglasses. They'll kiss you, they'll kill you, you'll know where you stand.
posted by fet on Jul 25, 2006 - 50 comments

Gallery of Soviet governmental posters
posted by jonson on Jun 30, 2006 - 31 comments

The Parade of the Red Army and other scans of Soviet Children's Books from the '20's and '30's. [via DaddyTypes]
posted by anastasiav on Mar 27, 2006 - 14 comments

Slavomir Rawicz was a Polish calvary officer, who was imprisoned by the Soviets and eventually taken to a prison in Siberia. With 7 companions, including one mysterious american, he escaped and journeyed to the south, crossing Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Tibet before making it to British India. Or at least this is what he claims in his book "The Long Walk." Nobody has ever found evidence that he was ever in russia or that any of his companions ever existed. Oh and he also claims to have seen Yetis.
posted by afu on Mar 17, 2006 - 21 comments

Vlad gives his views on the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As the anthem of Phystech promises, "we will disperse, when the time comes, in all the world, from Dolgoprudny"
posted by tellurian on Feb 28, 2006 - 3 comments

We all know the story: little Elli, a girl living in the steppes of Kanzas with her dog Totoshka, is blown by a hurricane (stirred up by the wicked witch Gingema) all the way to Magic Land, where she meets the Cowardly Lion, the Iron Woodman, and the scarecrow Strashila and has to make her way to the Emerald City to find the magician Gudvin so she can get back home... What, you don't remember it that way? Didn't you read The Wizard of the Emerald City and its much-loved sequels Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers, The Seven Underground Kings, The Fiery God of the Marrans, The Yellow Fog, and The Mystery of the Deserted Castle? Ah, you're not Russian! Listen [RealAudio] to a five-minute description (on Studio 360) of Alexander Volkov's Russified versions of Baum (with illustrations by Leonid Vladimirsky) and how they captivated children and adults in the Soviet Union (you even get a bit of the famous song Мы в город Изумрудный/ Идем дорогой трудной ["We're going to the Emerald City by a difficult road..."]); visit the Emerald City website (Russian version, where all the links work); and see the wonderful illustrations at this site, which links to the texts of all six novels (click on Читать...)—in Russian, but the images need no explanation. (Fun fact: the word "Oz" doesn't occur anywhere in the Russian versions.) And if you're interested in other alternate versions, go to Oz Outside the Famous Forty. (Via P. Kerim Friedman.)
posted by languagehat on Nov 25, 2005 - 21 comments

Soviet Calculators
posted by anastasiav on Oct 8, 2005 - 16 comments

Museum of old Russian radios I want the styling Zvezda-54 and one of these early iPods. The Thermogenerator TGK-3 looks like fun.
posted by arse_hat on Jul 7, 2005 - 13 comments

Experiments in the Revival of Organisms 'Of course technique is everything...' Introduced by renowned Marxist scientist and geneticist JBS Haldane, this Soviet film depicts the artificial maintenance of individual organs, a severed dog's head, and finally a dog in toto (excuse the pun).
posted by derangedlarid on Apr 25, 2005 - 8 comments

You heard it here first, ex-soviet, a blog for all the soviet music fan in us all.
posted by drezdn on Feb 28, 2005 - 18 comments

Fabulous images of the Moscow Metro underground, also known as "the people's palaces". Click "M"s on the entry map to view gorgeous (often architecturally surreal) panoramic images, and visit the picture gallery for sweet details. Via Jorgen at Viewropa.
posted by taz on Jan 14, 2005 - 24 comments

The greatest children's toy in the world? A railway run largely by children aged 10-14 with full sized trains. The Hungarian one is perhaps the best known, but there are others in the former soviet republics.
posted by biffa on Oct 25, 2004 - 16 comments

A large catalog of interesting handmade Russian chess sets. Some that caught my eye: Soviet vs. American; "Soviet-Fascist Chess" (note the kings); and American vs. Russian politicians (note the American queen).
posted by Prospero on Jul 19, 2004 - 5 comments

Dsicipline, Strength, Beauty, Youth 'Bodies in Formation' is a wonderful exhibition of photographs and ephemera, that illustrates Soviet-era mass gymnastics displays in eastern Europe. Via plep.
posted by carter on May 23, 2004 - 7 comments

Revolution by Design: The Soviet Poster
Amazing examples of graphic design from the masters of propaganda. For those of you feeling a little revolutionary this weekend!
posted by hypnorich on Jan 23, 2004 - 6 comments

Beyond the Fall. The former Soviet block in transition 1989-1999. Outstanding photojournalism.
posted by normy on Jan 18, 2004 - 4 comments

Red Tape from Red Square. Russian and Soviet cartoons. An interesting collection, despite a couple of broken images.
posted by plep on Dec 18, 2003 - 3 comments