MetaFilter posts tagged with soviet and history

Everyday life in the USSR

Rumple — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:50:06 -0800

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

hatchink fiendish plan to catch moose and squirrel

shothotbot — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:14:05 -0800

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. Alexander Vassiliev was a KGB officer who turned to journalism in 1990. From 1993-96 he had access to the KGB archives for the 1930s to early 1950s to write notes for a book project on Soviet spying in the Stalin era. His original notebooks - including extensive verbatim transcriptions - were left behind in Moscow when he moved to London but smuggled out via an elaborate plan. There are eight notebooks, on the Cold War International History site there are scans, transliterations and translations of each notebook, free for nothing. Vassilev assisted in the transcriptions and transliterations. The whole story is in Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks: Provenance and Documentation of Soviet Intelligence Activities in the United States (pdf). "Since the KGB’s archives remain closed, Vassiliev’s notebooks are as close as we are likely to get to the actual documents for many years, likely decades"

known mostly as a place for political prisoners and for repressing political opposition

nickyskye — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 10:39:46 -0800

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. Samizdat was the name for underground literature that opponents to the Soviet government secretly wrote and distributed within the Soviet Union. It was the internet of the gulag years. About one of the greatest monsters in history, Joseph Stalin, on Wikipedia, "Early researchers attempting to tally the number of people killed under Stalin's regime were forced to rely largely upon anecdotal evidence. Their estimates ranged from a low of 3 million to as high as 60 million." The Gulag entry on Wikipedia.

Russia in photos: 1941-1945

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 11 May 2007 20:52:30 -0800

Russia in photos: 1941-1945.

Birobidzhan

tss — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 23:47:24 -0800

Stalin's Forgotten Zion. In 1934, the Soviet Union established the Jewish Autonomous Region in remote Birobidzhan as a permanent agricultural colony for all Soviet Jews. Substantial incentives from the Soviet government drew many new settlers. Today, only a few thousand Jews remain. A few more links: pictures from the BBC, a travel diary, a recent economic overview.

Stalin killed to prevent nuclear war?

mcwetboy — Thu, 06 Mar 2003 10:33:29 -0800

Was Stalin assassinated to prevent him from launching a nuclear attack on the United States? "'The circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of non-fortuitous death,' said Jonathan Brent, a professor of Russian history at Yale University. 'And to support this further, we now have solid evidence, non-circumstantial evidence, of a cover-up at the highest level.'"

mutagen — Sun, 22 Apr 2001 22:42:18 -0800

Soviet Computer Technology circa 1988 (Google Cache).