Articles

Just Before USSR Dissolution, These Photos Capture Street Scenes of Moscow in 1990

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    January 05, 2022       1990s , life & culture , Moscow , Russia & Soviet Union , street     When the USSR was dissolved in 1991, Moscow remained the capital of the Russian SFSR (on December 25, 1991, the Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation). Since then, a market economy has emerged in Moscow, producing an explosion of Western-style retailing, services, architecture, and lifestyles. Moscow in 1990 The city has continued to grow during the 1990s to 2000s, its population rising from below nine to above ten million. Since then, however, there has been a dramatic growth of low-density suburban sprawl, created by heavy demand for single-family dwellings as opposed to crowded apartments. In 1995–1997 the MKAD ring road was widened from the initial four to ten lanes. In December 2002, Bulvar Dmitriya Donskogo became the first Moscow Metro station that opened beyond the limits of MKAD. The Third Ring Road,...

From Bread Lines to Big Mac Lines, These Photos Show That Post-Communist Russians Are Loving the American Lifestyle

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    May 26, 2019       1990s , ads , fashion & clothing , life & culture , people , Russia & Soviet Union     The dissolution of the USSR left Russia ripe for visual reinterpretation. With the Cold War over we wanted to see who these freshly freed former Communists were. These pictures depicting Russia not as the complex place it is, but in comparison to our own domestic self image. The 1990 opening of Moscow’s first McDonald’s was an easy symbol for Western media to glom onto, as were other iterations of a nascent consumer culture “emerging” after decades of Soviet dormancy. Subjects finally had the choice between Snickers and blue jeans, pizza or cocktails. The “New Russians” phenomenon further reinforced an image of a class of nouveau riche embracing their innate capitalist tendencies. Even representations of diverse experience became a means for underlining the split between socialism and capitalism, and...

Life in USSR in 1980

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    January 04, 2014       1980s , life & culture , people , Russia & Soviet Union     A collection of color photographs of daily life in USSR in 1980. You might also like: