My Grandpa Loved Taking Pictures Of Life In The Soviet Union, Here Are Some Of His Best Snaps

Mum and grandma on a trip somewhere. Could have been many places, really, as they did their fair share of travelling. She just can’t remember.

Grandpa with Arseny, the husband of Maria, one of my grandma's best friends.

Chess was ideologically unobjectionable and could make you forget for hours that you, most likely, would never be able to travel to Rome, try a burger or open a Playboy.

My less-than-beloved uncle Lev and his brother Mark (here with their mum). Mark has lived all his life in Tashkent. At around the time this picture was taken, he fell down from a chair while reciting a poem. I don’t know what the poem was about, but it’s a pretty safe bet to say it was either about nature or Lenin.
That fall took its toll on his health, and he needed several operations throughout his life as a result. I suppose poems really can be dangerous.

When mum and her parents moved to a new flat from the flatshare they’d previously occupied, they found themselves living in one house with a fairly well-known painter (yes, she does have a Wikipedia page). Mum even posed for her, though we don’t know whether the woman ever finished that painting or not.

On this day, in 1959 or 1960, that painter, mum and mum’s friend Nadya had a day out. The woman had recently bought a Moskvich, one of the most popular car brands in the country. Set her back 9000 rubles (let me remind you again – an engineer was earning about 120 rubles per month). She hired a driver, and they spent a marvellous afternoon picking flowers and doing innocent Soviet stuff like that.
This photo could well be used for a cover of a travel diary novel, don’t you think?

Against the backdrop of the Neva and the Peter and Paul Fortress

Most likely, taken on a 1st of May demonstration. The day is also known as Labour Day, the Spring and Labour Holiday, or the Day of International Worker Solidarity. According to Lenin, this was an occasion for workers to celebrate their “awakening to light and knowledge, their unification into one brotherly union to fight against any kind of oppression, any kind of tyranny [more accurately translated: “arbitrary treatment”], against any kind of exploitation, to establish a socialist society”.

1963. Grandma (in white, on the right in the background), mum (somewhere) and a few colleagues from the Mining Institute holidaying in Anapa in the Krasnodar Krai [Region].
By some weird coincidence, mum ran across a former classmate of hers back from Leningrad.

Mum and grandma on a trip to Samarkand, Uzbekistan. With its completely different landscape and culture, lack of urbanisation and a Muslim majority, that was as exotic a land as you could find in the entire Soviet Union.

Farmers would still transport their goods on horses, no hint of asphalt, and the heat was merciless. One of mum’s fondest memories was her talking to a tourist from Florence. The elderly woman had an interpreter with her and, for some reason, was very keen to talk to the little girl from Leningrad.
Mum and her parents were staying in a hotel, shielded from the poverty around them. They hired a local guide for a few pennies, who was extremely knowledgeable and showed them the tomb of Timur, a legendary Turco-Mongol conqueror, made entirely of green nephrite. The tomb, that is, not the man.

Grandma

Zelenogorsk is a town in St Petersburg’s (then-Leningrad’s) Kurortny District. The name “Kurortny” already means something like “with a resort” or “serving as a resort”. So, when mum went there, she was really hoping to have a blast on her winter holidays. Didn’t happen though, and when she talks about it, you can hear she’s still a little upset at her own clumsiness.

She was never much into sports, let alone ice skating. And yet, she decided to give it a go. Within a few days of getting there, she fell down and broke her arm. If you look carefully, you can see a bruise on her left eye, too. Had to wear a cast for three weeks, which meant her choice of activities was severely restricted.

Not only that, but she also lost any chance of seducing a bloke from her class. He was smart and ambitious, and she always felt he would go on to become... well, some kind of a big deal. She wasn’t wrong – he ended up getting a job in the US and earning millions.

Still, they did go out for a bit, but then they both realised they had no feelings for each other whatsoever. If they had, I guess I would have been born an American – and perhaps with a slightly prettier face.

Memorials don’t get much more patriotic than this!

As you can see in this picture, nothing made a middle-aged lady from the USSR happier than a big platter of fish.

You may have heard that the Soviet Union was regarded as the “most reading country” on the planet (at least by the Soviets themselves). There was a kind of fashion for reading. A regular family would have a collection of books on their shelves, which they would display for their guests to see. Many would have a collection of works by Tolstoy, Pushkin or Shakespeare – but that, of course, didn’t mean they would have read them all. It was just something one wanted to show.
Oh, and of course, such collection would also include an encyclopaedia – with a varying number of volumes.