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Soviet kids'-book robots
Will from the Journey Round My Skull blog has been scanning vintage, Soviet-era robot illustrations from Eastern European science fictional kids books -- the pictures are just lovely. A Journey Round...
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HUMONGOUS Soviet ground-effect tank-plane
I know nothing about this titanic Lun Soviet ground-effect war-tank-plane-thing. The description (in Russian) contains a large number of specialized ground-effect tank-plane enthusiast vocabulary...
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Soviet statues as comedy fountains
I'm not clear on whether this Cracked.com image is a photoshop job or an actual fountain somewhere in the world (the former USSR?) or just a clever idea for repurposing all that Stalin-era...
View Article1980s Soviet cartoons based on US science fiction classics
Frank sez, "Rhizome has a collection of 1980s-era Soviet cartoons based on stories by American sci-fi authors such as Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. The accompanying synth music is retrofuturist joy."...
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Soviet ad celebrating petty bourgeois resurgence
According to Farranger, a LiveJournal commenter, this 1925 Soviet advertisement "is an ad indicative of the goods available to citizens in the wake of Lenin's New Economic Policy, which allowed small...
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Forgotten, aborted Soviet moon-lander
Jalopnik has a wonderful set of photos of the abortive Soviet moon lander, the LK Lander, abandoned in 1971. It currently rots gently in a private lab at the Moscow Aviation Institute. The photos come...
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Furniture made from rusted Soviet naval mines
Estonian sculptor Mati Karmin creates furniture and other housewares (woodstove, prams, chairs, etc) from rusting naval "Blok" mines recovered from an ex-Soviet fortress on Naissaar Island, an...
View ArticleRussian wartime Cossack dance-off set to Run DMC
In this 1941 video, Russian soldiers are seen engaged in a precursor of the modern dance-off; to drive home the point, some wag has set the proceedings to Run DMC's "It's Like That," which is...
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First-person account from surgeon who removed his own appendix
From The Atlantic's archives, a harrowing 1961 account of a Soviet surgeon on a primitive Antarctic base who had to remove his own appendix, stopping frequently as he battled vertigo and blood loss: I...
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Vintage Soviet science and space illustration
This site collects vintage Soviet space and science illustrations; most appear to come from old children's books. They're eerily similar to American illos from the same era -- both empires believing...
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Xeni on The Madeleine Brand radio show: Russia's "Gaga-esque Gagarin...
MP3 I joined Madeleine Brand Show guest-host Alex Cohen today for a radio segment on my recent trip to Moscow with Miles O'Brien and his documentary crew, on the occasion of the 50 year anniversary of...
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Chernobyl disaster, 25 year later: commemoration around the world
It's early morning on April 26 in Kiev, Ukraine, where the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened exactly a quarter century ago. On this day in 1986, reactor number four at the plant exploded, setting...
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Soviet cars
On the always-excellent How To Be a Retronaut, a gallery of the dreadful automobiles of the Soviet Bloc from the 1960s and 70s. Vintage Soviet Cars, 1960s / 1970s [howtobearetronaut.com]
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Design classics of Soviet-era Czechoslovakia
Nanovo Shop sells hand-picked vintage housewares and designy tchotchkes and doodads from Czechoslovakia's Soviet era. NANOVO shop (via Core 77)
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Aelita, Queen of Mars: Soviet Science Fiction film from 1924
In vintage ad archivist Paul Malon's excellent Flickr stream, I stumbled on this beautiful Soviet film poster for a film titled "Aelita." A quick Googling revealed that this was for the motion picture...
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E-Stonia: where the free internet now flows like water
Photo: Bruce Sterling First things first: oh, you world travelers, for pleasure or for work, never, ever fly Baltic Airlines. First they will stiff you by making you pay sixty euros to carry...
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Stalin: evil dictator, good editor
Holly Case on Joseph Stalin, editor. [via Kottke] Stalin always seemed to have a blue pencil on hand, and many of the ways he used it stand in direct contrast to common assumptions about his person and...
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Wacky dudes in Russia open 1940s war ration can and eat it because Russia
https://youtu.be/8PBsp4jXdyc According to the uploader's description, these jolly Russian gentlemen here are opening what is identified as a 70-year-old package of Soviet fighter pilot war chow. (more…)
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Bizarre brutalist and experimental Soviet bus stops
Over the course of 12 years, photographer Christopher Herwig traveled more than 18,000 miles around Eastern Europe to photograph the incredible, brutalist, experimental, and downright bizarre bus stops...
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Watch the (very weird) first USSR television commercial
This surreal advertisement for corn from 1964 is reportedly the USSR's first TV commercial. Over at r/ObscureMedia, amer_amer kindly offers this translation: If you would like to be healthy, fed for a...
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