Tag: Russia

“Beautiful Books, Terrible Times”

Hyperallergic has a piece on Soviet children’s books between 1920 and 1935, with images from Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children’s Literature 1920-35: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times. “The 1920s in Russia weren’t exactly what people had hoped they would be. After the 1917 Russian Revolution brought down the old regime […]

Cosmonaut’s Retro-Mission Patches

“The history of Soviet mission patches begins with one of space travel’s most significant achievements. In 1963, Valentina Teresknova made history as the first woman in space. Her call sign was Chayka—Seagull—and under it, she completed 48 orbits of Earth. As she did so, hidden from view, sewn onto the […]

The Miracle of Ajooba

Ajooba is one of those Bollywood movies that almost everybody dismisses—cheap costumes, awkward giant monsters, make-do special effects—until you get them to actually think about it. Released in 1991, this  bank-breaking Indian and Soviet co-production features a plot that sounds more at home in the 1970s in the […]

Soviet Erotic Alphabet

Bturn has a gallery of images from a Soviet picture book in which naked people form the letters of the cyrillic alphabet. “The fascinating scans come from an alphabet picture book published around 1931, allegedly to fight widespread illiteracy across the vast Soviet territories. It was drawn by […]