Photos from the "old days"

Someone wrote a first hand account of being there. And posted this photo on Twitter.

Punks on tanks. (the sign says, "Away with the CPSU".)

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Punks versus skinheads over there was insane back in the 90s. You couldn't go anywhere without seeing anarchy symbols all over every wall.
 
NorBro said:
Punks versus skinheads was insane back in the 90s. You couldn't go anywhere without seen anarchy symbols all over every wall.
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The skinheads were into heavy metal. But this is from the August coup. I am reading comments from people who were there at that time and the general consensus is, "We felt free for the first time in our lives". It didn't last long.

I was living in LA at the time. An American buddy of mine calls me (had to be on the 21st) - "Are you watching TV? Are you watching TV? - no, why? - they're showing stuff in Moscow - and what's the big deal about that? - the end of the USSR". Which it basically was. It was dissolved in December, albeit unofficially, with Gorbachev resigning on Christmas Day.
 
Let's twist again, like we did last summer. Which was like winter, since this is the Siberian portion of the USSR.

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December, 19th, 1981. Leonid Brezhnev is receiving his 4th Gold Star Hero of the Soviet Union medal. The "era of lavish funerals" is already underway. The presenter, the minister without a portfolio and the nominal second in political seniority, Mikhail Suslov has a month to live. The minister of defense Dimitri Ustinov (in a parade uniform) and the head of Uzbekistan and Brezhnev's #1 money man Sharaf Rashidov (last row, on Ustinov's left shoulder) will go in 1984, the future General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko (smack in the middle of the shot) will live until March, 1985. Wedged between the foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and Chernenko is Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark.

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1967. A rock star like room in Moscow's House of Books. Filled with portraits of the Soviet rock stars.


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The Potemkin Steps, Odessa, 1982. If anyone remembers Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" and the baby stroller. Or the "Untouchables" and the baby stroller. Well, here it is. Without the stroller.

Edit - I decided to rename "stairs" as "steps".

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DLD said:
The Potemkin Steps, Odessa, 1982. If anyone remembers Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" and the baby stroller. Or the "Untouchables" and the baby stroller. Well, here it is. Without the stroller.

Edit - I decided to rename "stairs" as "steps".

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Click to expand...

The unforgettable Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin", with unforgettable scene of the baby stroller rolling down the steps … STEPS, not stairs … :)
 
Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink anymore.

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PS. In Russian, the Odessa construction is called "Потёмкинская ле́стница", which is technically the "Potemkin stairs/staircase". "Steps" fit better with English.
 
Let my people go ... inside. I may have posted this before. Parents are visiting their kids at a summer camp. Whenever someone lets them.

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A beer hole in the wall. The sign on the right says, "Beer is only sold to customer's own wares". The sign on the upper left, "No more dishwashing. We ain't got the water".

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How not to market yourself. Alexander Nasa is a terrific Ukrainian photographer ... but if you do any search for him, you'll end up with something from NASA.

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The same photographer who did the Potemkin Steps (Ian Barry), from the same series of photos taken on his tour of Odessa in 1982.

This one is from the time, when you realize that you have to supply your own footwear.

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