What this year meant for Russian history, what people looked like and what was happening on the cities’ streets in the first year of World War II in the USSR.
Stalin’s regime was at its peak: industrialization was in full swing, new megafactories were constantly appearing and peasants were working hard on collective farms. At the same time, a big purge that started in the late 1930s was in force and people kept finding themselves in prisons and labor camps.
But on June 22, 1941, the whole Soviet history was literally split into before and after, with World War II reaching the Eastern Front and threatening both Moscow and St. Petersburg. Former kids and students lined up to become volunteers at the frontline, girls took rifles in their arms and went to the factories to produce weapons. Citizens were evacuated, while their homes were destroyed…