After the disastrous World War II, by the beginning of the 1950s, Soviet people had finally returned to normal life. Facilities started the reconstruction, industries turned back to their peaceful goals and one of the first rockets was sent into space. The Soviet Union founded an Olympic committee and was preparing to participate in its first ever Olympic Games.
However, it was still Stalin’s era and two years before he died. The ‘Seven Sisters’ skyscrapers as a last accord of his reign were under construction. He was still carrying out the mass deportation of nations inside the Soviet Union, while sending thousands of people to Gulag labor camps and prisons.
Reading Moscow
Skiing and sledding
Spinning reels at a weaving mill
Moscow State University under construction
‘First payday!’
People at a Labor Day demonstration in Leningrad
Mishka and Chizhik space dogs successfully returning to Earth after their flight on The R-1B rocket
Sovetskaya Square in Moscow (now called Tverskaya)
Pashkov House and ‘Leninka’ (The V.I. Lenin State Library)
Amateur athletes at the Soviet sports tournament - the Spartakiad
A cinema operator in a village club
Paratroopers during training
Chess leisure time at a resort
A Soviet motorsport competition
Navy war veteran meets young ship model fans
Moskvich-400s for sale
Elections for the Supreme Soviet of Russia
A proletarian family
An agitation team of a village club
Tourists on the Red Square
Geologists in the Sayan Mountains
Legendary ballerina Maya Plisetskaya as Odetta in the Swan Lake ballet
Mass picking rose petals
A castle ruin in Kaliningrad (former Konigsberg)
A new street under construction in Moscow Region
Pioneers busy making a model airplane
A new school in Vologda Region
A giant statue of Joseph Stalin at the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNKh) in Moscow
Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev atop the Lenin mausoleum at the Labor Day demonstration on the Red Square
Sputnik
Convicts at work in Ozerlag, one of the Gulag camps along the Baikal-Amur Mainline
TASS