Books
The Playful Yet Sobering Anti-Alcohol Posters of the Soviet Union
A new book from Fuel features previously unpublished anti-alcohol posters from the 1960s to '80s in the Soviet Union.
Soviet Union
Art
The Radioactive Ruins of the Cold War’s Secret Cities
When Nadav Kander, an Israeli-born, London-based photographer who is interested in the "aesthetics of destruction," learned of these secret cities, he traveled to eastern Kazakstan to document their ruins.
Art
A Soviet-Era Kinetic Sculpture Designed to Improve Factory Life
The "Positron" (1976–77) by Latvian artist Valdis Celms operated a bit like a disco ball, flashing various colors of light as the goliath metal orb rotated.
Film
An Artist's Quest to Confirm a Chernobyl Conspiracy Theory
The Russian Woodpecker is a documentary about zombies.
Art
The Idealism of Early Soviet Russia in Pictures
The Jewish Museum’s The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film examines the beginnings of Soviet Russia, positing that the period from 1921 to 1932 was one of avant-garde artistic experimentation, a time when photographers and filmmakers (many of them Jewish) imagined their c
In Brief
Lenin, I Am Your Father: Darth Vader Engulfs Ukrainian Communist Statue (and Brings Free Wifi)
A city in Ukraine has gone over to the dark side.
Art
The First Artwork Made in Outer Space
LONDON — The first human to spacewalk wanted to be an artist before he learned to fly.
Art
The Whimsical Forms of Soviet Bus Stops
For over a decade, photographer Christopher Herwig travelled through 15 former Soviet countries on a scavenger hunt for one specific form of architecture: the common bus stop.
Books
The Most Fantastic Architecture of the Soviet Union Was Built on Paper
Restricted by the aesthetic limits on architecture in the Soviet Union, Alexander Brodsky and Ilya Utkin imagined the most fantastic cities and wondrous structures on paper.
News
Soviet Symbols Going Up and Coming Down
It’s been nearly a quarter century since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but the physical reminders of Central and Eastern Europe’s communist past are still provoking controversy.
Books
The Bleak Banality of Shopping in Communist Europe
"In a cityscape largely without commercial seduction, the banality of the shop windows underscored a real cultural difference between East and West," photographer David Hlynsky writes in his introduction to Window-Shopping Through the Iron Curtain.
Books
The Sacrificial Glory of the Soviet Space Dogs
As companions in our centuries of wandering and settling, dogs have given their loyalty blindly, in both good and bad, as sacrifices to animal testing, as scouts to survivors on battlefields, as guardians to sleep by the door at night.