USSR - A Look at Red Russia

A friend of mine said to me, that, as I had spent some time in Vladivostok (USSR in those days of Nikita Khrushchev) during the ‘60s, it would be nice if I talked or displayed something I had collected during those days. As a matter of fact I was in that great country when they were celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the Great Revolution. This, I felt was a good idea, as I do have a fairly good collection of those days. I had gone around the bookshops in Vladivostok quite extensively, to look for stamps (that’s where they peddled stamps etc in those days). Now I won’t describe Vladivostok or the kind of life I spent there (even though I’d love to) except to say that in winters it is an exceptionally cold place (-20 to –30 Cs during the day, and really brrrrrrr at night). But, that did not stop the Vladivostokans from eating their favorite ice creams while window-shopping in biting cold weather. There was a joke going around, that if you wanted to know Russian progress in Metallurgy, all that you had to do was request an average Russian on the street to give a big wide smile into the lens of your camera. The silver and gold tooth fillings would tell an ample story about metallurgical advances in that country!

Over the next few days I will try and display a cameo of the various facets of the USSR. The Golden Anniversary in 1967 was a great and continuous event, the national ceremonies seemed never ending. The city nay the whole country was bedecked with buntings flowers and flags everywhere. Each Republic that formed the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics the USSR (or CCCP as written on the postage stamps) was trying to outdo one another in their nationalistic fervor. So lets begin by looking at the emblems of the Republics that formed the USSR.