FRESH

Hacker News

The Manhoff Archives: Color photos of Stalin-era USSR taken by a US diplomat

189 points by Cider9986

by 0xDEAFBEAD

1 subcomments

"According to Smith, after Manhoff’s wife died he was asked to check the home of a former official for valuable memorabilia."
I wonder how much valuable memorabilia is just getting thrown away because no one thought to check for it.
Here's your nudge to ask your older relatives about their memorabilia, and record conversations with them while they are still alive.
If you want to put the info online somewhere to increase the chance that it's useful to someone someday, you could try a free genealogy website like familysearch.org or wikitree.com

by infecto

4 subcomments

Lots of contention here around the narrative. The original link should be removed and replaced with the original source that has what’s seems to be accurate and different narratives for the pictures. The linked site seems to simply steal what is a pretty nice coverage of the archive.
https://www.rferl.org/a/the-manhoff-archive/28359558.html

by aix1

5 subcomments

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union (during a later period), I found it really interesting to look at this photographs.
One thing worth pointing out: Moscow was very different from the rest of the country. It had better housing and infrastructure, the shops were stocked far better than elsewhere in the country, it had more grandiose architecture and richer cultural life and so on.
In many is ways it was the country's showcase city.

by dctoedt

0 subcomment

More information about the origins of the collection and the photographer (a U.S. Army officer, assistant military attaché): https://manhoffarchive.org/narratives/intro

by usrnm

7 subcomments

Interesting and sad to see the ratio of women to men doing hard manual work in these photos, even road repairs are done by women. It's mind boggling how devastating the war was for the country.

by adolph

3 subcomments

0 subcomment

by anovikov

0 subcomment

The most striking thing about it, is that no matter how sorry do most of those people look, a good half of them represent Soviet 1% ers. And virtually all of them, top 20%. Vast majority of population wore homemade clothes, lived in villages with no documents (literally having no right to have an ID issued, which was necessary for all things except working in their kolkhos they were attached to), and could be jailed simply for leaving their village without a written order, at will.

0 subcomment

by Jgoauh

6 subcomments

"It becomes evident that the parade was a carefully choreographed spectacle, designed to showcase the Soviet Union’s ideology and power to the world."
Ah yes, everyone known that in a TRUE democracy parades are spontaneously occurring events, self organizing to show the country's weaknesses and the population's biases.
Seriously tho, what does this mean, has anyone ever been to a parade and concluded it was neither coreographed, planned, or meant give a positive image ?
How do you determine people's enthusiasm is planned and orchestrated by looking at them ?
Are all parades proof the country is actually the torture Truman show or just the countries you're being payed to spy on ?

by obezyian

1 subcomments

> store №20
> MEAT. FISH.
That's some Edward Bernays-level trickery right there. /s

by balalalalalala

0 subcomment

by bediger4000

0 subcomment

by serious_angel

0 subcomment