USSR national basketball team player Arvydas Sabonis at a gala reception. Moscow, 1988.

The Sunny Valley ski resort in Bakuriani, Georgian SSR, 1973

The team of Soviet weightlifters participating in the international weightlifting meeting, Latvia, 1925.

A girl stands near the "Mother's Sorrow" sculpture on Mamayev Kurgan, Volgograd, 1964

“Girls of the USSR” (Samoyed, Ukrainian, Russian), picture book by A. Borisov (1929).

Basic military training classes at a vocational school, Tula, USSR, early 1980s. (From the collection of Vladimir Shcherbakov)

First-year students of the Faculty of Philology of Lomonosov Moscow State University. Photo by V. Yevgrafov (Moscow, 27 March 1951).

October Headquarters - Painting by Vladimir Alexandrovich Kuznetsov (1938)

Playing chess on the promenade, near the beach. Abkhaz ASSR, Pitsunda. 1973

“Greetings on the Day of the Great October!”, Soviet Postcard (early 1960s)

L. I. Brezhnev gets into the new ZIL-4104 limousine. USSR, 1978. Photo by Gordon Gahan

The USSR and USA bodybuilding teams. USA, 1991

Soviets had a true passion for mushroom picking, it wasn’t just food, it was a way of life! There was even a bizarre 1991 TV hoax claiming Lenin was actually a mushroom.🍄

Vladimir Mayakovsky and Lili Brik, sister of the French writer Elsa Triolet, at Yalta in 1926

V. I. Lenin during the sittings of the Second Congress of the Communist International in the Kremlin. Moscow, July-August 1920

Central Institute of Blood Transfusion of the City of Moscow. Letter from a donor who donated blood for wounded soldiers. USSR, December 1942. Photo by Anatoly Garanin

Good-bye, earthlings - Painting by Andrei Plotnov (1979)

“The Song of the Forests” (1949) by Dmitri Shostakovich, with lyrics by Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, celebrates the postwar rebirth of the Soviet land, the planting of new forests as a symbol of renewal and unity. 🌲 Experience it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd7P...

Matinee in kindergarten #132 for the holiday of the Great October Socialist Revolution. USSR, Ulyanovsk, 1985. Photo by Vladimir Lamzin

Stained glass windows with Lenin, Marx and Engels on the stairwell of the main building of Humboldt University, Berlin. GDR, 1962.

Endel Puusepp (1909–1996) — Soviet pilot of Estonian origin, Hero of the Soviet Union. He flew key diplomatic missions during World War II, including the flight that carried Molotov to the United States in 1942. Photo from 1985.

Once the Lenin Monument towered over Karl-Liebknecht-Straße near Alexanderplatz, until most socialist monuments were torn down after the Wall fell. Klaus Zapf, founder of Zapf Umzüge, rescued the statue from destruction and brought it to his company yard in Kreuzberg.

Lev Nikolayevich Oborin (1907–1974) was the first ever winner of the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1927 and one of the great interpreters of Soviet classical art. He was also awarded the Stalin Prize (1943) and the title of People’s Artist of the USSR (1964).

At the "Motorcycles and Mopeds" exhibition, USSR, 1959. Photo: Nikolai Bobrov

Sretensky Boulevard in Moscow. Photo by Vladimir Bogdanov (1980s).

“Modern Crime Story” book series published by Progress, Moscow from 1971 to 1991. Each book features novels from a different country (Australia, Hungary, Greece, Kenya, Finland etc. etc.)

Stepan Kazemirovich Gil (Lenin’s chauffeur) stands at Lenin’s Rolls-Royce at the Lenin Museum, 1957

On May 20, 1943, eleven volunteer tankmen from Tuva were sent to serve in the Red Army, joining the 25th Uman Tank Regiment of the 1st Ukrainian Front.

Beer fan. Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, 1983. Photo by Ian Berry

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin share a joke in the Kremlin, Moscow, in 1942.

The triplets Vera, Nadezhda, and Lyubov as university students in Odessa, 1968.

Soviet aviators of the all-female 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment ("Night Witches"), 1943. Photo by Yevgeny Khaldei

Boys eating ice cream in the winter. Photo by Vladimir Lagranzh (1970).

Portrait of Georgy Zhukov, painting by Vasily Yakovlev, 1946

Portrait of Soviet artist Elena Figurina posing in her studio at the House of Artists, among her paintings. Leningrad, 1990.

Cover of the Soviet magazine for children "Funny Pictures". March 1974

"Gagarin", by art-group Doping-Pong, 2016

Marx and Engels in the Louvre - Soviet painting by Ivan Vepkhvadze

“Karl and the Dwarfs” — Soviet caricature (1933) by Boris Efimov. A wordplay on Karl Marx and karliki (“dwarfs”), it shows Marx towering over tiny figures symbolizing capitalism, fascism, revisionism, and the church.

"Geologists", painting by Ivan Naumovich Nesterov, 1960

Stop! – Soviet Poster (1982) with the word Israel written on the attacker’s arm

Salyut Space Station, painting by Rim Konstantinovich Strelnikov, 1977

Winston Churchill shares a joke with Marshal Stalin (with the help of Pavlov, Stalin's interpreter, left) in the conference room at Livadia Palace during the Yalta Conference.

A disused marine school in Riga, Latvia, 2021 Photograph: Terence Abela

Section Officer P. Hack (centre) and Section Officer B. Hampson of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force with a female Red Army traffic officer near the Brandenburg Gate on Unter den Linden, Berlin. Summer 1945

Bullet for Browning pistol, Caliber 6.30-6.39 (medium), with which V. I. Lenin was wounded on August 30, 1918

Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov, June 1945

Soviet ice hockey player Vladislav Tretiak, 1976

Women from the Leningrad Shaping Club "Olympus", 1988. Photo by V. Sokolov

A twelve-story residential building under construction, Krasnodar, 1977