What Russia was like in 1951 (PHOTOS)

History
RUSSIA BEYOND
What this year meant for Russian history, what people looked like and what was happening on the post-war cities’ streets of the USSR.

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

Convicts at work in Ozerlag, one of the Gulag camps along the Baikal-Amur Mainline