20+ photos of Russian babushkas like you’ve never seen them before!

 ‘Pravda’ newspaper, axe and bones, 1984

‘Pravda’ newspaper, axe and bones, 1984

Vladimir Vorobiev/MAMM/MDF
We’re used to seeing a Russian babushka as a calm old woman in a headscarf sitting on her knitwork. But not all of them are so soft and kind! We’ve put together a gallery of badass Russian grandmas that you won’t want to mess with!

Russian babushkas never give up and defy all stereotypes. People say they can stop a running horse and enter a burning house. They raise their grandchildren, keep the house in order, never complain about life and always try to stay positive! And here is photo evidence of their endless energy!

Two old women having small talk
An old saleswoman in the GUM department store in Moscow
An old woman from Chukotka
An old woman knitting, 1949
A countryside cyclist and an old woman with a yoke, 1979
A peasant woman during World War II
“Once upon a time there lived an old woman and an old man”
An old woman holding a sheaf of grain
A grandma cleaning mushrooms she just picked
An old woman posing on a tractor
An old woman posing in a headscarf, 1870s
Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sofya
A peasant woman hauling her disabled son near Sarov Monastery, 1903
Maria Polenova with Alisa the horse. Pavlovskoye estate
‘The Exodus’ After the Nazis aviation bombed Murmansk
An old woman sitting on a bench, 1956
A grandmother and her ‘little’ grandson, 1960s
 An old woman selling potatoes at a railway station somewhere in the Urals, 1974
A group of old women on a holiday in a village, 1978

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