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

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

#51

Post by RaSoJo »

infecto wrote: post #38
RaSoJo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reckon OP means quotes like these: Manhoff captures the scarcity of consumer goods, the omnipresent surveillance, and the ever-present fear of being monitored by the Soviet security apparatus. A lot of socialist commentators push back on such portrayals, dismissing them as capitalist propaganda. Michael Parenti was one such. He argued that life in the USSR was in stark contrast to what the world were made to believ…

I have no bone to pick on either side but there were a number of comments here about the footnotes to the pictures so I went to look up the source material and could not find good references to those footnotes so wanted to point out they the images are stolen and the text that comes with it is probably made up.

Ah ok. Sorry, I misread your comment then :)

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

#52

Post by watwut »

wl wrote: post #24
Jgoauh wrote: post #12

"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 c…

In my experience as an American, most of the parades I'm personally familiar with are organized by local groups rather than the government. Maybe you can read some ideology into the American Legion marching with flags, but it's more an exercise in giving the local high school band a chance to march, the Shriners an excuse to break out their clown cars, and maybe the whole thing is an advertisement for the 4H or FFA f…

Military parades with actual soldiers in USA are organized by local groups rather then the government? Like commooooon.

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

#53

Post by dang »

MisterTea wrote: post #31
infecto wrote: post #23

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

[flagged]

You broke the site guidelines here by posting aggressively. Please don't do that.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

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

#54

Post by dang »

infecto wrote: post #23

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

Thanks - we've switched the top link to that from https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-era-soviet-union-pic....

Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#55

Post by watwut »

usrnm wrote: post #18

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.

There is exactly one photo with three women pouring something onto small holes? Only other work shown has women going to clear/sweep and cleaning is traditionally female work.

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

#56

Post by ido »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
aix1 wrote: post #3

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 co…

So, the same as any big urban center anywhere has better infrastructure and cultural life compared to villages and rural areas? Or was it particularly pronounced in the USSR?

Not just the USSR, Warsaw Pact countries in general (e.g. Prague was disproportionally well funded in Czechoslovakia in comparison to other cities - even accounting for its size and population) and probably authoritarian countries in general tend towards it. Of course in general the biggest cities/capital cities tend to be richer than smaller/less important cities but the comment was about the magnitude of the phenomenon in the USSR.

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

#57

Post by teachrdan »

Cider9986 wrote: post #34
branon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, is that why... I noticed this too but assumed it was due to some communist ideal of gender equality leading to more women tradespeople, wishful thinking I guess

You saw it in the US during the two world wars. Women got more rights and there was some interesting propaganda encouraging women to work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter

Fun fact: The version Normal Rockwell painted shows Rosie stepping on a copy of Mein Kampf. Good times!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RosieTheRiveter.jpg

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

#58

Post by bediger4000 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #32
aix1 wrote: post #3

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 co…

So, the same as any big urban center anywhere has better infrastructure and cultural life compared to villages and rural areas? Or was it particularly pronounced in the USSR?

In the USA, we tend to hear a lot about "urban/rural divides". There's always a lot of calls to narrow or erase that divide. The efforts are usually directed towards increasing rural access (to anything, broadband, healthcare, schooling, etc), rather than making improvements for both urban and rural problems.

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

#59

Post by readthenotes1 »

usrnm wrote: post #18

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.

That's a funny take these days, that women are too dainty to do "men's work". Should they be kept barefoot in the kitchen? Or just allowed in women's jobs?

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

#60

Post by robotnikman »

usrnm wrote: post #18

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.

The Soviets were one of the few countries where Women were employed on the front lines during the war. They were tank drivers, anti aircraft gunners, pilots, snipers.

A famous unit of all women pilots known as the 'Night Witches' made a name for themselves during the war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Witches

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