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  • 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 usrnm
  • 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 dctoedt
  • 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 aix1
  • 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 infecto
  • 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.
    by anovikov
  • "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 0xDEAFBEAD

  •   It unveils the stark contrast between the carefully constructed façade 
  presented by the Soviet authorities and the harsh realities experienced by 
  ordinary citizens.
    I guess without examples of the "carefully constructed façade" its difficult to understand if there is a contrast. To me, the photos just look like ordinary 1950s street scenes. Waiting at Walgreens the other day I spent the time examining the store's decorative antique photos; aside from differences in culture and subject area, so many details of vehicles, building construction, clothing styles are remarkably similar.
    by adolph

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