Anon - Москва И Москвичи (Moscow and Muscovites) - 1975

This lavish propaganda photobook is an extensive documentation of the Soviet capital in the mid 1970s, a time known as the Years of Stagnation under Brezhnev when rampant corruption was hollowing out the entire political and economic system of the USSR, leading to it's collapse 15 years later. But the problems of the USSR are absent from the optimistic narrative presented in this photobook. With captions in Russian only, it was obviously designed for a domestic audience rather than being another 'pilgrimage to Moscow' book for international visitors.

Mixing street photography, portraiture and architectural photos, the book concentrates mainly on everyday life in the Soviet capital rather than the historic sites that similar publications usually focussed on. People are photographed in both work and leisure, living happy, fulfilling lives, while orderly lines of traffic fill the wide boulevards of the city. Gleaming, newly constructed concrete apartment blocks (that Brezhnev was particularly associated with building) are lovingly presented as both a demonstration of rational state planning and proof that the better life Communism promised had come to pass. The unspoken subtext of this propaganda book is to convince Soviet viewers that they were living the good life, or if they were in the provinces, that the modernity embodied by the showcase capital city would be coming their way soon.

Condition:
Very good copy of this unusual propaganda photobook. Tiny damage to top and lower corners of rear cover. Please examine listing photographs carefully.