Old colour photos from Russia - Moscow street

The Potemkin effect: Colour photos from Russia in the black-and-white days

Soviet Life, Tech Meets History & Totalitarianism /

There is a fantastic collection of old colour photos from Russia — Tsarist Russia, to be exact — taken between 1902 and 1912 on the Boston Globe site. Strictly speaking, they’re not colour photos — the photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) — shot each image three times, using a red, green and then blue filter. He later combined them to get an approximation of reality. […]

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My Perestroika documentary screenshot

Not my perestroika: Shades of might have beens

Books & Movies, Soviet Life /

Every year, on September 1, Russian children start their first day of school. All of them, en masse. And before them, it was Soviet children. My mother went to school in pinafored uniform, braids and bows in her hair, flowers in her arms. Twenty years later, a carbon copy photo of my cousin doing and wearing the same thing. It’s a ritual I never participated

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The Kitchen Debate - Nixon and Kruschev meeting in Moscow at the American National Exhibition, 1959

Live, in the kitchen, from Moscow

Soviet Life /

So this happened – 1959, Moscow, at the Kruschev and Nixon meeting in, where else, a kitchen. It took the Kremlin until 1959 to realize how starved for things the nation was. In July of that year, Moscow’s Sokolniki Park hosted the American National Exhibition. …In just two week two million Russians had had their faces mashed into a perfect tableau of Yankee wealth. The

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Hiding out in the ‘burbs

Immigrant Experience /

Surprisingly to some, many of the people living in the suburbs – places like Peel or Scarborough – do so voluntarily—almost as if they like it or something. Moreover, a very significant chunk of those suburbanites aren’t white and weren’t born in Canada, a fact that raises some rather sticky questions. To wit, as downtown scenesters badmouth the suburbs over bowls of Pho, are they

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Immigrant Decor: When all is fleeting anyway, food becomes everything, by Katrina K

Guest Posts - Immigrant Decor Series /

If I had a Russian food blog, it would be something like The Gastronomical Me, by Katrina K., a transplanted Russian who lives in London. And, if I loved in London, I would be crashing her monthly Soviet brunch club. As it is, I may have to start my own version in Toronto. In the meantime, enjoy today’s musing from Katrina. More posts to come,

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Immigrant Decor: The weight of an English chesterfield, by Navneet Alang

Guest Posts - Immigrant Decor Series /

This next post is from Navneet Alang, a tech-culture writer and PhD student. You can catch his always thoughtful commentary in This Magazine and the Toronto Standard, among others. Nav’s memorable item is slightly bigger than your average tchotchke, but what I really appreciate is how neatly it upends expectations of what, or where, home means. More posts to come, so stay tuned! And if

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Immigrant Decor: Hindu gods, the Alberta way, by Scaachi Koul

Guest Posts - Immigrant Decor Series /

Our next submission on the things we take with us growing up in immigrant homes is from writer Scaachi Koul, who writes about her distance from her Indian background. Scaachi is currently interning over at Huffington Post Canada. She also keeps a personal blog, Big Fists, where she’s recently started an advice column featuring her dad, Papa Koul—”62-year-old Calgary-bound India-born somewhat-racist father answers [your questions]

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Immigrant Decor: A suitcase full of matryoshkas and salami, by Anna Tarkov

Guest Posts - Immigrant Decor Series /

Today’s peek into the immigrant home comes from Anna Tarkov, a journalist and blogger from Chicago. She’s been published in the Chicago Tribune, Time Out Chicago, and others, and her blog, THE OUTSIDER… and the rueful dilettante, is full of insights on the state of journalism today. Though she left the USSR much later than my family, she seems to really echo my own sentiments

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