In 1977 the National Geographic Society (the USA) published this book of a journalist Bart McDowell and a photographer Dean Conger – 370 pages of “personalized geography”, a portrait of the huge country and its people. Two Americans travelled to all 15 republics, visited dozens of cities and made a detailed story about the Soviet Union.

The first day at school – a Ukrainian schoolgirl

Many faces of the Soviet Union

Ice-cream vendors in Kreschatik, Kiev

Girls at a picture “Danae” of Rembrandt

A small city near Novosibirsk. A docotor is examining a girl after an operation on her heart

Residential buildings in cubistic style above the streets of restored Tashkent – the largest Soviet city to the east from the Urals.

In winter Yakutsk builders do not let mortar freeze, they apply electric heating units and salt additives.

Trading centers and a new movie theater in Togliatti.

Children are looking out from the windows of a car at the station of the main Trans-Siberian railway.

A veteran Abram Mordukhovich and an acting colonel Dmitry Boyarkin are having lunch in a compartment of a train going along the main Trans-Siberian railway.

A young girl from Leningrad looking at the candlelight, a kid from Murmansk showing how old he is and a couple from Kiev following the fashion rules of that time.

An employee from a state farm working in the town near Tallinn, stylish students from Erevan, a Latvian woman with a badge «Virginia is for lovers».

Behind the crossroad in the center of Samarkand are the ruins of Bibi-Khanym mosque.

The city farewell draftees with an orchestra.

The newly married couple is being photographed at a wedding palace in Alma-Ata.

Church members from Odessa are listening to a baptist priest. Someone is even recording his speech.

First-class Moldavian wine

A family of a Ukrainian farmer Mikhail Boiko has a small house. They raise pigs, hens and ducks.

A post and a savings bank of a collective farm named after Shevchenko in the village Novye Tsybli. 2-3% of annual income from the deposits.

A police car in Tobolsk. The bright sun melted the heart of a young man.

Tobolsk is turning to a large industrial center.

“Zhemchuzhina” (“Pearl”) cafe in Baku

Riga is often called an eastern-European Paris.

A couple from Tallinn is hiding from the rain under the umbrella.

Traffic-controllers in Khabarovsk, the Soviet constitution declares equality of rights.

Cold winters may cause development delay that’s why children from Murmansk should take vitamins and have sessions of ultraviolet radiation.

A small red flag stops traffic

Decorations in Leningrad. November, 7th – another anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Children playing snowballs in the yards of Murmansk, a guide is telling about the tactics of Russian troops in Borodino battle in the Moscow Region, teens from Odessa.

“Spa” in Yalta, Alma-Ata reveres Lenin’s memory, the Volga car production plant where 111 thousands of female employees

November, 7th celebration.

A Yakut people’s artist Gavriil Kolesov is making sliced frozen meat for the author of the book Bart McDowell (to the right) and a translator Gennady Sokolov.

Rest of a couple from Leningrad – an evening in the company of vodka, light supper and tunes of records.

White nights in Leningrad. A group of students are having a graduation party.

Retired soldiers

The cheapest “Zhiguli” model costs $7420 inside the country, however abroad it costs only $1900

A helicopter of “Aeroflot” has delivered supplies to reindeer breeders in the North.

In the Arctic port

Ethnic heterogeneity in the streets of Ulan-Ude.

The Trans-Siberian railway. A young traveller has made friends with soldiers and is rehearsing a military salute.

Baikal-Amur mainline. A master Varvara Kupova from Siberia.

A photographer Dean Conger (to the right) and a translator Gennady Sokolov in Irkutsk.

Prelate Nikolay is found under the cover of the book

via valkorn