—These pedestrians, photographed in the Arbat neighbourhood of Moscow, are among the most privileged in the Soviet Union. Mass famines would no longer strike the Soviet Union, but the phenomenon of the food line-up and the empty shelf would never disappear. The death of Stalin was a period of profound chaos in the Soviet Union. For those born into the modern Soviet Union, the “return of history” that came in the 1980s was a devastating shock. Gorbachev himself, who was about 20 when this photo was taken, saw both of his grandfathers arrested.

Source: National Post February 08, 2017 18:52 UTC