Moscow, 1956

The hiatuses of our collection of Moscow’s historic photo series – 1931, 1900-60, 1960-80 and 2010, 1981/2009 – are gradually filling up, as from various archives more and more pictures come to light, whose existence has not been known. French historian Jacques Dupâquier digitized and put up on the net in 2009, one year before his death the color photos of his 1956 journey in the Soviet Union (from which we will also present those outside Moscow). The images are average tourist photos, but they deserve attention not so much because of their quality as for the date. “Such freedom”, recalled Dupâquier in a recent interview, “as in 1956, there was not even in the Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union. Our delegation met no police control, I could break away from the group and wander for hours all over the streets. I knew a little Russian, andn could ask for directions. Soviet society at that time had to face the moral catastrophe following Khrushchev’s speech at the Twentieth Congress [on the crimes of Stalinism]. No one knew what is admitted and what not, I could do whatever I wanted, which was an especially heady feeling. When for example taking photos on the drunk people laying on the main streets of Moscow, the policemen standing there did not hamper me, neither did they took away the camera, in spite of my expectations… What surprised me the most was that in 1956, more than half of Moscow’s buildings were of wood, and some great poverty prevailed everywhere, except the central streets.”