How did the people of the Soviet Union expect to live in the year 2017? A filmstrip from 1960 shows that their expectations were pretty similar to the futuristic predictions of Americans. With a touch more Communism, of course.
A giant metal shield designed to contain radioactive waste at Chernobyl’s damaged nuclear reactor is being moved into place.
From the late 1950s until the late 1980s, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union were working on computer networking in one form or another. Why did the US succeed where the Russians failed? That’s the subject of a new book titled How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet
Two spacecraft drifted closer to one another far above planet Earth, as they prepared to dock. It was July 17th, 1975, and they were about to make history. For the first time, a United States Apollo and Soviet Union Soyuz spacecraft would dock with one another, an enormously symbolic mission that served as a small…
Pictures of the Soviet Space Shuttle in its hanger have been making the rounds on the internet recently, but there’s another shuttle out there. Russian photographer Aleksander Markin came across the remains of the original wooden model, used for wind tunnel testing.
What do you get when the Soviet Union wants a jet airplane purpose-built to service its massive farms and agricultural collectives? Well, according to Poland, you get the demented looking PZL M-15, nicknamed “Belphegor,” which means a hideous mythical demon who tricks people into thinking they have an invention that…
Looks like North Korea's engineers have been hard at work brushing up on their obsolete Soviet-era technology. Because after acquiring 10 discontinued Soviet subs, everyone's favorite little warmongering-dictatorship-that-could has finally rendered the outdated ballistic vessels seaworthy—and it only took them 21…
The canine members of Soviet Union's space program were stars, symbols of the nation's technological future. And so, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, these pups appeared on matchbook covers, commemorative boxes, ceramics, and more.
If you went looking for Zvezdny Gorodok, aka Star City, on a map in the 1960s, you'd have no luck. This small town outside of Moscow was long a state secret, and for good reason: It was the base where Cosmonauts came to train for—and recover from—space flight. And it's still cooking.
Americans tend to talk a lot about the Space Race and how we made it to the Moon and we were first and no one else was second because we are the best. It's put into context by the fact that the Soviet satellite Sputnik was the first in space, but by the time we get around to discussing the moon landings no one…
This thing? I found it inside an abandoned square-mile Soviet-era military factory in Siberia. It would have worn a gas mask to help illustrate to workers proper safety protocols upon nuclear war with America. Now, it's just another artifact of the USSR's once mighty military machine.
In Soviet-era Russia, families needing transportation lined up at the car office, filled out their paperwork and waited up to six years for their wheels to arrive. Many chose to instead spend those years building their own cars, from iron-clad sports cars to pods with a frying pan for a steering wheel. Here's some of…
We'd all love an obsessively detailed 1:18 scale Volvo 240 coupe on our desks, of course, but no collection of automotive tchotchkes is complete without some Soviet iron!
Saturday morning, the competitors of the Mutually Assured Destruction of Omaha 24 Hours of LeMons race had just entered the track for transponder testing laps when this hunk of vintage Soviet iron came screaming by at low altitude.
Once again, English Russia comes through with a great car photo.
Powered by 228,800 Lb-Ft of thrust, this Lun-class Ekranoplan was designed to carry two-million pounds of Europe-invading soldiers and vehicles and six nuclear missiles at speeds up to 340 MPH. Thank God Reagan defeated the Soviet Union.
This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition, where we admire interesting street-parked cars in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot. We've already seen a WW2 vet on the Copenhagen street, and now it's the Cold War's turn.
Let's say you could go back to the early 1950s and snag a super-futuristic prototype automobile as your 2009 daily driver. Which side of the Iron Curtain would you choose?
The Lamest Day takes place at Nelson Ledges next weekend, and it will feature the best all-time Index Of Effluency matchup in 24 Hours Of LeMons history: a Soviet car taking on a finned Caddy!
All these Engine Of The Day honors, and no Russian iron? And yesterday was May Day, comrades? We're going to remedy that oversight right now!
