Slavic scholar Grisha Freidin is a child of Moscow – he and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was teenager. So that means he recalls the city’s 800th birthday party on September 7, 1947. “I remember playing with the colorful commemorative insignia (few things were colorful then) and hearing my parents, probably in answer to my questions, refer to the celebrations with uncharacteristic ebullience. Clearly it was a major landmark of the post-war years in Stalin’s Russia.” The era’s most famous war photographer, Robert Capa, was on hand to document the event with John Steinbeck – and add a little nuance to the official party line of a a people looking inexorably forward to a glorious future. Grisha looked up Capa’s photos, and has a compelling essay over at his blog, The Noise of Time: And yet, whatever the restrictions, this war photographer was able to convey the atmosphere of the 1947 Moscow. Indeed, many images are composed to give expression to the wrenching tension between the ordinary folks’ desire to cash in a little of that great WWII victory – to ease gently into the long-deferred private life – and the unspoken command shouting at them from every poster: “Attention! To the Glory of the Empire, March!”
more from Cynthia Haven at The Book Haven here.