Soviet television shows California (1976)

What did the Soviet people know about USA? How did they see America? California Today is a short documentary (26 minutes) made in 1976 by the Soviet television. Nature, American working class, banks, roads and cars, Hollywood, military-industrial complex, Berkley university, students protests, conservatory and rock music, beaches, immigrants, Disneyland.

Music includes "My Beautiful Balloon" and "One of These Days".

The web-site CCCP.TV is an online archive of Soviet TV programs: political, for kids, concerts, sports, travel, party congresses... See, for example, one-hour long the First of May parade in Moscow in 1974 or ice hockey match USSR-Canada in 1960.

The archive is not a large one, but I do hope they will grow.

Two blogs you really have to look at

The first one is a brilliantly erratic Poemas del río Wang. Multilingual, colorful, aimless, meditative and absolute must read.

The second one is in Russian, but in most cases all you need to read is the year in the post title. Visual History (a.k.a. "Photo archives to the people!") is a collection of old photographs. Mostly, but not exclusively, Russian, including the famous photos by Prokudin-Gorsky and equally brilliant images made in USSR by journalists of the "Life" magazine Howard Sochurek and Carl Mydans. Absolute must see.

Here are some links to articles in Visual History:

• Nizhny Novgorod in 1958 (by Sochurek)
• Travel of an Americal along Volga in 1958 (by Sochurek)
• Sports parade in Moscow in 1945
• My hometown, Samara, in 1958 (Sochurek again)
• Post-war Byelorussia (1950s)
• Moscow in 1959 (by Mydans)
• Pskov around 1960
• Rostov: modern and Prokudin-Gorsky's photos
• Travel from Moscow to Rostov in 1964 (by Jacques Dupâquier)
• Soviet cars on the Expo 1958 in Brussels

P.S.: while writing, I found also this collection of photographs: Kansas City with a Russian accent.