The Princess Pretenders

The possible survival and escape of the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia, was one of most captivating and romantic mysteries of the 20th century. The youngest daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, was assumed to have been tragically murdered along with her parents and siblings by communist revolutionaries in 1918, when they were lured…

Chasing American Dreams at the 1st Miss Soviet Union Beauty Pageant

The year was 1988, the iron curtain was falling and the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, was patching up foreign relations with America after a schmoozy dinner with Ronald and Nancy Reagan in Washington. The country was ushering in a new era of social freedom and a flood of information about the lives of people abroad had triggered a…

America’s “Secret Sonic Weapon” Against Communism

This is the story of that time the United States decided to influence countries “at-risk” of falling to communism … by introducing them to jazz. In a Cold War “Jazz Ambassador” initiative, they sent famed artists such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Galespie, and Duke Ellington, among others, to share “their Western music” and to hopefully, introduce some American…

The Stylehunters of Soviet Russia

In communist Russia of the 1950s, members of a provocative subculture put their own original twist on street style. Labeled “Stilyaga” or “Stilyagi” (plural) by disapproving outsiders – a name that literally translates to stylehunter – a group of dandy youngsters dressed up in colorful American-inspired get ups to meet on Leningrad and Moscow’s main…

The Great African American Escape to Soviet Russia

In pursuit of the African American story abroad, we often look to 1920s Paris, where jazz was first introduced to the French and Black culture was embraced with open arms. It’s a more familiar story than the one about Soviet Russia opening its doors to thousands of Black Americans in the 20th century, where they…

Inside America’s Secret Atomic City

Most of the 75,000 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee had no idea they were processing uranium until the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. They had settled in the mysterious town, a “secret city”, with very little knowledge of what they would do there, other than the promise that their work was going to help…

Brooklyn’s Revolutionary Social Club

On a quiet street in Brooklyn, lies a very peculiar treasure chest. It safeguards the boots of Mexican revolutionaries, and the sound bites of rebels; it collects buttons, posters, and anything upon which one could scrawl a grassroots manifesto. It’s New York City’s “Interference Archive,” and it’s the volunteer-based library, gallery, and archive for tools…

Documenting a Stasi Prison

On East German maps of the time, the prison simply didn’t exist, marked only with a blank space. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, unlike many other government and military institutions in East Germany, the former prison was not stormed by demonstrations, allowing the authorities to destroy evidence of what went on there. Twenty…

The Vault

The Soviet Propaganda Fabrics We Probably Shouldn’t be Lusting After

On one hand, they’re undeniably beautiful and intricate patterns that could make a very attractive scarf collection were a fashion designer willing to give them a style comeback. On the other hand, if anyone were to take a second look at your scarf, they would find the image of a communist regime… These are the communist…

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The Secret Newspaper Published from inside a Prison

Doftana Prison sits abandoned near Romania’s Carpathian mountains. Its foundations have been rocked by earthquakes, its roofs have been brought down by heavy snow and storms, and every winter the building crumbles a little more. There is still enough remaining to show the scale of the place and a sense of how a prisoner’s life was,…