UIG contributing partner Sovfoto/Eastfoto has long been considered one of the West’s most comprehensive sources of historical and documentary photography from Russia, the former Soviet Republics, Eastern Europe, and China. The extensive archive covers historical events and notable people, cultural heritage, industry, geography and political content from the Russian Revolution through the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Dinner time during harvest season on a collective farm in Russia, 1938. 
Prague Residents Sit On The Top Of Soviet Tank In Front Of The National Museum In Wenceslas Square, Prague, Czechoslovakia, Aug 1968. With A Sign Reading ‘Access Denied To Unauthorized Personnel’. 
Lavrenty Beria, Georgi Malenkov, and Anastas Mikoyan on the rostrum on Lenin’s tomb during a may day demonstration in red square, Moscow, USSR, May 1 1949. 
October 1956: Wladyslaw Gomulka speaking. 
Soviet propaganda banner with likenesses of Lenin, Engels, and Marx in Leningrad, USSR, 1960s. The banner reads ‘forward to the victory of communism!’. 
International women’s day, women (mainly textile workers) demonstrate on Petrograd’s (St, Petersburg) nevsky prospect shortly after the establishment of a provisional government. Russia, February 1917, the soldiers’ families are demanding increased rations for the troops, the banner reads ‘comrade workers and soldiers, support our demands’. 
Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin (1872-1916), spiritual advisor to Tsarina Alexandra, assassinated in 1916 by members of the Russian royal court. 
Red army soldiers raising the soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin, Germany, April 30, 1945, photo taken by Vladimir Grebnev. 
Chairman Mao Zedong applauding red guards at a parade in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, 1960s. 
Joseph Stalin with two young women collective farm workers from Tadjikistan soviet republic at a conference of cotton farm workers, January 1936, USSR. 
Lenin addresses crowd in new soviet Russia in 1919. 
World War 2. “We are fighting heartily. And bayoneting daringly – grandchildren of Suvorov, children of Chapaev.” A wartime poster (1941) by the famous caricaturists, the Kukrynitsy (M, Kurpriianov, P. Krylov, and N. Sokolov). 
Citizen marchers carrying posters of Joseph Stalin at a May Day parade in Bucharest, Romania, 1950s. 
West German citizens passing through the Oberbaum bridge checkpoint into east Berlin in the GDR, April 7, 1966. 
Berlin, GDR, May 1, 1957. May Day celebrations in Marx-Engels square. 
The troops of the provisional government shooting at a peaceful demonstration of workers, soldiers and sailors, held under the slogan ‘all power to the soviets’ in Petrograd on July 4, 1917. 
Bloody Sunday, painting by I Vladimirov of Tsar Nicholas’ troops shooting demonstrators outside of the winter palace in St. Petersburg on January 22, 1905. 
Red army cavalry soldiers undergoing rapier practice, world war ll. 
Construction of the Great Fergana Canal. Uzbekistan, September 1939. An Uzbek collective farmer working on the canal. 
Women under hair dryers at a Moscow beauty salon. Late 1950s. 
A mass chorus formed by Peking (Beijing) children singing the revolutionary song ‘we are successors to communism’ at Chingshan park in celebration of International Labor Day on May 1st (May Day), the banner reads ‘listen to chairman Mao’s words, be chairman Mao’s good children’, 1965. 
Russian Royal Family: Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchesses (from left) Maria, Tatyana, Olga, Anastasia and Crown Prince Alexei, 1914. 
Korean War. The cultural workers of the Chinese People’s Volunteers play an active role on the Korean front. Here, a cultural worker singing a Chinese song to members of the Chinese People’s Volunteers in their underground base during a break in combat. 1953. 
Korean War. An artillery unit of the Korean People’s Army. 1953.
Established in 1932 in New York City, Sovfoto/Eastfoto was the only American photo agency receiving the best of Soviet photojournalism and, after World War Two, the agency became the exclusive source of photojournalistic content from China and Eastern Europe. The Sovfoto/Eastfoto archive features coverage of some of the most important events in world history, including Russian and Chinese Revolutions; the Soviet Space Program, the Korean and Vietnam Wars (from the communist perspective); and the fall of communism.
All images in this post are credited to Sovfoto/Eastfoto. All images featured in this post and on Kaleidoscope are available for licensing. Please contact us at info@universalimagesgroup.com