Monday, September 9, 2019

Traveling Down the Dnieper with Soviet Life, 1984 Part II

Recently we featured a remarkable Soviet book from 1985 that promoted tours along the Dnieper River in the Ukrainian SSR.

Today we are going to look at a voyage made by two editors of Soviet Life Magazine down the river in 1983 sharing the text and the images. They wrote of their trip in the February and March issues in 1984. As they did we will be breaking our post into the two parts of which this is the second. The first part can be found here. 

The writers traveled on a smaller passenger yacht. In this second part they travel from the new riverside town of Komsomolsk down to the river's end at the port city of Kherson just to the north of the Black Sea.

They talk about many sights and sounds along the route such as the Tavriya State Farm winery, the city of Zaporozhye near the Dniper Hydroelectric Power Station (which was the largest of its kind in the world when first built), the village of Ivanovka and the factories of Nikopol. They relate a variety of discussions and encounters with people of various different occupations and backgrounds.

There are numorous photos in colour and black-and-white.

One notable part is the trip to the Dneprovshina tire factory with its services for workers such as nurseries and daycare centres, medical facilities, laundries, tailors and more. The factory had a system of "Trust Phones" which could be used by shop floor workers to make suggestions or raise concerns with directors or the trade union committee without the need for an appointment or formal paperwork.

(Click on scans to enlarge)




































No comments:

Post a Comment