Published in the final decade of the USSR, this volume from Time-Life’s Library of Nations series is a lavishly illustrated attempt to explain the Soviet Union as both political system and lived society.

It moves between the long history of Russian state power, revolution and Communist government and the textures of ordinary Soviet life: housing, work, food, marriage, religion, childhood, drinking, agriculture and the enormous geographical distances contained within the Union.  Produced in 1984, it describes a country that still appears durable and essentially permanent, only seven years before its dissolution.

The photographs are especially good: weddings conducted beneath Soviet insignia, Siberian domestic interiors, farms, religious observance and state architecture sit alongside reproductions of historical art and political imagery. Less a neutral reference book than a very handsome piece of late-Cold-War popular ethnography — the Soviet Union being explained to the Western household just before the object of explanation disappeared.

Time-Life Books, 1984. First edition. Hardcover. Orange cloth boards with mounted colour photographic plate; extensively illustrated throughout in colour and black and white. Light rubbing and handling wear to boards, with minor wear at corners and edges. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good condition.