December 9, 2006

Moscow in 1908


I meant to post about this a while back. It's from a great blog called English Russia. They say: "English Russia is a daily entertainment blog devoted to the events happening in Russian speaking countries, such as Russia (Russian Federation), Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, etc. Everyday something interesting happens in the countries occupying 1/6 of the populated world. We are here to inform you about it."

They have this remarkable video of Moscow on a cold, winter day in 1908: "That’s Moscow back from 1908. Same Russian snow, same Kremlin and same… Russian people."


The footage is amazing (first of all, it has survived from 1908, and the quality is so good considering the freezing temperature-related issues no doubt impacting the making of it), and I find the classical music soundtrack hypnotic (is it Rimsky-Korsakov? Anyone know?).

Here's the Moscow EarthCam to see what that area looks like right now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this! Incredibly beautiful. I'm so conditioned by Hollywood, though, that some of those sights looked like they were almost CG-created.

I wish I could have traveled the world in previous decades, before every place started looking the same...

Chris said...

You're welcome. It is incredible footage. To me, it frequently looks like a painting (similar to your CG impression).

I know what you mean. The world in that video is about as different to ours that it might has well have been the 18th century.