The USSR in photographs by American professor Thomas Hammond

Thomas T. Hammond, a professor at the University of Virginia and a specialist in the history of Russia and the USSR, photographed Soviet Russia for nineteen years. From the 1950s to the 1970s, he traveled extensively around the USSR with his family: he visited Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Yaroslavl, Samarkand, Pyatigorsk, Riga. Hammond never hesitated to photograph what soviet people thought was ordinary, so there are many curious details in his pictures.