This Russian language training film was produced in 1963 by International Film Bureau, Inc., and the East European Language program of Syracuse University. Narration by Olga Snegireff Federoff. Depicted are the produce markets of an average European Soviet city, a central Asian produce market, shots of the normal traffic in Samarkand (the capital of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic at the time), a prolonged explanation of the daily life in the Soviet countryside, ending with several shots of the now-extinct kolkhoz in the Baikal region and the kolkhoz workers wistfully gazing at the Russophone “Amerika” magazine. Footage dating 1956-1962.
Highlights include:
0:49 – 1:51 an overhead shot of a Russian produce market and produce, scenes of people, mostly elderly women and older men, buying produce. Supposedly Moscow, but can be anywhere in Russia, just a very typical shot.
2:05 Overhead shot of a Central Asian Soviet produce market, supposedly in Tashkent
2:14 A ZIS/ZIL-150 (1947) truck, navigating the crowd, in the background
2:15 – 3:07 People buying and selling produce.
3:21 – 3:41 Samarkand, Registan Masjid Square
3:41 People exiting one of the mosque doors
4:12 Registan square ensemble, viewed from the back, people exiting a 1949-model GZA-651 bus, and a Willis-MB by, swiftly, at 4:14.04, followed possibly by a ZIS-5 or GAZ-AA trucks. Continued from the same spot behind the Registan square is a long shot of the Samarkand street traffic, consisting mostly of pedestrians, bicycle and horseback riders, horse and mule-drawn carts
4:55 just a wall pattern shot
5:07 Central Asian steppe
5:20 and 5:30 Agricultural trucks and a harvester in the distance, of unknown make and model.5:40 A « Kommunar » (licensed Holt-Caterpillar) grain harvester drawn by an S-85 (licensed Caterpillar D-7)
5:56 – 6:10 Siberian wide landscape shot, with a bridge across the shot, seen are GAZ-51, ГАЗ-51 trucks and a motorcycle
6:10 – 6 :44 unknown, allegedly Siberian village shot, with a road traversing the village and continuing far in the distance.6:40 Allegedly, the Baykal lake.
6 :40 – 8:16 Typical, allegedly Siberian, Russian countryside houses
8:17 – 9:32 Process of construction of a wood-log cabin-styled country house
9:32 – 10:25 Shots of farm animals
10:27-10: Kolkhoz worker and his family seen gathering potatoes and beets on their « private vegetable patch (as said by the narrator), the shoreline of the Baikal lake in the background. This is probably the now-extinct kolkhoz « 20th General Assembly of the Communist Party » «XX S’ezd Partii », located in the Olkhon district of the Primorski mountain chain of the Baikal lake
11:36-12:12 Extremely out of place in Siberia, a thatched-roof house, still in Siberia – according to the narrator, could be that it’s a relocated Cossack family. Or could be that it’s a Ukrainian, a Volga or a Don steppe shot.
12:14 – 14:00 Kolkhoz workers reading the Russophone « Americk » magazine , an article about the Nikita Khrushchev’s corn-growing campaign can be seen.
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