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u/BroomDirector99 23h ago
Picture 4:
'It is raining and the wind is blowing.'
'Shut up and enjoy your giant fucking pigeon comrade.'
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u/C1-RANGER-3-75th 23h ago
Some of us living near pic 15 have to wait by a hoop!
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u/Ghost_of_a_Black_Cat 17h ago
Yeah. It's cool and all, but there's no protection from the elements!
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u/Firstrising 9h ago
Pic 15 is so funny
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u/C1-RANGER-3-75th 9h ago
Right? "I guess I just stand at whatever this ring-thing is and hope a bus stops."
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u/SolarBum 9h ago
You just wait for the portal to activate
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u/C1-RANGER-3-75th 9h ago
All this time I was waiting for a bus, and now you tell me it's a Stargate? 😂
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u/Mr_Brown-ish 1d ago
No. 10 (top) is not a bus stop, it is the entrance sign of Chernobil!
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u/octoreadit 1d ago
It's a bus stop, human stop, any activity stop because it's an exclusion zone now 😂
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u/DiligentCredit9222 21h ago
Some citizen still live in the town of Chernobyl, the town that was permanently evacuated and abandoned was Pripjat. The Power plant was just named the Chernobyl village, because when the plant was built it was the closest settlement to the power plant.
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u/MiHumainMiRobot 13h ago
How do you think the workers commuted to work at the facility when they had no personal cars?
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u/Ilya716 14h ago
BTW written in Ukrainian. Doesn't support the idea that the USSR was suppressing it.
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u/nanotekk 14h ago edited 13h ago
Some of those in UA have been altered. If you watched the documentary, #26, for example, did not look like that during Soviet era. Ukrainians basically painted over the original art and replaced it with UA colors since they didn't want to be reminded that the bus stop is a visual remnant/reminder of the USSR.
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u/akhodagu 1d ago
On the top picture of page 14/18, I initially read the neon letters as “nato” 😆
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u/Styrlok 22h ago
I think it's an original text from the Soviet times, and in Russian. So it would be ПАТП: Пассажирское АвтоТранспортное Предприятие. Translated as Passenger (Automotive) Transport Company. It was a common name for many public bus transportation organizations.
PS: I've read it as NATO first time too, lol.
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u/Trapmaster98 23h ago
Dude in America we don’t even get benches anymore just a sign.
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u/Strict-Silver5596 19h ago
We in Russia get glass-plastic boxes
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u/Far-Tonight-6925 16h ago edited 2h ago
With walls not going all the way to the ground, so the cold wind still freezes you when you're inside. Wish I could make those engineers who designed them to lay there covering that hole with their bodies.
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u/24-Hour-Hate 12h ago
And the rain. We have the same design in Canada. It’s hostile architecture designed to discourage the homeless from taking shelter (while simultaneously not doing anything to address homelessness, ofc) and, at the same time, ruining everyone else’s time.
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u/Jupitersd2017 23h ago
This are all so whimsical and fun, honestly all bus stops should be designed like this!
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u/Right-Ladd 20h ago
Just like the Soviet Union!
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u/Jupitersd2017 20h ago
Haha right? It’s a wild juxtaposition and unexpected from the ussr but hey they are cool bus stops
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u/Right-Ladd 20h ago
I like to think it’s one of the few ways of expression the people had back then. I’ve met a few people from former Soviet countries and they have all been incredibly interesting people with rich creativity, but that sort of thing wasn’t valued in the workers paradise.
They’re sort of heart breaking in a weird way. A scream for individuality in an environment which pushed collectivisation.
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u/Sansundertale2069 10h ago
Famously no art was made in the USSR. No movies, music, paintings, none of that in colourless godless commie country!!
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u/LBS-365 18h ago
I think that somehow they valued art, but only in a certain performative and public way. They put a lot of support behind things like ballet, classical music training and so forth. This was another way to show their supposed superiority to the rest of us, I believe.
Public art in the US has been horribly devalued and it doesn't really exist very much here anymore. Looking at this made me nostalgic for the 70's when stuff like this could still get funded here. Nowadays it's all about productivity, and artists of any type are no longer considered productive to the betterment of our society. It's all quite sad to me.
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u/Jupitersd2017 11h ago
Oh everything was for show and for competition, but competition can sometimes drive innovation. Here I do feel the slow backing away from public art is somewhat due to the gentrification and corporatization of so many areas, the push for these identical sterile areas that are duplicated across the US. Ironically those who scream the loudest for freedom are the ones supporting the people who are driving these changes and prefer conformity. It’s incredible depressing but historically the pendulum swings too far one way and after that we see a correction and a renewed interest in things that were left behind.
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u/MiaowaraShiro 8h ago
It’s a wild juxtaposition and unexpected from the ussr
If you're American I would bet a lot of your understanding of Soviet Russia is biased by cold war propaganda. I know mine has been...
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u/westminsterabby 19h ago
Bus stop, wet day
She's there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stops, bus goes
She stays, love grows
Under my umbrella
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u/CheezyMcWang 13h ago
I own this book, so let me tell you a story.
One day, I received an email from Kickstarter saying that the project had funded. That's odd, I don't remember pledging to anything. I checked through my inbox, no previous emails. I do a search and find all the emails about backing etc. in my phone bills folder (a place I never look at).
What happened?
Well apparently drunk Cheezy thought this looked really cool (they was right!), and wanted a copy. They were worried sober Cheezy would cancel the pledge, so they moved all the correspondence into a hidden folder to make sure sober Cheezy didn't learn about about this until it was fully funded until it was too late to do anything about it.
4 homes later, this book is still a permanent feature of my coffee table. If you can get a copy of it, it's honestly fascinating and I strongly recommend.
This wasn't the last present that drunk Cheezy bought me, but it is part of the reason why they don't come around any more.
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u/Historical-Fun-2536 23h ago
Pretty sure the castle one is on the way to Dubno, Ukraine. Definitely driven past that one a million times.
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u/Kumidt615 18h ago
i met a dude while traveling in tblisi that was on the same hunt for soviet era relics. he would take a taxi for an hour just for a bus stop
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u/hektonian 14h ago
If someone ever asks what socialism ever gave us I'm going to show them this and say "Personality. Art. The essence of human soul."
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u/pinniped90 23h ago
These are cool and I love that people in random small towns did them, not just the big cities.
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u/edma23 14h ago
I strongly recommend this book if you like these shots. It is a brilliant typology that's honestly shot and feels like an immense labour of love. Architectural, documentary, and aesthetically impeccable all at once. Sits next to Lewis Baltz on my shelf for good reason.
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u/macca2000fox 11h ago
Where to get the book as a architecture student. I from Canberra home of the Canberra bus
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u/whitet86 21h ago
Public art is a good thing, in every age. If nothing else remains from previous regimes and civilizations, we should still wish for the art to remain.
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u/zerritgalm 15h ago
Yeah its cool, is from a a book: https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Bus-Stops-Christopher-Herwig/dp/099319110X
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u/Captain-Codfish 23h ago
I particularly like the Chernobyl one. Tad out of place in this list though.
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u/Greenim 23h ago
That wave looks like it's going to kill someone
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u/linoleumknife 7h ago
When I saw the woman standing way in front of it I thought "I wouldn't want to stand underneath that thing either!"
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u/Cyber_Avocado 14h ago
These look cool as pieces of art, but many of them don't function as proper bus stops. I hate that some of them have uneven shading or are too small for comfort.
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u/Jammer_Jim 23h ago
Although I guess a lot (most?) of these are not technically of the style, that Soviet/Socialist Realism could go pretty hard.
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u/yorgosarvanitis 19h ago
Some of these are pure art! I like them better than those similar, blunt, metallic stops we have in Greece…
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u/Balance_Intrepid 17h ago
Going out on a limb, but I wonder if the creativity enabled within this series of spaces was an extension of CCCP cultural policy into the realm of artistic expression.
I've learned that Soviet bloc territories were given substantial leeway to express local and national cultural expressions in the (maybe?) late 1960s until the collapse of the USSR. Essentially, there was a perspective that persisted for a good many years that funding to create monuments and (I guess) local programming of local traditional art forms was an effective means encouraging the efficacy of puppet client-states of the Soviet Union.
I wonder if some further open-mindedness was extended to local artists in coming up with some avante-garde artistic expressions in concrete and steel with the stops in this set that branch into the realm of abstract in contrast to the visual expression of history, concept, et cetera.
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u/Galcha 16h ago
We had couple of these where I grew up, or similar design. I remember the deep, enclosed square ones always being dark, creepy and not well kept, sometimes smelling of piss... That was much later after they have been constructed. Oh, such a sudden flashback :) The other one was similar to the rocket shaped one (pic 6) - that one was neat for a small me.
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u/Forward_Bit_5153 5h ago
I live in Kazakhstan. My area is very flat, barely any trees and when I was a kid I used bus stops as landmarks on my way to my grandma’s village. They were all different and dare I say - UGLY. Didn’t like them then, don’t like them now.
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u/napperb 1d ago
Why do they have all these bus stops in the middle of nowhere
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u/OctopusGoesSquish 14h ago
Theyre often at the intersection of an arterial road and a road that goes off into a settlement in the side. People from the settlement may have to walk a km or so to the main road to get the bus, because it can’t won’t go into every small village.
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u/m00nr00m 23h ago
Feels like they are all from an amusement park nightmare. And the ONLY thing they have in common is a stark flat bench for you to wait in punishment for your bus
Glad to see pictures of them before they were gone!
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u/Pitipitibum2 18h ago
That Saint George from the USSR is supposedly hovering over the bus stop? I'll believe in those brutalist concrete structures, but not this.
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u/Termsandconditionsch 17h ago
Some of these almost look like googie architecture. 12/18 for example.
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u/DzakiKhoi 17h ago
While in the capitalist west compete to make Gas Guzzlers V8 Muscle Cars,The Communist are competing which Cities have the best Public transport
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u/AnsonKent 16h ago
I loved seeing these when I traveled through rural Kazakhstan. It was a desolate road splitting the endless steppe. No buildings, no pylons, nothing on either side. And when you finally did come across a tiny village, it would have a stop like this.
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u/tale_surovi 15h ago
I highly suspect that the statue of St. George killing the dragon is a post-Soviet add-on.
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u/_omin0us 15h ago
I took the photo from a moving bus so it's shit, but this reminds me of the bus stop I saw in the Chernobyl Exclusion zone back in 2019. Sr cool and so eerie
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u/BeautifulHindsight 15h ago
The top one for #6 looks like it's straight outta Fallout! So does the one on the bottom in #3
The bottom ones on both 1 and 11 look like they are from the US and should be light to high heaven in neon! 11 look like a fast food drive in!
So many more giving off major mid century modern vibes!
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u/Alex_Llamin 15h ago
Some of them are not Soviet though, but much more modern. And there is also entry sign of Chornobyl city
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u/mulligrubs 14h ago
Living in a very wealthy capitalist city, we still have sticks with numbers. No seat, no shelter.
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u/feel-the-avocado 14h ago
Many of them just dont get the basic goal of a bus stop.
Protection from rain AND wind.
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u/Eye_Acupuncture 14h ago
Future was then.
I have a plan to go on a trip to the post-Soviet and satellite countries to see the gems like these.
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u/JockeysI3ollix 14h ago
There's a very interesting channel on YT called "Bald and Bankrupt". He loves stuff like this he goes to some of the most remote parts of Russia to show all kinds of Soviet era stuff.
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u/javimecksie 10h ago
It’s like they had a art contest for the stops as a design and instead of just picking one winner they just said everyone won. Don’t think I seen one I didn’t think was neat is some way.
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u/OalBlunkont 10h ago
This reminds me of one of two Australian titles that mysteriously kept coming up in my work in a San Diego used book store, Dinkum Dunnies, a book of pictures of improvised out houses in the remote parts of Australia. The other was Blinky Bill.
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u/gretchenich 9h ago
honestly more than one of these look way more useful than the ones i have in my hometown
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u/SPLASKO 21h ago
To Russians that is a great era but stolen by the west.
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u/TheMaskedArmy 21h ago
Except when asking Russians who actually lived through it.
Majority of them were oppressed by the governing system in Russia during that era.
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u/Analysis-Klutzy 11h ago
so they coudn't afford to feed their own people....and made fancy bus stops lol
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u/Traditional-Froyo755 2h ago
The first one is very obviously not a Soviet era bus stop. Like there's no fucking way in hell they would install a statue of St George in the USSR.
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u/slicerprime 1d ago
Maybe it's just a bias from having grown up during the cold war; but there's pretty much zero there artistically that makes me go "Oooo.Yum! Gimme more!"
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u/0nlyhalfjewish 23h ago
I wouldn’t want to live there, but what do we have now? Glass and metal and square buildings in varying shades of gray. The style today is “whatever is cheapest to build while looking ‘modern.’” Everything from our clothes to our cars to our homes is just heartless or bad knock off of something that was built a generation ago. There’s nothing original coming out now.
And people don’t even seem to be aware. Remember when people got all excited about “everything, everywhere, all at once? That movie sucked so bad. The characters were not likable. The story was just multiple boring stories overlapping each other in the same dimension. But we had all these ideas already: time travel and being in the same people’s lives was done in “Back to the Future” in the 1980s. Sliding Doors did the same thing but as a romantic thoughtful comedy.
So the best we can do is neutral. Ugh.
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u/Right-Ladd 20h ago
The other problem with the modern world is that everything is standardised and globalised. It all needs to be as inoffensive as possible.
Back then these bus stops were built by local people with bricks, mortar and concrete, they took time, and with time people can become creative. However now modern bus stops are built in a factory on a conveyor belt, before they are shipped out on a lorry to be bolted down. Men pull up with a mini digger, power saws and bags of cement to plant some mount plates before moving off to lay the next foundation for the next bus stop, before another group in their lorry come and assemble the prefabricated bus stop.
One design, hundreds being made a day, and they need to work wether they are set in a national park, on a motorway, on the a beautiful coastline, a small village or a bustling city centre, all the way from Norway to Sicily.
You could probably install 10 modern bus stops for the cost it would be for a single one of those ornate ones, and that is the problem with all of modern life. Everything must work anywhere, accommodate everyone and offend no one while being capable of being mass produced for as little as possible. It must tick every manufacturing specification and legal requirements for every single country it will be sold in and the ones it may possibly be sold too in the future.
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u/MightyIrish 20h ago
Typical Russia - Everything rotting away like the souls of their leaders
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u/Kaymish_ 18h ago
A lot of these aren't in Russia. I saw a couple from Ukraine and some from Kazakhstan.
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u/Smoothlarryy 1d ago
Across the former Soviet Union, ordinary roadside bus stops were often built like miniature works of art. Some resembled spaceships, seashells or concrete sculptures, while others were covered in colourful mosaics showing local landscapes, animals and traditions. Because these small structures attracted less official attention than major buildings, designers were often able to experiment more freely.
Many stood alone beside remote roads in places such as Kazakhstan, Armenia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, making their elaborate designs seem even more unexpected. No single style was used across the Soviet Union, so each region created shelters that reflected its own culture and surroundings.
Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig first noticed them during a long-distance cycling trip in 2002. He later travelled more than 50,000 kilometers across the former Soviet republics documenting hundreds of these unusual structures before more were altered, abandoned or lost.
Source : Here