The Communist world was the only alternate reality we could ever directly experience. These photographs, culled from the Novosti Press Agency's collection, show what the Soviets would like us to think that reality consisted of. Nowadays, we know differently - but not entirely. Living in a society is the only way to experience it for real. These pictures are a glimpse of a vanished world - and one that some look back on with affection for its positive values, notwithstanding what we now know about its negative ones.

There was a very strong tradition of powerful photography in the Soviet Union, hearking all the way back to the Constructivists and photographers like Aleksander Rodchenko. Although these pictures are from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s - well after Rodchenko's time - the developed eye and sometimes imaginative composition displays the Rodchenko heritage. Strange that a society that relied so much on manipulating the mindset of the citizen should encourage innovative photography when innovation in the arts generally was frowned upon. ( )