Old postcards Kazakhstan

The Kazakhstan section is built from two city sets more than a decade apart: Karaganda in 1972 and Alma-Ata in 1983–1984. Alma-Ata was the capital of the Kazakh SSR from the republic’s creation in 1936 until 1991, so its cards concentrate on government buildings, theatres and museums.

The Alma-Ata views include Government House, the House of Soviets, the Central Committee building of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, New Square, the Lenin Palace, the Abai Academic Theatre, the Central State Museum of the Kazakh SSR and the monument to Mukhtar Auezov, author of the novels about Abai. The 1984 cards add the Otrar hotel, the airport and the Medeu high-mountain sports complex.

Karaganda in 1972 was a coal-mining city, and the subjects show it: the Miners’ Palace of Culture, the Giproshakht institute, the railway station, and the avenue and monument named after Nurken Abdirov, a pilot trained at the Karaganda aero club who was killed in 1942 and posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union. The Palace of Pioneers, the Yubileiny cinema, the philharmonic hall and the Orbita restaurant complete the set.

Each of these Soviet postcards of Kazakhstan is a direct scan of the printed card, not a retro-style redraw; other cities of the republic will join Alma-Ata and Karaganda as the archive is scanned.