Old postcards USSR Ships

Despite the section name, there are no warships here: every card shows a passenger motor ship (teplokhod in the Russian captions), and all were printed between 1975 and 1977. Captions are brief, just the word for motor ship and the vessel’s name, so the section reads like a roll call of the passenger fleet of the time.

The strongest group is three sister ships: Ivan Franko (card printed 1975), Taras Shevchenko and Shota Rustaveli (both 1976). They belong to a class of five vessels built from 1964 to 1972 at the Mathias-Thesen-Werft yard in Wismar, East Germany, and named after the lead ship, Ivan Franko. These three went to the Black Sea Shipping Company, the other two to the Baltic.

Pobeda, on a 1976 card, is one of the oldest ships in the section: she was built in 1928 for the German line HAPAG and later sailed for the Black Sea Shipping Company, including on the Odesa – New York route. Other vintage postcards here show Maxim Gorky, Moldavia and Mariya Yermolova (1977).

Ship enthusiasts can match each printing year against a vessel’s service history.