Views of industrial development projects and activities during first 5-year plan under Joseph Stalin in Soviet Union. Mining activities, with ore being moved on conveyor belts and open rail cars. view upwards toward piping and towers in a petroleum refining plant. Steel plant and open hearth furnace. Turbine deck in a hydroelectric power plant. Electric transmission lines. Farmer irrigating crops with machinery. Workers shoveling grain out of open bed trucks. Apartment houses under construction. A machinist turning metal on a lathe. Factory workers in a room with pictures of Lenin and Stalin on the wall. Freight trains underway (ostensibly to Siberia). Officials visiting a machine shop, during the 2nd Five Year Plan, in 1935. They present worker's medals to Stakhanovites (superior workers). Views of Stakhanovites conversing and comparing medals at a presentation occasion. View of criminal (political) proceedings conducted in the Great Purge (Yezhovshchina) during 1937-38. Photograph of N.I. Yezhov (called Stalin's executioner, by the narrator). Picture of Stalin walking with Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lev Kamenev, and Gregory Zinoviev, Ca. 1925. The latter two images are circled as narrator says they were quickly disposed of after Stalin seized power. View of trials in which persons are accused of plotting with Leon Trotsky, in 1936, at the Hotel Bristol, in Copenhagen (according to narrator, who notes that the hotel was no longer in operation in 1936). More trial scenes. Image of N.I. Yezhov is shown, again, as narrator states that he was purged in 1938, along with other officials.
Legislators entering a hall in Czechoslovakia, in 1948. Inside,an image of the Small Coat of Arms of the Republic of Czechoslovakia (1920) dominates the scene. New scene shows Gustav Husak, acting Prime Minister, delivering an address urging support for the Communist Party. The next sequence shows violent Communist-led demonstrations, as armed trade unionists riot in the Prague streets, attacking the offices of the political opposition. Police attempt to restore order. On February 25, 1948, the communists achieve a Czechoslovak coup d'état. On February 27th, Czech President, Edvard Benes, receives a delegation including communist Premier Klement Gottwald and the 12 new members of the cabinet, at the Presidential Palace. He is seen signing documents accepting the communist cabinet. Change of scene shows Czech Foreign Minister, Jan Masaryk, giving a speech rejecting the change. (He remained in office, but died under suspicious circumstances on On March 10, 1948.) View of Masaryk in his casket. Mourners at his funeral.The Czech Parliament Building with flag at half staff. President Benes seen strolling, using a cane, accompanied by his wife, Hana Benes, in the garden of their summer home, Benesova vila, in Sezimovo Usti. Narrator notes that he refused to sign a new constitution drawn up by the communists. He died of natural causes at his villa on September 3, 1948. Scenes of his funeral and of him in his casket. Views of Benes' state funeral, with mourners lining the streets. View of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Narrator describes circumstances using Churchill's term "Iron Curtain." A communist parade in an Eastern European city. A person who was roughed up on the street. View of East German uprising in 1953, being suppressed with Soviet tanks. Uprising in Poland in 1955 being put down by local police and Russian soldiers. Polish musicians playing and examples of Polish political cartoons permitted under relaxed communist rule.
In 1956, crowds of Hungarians walk peaceably in their Capital, Budapest, calling for establishment of their own style of communist rule. A woman waves a Hungarian flag from a window. A communist star is pulled down from atop a building. On October 24, 1956 Hungarian authorities crack down, with police supported by Russian troops from local garrison. Russian soldiers in T-34 tanks seen on city street. View of Russian soldiers leaving the area aboard a T-34 tank. Hungarians battling their police. View of Prime Minister,Imry Nagy, ascending steps of a government building. Narrator states that Nagy declares Hungary neutral in conflict between Soviet Union and the West. Soviet books and documents being burned. The next sequence shows Soviet T-34 tanks entering Hungary in force, on November 4, 1956. One is seen firing from a city street. Picture of Imre Nagy shown as Narrator says his execution was announced on June 17, 1958.
American workers off-load loaned Egyptian treasures of Egyptian King Tutankhamun from the USS Sylvania at the Navy Station in Norfolk, Virginia. Treasures of Egyptian King Tut seen being off-loaded in boxes, from USS Sylvania. American workers place boxes in small transport vehicles. Men strap the boxes carefully. Heavy structure being lifted by cranes. Archaeological treasure packed in wooden boxes, on loan from Cairo Museum for a five city United States tour.
A rabbit station maintained by United States Government in Southern California. A board read 'US Rabbit Experimental Station'. The American flag flutters on a pole at the farm. Rabbits in small cages. A man takes out a rabbit from a cage. Diseases of rabbits studied in a pathological laboratory. A scientist works in the laboratory.
Corn Tones Blood Donation Show at AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service) Radio Studio in Tokyo, Japan. The Corn Tones play music and sing a song. Members of the Corn Tones who are the Signal Corps Officers introduce themselves. They play their own song called 'Heartbreak Ridge'. The song is about a wounded man who is spotted by the medics on the Heartbreak Ridge, brought in and given a transfusion that saves his life. Lieutenant Bill Glaza signs off stating that this show commemorates National Blood Donor Campaign. He makes a final appeal for blood donation.
CRITICALPAST.COM: About Us | Contact Us | FAQs - How to Order | License Agreement | My Account | My Lightboxes | Shopping Cart | Advanced Search | Featured Collections | Website Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy ©2026 CriticalPast LLC.
License Agreement |
Terms & Conditions |
Privacy Policy
©2026 CriticalPast LLC.