soviet zhambyl

the drab soviet-era concrete block apartments in taraz are made a little less drab by the fancy cyrillic signs placed on top of a lot of the buildings. i think they are (or were) the names of each apartment block. not all of apartment buildings from this era have the signs. but i wonder if the signs fell off the ones without.

in any case, there's something a little faded-gloryish about the the stylish script. it really makes me wonder what this city looked like 50 years ago. was it really so drab? or were there little touches like these more common than i would otherwise think? surely somewhere out there, there must be photographs of this place in the 30s, 40s or 50s.