Olenegorsk

Olenegorsk is a small town located 100 kilometers to the south of Murmansk. Only 20,000 people live here, and there is only one bus route and the Olenya railway station for the entire city.

At the entrance to Olenegorsk, there is a stunning logo.

In one of the courtyards in Olenegorsk, there was a grandmother who appeared to be in her eighties or even nineties. I decided to ask her where it was better to live: in Russia or the USSR. The grandmother smiled and unexpectedly said, “Why are you asking such nonsense? Were there any cars? No. Were there so many products on the shelves? No. But now everything is here, just look around.”

Well, let’s look around. What do we see in Olenegorsk? Here is the Sushivok store. Were there sushi and wok in the USSR? No, there weren’t.

A bus stop and a store with draft beer. They existed.

Sports Palace. They used to grow like mushrooms before.

Monuments with a sickle and hammer existed. Sberbank was also there. There were pharmacies, and dandelions too.

Sports grounds. They existed in the USSR, but they were still made rusty and bent right at the factory.

Foreign cars. They didn’t exist, except for the fact that all Soviet cars were copied from Western models.

Comrade Lenin. There was plenty of that crap, and still is.

In the center of the city, I found an absolutely charming birch park.

An unknown thing that looks like a time machine — an air pollution monitoring station.

Propaganda stand.

Poster.

Soviet street art.

City stadium.

Typical house.

Square in the city center.

Road repair in progress.

A beautiful house in the center.

An abandoned dormitory, it seems, stands among the residential buildings.

Railway station.

The streets of Olenegorsk are empty, and there is absolutely nothing to do in the city.