Soviet-era Dolls Enrich the Museum’s Collection

Recently, the Ogre History and Art Museum’s collection has been enriched with significant artifacts from the Soviet era. Ogre resident Kristīna Apine (née Lielbriede) has donated her childhood playmates to the museum: four dolls, a rubber chicken, and the Moscow Olympic Games mascot bear. It’s remarkable that all these 40-year-old toys look as if they just came off a store shelf.

Kristīna Apine: “In my childhood, I had many toys – both soft toys and various dolls. My father worked as a chief engineer at the famous ‘Sakta’ store in Riga, and this workplace was, of course, considered very good during Soviet times. I also had dolls brought back from his business trips abroad. I remember my parents always taught me to treat my dolls with love. I never had all the toys I owned at my disposal, because my parents figured out which ones I liked best, left those out, and put the rest in the top compartment of the wall unit. After half a year, they would take them out again, and they seemed like new to me.”

Three of the dolls donated to the museum by Kristīna Apine still have their original clothing. However, Kristīna says that she really enjoyed making clothes for her dolls herself. Her grandmother, Vilhelmīne Magazniece (née Villeruša), was a skilled needlewoman and taught Kristīna many of her skills. In the apartment on Padomju (now Mālkalnes) Avenue, where the Lielbriede family lived, there was a substantial collection of ‘Atpūta’ magazines on the bookshelf. Little Kristīna was captivated by the beautiful and feminine clothing designs she saw there. Later, many of Kristīna’s dolls were dressed in 1920s-1930s era clothing.

Although the dolls donated to the museum by Kristīna Apine are perfectly preserved, she admits that she played with them wholeheartedly. Just like children, her dolls also ‘fell ill’ and wanted to be beautiful, which is why some had their hair cut, others had a large glass syringe ‘injected’ into their ‘vein’ or bandages applied, and almost all the dolls had been in the bath – their hair washed and then wrapped in her mother Ināra’s metal rollers with elastic bands. Kristīna laughs, saying that there were some ‘sacrifices of love,’ and the lives of these toys stopped in the distant Soviet era.

The Ogre History and Art Museum thanks Kristīna Apine from Ogre for her donation.

This is a time when many Soviet-era artifacts have been discarded, lost to oblivion. Meanwhile, others that have found their way to preservation have lost the story of their original owners. The greatest added value for museum collection items lies in their stories, their testimonies – these are what most accurately evoke a connection with a specific era, telling about daily life, the everyday routines of that period, the people, and their lives.

Gunta Šmidre,
Former Information Specialist, Ogre History and Art Museum