An American pastor named John Wells Rahill went to Russia in 1917 with the YMCA because he wanted to witness the revolution. He took hundreds of photographs in Russia before being evacuated through China and Japan (where he took more pictures). His photographs were hand-colored and converted to magic lantern slides, but in the 1920s, when it became unpopular to have been anywhere near the communist revolution, the slides were hidden. Rahill's granddaughter uncovered them in 2005, and contacted Russian photography aficionado Anton Orlov, who is sharing them now.
Link to story. Link to photographs. -via mental_floss
All those fantastic hats!
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)