What’s online?
Collection of 67 lantern slides taken by Kate and Henry F. Hebley of Mt. Lebanon during their trip to the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) circa 1931. Mr. Hebley was a major figure in the coal industry in SW PA in the 1920s and '30s. The slides are largely scenes of everyday street life in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. The area was the major coal mining region of the Soviet Union. Although there is no explicit indication of the purpose of the Hebleys' visit, Mr. Hebley's professional background suggests perhaps it was in an official capacity as an authority on coal mining that Soviet authorities invited him to the USSR at that time. The collection was gifted to the ULS by Sean Sealy who himself received the slides as a gift from the Hebleys' son.
What’s in the entire collection?
These 67 lantern slides were made by a firm in Chicago from photographs the Hebleys took while in the Soviet Union. They offer a glimpse into the brutal conditions of everyday Soviet life, mainly from the Ukrainian SSR. The collection challenges Soviet propaganda of the time, and its Western apologists, illustrating a very different portrait of reality in the USSR from the Soviet regime's official depiction of "utopia in power.”
About Henry F. Hebley
Henry F. Hebley immigrated to the US from New Zealand in 1914. He spent 15 years working for the coal mining consulting company Allen & Garcia of Pittsburgh, during which he traveled to the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. It was during his trip to the USSR that he took the photographs from which this collection of lantern slides was created.
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