not the office of a freight forwarder

...as you might expect from the graphics, but the window of a Post Office in Moscow in 1990.  This is one of the pictures in a recent book called Window-shopping through the Iron Curtain devoted to the subject of shop windows in Eastern Europe during the late communist era.

It presents a fascinating look at the different concepts that existed in the communist world compared to the West when it came to window dressing -- invariably windows had an object or two depicting what they sold with some accompanying decoration, perhaps a word and a graphic or two; and that was about it.  In a world where consumer shortages and shoddy products were part of the scene, and shops had very little on their shelves to sell, that isn't a surprise.  Window frames, like most everything else, received little maintenance, but western litter and graffiti weren't part of the scene either.

Evidence of a sad world, however, the artistic concepts are interesting.  The Thames and Hudson webpage for the book.