From CCA.54

These examples of personal effects relate to Cooke’s interests in architecture and construction. On the left is a membership booklet for the Union of Construction Workers. Made out to a Vladislava Ivanovna Mironova, a bookkeeper born in 1900, the booklet was issued on the 23rd of November 1930. The stamps seen on internal pages mark Mironova’s payment of the monthly union fee. The last pages of the booklet provide the rules and regulations of union membership. One section specifies those not permitted to join; among these are agents of the tsarist police and monks.

On the right is a card written out to a Vasilii Ivanovich Dobrokhotov, described as a ‘participant in the construction of the third stage of the Moscow metro’. Above we see an Order of Lenin and an Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Work on the metro had initially paused when the Eastern Front of World War Two was opened but significant progress was then made, with seven stations opened in 1943–44. This achievement was marked in June 1944 by a resolution passed by the State Committee of Defence (and reproduced on the right-hand side) congratulating and honouring the workers involved.