The first beauty contest in the USSR "Moscow Beauty"

In 1988, the first official beauty contest "Moscow Beauty" took place. Ogonyok magazine reported: “Perestroika allowed every ordinary person, every beautiful woman or one who considers herself beautiful, to come and show herself. The queue that appeared from the Park Kultury metro station to the park administration building has become a symbol of the emerging changes in society.” The winner - a kind of Yuri Gagarin - was a schoolgirl Masha Kalinina.

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1. Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Komsomol V. Pankin spoke about the spiritual side of the competition: "It has an important, socially transformative function - to save a woman from urbanization, from being lost in the crowd, to increase the prestige of a woman in society."

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5. The competition was sponsored by the magazine "Burda". Only 36 participants made it to the final.

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10. The Moscow beauty should also be witty and answer Zadornov's questions.

Schoolgirl Masha Kalinina became the winner of the competition. Later, the organizer of the competition, Marina Parusnikova, said: “When six contestants remained in the final, we realized that we had not even looked at their passports. We looked in ... Oksana Fandera did not have a Moscow residence permit, she had just arrived from Odessa to conquer the capital. So, for obvious reasons, we could not make her a “Moscow Beauty”. Ira Suvorova was married and with a child. Let's go look further: Lena Durneva ... Silly, of course, but imagine how it sounds: the first "Moscow Beauty" Elena Durneva. Changing her last name in one day is unrealistic. There was still Lena Peredreeva. She was extraordinarily good, but she had such an image ... of a vamp woman, which in no way corresponded to the task set for us from above to choose a simple Russian girl from the people. A kind of Yuri Gagarin became Masha Kalinina - a beautiful girl with a Russian name and surname.

11. Masha Kalinina later recalled: “They gave me the Temp TV, another crown, a large crystal vase, flowers were poured into it from above, the hatch was opened, and flowers, carnations, with large stems fell right into the vase and on my head. The vase was heavy, you had to hold it, the crown fell into the vase, carnations also fell into this vase ... That is, there was some kind of complete shock after this crowning. Very bright memories of some kind of enthusiasm, wild energy, creativity - this is all left, probably, for all people of that generation.

Having become famous, Masha Kalinina soon left for the USA.