The Bolshoi Theatre in autumn — Muscovites on park benches in the square, fall leaves on the trees, the great Neoclassical portico with its eight Ionic columns catching the afternoon light, and Apollo driving his bronze quadriga across the pediment above. The Bolshoi has been the center of Russian musical and theatrical life since 1825, home to the premieres of works by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Khachaturian; the building itself is one of the iconic images of Moscow. This card was published by Planeta in 1974 in a print run of 100,000 — a standard Soviet-era mass production for tourist and souvenir use — and mailed in August 1981 by a family named Ondracek to friends in Vienna, sending holiday greetings from Moscow at the height of the Cold War, when Western tourists in the Soviet capital were still a novelty.

• Caption: Moscow — Bolshoi Theatre (Russian, English, French, German, Spanish)
• Photographer: B. Krutsko
• Publisher: Planeta Publishers (Издательство «Планета»), Moscow, 1974
• Postmark: Moscow, August 19, 1981
• Status: Posted