Thanks to the mag's Facebook feed, I've found this story:

https://petapixel.com/2017/03/21/can-browse-437-complete-issues-soviet-photo-magazine-online/

Basically, much of the catalogue of the magazine "Soviet Photo" can now be browsed online. Now Russian is not one of my linguistic ahcievements, but it's worth looking just for the pictures.

Access to the archive is here:

https://archive.org/details/sovetskoe_foto

 

Something I find interesting is just how many technical articles there are, judging from the graphs.

 

I'm impressed by just how great a variation of subject and style the magazines show. If there's a "party line" here it's about five miles wide.

 

Yes, exactly. Sure, there's a fair bit of what I had considered "Soviet-style heroic" pics, but there's an awful lot more.

 

Year 1957, Issue 12, page 68. At the bottom of the page there's something that looks awfully like a fisheye lens, though no example of the output. That would make it concurrent with the Nikkor, wouldn't it?

 

It IS the Nikkor - zooming in, it says "Nippon Kogaku" on it. Which in itself is interesting, I had always assumed that progress from other nations wouldn't be reported in this sort of publication in the USSR.

 

Thanks - I didn't think of doing that.