At the dawn of the 20th century, the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) developed a three-lens camera that produced images of incredible quality for the time. Impressed, Tsar Nicholas II sent him to do a photographic report on the Russian Empire.
The photos that Sergei managed to take, although they are over a century old, look like they were taken yesterday, giving a realistic picture of the daily lives of Russians ten years before the Soviet Union.
I highly recommend that you do some research on Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, as all of his photos are extraordinary.