Vintage Tiraspol Matryoshka

Tiraspol Matryoshka. A scarce set  decorated in the traditional Tiraspol colors of orange, yellow, green, red and jet black. Nicely painted faces and strawberry decoration on the aprons. The fingerprint "swirls" are green and red on a yellow background. Circa 1960. The wood on the bottom of the first doll has a nice age-related patina. A remnant of the original label on the first doll has worn off. 5 nest, 4¾" down to 1¼". 1 only, as shown.

Tiraspol is the second largest city in Moldova located on the eastern bank of the Dniester River. The modern city of Tiraspol was founded by the Alexander Suvorov in 1792, although the area had been inhabited for thousands of years by different tribes and ethnic groups. The Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (MASSR) was created in 1924 with Romanian, Ukrainian and Russian as official languages. Tiraspol remained the capital of the Moldavian ASSR until 1940, when, as part of the Ukrainian SSR, it was annexed into the short-lived newly-formed Moldavian SSR. In 1941, following the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, the city was occupied by Romanian troops. In 1944, the city was retaken by the Red Army and became again part of Moldavian SSR.