Many camera collectors already know me as fedka on eBay, but a web store is a more personal endeavor, so let me introduce myself. My name is Yuri Boguslavsky, and I live in New York City. I was born in Ukraine (part of the Soviet Union until 1991), moving to the USA in 1990. I am currently working as an engineer for a major healthcare company and pursue Soviet cameras during my free time.
My mother bought me my first camera, a Smena-7, when I was 8 years old. When I was in high school I switched to a Zenit-E SLR. By the time I left the USSR I was a lucky owner of a Praktica DTL3.
I was always fascinated with the way an optical/mechanical device, photo film, paper, and chemicals produce an image that captured a moment forever. During my school and college years, I shot myriad rolls of film and printed countless pictures, and I always enjoyed it.
Photo hardware and photo history have always interested me, but it was impossible to have more than the bare necessities back in the USSR. Cameras and lenses were scarce and expensive, and the whole notion of collecting cameras would have been unthinkable. In 1990 I owned one Practika DTL3 with 3 Pentacon lenses (only one camera per family was allowed for those leaving the USSR).
I chose the name Fedka because this nickname was given to the first FED rangefinders made at the Kharkov work commune in the early 1930’s. As the Leica did to the world, its Soviet copy, Fedka, introduced 35mm photography to the Soviet Union.
[…] Yuri Boguslavsky – Fedka – New York City, NY – Yuri has both a Fedka store and sells on eBay under the same name and was born in Ukraine before moving to New York in 1990. In the years since, he has developed a large collection of Soviet gear and has developed contacts back home in Ukraine and regularly imports repaired or good working condition Soviet cameras and lenses. Although Yuri does not take in repairs himself, his online store has a large selection of stuff for sale and comes with a very positive reputation from many happy customers. […]