Irina Antonenko from the Urals city of Yekaterinburg...
broke out in 1939.* The Soviet ideology, where woman was primarily considered a worker and a mother, dismissed any idea of a beauty pageant. The Soviet Union"s first official beauty pageant was held during the Perestroika times in 1988, under the name "Moscow Beauty."
* Maria Kalinina, the Moscow Beauty winner and the first Soviet beauty queen, emigrated to the U.S. and now works as a Kundalini Yoga instructor in Los Angeles
* In 1989 the pageant was given a nationwide status and renamed into Miss U.S.S.R. However, it was held only two times before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
* The first nationwide beauty pageant in the history of modern Russia was held in 2002, and was won by Yulia Kurochkina.
* Only girls with Russian citizenship, aged from 17.5 to 24 years, at least 172 cm high and having a "model look" are allowed to take part. They should not have tattoos or scars. Those with bad habits are also barred from the contest.