What was so amazing about this company's soviet era camera lenses?

I googled it and all the pages were just this company saying "Yeah! We rehouse amazing soviet era lenses in modern lens bodies!" | Which is cool, but where's the "legendary" part of the story? Like, why would you want one as opposed to another lens?

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az_reth 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Google "Helios 44-2 bokeh" and look for portraits with a blurry background. The "swirly" effect is the artsy element. Add the fact that these lenses were mass-manufactured back in the day and it means that you can get them pretty cheap.

	▲	rootusrootus 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Interesting. Those images make me a little disoriented. I am prone to visual-based motion sickness, so it's probably just me. But I do not really like the swirly effect one bit.
	▲	Morromist 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ahh. Now I see. That's a pretty cool lens effect.