Artifacts
1990
Russian Crime Statistics, 1980–1996
Nothing characterized the everyday experience of the urban Russian 1990s like crime; as shown in this first comprehensive statistical study of the 1990s, crime was just as bad as everyone had known. But the numbers also reveal some unexpected trends.
Klei-Moment
Made by the German Henkel company, Moment glue was a staple of post-Soviet hobbyists. It also became one of the prefered drugs among the post-Soviet youth. The brand name became synonymous with huffing itself.
Long Live PaperLessLit
Soviet paper shortages, new computer technologies, and the lifting of censorship come together in an unexpected way in this proposal to preserve manuscripts of unpublished authors for posterity.
Early Vzgliad parodies itself
A 1988 celebration of a year of Vzgliad, where several sketch comedy artists parody and recapitulate Vzgliad's casual, sincere, freewheeling style of television programming
Putting the "Spotlight" on an experimental three-hour line for Soviet luxury clothes
Prozhektor Perestroiki [Perestroika's Spotlight], a glasnost-era televised investigative journalism project, investigates a three-hour line for luxury clothes at the recently opened Luxe Fashion Center, where the reporters discover the problem of supply and demand in the USSR.
Soviet technical intelligentsia learns Reaganomics on the Chto? Gde? Kogda? gameshow
Chto? Gde? Kogda? [What? Where? When?], a long-running high-brow quiz show for the late Soviet technical intelligentsia, debates the economic principles of Soviet private enterprise in the heat of Perestroika’s economic reforms in 1988
"Can't Live Like This": Imperial nostalgia as a post-Soviet Russian project
Tak zhit' nel'zia [Can't Live Like This], excerpt from Stanislav Govorukhin's influential documentary on the late Perestroika malaise and the way out of it
"Our boys" fight against "fascist" Baltic independence
"Nashi [Our Boys]"- Alexander Nevzorov's propagandistic documentary of the Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet OMON, fighting off the local independence movement in early 1991
Primetime hypnotic tele-healing seances with Kashpirovskii
Anatolii Kashpirovskii, the psychic and guru of Perestroika era's "new thinking" uses the power of suggestion to heal the Soviet people from all ailments physical and spiritual
The Collective Society “Kartinnik”[”Picture-man”] with B.U.Kashkin in front of painted Ural Electro-Technical Institute rubbish pins. 1993.
The bearded B.U.Kashkin stands in front of a set of trashbins which have been painted with bright, colorful scenes of trees, butterflies and flowers. Pigeons are digging through the garbage and mud apparent throughout the site.
Cover for “Red Hogwash” [“Krasnaia Burda”], issue 1, October 1990 by G. Malyshev.
The first issue of Red Hogwash's cover depicts a man in the costume of the Statue of Liberty lighting a cigarette with the torch.
Manager Board Game 1st edition
A square, indigo board game similar to Monopoly, but reading "Manager". Manager, which became the most successful Monopoly-like made in the former Soviet Union, initially presented itself as scientific and rational in its promise of capitalist success.
A Man Who Keeps Up with the Times
A piece on David Bowie, focusing on the star’s bisexuality, in the glossy color gay magazine Мальчишник
Kitchen Diary by S. Piskunov, sent to Komsomol’skaia pravda, October-November 1990
Excerpt of Kitchen Diary written by Piskunov and sent to KP
Chumak sends morning healing vibes to Perestroika audiences
A healing seance with TV-psychic Allan Chumak in 1989, during the morning newscast, “120 Minutes.” Works on people, their drinking water and their creams.
Kino’s last concert (Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow)
Footage of a live Kino concert at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium on June 24, 1990, roughly a month and half prior to frontman Viktor Tsoi's death in a car accident in rural Latvia. The footage shows the band at the very height of its popularity, as well as offering an unencumbered look at a country in transition: a heavy and conspicuous Soviet police detail is assigned to the event, while audience members wave both the Soviet flag and the Russian tricolor banner.
Roksi Music Journal (Samizdat) (Vol. 15, 1990.)
The final print issue of the Leningrad-based samizdat rock journal Roksi, which was
founded in 1977 by members of the rock band Aquarium and the future president
of the Leningrad Rock Club. Considered to be the first rock publication in the
Soviet Union, which was subject to raids by the KGB, Roksi eventually
became the official newsletter of the LRC, and thus legitimized by the state
apparatus.
Perestroika Women Speak to US Women
A clip from one of many Perestroika-era televised conversations between American and Soviet "regular people," in which they find common ground with the help of long-time Soviet propagandist and future star of liberal post-Soviet TV, Vladimir Pozner
“500 Days: Program Summary,” a special issue of Komsomol’skaya Pravda, 29 September 1990
Komsomol'skaya pravda "500 days" special issue
Urlait Music Journal (Samizdat) 1985-1992
Moscow's samizdat music journal, which followed in the footsteps of Lenigrad's Roksi while forging a new journalistic style. The journal positioned itself to in many ways reject the Leningrad scene. Despite Moscow-based bands generally leaning towards a more avant-garde, art-rock aesthetic, Urlait made a point to promote so-called "national rock." According to Urlait's founder I. Smirnov, bands like DDT, DK, and Oblachnyi Krai (Yuri Loza) were said to be "oriented towards national problems, in opposition to estrada and the confluence of Western and domestic cultural traditions."
Kontr Kult Ur'a Music Journal (Samizdat) 1989-1991
Kontr Kult Ur'a was envisioned as an ideological reincarnation of Urlait, which was deemed by the new editorial board as "cult-like" and "radically positioned." The journal also was one of the first samizdat rock zines in Moscow and Leningrad to prominently feature and promote Siberian punk rock, including Egor Letov, Civil Defence, and Yanka.
Lyube performing "Atas" during a televised concert on January 1, 1990
The rock band, which Vladimir Putin would later count as among his "favorites," performing on late-Soviet television on the cusp of rock stardom.
Band Survey from the Leningrad Rock Club completed by Sergei Kuryokhin of Pop Mekhanika
An official rock club survey in which Sergei Kuryokhin utlilizes the late-Soviet aesthetic of stiob and performative socialism to underscore the club's dependence on the KGB
Maria Devi Khristos
Maria Devi Khristos, street poster with a woman in religious regalia making a gesture of blessing, 1991.
"Tsoi's Wall" on Arbat
A wall of fan graffiti dedocated to the late Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi on Moscow's famous Arbat Street.
Leningrad Rock Club
A wall of graffiti in the courtyard of the Leningrad Rock Club (1981-1991) on 13 Rubinshteyna Street in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), which featured fan street art dedicated to USSR's most revered rock-music collectives. When the wall was painted over in 2010 by the bulding's new proprietor, this caused a public outcry from both rock fans and the many surviving musicians from that era, who sought to preserve the LRC's legacy and designmate the wall and the building a historical landmark.
Meaning of pluralism on Vzgliad
A conversation about pluralism between Evgeny Dodolev and Alexander Liubimov, after an expose on Nina Andreeva
You Can't Teach the Lefthanded to Be Righthanded
An article from Argumenty i fakty from 1990 in which w journalists seek comment from Igor Kon on the topic of homosexuality
Top Secret: Investigative Journalism and True Crime During Perestroika
Sovershenno sekretno, the first privately owned periodical in Soviet Russia since 1917, showcased a combination of transparency and sensationalism that became a distinguishing feature of journalistic writing in the post-Soviet period.
The World Made of Plastic Has Won
Egor Letov performs his song “Moia oborona” (My defense), during his “concert in the hero city Leningrad,” part of Grazhdanskaia oborona’s 1994 tour Russkii proryv (Russian breakthrough).
Mumiy Troll's Breakthrough “Utekai” (Take Off) Becomes the Song of the Year 1997
Video and lyrics of Mumiy Troll’s 1997 breakthrough song “Utekai” (Beat it) displaying the combination of surrealism, dark humor, and provincial romanticism that comes to shape the band’s trademark style.
The Future of Crimea
Campaign documents surrounding the 1991–92 referenda on the independence of Crimea.
Tanks in Lithuania
Pravda coverage of Soviet tanks in Vilnius, January 1991
Dmitri Vrubel, "My God, Help Me To Survive This Deadly Love", 1990, graffiti, Berlin Wall, East Berlin.
Graffiti of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing on the East Berlin wall.
The First (Home-Made) Post-Soviet Independent TV
The Saint Petersburg “New Artists” stage a meeting of the committee “anti-state of emergency” on their “Pirate Television,” declaring their support of Yeltsin against the group of communist hardliners who led the coup d’etat against Gorbachev on August 19, 1991.