Artifacts
1991
Ekho Moskvy - 20 August 1991
Live coverage of the GKChP putsch in August 1991 from the Echo of Moscow radio station. Demonstrates the chaos of the moment, the putschists' failure to control their message, and the power of the newly independent media.
The Triumph Prize
Launched at the same time as the Russian Booker and funded by the newly minted oligarch Boris Berezovsky, the Triumph Prize promised an even broader program of cultural guardianship and philanthropy.
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.
Rebuilding Russia
Alexander Solzhenitsyn's traditionalist prescription for pulling Russia out of its difficulties was seen by many as out of touch with the times, but many of the ideas he expounded in 1991 have become part of Russia's neo-revanchism in recent years.
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
A coup d'etat holds a press conference
Press conference held by the State Committee for the Emergency Situation (GKChP), the group of hard line government officials who had attempted a coup d'etat overthrowing Mikhail Gorbachev. This press conference was held the next day and shows the coup coming apart at the seams.
Tsvetaeva and Parnok
Article on the affair between poets Marina Tsvetaeva and Sophia Parnok in LGBTQ magazine Риск
Vzgliad at GKChP
Clips of Vzgliad's reports during GKChP in 1991. These include being holed up in the White House (the RSFSR parliament) alongside its defenders and celebrities, such as Mstislav Rostropovich.
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
"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
The Glasnost Booth on the last October Revolution anniversary in the USSR
“Glas naroda [The People’s Voice]”– a booth installed in the middle of town, into which random people can enter and speak their minds. Episode from the Kremlin, on USSR’s last anniversary of the October Revolution, in 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.
Kommersant Board Game
Kommersant attempted to represent the 90s market economy via a Monopoly-like of two economies, an inner and an outer, with racketeering as a recurring threat.
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
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.
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
Kommersant’ by Vladimir Kharchenko and Rada Ltd, 1991.
The Ukranian video game attempted to represent the rough transition to capitalism via a detailed, simulationist interface.
The Raspberry blazer as the uniform of the New Russian
The origins and the meaning of the raspberry blazer as the iconic dresscode of New Russians in the early 1990s
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.
Rok Protiv Terrora Music Festival. April 6, 1991, Moscow.
A not-for-profit charitable concert that took place at Moscow's Kryl'ia Sovetov Stadium on April 6, 1991, concieved by the Garik Sukachev, the leader of the rock band Brigada S. Intially the event was meant to be an act of protest against police brutality, but grew to include all forms of state organized terror: political, social, and moral. The festival received organizational support from VID, Komsomolskaya Pravda and the Fili Cultural Center. Fourteen Soviet rock bands took part in the festival.
Maria Devi Khristos
Maria Devi Khristos, street poster with a woman in religious regalia making a gesture of blessing, 1991.
SpidInfo #1, January 1991
Cover of the first issue of SpidInfo depicting an anxious nude couple turned away from each other in bed.
Georgii Deliev, Mask Show (Маски Шоу), 1991-2006.
title screen, "Maski-Show"/"Maski-Show", 1991 by Georgi Deliev, showing a stylized image of multiple people in clown make-up.
"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.
TaMtAm Rock Club documentary by German television (1993)
The first and until 1994 the only Western-style rock club in Russia, which was founded in 1991 by cellist Vsevolod (Seva) Gakkel (Akvarium) after he visited the famous music club CBGB in New York. The club specialized in punk rock specifically, providing the budding underground punk scene in Russia a much-needed performance venue and cultural legitimacy. Some have accused Gakkel's establishment for breeding far-right nationalist sentiments among Russia's youth subcultures (or at least providing them with a physical organizational platform) in the early 1990s. The fact that a German television production company took interest in TaMtAm is also a testament to punk as a truly transnational movement after fall of the Berlin Wall.
Meaning of pluralism on Vzgliad
A conversation about pluralism between Evgeny Dodolev and Alexander Liubimov, after an expose on Nina Andreeva
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.
Olga. Love and Faith Are Not Dead
Profile of a post-Soviet lesbian survivor of Soviet-era anti-LGBTQ repressions
Expropriation of the Territory of Art, E.T.A--text, 1991
Image of the actionist group E.T.A. forming an obscene word out of their bodies in front of the Kremlin
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.
Lenin Was a Mushroom
An excerpt from the famous episode of the TV show Piatoe koleso in which the experimental musician and performer Sergey Kuryokhin argued and almost convinced Soviet audiences that "Lenin was a mushroom."
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.