4 artifacts
ASSA, motion picture
Scene of Viktor Tsoi performing his rock-anthem "Changes!" (“Peremen!”) during the last seven minutes of Sergei Solov’ev’s 1987 film Assa. Kino's cinematic performance became a defining mass-cultural event that legitimized Soviet rock music as a product of the official mainstream collaborating with the Soviet underground rock movement, crowning Tsoi as USSR's ultimate rock star, and promoting rock music as a legitimate artform for the late-Soviet audience.
Novikov's New Russian Classicism: Pop Culture, Fashion, and Totalitarianism
Timur Novikov’s essay and manifesto “The New Russian Classicism.”
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.