Bestsellers of Moscow

Post-Soviet Russia's first bestseller lists, compiled by the weekly industry newspaper "Knizhnoe obozrenie" and published from late 1993 through 1998.

Early “Vzgliad” parodies itself

A 1988 celebration of a year of the late- and post-Soviet youth program “Vzgliad,” where several sketch comedy artists parody and recapitulate its casual, sincere, and freewheeling style of television programming.

An episode of the talk show “Tema”: “Racism in Russia”

A clip from the talk show "Tema [Theme]," Vladislav Listyev's (1956-1995) major post-Soviet project after the 1991 end of “Vzgliad.” This episode centers on racism in Russia and includes guest Dzheims (James) Lloydovich Patterson (1933-), who played an interracial baby in the classic Stalin-era musical comedy Circus (1936).

"Democracy must know how to defend itself," Obshchaia gazeta

Marina Goldovskaya’s "Solovki Power" excavates painful historical memory

In 1988, journalist Marina Goldovskaya was able to release her documentary film "Solovki Power," which was dedicated to reconstructing long-suppressed memory of one of the USSR’s most notorious gulags: “Solovki.”

The founding of the Memorial Society in the late 1980s

Three moments in the early history of Memorial, a human rights group established in Gorbachev-era Russia (and abolished by Putin’s government in 2022) to document and memorialize Soviet political repressions and abuses.