Nothing epitomized the everyday experience of the urban Russian 1990s like crime. As this first comprehensive statistical study of the 1990s demonstrates, crime was just as bad as everyone had anecdotally experienced. The numbers also reveal some unexpected trends.

Aleksei Balabanov's cult crime drama, which made its title character, the loveable killer Danila Bagrov into a youth idol and a national emblem of post-Soviet masculinity

The 2000 sequel to Balabanov’s (1959-2013) cult 1990s-era neo-noir, Brother, brought its heroes to Chicago, where they took on both American and Ukrainian villains. 

Criminal boss Mikhail Kuchin’s gravestone portrait, erected following his 1994 slaying in Shirokorechenskoy Cemetery, featuring the iconic image of keys to his Mercedes. 

Igor Dudinsky takes over the magazine Megapolis-ekspress and turns it into an extreme and surreal parody of the lowest and most excessively sensationalist forms of Western tabloids.

The Moscow-based, English-language magazine the eXile combined gonzo journalism and stiob to provide unique reporting on post-Soviet Russia. At the same time, the outlet fetishized the very 1990s-era lawlessness or bespredel—not to mention Western sexual and economic exploitation of Russia—that it nominally denounced and condemned.