The Triumph Prize

Launched at the same time as the Russian Booker and funded by the newly minted oligarch Boris Berezovsky (1946-2013), the Triumph Prize promised an even broader program of cultural guardianship and philanthropy.

View Artifact

Russian Crime Statistics, 1980-1996

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.

View Artifact

Klei-Moment

Made by the German Henkel company, Moment-brand glue was a staple of post-Soviet hobbyists. It also became one of the preferred drugs among post-Soviet youth. The brand name alone became synonymous with huffing.

View Artifact

Rebuilding Russia

When it was published in 1990, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's (1918-2008) traditionalist prescription for pulling Russia out of its difficulties was seen as out of touch with the times. Since then, many of the ideas the author expounded have become commonplaces in the culture of Russian revanchism.

View Artifact

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

View Artifact

A Coup d'État Holds a Press Conference

A press conference held by the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP in Russian), the group of hardline government officials who attempted a coup d’état overthrowing Mikhail Gorbachev. This press conference, held on 20 August 1991, shows the coup coming apart at the seams.

View Artifact