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.

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"Gone with the Wind"—The post-Soviet Sequels

A series of five collectively authored sequels to Margaret Mitchell's bestselling “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Writing in Minsk, Belarus, the anonymous authors published under the pseudonym Dzhuliia Khilpatrik (“Julia Hillpatrick”) and released titles like “We'll Call Her Scarlett,” “Rhett Butler's Son,” and “Scarlett's Last Love”

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The Russian Booker—Scandals

A series of five articles scandalously decrying the Russian Booker, the new literary prize imported from England.

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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.

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OMON Uniform

Although the police special forces unit known as OMON (Otriad militsii osobogo naznacheniia) was established before the fall of the Soviet Union, their now-ubiquitous light blue camouflage was only introduced in 1994, when OMON was deployed as part of the first Chechen War. OMON and its uniform have since been associated with street intimidation, market clearings, and protest-quashing, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

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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.

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