The first post-Soviet Lada model, the VAZ-2110, appeared in 1995 and sold for between $5,000 and $8,000. Targeted at the emerging middle class, the car represented the manufacturer’s hope that Russian production and consumer power could come together to build a domestic market that would advance the economy beyond raw materials extraction and imported consumer goods.

The center of the post-Soviet book trade established itself in the corridors of the enormous stadium built for the 1980s summer Olympic Games in Moscow. It was chaotic, even dangerous, but also presented an embarrassment of literary riches.

In 1994, Alexander Solzhenitsyn staged a theatrical return to Russia, flying from America to Magadan, then returning by train from Vladivostok to Moscow. The journey and the salvific importance Solzhenitsyn attached to it soon became the target of much derision, as well as some praise.

A 1996 item about a police raid at a gay nightclub from the Triangle Center LGBTQ community bulletin, Tsentr treugol’nik informatsionnyi biulleten’. 

“A Way Out of the Dead End,” an op-ed co-authored by prominent Russian “oligarchs” and published in the Wall Street Journal-like daily “Kommersant” in April 1996, which announced their intention to use their considerable media resources to sink the Communist Gennady Zyuganov in the upcoming 1996 presidential election.

The logo of a young, anthropomorphic elephant giving the victory sign with his left hand announced Russia’s first game console, Dendy, which became enormously popular between 1992 and 1996.