A Man Who Keeps Up with the Times
A piece on David Bowie, focusing on the star’s bisexuality, in the glossy color gay magazine Мальчишник
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Piskunov’s “Kitchen Diary” in “Komsomolskaya pravda”
For almost a month in 1990, a student named S. Piskunov documented regional shortages in a "kitchen diary," responding to “Komsomol’skaia pravda”'s call for readers to track the impacts of Gorbachev's economic reforms on daily life.
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Chumak sends morning healing vibes to perestroika-era audiences
A 1989 healing session with TV psychic Allan Chumak (1935-2017) taking place during the morning newscast “120 Minutes.” Chumak alleged that his techniques worked not only on people themselves, but also on their drinking water and moisturizing products.
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Kino’s last concert (Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow)
Footage of a live Kino concert at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium on June 24, 1990, roughly a month and half prior to frontman Viktor Tsoi's death in a car accident in rural Latvia. The footage shows the band at the very height of its popularity, as well as offering an unencumbered look at a country in transition: a heavy and conspicuous Soviet police detail is assigned to the event, while audience members wave both the Soviet flag and the Russian tricolor banner.
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Roksi Music Journal (Samizdat) (Vol. 15, 1990.)
The final print issue of the Leningrad-based samizdat rock journal Roksi, which was founded in 1977 by members of the rock band Aquarium and the future president of the Leningrad Rock Club. Considered to be the first rock publication in the Soviet Union, which was subject to raids by the KGB, Roksi eventually became the official newsletter of the LRC, and thus legitimized by the state apparatus.
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Perestroika-era Russian Women Speak to US Women
A clip from one of many perestroika-era televised conversations between American and Soviet "regular people," in which they find common ground with the help of longtime Soviet propagandist and future star of liberal post-Soviet TV, Vladimir Pozner (1934-).
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