TV Commercials for the MMM Pyramid Scheme
A series of 15-second TV spots advertising post-Soviet Russia's most successful pyramid scheme, MMM. The scheme's popularity derived from the simple action-reward structure of the TV spots, which presented a simultaneously winking and sincere vision of capitalist utopia.
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Putting the “Spotlight” on an experimental three-hour line for Soviet luxury clothes
“Prozhektor perestroiki” (Perestroika's Spotlight), a glasnost-era televised investigative journalism project, seeks to uncover the causes of a three-hour line for luxury clothes at the recently opened Luxe Fashion Center, which come down to intractable issues of supply and demand in the USSR.
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The Soviet technical intelligentsia learns Reaganomics on the “Chto? Gde? Kogda?” quiz show
“Chto? Gde? Kogda?” (What? Where? When?), a long-running highbrow quiz show targeted at the late Soviet technical intelligentsia, debates the economic principles underpinning Soviet private enterprise in the midst of perestroika’s economic reforms in 1988.
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Writers demand a Yeltsin coup ("Letter of the 42")
A letter signed by 42 prominent members of the Russian intelligentsia during the 1993 Constitutional Crisis, in which the liberals urged Yeltsin to use lethal force to destroy the Communist-led parliamentary opposition.
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An episode of the talk show “Tema”: “Racism in Russia”
A clip from the talk show "Tema [Theme]," Vladislav Listyev's (1956-1995) major post-Soviet project after the 1991 end of “Vzgliad.” This episode centers on racism in Russia and includes guest Dzheims (James) Lloydovich Patterson (1933-), who played an interracial baby in the classic Stalin-era musical comedy Circus (1936).
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The Glasnost Booth during the USSR’s last celebration of the October Revolution
“Glas naroda” (The People’s Voice) was a booth installed in the middle of Moscow, into which random people could enter and speak their minds on camera. For this 1991 episode, the booth was set in the vicinity of the Kremlin on last anniversary of the October Revolution ever celebrated in the USSR.
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