The return from exile of physicist, dissident, and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) was a media sensation—here emblematized in a photograph of reporters swarming him as he steps out of a car in Moscow. His return marked a powerful popular comeback for the renowned human rights activist who, despite years of official condemnation, received growing press support through perestroika until his death in 1989.

Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), a physicist and Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident, returned to Moscow from internal exile in 1986. He quickly became one of the USSR's most popular and respected public figures, surpassing even Gorbachev in some polls. His sudden death in December 1989 drew tens of thousands of mourners, despite a muted official response.

In 1991, the actionist group E.T.A. (standing for Expropriation of the Territory of Art”) staged a performance in which they used their bodies to form an obscene word in front of the Kremlin.

The first issue of the actionist magazine Radek featured, on its cover, four strategically denuded men standing in front of the charred façade of the Russian White House—a recent casualty of the 1993 Constitutional Crisis.