Press Law of 1990

In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) signed into law a press reform that reinforced existing commitments to speech and press freedoms, as articulated in the version of the Soviet Constitution adopted in 1977 under Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982).

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The pro-Yeltsin propaganda paper “God Forbid!” subjects Communist presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov to blistering critique

An anti-Zyuganov cartoon published about a month before the first round of presidential elections in 1996 compares him to a Godzilla-sized dog owner training an entire city to “Beg!” for a slice of Soviet mortadella—liubitel’skaya kolbasa.

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Marina Goldovskaya’s "Solovki Power" excavates painful historical memory

In 1988, journalist Marina Goldovskaya was able to release her documentary film "Solovki Power," which was dedicated to reconstructing long-suppressed memory of one of the USSR’s most notorious gulags: “Solovki.”

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The founding of the Memorial Society in the late 1980s

Three moments in the early history of Memorial, a human rights group established in Gorbachev-era Russia (and abolished by Putin’s government in 2022) to document and memorialize Soviet political repressions and abuses.

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“Iceberg,” an anti-Zyuganov television spot

An animated political ad from 1996 reminds viewers of the awfulness of the recent past, identifying Communist Gennady Zyuganov with Soviet brutality and empty sloganeering.

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Svetlana Baskova's "Little Green Elephant" (1999)

Svetlana Baskova captures the surreal, deeply violent, and grotesque essence of the 1990s and the Chechen wars in her cult trash movie, "Zelenyi slonik" (The little green elephant, 1999).

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