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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Oligarchs collude for Yeltsin in 1996

“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.

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DDT’s Shevchuk Goes to Chechnya

An excerpt from “Vremia DDT,” a 2002 documentary centered on DDT, one of Russia’s best-known rock bands throughout the 1990s and later. A montage of amateur footage by DDT leader and frontman Yuri Shevchuk (1957-), who visited Russian frontlines during the First Chechen War in 1995-1996, is backed by the song “Patsany [Guys],” itself inspired by Shevchuk’s experience.

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Petrovich, the Soviet everyman, survives post-Soviet Russia in “Kommersant”

A collection of "Petrovich" cartoons by Andrei Bil’zho published in Russia’s “first business newspaper,” “Kommersant.” Bil’zho’s drawings depict a hapless and repulsive comic personage, born and raised in the Soviet era but trying to get his bearings in post-Soviet capitalism.

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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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Referendum 1993: the "Yes Yes No Yes" campaign

“Yes, yes, no yes [Da, Da, Net, Da],” an agitational propaganda campaign for the 1993 referendum, featuring the slogan "We are building a new Russia!"

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