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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"Pro Eto." Male Prostitution

A clip from the talk show "Pro Eto" with Elena Khanga, episode on male prostitution.

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“We Are Building Communism!" / "We Are Building a New Russia!”

A 1993 billboard for Moscow’s Peresvet Trading Firm that plays on an existing Soviet-era billboard displayed just above it.

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Soviet Nostalgia: “Old Songs About What Matters Most”

Arguably the most popular Soviet nostalgia project of the 1990s was Leonid Parfenov and Konstantin Ernst’s "Starye pesni o glavnom [Old Songs About What Matters Most]"

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"New Russians" at “Kommersant”

A series of articles from the nascent “Kommersant Daily” dating to late 1992/ early 1993 sought to assess the paper’s target audience, the wealthy class of so-called “New Russians.”

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Parfenov’s “Namedni” as memory work in the 1990s

“Namedni” (Recently), Leonid Parfenov’s project dedicated to recent history, was one of the most successful shows of the 1990s. Eschewing big narrative arcs, the program highlighted the past as a collection of memory sites—in this case, exploring the origins of the “New Russian” in 1991.

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