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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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Piskunov’s “Kitchen Diary” in “Komsomolskaya pravda”

For almost a month in 1990, a student named S. Piskunov documented regional shortages in a "kitchen diary," responding to “Komsomol’skaia pravda”'s call for readers to track the impacts of Gorbachev's economic reforms on daily life.

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Letter department workers process mail from citizens writing about the upcoming 26th Party Congress

A photograph of letter department workers at Moscow's television and radio guide, Govorit i pokazyvaet Moskva (1973-1990), processing mail from citizens writing in about the upcoming 27th Communist Party Congress in 1986.

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