“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!"

In 1989, Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) capitalized on the gains of glasnost to secure widespread support for his candidacy to the Congress of People’s Deputies, overcoming a contentious past with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) and emerging as a popular figure against conservative elements inside the Soviet Communist Party.

Just five months before his death, Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989) spoke out at the USSR’s First Congress of People’s Deputies, defying Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) to advocate for a multi-party system in a speech broadcast live to millions—yet silenced within the Congress hall itself.

Konstantin Ernst’s (1961-) series of social advertisements extolling Russia’s shared values and national identity at a time of seeming social crisis in the mid-1990s.

The Saint Petersburg “New Artists” stage a meeting of the committee “anti-state of emergency” on their “Pirate Television,” declaring their support of Yeltsin against the group of communist hardliners who led the coup d’etat against Gorbachev on August 19, 1991.