The book series “Contemporary Russian Prose” or the “Black Series,” published by Vagrius—one of post-Soviet Russia’s most successful commercial publishers—made bestsellers out of literary prose.

After the launch of Victor Pelevin’s hit novel “Generation P” in 1999, the author set out on a publicity tour in which he behaved as poorly as his own protagonist, Vavilen Tatarsky. And much like his protagonist, he proved that, in post-Soviet Russia, bad behavior sells.

This billboard advertising the cigarette brand L&M is positioned in front of the burned façade of the Russian White House, which was bombed on Yeltsin’s orders during the 1993 Constitutional Crisis. It possibly inspired one of the most famous passages from Victor Pelevin’s iconic satire of the 1990s, “Generation P” (titled, in English, “Homo Zapiens”).