Once upon a time, Oleg Gazmanov was the lone ranger waxing nostalgic about the CCCP. Senile as he is, he kinda has a point. Some of my favorite people were born in the Soviet Union (then fled immediately). If you filter out all the bad shit, you come up with a pretty neat set of things: chess, cosmonauts, torpedos, spies, “big science” (our favorite, too). We’d add that ambisexual Mickey Mouse knock-off Cheburashka and those medical bars for kids made of dehydrogenated cow blood to the list, as well.
The original O.G.
Nowadays, when journalists are accidentally getting deaded and history textbooks are giving a more patriotic look at the past (Stalin was a great micromanager), nationalism is just the safest hand to play, even on the club scene. Opera’s Pervomaika (1st of May) party resurrected that old proletariat spirit, and showed the world that a monstrous regime is a pretty sexy beast when it lets its hair down.
Now most Opera frequenters were born in the Yeltsin era, not the Evil Empire. Having never been forced to endure long queues and pointlessly circuituous beauracracy for basic supplies (unless you consider sushi and kalyan basic supplies, in which case every weekend at Etazh), they have a somewhat glamorized version of the not too distant past. It's less about Lenin and Marx, more about free vodka shots and STDs.
I survived 80 years of oppression and all I got was these stupid rigger grandkids?
Keeping it really real: gulag chic
Surely the Soviet Union wasn't this bad
If you want a vision of the Moscow future, it's a stiletto stamping on a human face. Forever.
