#perestroika

Belarusian Interiors - Andrej Liankievič

"Over the last 60 years, Belarus has undergone a profound transformation, with rapid urbanisation reshaping the demographic and cultural fabric of the country. Today, only 25% of the population live in rural areas and many villages are at risk of depopulation or abandonment. The rural interiors captured in my project are not only living spaces, but also repositories of memories and traditions. The embroidered textiles, hand-carved furniture and fading family photographs reflect a way of life that is disappearing. These houses were once the centre of family life, places where generations lived together, cared for each other and passed on traditions. Now that children are moving to distant cities, many older people have to spend their twilight years in isolation, often as widows. In Belarus, 74% of older women live alone.

The decline of the traditional Belarusian village is not just about physical space, but is also a story of cultural loss. Younger generations rarely use their parents’ rural home as a family centre and the intergenerational ties that once defined rural life are weakening. These frozen interiors are a poignant reminder of a way of life that was characterised by resilience, hard work and attachment to the land. But they also reflect the difficulties of ageing in solitude, where economic hardship, health problems and lack of support take their toll.

Girls with enamel canisters ("bidon"), USSR 1989

This type of canister was commonly used for carrying milk, kvas, fresh berries etc.

They met at a rink in Moscow when they were eight. Ilya was practicing shots after his hockey practice had ended. A girl his own age with Afro puffs, a leotard and figure skates came up to him and started giving him a detailed breakdown of everything he was doing wrong. It was impressive how much she knew!

Then some older boys heard a girl lecturing Little!Ilya about hockey and skated over to bully him for it. This girl knew a hell of a lot more about hockey than these big boys did, so Ilya stuck up for her. Being Ilya, even at eight, he said something smart mouthed to the big kids.

They took offence and decided to pound the little shrimp. But before they could beat him up, Svetlana grabbed Ilya’s hockey stick and hit the biggest bully in the face with it. She broke his nose.

Then she gave Ilya her hand and told him she’d help him run away from the bullies. They hid in the girls change room until their respective moms tracked them down there. The hiding place was Sveta’s idea. After their next practice at the same time, Ilya convinced Irina to let him to go to the nearest playground with Svetlana. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between two little hellions.

Grigori was at first annoyed that Irina had let Ilya become friends with a girl, and a mixed race girl at that. Then he found out she was Sergei Vetrov’s daughter. Instantly starstruck! Grigori used his son’s friendship with Svetlana to become friends with Sergei. So Ilya and Svetlana got to spend more time together. At some point they swore a blood oath to be friends forever.

After Irina killed herself when they were twelve, Svetlana convinced her parents to let Ilya sleep over at their apartment. Since the Rozanov apartment still had the mortuary coming to pick up the body. Ilya was still in shock, and neither Grigori nor Alexei was in any shape to look after him.

So she didn’t have to convince her parents too badly. They felt bad for the poor kid, so they let him sleep over in her room. Svetlana was the only person Ilya ever told until he was 26 what had really happened to his mom. She hugged him the whole night while he cried. She promised she would always be his best friend, and she kept that promise.

Another headcanon of mine is that Little!Svetlana desperately wanted to play girls hockey. But her dad made her do figure skating instead. We know nothing against Sergei Vetrov EXCEPT that he’s a close friend of Grigori Rozanov’s. Given how sexist and homophobic Grigori is, maybe Sergei has similar views.

There have always been lots of lesbians in girls and women’s hockey. Maybe Sergei was worried his little girl would be corrupted by them. Or maybe he let her play for a few years. And then she broke her nose or something else potentially disfiguring, and he made her switch to figure skating. Can’t have her ruining that pretty face, or she’ll never get a husband when she grows up.

Svetlana critiques Ilya’s play when they’re 8 because she’d love to play herself, but she’s not allowed. Maybe their friendship deepens when she tells Ilya that. This little brother with no sisters realizes it’s not just his mom who gets treated unfairly, it’s other girls too. Ilya lends her his own hockey gear and sneaks her onto the ice in it as often as he can.

Irina looks the other way, as long as the kids give her some plausible deniability. I.e. So Grigori doesn’t blame HER for undemining Sergei as a father. She likes Svetlana, and encourages the friendship. Although post-suicide, I suspect Svetlana’s memories of Irina are more complicated than Ilya’s. Irina wasn’t her mom, after all, so she doesn’t need to idealize her memory. And Svetlana can see how Irina’s suicide left her bestie with gaping emotional wounds.

Another possible point in favour of Sergei Vetrov being a shitty dad is that Svetlana moved seven time zones away from her family as soon as she was a legal adult. Yes, she goes back to Moscow for visits, but she doesn’t live there. She moved to Boston solely because her bestie had been drafted by Boston and she had an American passport.

And then she made a whole new life for herself there, stayed in Boston even after Ilya left. It’s safe to say she’s probably not TOO close to her parents. So my guess is Sergei might have blighted her childhood dream of playing hockey, and Mrs Vetrova didn’t fight him on it as much as her daughter wanted her to. Yeah, Svetlana could play in a rec league after moving to Boston, but if she only started playing at 18 or 19, she’d never be able to play competitively.

I’m also assuming Svetlana was born during her dad’s NHL career, hence the American passport. She was presumably born 1991, same year as Ilya. Prior to Gorbachev in 1985, it was virtually impossible for Soviet citizens to go to the West unless they defected. But perestroika changed that.

Sergei was a famous goalie for the Soviet Union. Maybe in the late 1980s he seized the opportunity to make big western money in America before his career ended. The Soviet Union was a disaster at the time, economically. Major shortages of food and consumer goods, political instability, etc.

As an elite athlete, Sergei would’ve been far more privileged than the average person, but by the mid to late eighties, the whole system was breaking down. Even privileged people like Olympians and cosmonauts were feeling the pinch. Sergei moved to the USA with his family, and his wife had a baby girl in 1991. When his career ended, they moved back to Russia, but Svetlana still had two passports.

I’m also assuming Svetlana’s mother was probably Cuban or African originally. Back in the Soviet days, it was common for the children of Communist Party elites in developing countries to study at Soviet universities. It was one of the cheaper ways the USSR rewarded Communists in developing countries, by giving their kids opportunities they wouldn’t have at home. A pretty Cuban or African student met a handsome goalie. Svetlana might have older siblings, we just don’t meet them in canon.

It’s also possible that Sergei moved to the USA to play and married a black American woman there. But it’s clear Svetlana and Ilya spent most of their childhoods together in Moscow. And Russia in the 1990s was a fucking disaster. It’s hard to believe that the Vetrov family would’ve gone back to Moscow and stayed there if Mrs Vetrova had US citizenship. She could have sponsored her husband and they could’ve raised their kids somewhere less turbulent than post-Soviet Russia.

Now, clearly Sergei, like Grigori Rozanov, was a survivor who adapted to the fall of Communism in 1991 and ended up thriving in its wreckage. He’s prosperous, and is apparently as of 2014 the Minister for Sport in Putin’s cabinet. Possibly he got axed from that job after the Sochi Olympics. After the embarrassment of the men’s hockey team crashing out to a former colony.

But I suspect Sergei could have thrived in the USA as well, if he’d had a clear path to citizenship through an American wife. The USA is a chaotic place, but Russia in the nineties would’ve been even more so.

64 years ago today: on June 21st, 1962, the world was gifted iconic Soviet rock artist Viktor Tsoi.

Born of Korean and Russian heritage, Tsoi (also translated as Tsoy) was the co-founder and lead of the highly influential Soviet post-punk band Kino; the Leningrad group widely recognised to be the most popular rock band in the entirety of Soviet history. Emerging in the early 1980s underground scene, tracks such as “Khochu Peremen!” (“I Want Change!”) and “Gruppa Krovi” (“Blood Type”) cemented Kino’s legendary status among Soviet youth in the Perestroika era.

Viktor Tsoi’s illustrious career came to a shuddering halt in 1990, following a high-speed collision between his car and a bus in Latvia; killing Tsoi at age just 28. Thousands mourned his passing, murals began to appear in numbers as tribute. The remaining bandmates of Kino compiled their final recordings into the posthumous release known as the Black Album, and subsequently disbanded.

the era is mid-late 80s. not realistic enough for actual socialist realism. not..severe enough for the "severe style" (though definitely influenced by both) i feel like this is heavily influenced by 60-70s psychedelia and supergraphic ultramodern aesthetic. maybe even the memphis group (the stylized geometric buildings make me think so). this is not exactly impossible as it's the perestroika era, the iron curtain is falling and western art & culture is getting popular in the ussr. but i think if i call this supergraphic ultramodern then my art history teacher will be legally allowed to kill me with hammers

there was kind of a transitional aesthetic between classic socrealism and whatever tf this is. it's also stylized and simplified but still closer to realism and doesn't have those psychedelic geometric backgrounds

The first Russian beauty pageant ("Moscow Beauty") was held in 1988, during the Perestoika period implemented by Gorbachev. There were more than 2,500 applicants

Each contestant wore their own swimsuit, some of them borrowed, as was the case with the winner, Masha Kalinina. Some of the contestants made a name for themselves in Soviet cinema, which had just reached the point of nudity.

Masha Kalinina, winner of the contest, in the first photo wearing a swimsuit lent to her by a friend: