Episode #12: “I didn’t want to live in a simulacrum of American life in the ruins of the Soviet Union”

This ep is inspired by Evgenia’s recent essay on her youth and Russia’s deeply colonized culture. But we get into all sorts of related topics — like what else is out there and what’s worth living for, other than this cursed consumerism and materialism that has surrounded us our whole lives.

—Yasha Levine

PS: The photo is from Gorbachev’s embarrassing 1997’s Pizza Hut commerical.

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Check out our previous episodes: 

• Episode #11: Watching American movies in the USSR ft. Boris Levine

• Episode #10: Anti-Soviet identities in the USSR

• Episode #9: The End

• Episode #8: Breeders

• Episode #7: Adam Curtis, get out of my head

• Episode #6: Navalny, the Kremlin, and the curse of neoliberalism

• Episode #5: The Serf aka Холоп

• Episode #4: Palestine and Soviet Jews

• Episode #3: Eduard Limonov and Natalia Medvedeva w/Thierry Marignac

• Episode #2: All the Sad Soviet Immigrant Lit

• Episode #1: Russians Against Politics

• Episode #0: The Ukrainian-Canadian left & Chrystia Freeland's Nazi grandpa