“Here's my grandpa with his Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin tattoo — except he wasn't a communist. He got it in prison ‘for the firing squad, just in case,’ they used to say.” — Andrey
We continue our Immigrant Deprogramming series by talking to Andrey, a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in 1993 — brought over by his cool farsovshik/Soviet criminal underworld-adjacent dad.
We talk about the different sides of his extended Soviet family — vory types on one side, communists on the other. We also talk about him growing up in the Midwest and trying to fit into an American society that turned out to be more of a Beavis and Butthead than Home Alone world he imagined it to be as a Russian kid.
A couple of notes.
Andrey talked about Mark of Cain, a documentary on Russian prison tattoos. He also mentioned Ladoni, an art film on late Soviet poverty and mental illness, as well as a late Soviet TV program on farsovshiki. And we mentioned Brigada, a TV show about late Soviet and Russian organized crime — a kind of Russian Godfather.
—Yasha & Evgenia
PS: Check out Andrey’s music on SoundCloud.
Want to know more? Check out previous episodes of The Russians.
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