Dangerous Soviet Things

An exciting historical non-fiction from the series “Culture of Everyday Life.” Jeans infested with lice, larvae under the skin of an African guest, a portrait of Mao Zedong appearing at night on a Chinese carpet, swastikas hidden in house construction, chewing gum with crushed glass—here’s an incomplete list of Soviet urban legends about dangerous things. The book by well-known folklorists and anthropologists Alexandra Arkhipova (RANEPA, RSUH, HSE) and Anna Kirzyuk (RANEPA) is the first anthropological and folkloristic study devoted to the fears of the Soviet person. Many of these fears found expression in texts and practices that are difficult for a modern reader to understand: in the 1930s people searched for Trotsky’s profile on a matchbox, and in the 1970s they spread rumors about food poisoned by Americans. The book explains why such fears arose, how they turned into rumors and urban legends, how they affected the behavior of Soviet people, and sometimes even led to large-scale moral panics. The research draws on survey data, interviews, memoirs, diaries, and archival documents.