The Russia that We Have Lost: Pre-Soviet Past as Anti-Soviet Discourse, by Pavel Khazanov, University of Wisconsin Press, 2023, $89.95 (hardcover), ISBN 9780299345105.
Journal: Nationalities Papers
Year: 2024

Drawing on a dozen or so movies, novels, and philosophical tracts, Pavel Khazanov convincingly diagnoses the driving force of post-Soviet Russian political culture.Revulsion at the Stalinist system is combined with a recognition that the society that exists today is the product of that very systemthe educated middle class in particular.One of the most important cultural products of the perestroika era were two films by Stanislav Govorukhin: Can't Live Like This (Tak zhit' nelzia) (1990) and The