ABSTRACT
EDITOR’S NOTE: Film critic and programmer Andrei Plakhov wrote this essay in 1991, before Gorbachev’s downfall and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union into separate sovereign states. What Plakhov describes, then, is a particular historical moment—between the heady days of perestroika and the more somber Yeltsin era. His references to the USSR may seem anachronistic, but this doesn’t mean that Plakhov’s observations have no relevance today. What he outlines is a process of change that is far from complete.
