ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the public sphere of late-Soviet society of the 1970s and 1980s, and considers its spatial arrangement and the communication patterns that characterised it. It presents the slang term tusovka the status of a sociological category embracing particular segments of the informal-public sphere of late-Soviet modernity. The chapter describes the Cafe Saigon as the location of tusovka, and also presents its regime, rules, common practices and symbols in the words both of those who frequented it and of ordinary city residents. It also explains the individual life stories of the cafe habitues in order to show when they were recruited, what their tusovka experiences were vis-a-vis everyday life in the Soviet Union, and what the meanings were that they attached to the tusovka habitus. The chapter focuses on the habitual practices that made a Saigonee acceptable in the tusovka.
