ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the hackneyed reputation of the “rowdy” 1990s as a period of economic decline and national humiliation only to juxtapose it to a more positive image of the decade that has started to take shape in the course of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term. While the “official” position continues to stress the decade’s supposedly destructive nature for disrupting the “organic” course of Russian history, viewers of the TV series Shuttletraders (2016) tend to take a more nuanced look, fondly recalling the “drive” and the “energy” of the first post-Soviet decade and admiring the small entrepreneurs who managed to live through those difficult times. Unambiguous expressions of nostalgia for (aspects of) the 1990s can be encountered among liberal opinion makers, especially those connected to the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, but also among aging punks, rappers, and right-wing radicals who remember the 1990s as an unpolished but authentic and merry time.
