Cultural artifacts are therefore interesting to study that history accumulates in them - its key plots, meanings and contradictions. The researcher here is like an archaeologist: he carefully brushes things of the past with a brush - books, songs, art in the broadest sense - in order to tell us about the era and the people who lived in it. Alexey Kolobrodov is just such a researcher. In his new book, he traces the most important connection for us - the origin of today's cultural and socio-political situation from the political and cultural life of the late Soviet Union.