Cohort of Those who Came of Age in 1990s Now Triggering Rehabilitation of that Decade, Stashkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 24 – The Kremlin and its mouthpieces in the media still continue to denounce the 1990s as a wild time in which everything was bad for Russians, but the aging of those who came of age during that decade is leading to an outburst of nostalgia about those years among them, according to St. Petersburg commentator Gleb Stashkov.

            Now approaching 50, he says, that “nostalgia for my youth” has swept over him just as it often does among those who have reached that age. And he notes that “a lot of materials about the ‘90s  have appeared in the pop sector of the Internet: ‘Music of the ‘90s,’ ‘Stars of the ‘90s,’ and even ‘Creepy Fashions of the ‘90s’” (gorod-812.ru/nachinaetsya-reabilitacziya-90-h/).

            While such materials are presented in ideologically correct ways, Stashkov says, behind these “stock phrases … are love and nostalgia,” because these programs allow people of his cohort to recall their youth and even show their affection and nostalgia for a period they are told to despise.

            “Maybe,” he says, “the rehabilitation of the ‘90s is beginning …simply because the time has come to fall into nostalgia for the generation whose youth fell in the ‘90s.” Such a trend would be consistent with what happened earlier when those who grew up in the 1970s reached a certain age and thought positively about Brezhnev’s times.

            So far, this is all taking place below the political level; but it does represent “the natural change of the generations which are falling into nostalgia.”