Dangerous Soviet Things: Urban Legends and Fears in the USSR

Jeans infected with lice, larvae under the skin of an African guest, a portrait of Mao Zedong appearing at night on a Chinese carpet, hidden swastikas in the structure of buildings, chewing gum with crushed glass - this is an incomplete list of Soviet urban legends about dangerous things. The book by well-known folklorists and anthropologists A. Arkhipova (RANHiGS, RGGU, HSE) and A. Kirzyuk (RANHiGS) is the first anthropological and folkloristic study dedicated to the fears of the Soviet person. Many of these fears were expressed in texts and practices that are hard for our contemporaries to comprehend: in the 1930s, people sought Trotsky's profile on matchboxes, and in the 1970s, rumors circulated about treats poisoned by Americans. The book explains why such fears arose, how they turned into rumors and urban legends, how they influenced the behavior of Soviet people, and at times led to large-scale moral panics. The study relies on survey data, interviews, memoirs, diaries, and archival documents.