Until about the 1960s, historians believed that history could only be written from documents, some of which are writings by older authors, thus not purely a fixation of historical knowledge but historical literature. Subsequent generations will inevitably evaluate and judge the living today through the lens of their time, and those who have personally not witnessed these events risk never breaking through the unspoken or intentional distortions of events and hierarchies of meaning. In this light, the historical memory of an individual or community, inscribed in local and global history, filled with emotions, fragments of facts, and details of past everyday life, is incredibly important. The stories of the 'small' person, whose views and values are not dissolved in official chronicles, are harder to reconsider in light of new interpretations because they are a snapshot of time, its spirit, and atmosphere. With the help of oral history, one can change both the angle and focus on a subject or whole phenomenon; it can break down barriers of misunderstanding between generations, and most importantly, return to people who made this history their rightful central place in events, giving them a voice and personal opinion. This is why this series has chosen the format of oral history from beautiful losers, where the 'raw material' consists of the life experiences of various people from the 'lost generation,' whose life paths intersected at the base of unhealthy, from the perspective of Soviet society, obsessions and antics. The collection includes candid conversations with representatives from Moscow, Leningrad, Lithuania, Estonia, and Eastern Siberia; a kaleidoscope of opinions from the direct participants of the Soviet punk movement that emerged from the depths of the underground in the 1980s, the most uncompromising and radical, and therefore still largely undocumented.
