We are a group of Germans, Poles and Russians, who came to Moscow to discuss the role of the political and social changes in the 1980s and 1990s in people’s lives and in the recent histories of our countries.
While in Moscow for one week in April, we tried to find out about the effects of big changes on Russians’ everyday life, and also about their opinions on these times and on the changes that happened. In order to achieve this, we used two approaches. On the one had, the entire group met with different experts and time witnesses. These meetings mostly had a the form of an informal lecture, usually followed by a discussion of our resulting questions. On the other hand, we formed small groups that went out into the city and researched on topics like the changes in business, in a community’s life, or in the museal presentation of history. In the course of this research, we talked to people in the streets or as a small research group met with locals who had agreed to tell us about their experiences of the 1980s and 90s.