Nostalgia in the oral narrative of the 1990s

The article examines the specific features of nostalgic narratives about the 1990s, based on 45 in-depth interviews conducted by the author with Moscow residents from different generations. In contrast to the dominant media discourse that dichotomizes the decade into “turbulent” versus “sacred” nineties, oral history reveals a complex and ambivalent picture in which positive and negative aspects of the era are inextricably intertwined. The analysis demonstrates that nostalgia for the 1990s is primarily linked not to mass culture or everyday material life – as is common in online nostalgic communities – but rather to personal experiences of youth, feelings of freedom, novelty, and expanded life opportunities. Notably, the most vivid nostalgic recollections come from respondents born in the 1960–1970s, whereas older generations tend to offer more critical assessments of the period. This allows the author to conclude that nostalgia for the 1990s in oral narratives constitutes a form of reflective nostalgia (according to S. Boym), which is oriented not toward idealizing the past but rather toward reflecting on the uniqueness of lived experience within the context of one’s life trajectory. Thus, this nostalgia is primarily biographically grounded and shaped less by the era’s broad historical characteristics than by personal experience.

1. Bonch-Osmolovskaya, А.A. (2018), “Names of time: Epithets of decades in the Russian National Corpus as a projection of cultural memory”, Shagi / Steps, vol. 4, no. 3–4, pp. 115–146.

2. Boym, S. (2019), Budushchee nostal’gii [The Future of Nostalgia], in Strugach, A. (transl.), Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, Russia.

3. Davis, F. (1979), Yearning for yesterday: a sociology of nostalgia, Free Press, New York, USA.

4. Gavrilova, M.V. (2024), “Holocaust Memory and Ethnic Identity in Soviet Jewish Families”, Judaic-Slavic Journal, no. 11–12, pp. 9–36.

5. Halbwachs, M. (2007), Sotsial’nye ramki pamyati [Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire], in Zenkin, S. (transl.), Novoe izdatel’stvo, Moscow, Russia.

6. Klimova, E.V. (2025), “The memory of childhood in the 1990s on social media: VKontakte and LiveJournal”, RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Literary Theory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies” Series, no. 7, pp. 113–124.

7. Koposov. N. (2011), Pamyat’ strogogo rezhima: Istoriya i politika v sovremennoi Rossii [Strict Regime Memory: History and Politics in Modern Russia], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow, Russia.

8. Lowenthal, D. (2004), Proshloe – chuzhaya strana [The Past is a Foreign Country], in Govorunov, A. (transl.), Russkii Ostrov, Vladimir Dal’, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

9. Merzlyakova, V.N. (2019), “Mediatization of the collective memory of the 1990s in RuNet”, RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Literary Theory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies” Series, no. 8, pp. 289–302.

10. Ostroukhov, M.S. (2025), “The topic of ‘victims of the 1990s’ as one of the main elements of an oral narrative about the era”, RSUH/RGGU Bulletin. “Literary Theory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies” Series, no. 6, pp. 113–124.

11. Utekhin, I.V. (2021), “The Visual Images of the 1990s in Instagram*: A Commercialization of Nostalgia”, Tempus et Memoria, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 60–72.