Introduction

Abstract

In the new issue of Laboratorium, the editors’ taste for experimentation manifests itself in new genres, research domains, and perspectives on familiar subjects. The texts that make up this issue, while not intentionally connected thematically, can all be read as explorations of issues of identity—the search for self-making in the complex space between Soviet and post-Soviet “identities,” between the roles prescribed by government and society and the longing for individual self-expression, between participation in market relations and relationships not predicated on capitalist exchanges, or between “spontaneous” activism and political apathy.