To Be Continued Post-Soviet Nostalgia in Sergei Miroshnichenko’s Time-Lapse Documentary Series Born in the USSR

This chapter analyzes the long-term documentary project Born in the USSR (Rozhdennye v SSSR, Sergei Miroshnichenko, 1991-present). In intervals of seven years the films chart the lives of twenty Soviet-born citizens, starting in 1990 when they were seven years old, up through 2012 when the latest installment was released. The later films combine old and new scenes, going back and forth between different periods, continually renegotiating the relationship between disparate moments in biographical and historical time. In doing so, they create a poignant and often nostalgic contrast between the vanished fatherland the films’ subjects once shared and their dispersion over post-Soviet space and beyond after the collapse of the Soviet system. The chapter argues that the documentary films obfuscate the rhetorical work they undertake and gloss over the nostalgic negotiations of (dis)continuity they cultivate. The director insists on the project’s disinterested approach, and the films rely on a persistent metaphor of the subjects as representing the larger “Soviet family in disarray,” thus naturalizing the (once existing) ties between the twenty subjects. The chapter argues that it is precisely this naturalizing gesture and seemingly apolitical approach that make nostalgia available for co-option by the forces supporting political restorationism.