This article describes the results of the pilot stage of qualitative fi eld research on Russian social memory in the second half of the 1980s. The aim of the research was to reveal what is the image of perestroika preserved in today’s social memory of those Russians who remember the events of those years. The main objective of the pilot stage was the identifi cation of the lexicon of terms and the set of concepts used to verbalize the memories of the perestroika period, as well as the caesuras and temporal characteristics related to the memory of this time. The results are outlined in the main topics, terms and concepts that pop up in conversations with respondents.
In the summer of 1980, following the death of Vladimir Vysotsky, the Taganka Theatre in Moscow received more than 130 mourning telegrams. Their collection (although not all the items have survived) represents an invaluable source for the study of late Soviet culture. The descriptions of Vysotsky contained make it possible to reconstruct a certain collective portrait of the bard – this being one of the purposes of this article. The reasonableness of this task is justified by the fact that a number of the declarations sent testify to the articulation of emotions perceived by the authors as collective ones. The portrait we have created is a picture that perpetuates the personality, in which all the main features of the Russian cultural concept of “the Poet” are fully realized. It is also a portrait of a person who – according to the author of one of the telegrams – “lived ultimate states”, or – according to another – was permanently “standing on the edge.”