Contents -- Introduction: Theoretical Common Places -- Rubber Plants and the Soviet Order of Things -- Archeology of the Common Place -- A Labyrinth without a Monster -- The Mythologist as Traveler -- 1. Mythologies of Everyday Life -- Byt: Daily Grind and Domestic Trash -- Poshlost': Banality, Obscenity, Bad Taste -- Meshchanstvo: Middle Class, Middlebrow -- Private Life and Russian Soul -- Truth, Sincerity, Affectation -- Kul'turnost': The Totalitarian Lacquer Box -- Soviet Songs: From Stalin's Fairy Tale to "Good-bye, Amerika" -- 2. Living in Common Places: The Communal Apartment -- Family Romance and Communal Utopia -- Art and the Housing Crisis: Intellectuals in the Closet -- Welcome to the Communal Apartment -- Psychopathology of Soviet Everyday Life -- Interior Decoration -- The Ruins of Utopia -- A Homecoming, 1991 -- 3. Writing Common Places: Graphomania -- History of the Literary Disease -- The Forgotten Classics -- The Genius of the People and the Conceptual Police -- Glasnost,' Graphomania, and Popular Culture -- A Taxi Ride with a Graphomaniac -- 4. Postcommunism, Postmodernism -- The End of the Soviet World: From the Barricades to the Bazaar -- Glasnost' Streetwalking: Fallen Monuments and Rising Dolls -- Stalin's Cinematic Charisma, or History as Kitsch -- Trashy Jewels of Women Artists -- Merchant Renaissance and Cultural Scandals -- The Obscure Object of Advertisement -- Conclusion: Nostalgia for the Common Place -- Notes -- Index.