This two-volume edition is a reprint of a special double issue of the journal "New Literary Review" (No. 83/84, 2007), dedicated to a close analysis of the final year of the Soviet empire. The choice of 1990 as the subject of this study of Russia's recent past is no coincidence: this year, forgotten in society's cultural memory and overshadowed by the "spectacular" years of 1989 and 1991, was a key turning point in Russia's recent history, its events predetermining the country's subsequent development. The reader is presented with a unique project: firstly, it is an encyclopedia of late Soviet civilization on the brink of collapse, when dying and emerging ways of life were frozen in a fragile balance: old and new political elites, official and underground cultures, totalitarian and free media, Soviet and capitalist economic practices, the repressive system and mass social movements, etc. Secondly, it is a platform for scholarly discussion about new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of history, about revising the professional tools of the researcher, about scientific ethics and the responsibility of the humanitarian community as a whole. The project is based on a detailed, day-by-day chronicle of 1990, compiled from materials of the Soviet press and supplemented with fragments of memoirs, biographical and bibliographical references, commentary from eyewitnesses and experts. In addition to blocks of analytical articles describing all spheres of life in Russia and Eastern Europe in 1990, an important part of the issue included private diaries from that era (of the USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs, an assistant to M.S. Gorbachev, an avant-garde artist, showmen, a participant in the youth unrest of 1990, Slavists, etc.).