For most of the 20th Century, Communism was the myth that shaped the Soviet Union, a myth in that promised social equality, but delivered instead a suffocating government and a paranoia that made even America’s feeble attempts at civil rights era socialism look passable. But with the myth of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the opening of the Iron Curtain, a new problem emerged for Russians, the freedom of self-discovery brought a crisis of identity.

Since Russians were no longer Communists what were they now? And with religion having been repressed for decades, and academia stifled by the Communist Party, how were Russians to shape a new identity?

The photographers included in this issue of 100eyes, Russians themselves, all seem to linger on the issue of identity, if not explicitly, as in the great body of work created by Nistratov, then implicitly, as we see in essays by Tikhonov, Gronsky, Plotnikova, and Bogachavskaya who shoot to establish a new identity, a new myth, to replace the fallen ideologies of the past.

Andy Levin/Port au Prince