ABSTRACT
The last years have witnessed an acceleration in the growth of Russian-language online communities through which post-Soviet audiences recall growing up in the Soviet Union. Taking the community The USSR Our Motherland as an example, this chapter examines which features of childhood in a context that is perceived as intrinsically Soviet are recalled and remediated through the visual image of the Soviet toy. It explores how, within the comment section, this “relic” serves as a mnemonic device that triggers memories on the more general features of Soviet society, everyday life, and public spaces. While these discourses are often nostalgic, it argues that they signal temporal and spatial displacements of modern social relations, too. By elaborating on the complex relation between the toys and the spaces of childhood they seem to signify, the chapter discusses how Soviet childhood is reimagined and reconstructed into a historically specific trope in time and space, used as an instrument of comparison.
