This collection brings together twenty-three essays by some of Russia’s most astute commentators on film and culture, written during the 1980s and published here in English for the first time. Included are reviews of films such as Little Vera and Taxi Blues, which were critically hailed in the West. Their comments illuminate important aspects of Russian filmmaking during this decade and capture a sense of a society in flux during the waning years of communism, as well as conveying the larger context within which Glasnost cinema and culture developed.