Russian.teens.3.glasnost.teens

Moscow, 1988. Arbat Street, 11:47 PM.

A teacher, red-faced, pounds the podium. "Comrades, the West wants to destroy our values!" Russian.Teens.3.Glasnost.Teens

– "openness" – had been Gorbachev’s promise two years ago. Now, in the spring of '88, the air smells of thawing permafrost and printer ink from underground samizdat magazines. The teens in this film don't want to storm the Winter Palace. They want jeans. They want rock music. They want to know why their history textbooks have chapters being rewritten as they study them . Scene 3: The School Auditorium Moscow, 1988

The crowd roars back: "SO WE’LL MAKE IT UP!" "Comrades, the West wants to destroy our values

This is Glasnost.Teens .

Lena lights a cigarette. "They told us to be the future. But the future keeps changing its uniform."

Viktor, 17, leather jacket torn at the elbow, flips a middle finger at the lens. His friend Lena, 16, sharp as a broken bottle, holds the Soviet-era Vega recorder like a holy relic. Inside: "Back in the U.S.S.R." by the Beatles, smuggled from a Polish sailor.