Photo albums about my hometown, Minsk, are my weakness. I try to buy almost every one that comes into my sight. So when the book From Panikovka to the Puck came out in December, I managed to order it through friends.
The book was “written” by the same authors who previously produced the biography of the Belarusian band Neuro Dubel. This time, they set out to show where and why the city’s youth hung out in the 1990s — what those places with names like “Panikovka” and “Puck” were, and what actually went on there. I put the word “written” in quotation marks because there’s hardly any real authorial text here. It’s mostly a collection of photographs and quotes — memories from various “scene” regulars of the time — with only very brief introductions by the authors here and there.
Unfortunately, the selection of respondents is very limited. Some are well known to many Belarusians, but most belong to a very narrow circle of people few have ever heard of — mostly the so-called bohemia: musicians, journalists, DJs, artists.
The book gives a certain snapshot of that era. After reading it, you’re left with the aftertaste of those years. At the same time, there are several issues that kept the book from meeting my expectations. Roughly speaking, they fall into two categories: the “places” described and the people chosen to comment on them.
The locations themselves are divided into three parts: Party Minsk, Club Minsk, and “Golden” Minsk — meaning the expensive venues that almost no one could get into back then, since a single evening there could cost a year’s salary for an average Belarusian.
Some of the spots lack enough illustrations to understand what they actually looked like. And even the selection itself feels incomplete — partly because of the narrow slice of the audience the authors chose to represent. After all, beyond the bohemian crowd, there was another kind of youth. For example, it was precisely in those years that the IT community was being born — the same one that was so successfully destroyed not long ago. No one knew then that just 5–10 years later, those casually dressed “nerds” would become objects of envy and imitation in society, as they suddenly turned out to be in high demand and well-paid. Back then, though, it was just another hangout — a group of people united by obscure computer jargon, gathering at so-called “sysop meets,” “point meets,” “fido parties,” drinking beer, and hanging out. In general, they weren’t much different from the “bohemian” crowd — they just talked about different things. And, oddly enough, they sometimes gathered in rather non-standard places.
Yes, they also met at Panikovka. But there was another spot — the “Lollipop,” a memorial sculpture in the underground passage under Victory Square — that the book doesn’t mention, even though it was a common meeting point for IT folks. And in the nearby Gorky Park there were several hangout spots too, which the authors also leave out.
Things aren’t so clear-cut with the clubs either. For example, the authors write that the entire musical club scene ended with the club NC — but there were others afterward. Maybe not as influential, but still. Why isn’t there a single word about the club Graffiti? Yes, it opened in 1999, but it also became something of a cult place.
The “expensive” nightlife clubs continued to appear later as well, making noise all over Minsk with their wild prices and strict entrance policies — the kind where even the director of Visa could be turned away just for wearing sneakers.
As for the commentators, the selection leaves mixed feelings. Not the people themselves, but the way they’re presented — the labels and self-descriptions inserted into the book. If you open it at random and read a couple of pages, you might get the impression that it’s all “junkies, drunks, and prostitutes.” As if the only purpose of hanging out back then was to get drunk, get high, and get laid. Look, I believe that during the era of glasnost, when suddenly everything became permissible, all that certainly existed. But people didn’t hang out only for that. Many went to clubs simply to listen to music.
The quotes chosen for each place also seem to be selected without any system — and sometimes they even raise questions. You get a chapter about McDonald’s, and suddenly there’s a quote about how “back then” everyone was getting high on whatever they could find. And what does that have to do with McDonald’s, exactly?
So the book is interesting for its photographs and at least for listing the places — some of which have long since disappeared — but as a piece of properly executed work? No, it didn’t succeed. Unfortunately.
My rating: 2.5/5
