The present anthology focuses on various aspects and manifestations of consciousness, in particular of mass consciousness, in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia (with a detour to the new Lithuania).Several of the authors have made profitable use of recently opened archives and discovered materials which, by their efforts, are now being made available for discoursive recycling. However, whether based on archive documents or not, re-constructed fragments of cultural consciousness and social memory, hovering between the past and the present, make up the main bulk of this book. For although the strange and multi-layered phenomenon of Soviet civilization has for some time been on the retreat, it will continue for a long while to provide the complex setting for the Russian and Baltic mentalities in transition.