On January 2, 1993, Santa Barbara became the first American television show to air in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The beloved 1980s soap opera chronicling the lives of the wealthy Capwell clan of Southern California became a sparkling image of the American Dream, captivating a nation just liberated from the yoke of a communist regime.
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Born in Moscow in 1989 – the year the Berlin Wall fell and the Eastern Bloc began to crumble to dust – photographer Diana Markosian grew up idolising Santa Barbara. “It was a window to another life that didn’t belong to us,” she says.
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“We had nothing as a family. My brother and I were picking bottles to buy bread for my mom. Both my parents had PhDs, but couldn’t get work. My father was painting nesting dolls for tourists on the Red Square. They were reduced to nothing and they weren’t the only ones.”
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