Born into a Jewish family in Moscow in 1971, Yevgeniy Fiks moved to New York in 1994. His conceptual art reacts to amnesia about the USSR in the post-Soviet space, resisting nostalgia and commodification in favour of recovering repressed histories, especially those of LGBT and Jewish people; he also looks at the relationship with the USSR and the USA before and during the Cold War, and at histories of the American left, suppressed since the McCarthy witch-hunts.In this Suite (212) Extra, Juliet talks to Yevgeniy about his exhibition Mother Tongue at London’s Pushkin House from March-May 2019, dealing with the underground slang spoken by Russian gay men in the 1970s and 80s, and his wider practice.SELECTED REFERENCESPROJECTS BY YEVGENIY FIKS (https://yevgeniyfiks.com/)Song of Russia (2005-7)Lenin for Your Library (2007)Monitoring Lenin’s Sales on Amazon.com (2007)Communist Party USA (2007)The Communist Guide to New York City (2008)American Cold War Veterans’ Association (2009)A Gift to Birobidzhan (2009)Homosexuality is Stalin’s Atom Bomb to Destroy America (2012)Landscapes of the Jewish Autonomous Region (2012-16)Monument to Cold War Victory (2012-14)Anatoly (2014)Sovetish Kosmos, Yiddish Cosmos (2016)Soviet Moscow’s Yiddish-Gay Dictionary (2016)In Edenia, A City of the Future (2017)Mother Tongue (2018)Guy BurgessFRIEDRICH ENGELS, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) – https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htmGay LaboratoryMasha GessenKama Ginkas – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_GinkasZinaida Gippius – https://www.rbth.com/literature/2014/11/20/a_life_unshackled_remembering_the_symbolist_poet_zinaida_gippius_41541.htmlHarry Hay – https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/harry-hay-communist-mattachine-society-lgbtqDAN HEALEY, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia (2001) – https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/307Magnus Hirschfeld – https://minorliteratures.com/2018/05/17/berlins-third-sexLangston HughesNikita Kadan – http://nikitakadan.comYevgeni Kharitonov – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Kharitonov_(poet)Vladimir Koslovsky – https://www.academia.edu/2074803/Between_lavender_and_light_blue_Negotiating_transnational_and_local_gay_identities_in_RussianMIKHAIL KUZMIN, Wings (1906) – http://chromajournal.blogspot.com/2007/09/review-wings-by-mikhail-kuzmin.htmlV. I. LENIN, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) – https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htmGeorgy Mamedov - https://soundcloud.com/suite-212/against-simple-answers-art-sexuality-and-society-in-kyrgyzstanVladislav Mamyshev Monroe – https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/2849/vlad-mamyshev-monroe-new-exhibition-marilynDmitri Merezhkovsky – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_MerezhkovskySergei Paradjanov – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/mar/13/sergei-paradjanov-films-gulagQueer in Space: Kollontai Communist Archive (dir. ShTAB, 2015) – http://www.frieze.info/article/juliet-jacques-school-theory-and-activisms-queer-spaceRainbow Association (Moscow)Restricted Sensation (dir. Deimantas Narkevičius, 2011) – https://lux.org.uk/work/restricted-sensationMykola Ridnyi – http://www.mykolaridnyi.com/Paul RobesonSHEILA SAMPATH (ed.), Letters Lived: Radical Reflections, Revolutionary Paths (2013) – http://sheilasampath.ca/letters-lived-blog/2013/12/1/letters-lived-contributor-sheila-sampathSeekers of Happiness (dir. Vladimir Korsh, 1936) – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026119/GENNADI TRIFONOV, ‘Letter from Prison’ (1978) – https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1986/04/10/the-case-of-gennady-trifonov/Harry Whyte – https://www.marxist.com/letter-to-stalin-can-a-homosexual-be-in-the-communist-party.htmAleksandr Zaremba – http://andrejkoymasky.com/liv/fam/bioz1/zaremba01.htmlKALMAN ZINGMAN, Edenia (1918) – https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/8498/edenia-lost-yiddish-utopia-ukraine-afterlife-modern-day-kharkiv