About the book: 2020 / Jeans infested with lice, larvae under the skin of an African guest, a portrait of Mao Zedong appearing on a Chinese carpet at night, hidden swastikas in the construction of houses, chewing gum with crushed glass - this is an incomplete list of Soviet urban legends about dangerous things. The book by famous folklorists and anthropologists A. Arkhipova (RANEPA, RGGU, NES) and A. Kirzyuk (RANEPA) is the first anthropological and folkloristic study devoted to the fears of Soviet people. Many of them found expression in texts and practices that are poorly understood by our contemporaries: in the 1930s, people looked for Trotsky’s profile on a matchbox, and in the 1970s, rumors were passed on about treats poisoned by the Americans. The book explains why such fears arose, how they turned into rumors and urban legends, how they influenced the behavior of Soviet people and sometimes gave rise to large-scale moral panics. The research is based on survey data, interviews, memoirs, diaries and archival documents.