All quotations from an interview with Roman Mazurenko, LAM editor-in-chief, and Vadik Marmeladov, LAM art director.
By PAYAM SHARIFI

Moscow’s maximalism and brutal beauty have recently catapulted the Eurasian capital to fame and notoriety. Against a backdrop of profane positivism, billionaires, and borscht, one would be forgiven for thinking that Russian romanticism was a thing of the past. Thank heavens for the boys of LAM. A loose-knit group of young men in their mid-twenties, the LAM boys produce a lean and mean digital monthly amidst Moscow’s glut of glossies. In a country where culture historically spills over into real life both gloriously and tragically, LAM magazine has managed to bring out of the shadows, and even confederate, a new generation not forgotten or ignored, but often drowned out by the country’s breakneck speed of consumption and capitalism. Their monthly club nights at Solyanka bring off-line a heady mix of sleek silhouettes with chiseled cheekbones and a welcome return of gravitas to a nightlife better known for its disposability and decadence.

Theirs is a country spanning eleven time zones and too often leaning towards collective conformism, yet the boys of LAM remind Russians of the urgency of individualism. As this decade comes to a close, the tides are turning for what were not so long ago mighty empires.

ROMAN MAZURENKO: Two summers ago, it was like a summer of love in Moscow for us. Everybody was jobless, everybody was best friends. So it was the happiest time, but also a very depressing time because we had no money – we would all go hang out in Kamergersky Pereulok and drink cheap coffee and just plan the future and different projects we could do together. Then the Russian winter came, and as my mom always says, few people can survive Russian winters mentally, because every year it does something to you. If you survive, you become a better person. Otherwise, you go downhill. Some of us survived, and some of us didn’t, and some of us became the biggest enemies although we were the biggest friends before.

It’s the lack of self-analysis and self-control: that, for me, is the definition of “Russian.” And it’s extremely romantic. So that’s what we tried to make the magazine as well – sincerity at the level of a naïve child. Raw sincerity.

Russian men have skin that tastes like the combination of two flavors: baby powder and steel. And we compare Russian women to the Moscow metro. You know how the Moscow metro used to be kind of glamorous at the very beginning? But now it’s kind of different … still beautiful, still fascinating, but worn out.

There had been times like this before – in the early to mid-’90s – when everybody got to know each other, and everybody was extremely creative. But after the economic crisis in 1998, the whole scene just disappeared – the creative minds were either surviving, or they decided to put everything aside and start making money. Between 2000 and 2006 was the most useless time of modern Russia. Nothing was happening. It was good for the mainstream – it was when big fashion brands and magazines moved to Moscow – but in the avant-garde, nothing was happening at all for six years. And then suddenly out of nowhere a new generation emerged.

PAYAM SHARIFI: One of the reasons I love being in Moscow is that it’s one of the few places where reality is more interesting than fiction.

RM: All over the world, especially if we talk about Anglo-Saxon culture like England and America, if you are creative, you are an extrovert. You might dress up in bizarre clothes and go clubbing; you’re a club kid. In Moscow it’s the opposite. If you do something creative you are an introvert. You spend most of your time in the bedroom, and your only access to the outside world is through the Internet. That’s why LiveJournal is so big in Moscow, and that’s why it’s not big anywhere else in the world anymore. Through LiveJournal, Muscovites get all of their information and they communicate with other creative introverts who are sitting in their bedrooms – even in the same city.

VADIK MARMELADOV: I just don’t feel like leaving home, even the act of sitting on the metro and going somewhere is a trial. Any small act in Russia is a struggle.

I came from the Detroit of Russia – Togliatti, which is a real chav city – to Moscow when I was sixteen, and just stayed at home working on the computer for two years until I landed a job as a designer.

RM: You need to have some kind of an off-line life. People read LAM online and then they go clubbing twice a month, maybe every week, to the events that we organize. We actually gather in one space, our readers. It’s about producing culture. That’s the main reason I do the magazine. Party tunes: we play mostly Italo-disco, some fucked-up alt-rock, kraut rock, psych — just a bunch of bizarre things that you can find on the Internet.

PS: Where were these people hanging out before, these young kids?

RM: Well, some of them who were really young wouldn’t go anywhere. The older kids? Corporate presentations — you know, launches for new Audi cars.

PS: New Rave kids were going to Audi presentations?

RM: They looked different, but they would go there anyway to drink for free.