They were still popular throughout the 90s and 2000s among many other themes including political scandal caricatures, football hockey and NFL players, etc. But the matryoshka jokes about old Soviet leaders could be found at any roadside bazaar. We theorized that a small group of elite painter babushkas must make all of them.
I had one Russian like these, there were like 10 with all the old dictators, IIRC Stalin was the smallest.
My mom still has a pair of them from when my uncle went to Moscow in the 80s, I believe one of them is Gorbachev.
They were still popular throughout the 90s and 2000s among many other themes including political scandal caricatures, football hockey and NFL players, etc. But the matryoshka jokes about old Soviet leaders could be found at any roadside bazaar. We theorized that a small group of elite painter babushkas must make all of them.
Mine was like from the nineties, IIRC gorby was the biggest or second biggest one!
Fun fact
What’s fun with that? Dictators going to dictator and when they die they leave a power vacuum and breadlines.