Following the party struggle between Politburo members, Khrushchev emerges victorious, becoming the party leader. He launches a “de-Stalinization”: prisoners are granted amnesty, Stalin’s cult is denounced, his portraits and statues removed. In 1959, Khrushchev orders that the Stalin-era criminal code be reviewed and brought in line with “de-Stalinization” as well. B. Nikiforov, a Soviet jurist and member of the judicial commission responsible for revisions, proposes to remove the first article of the law criminalizing consensual sodomy. As he does so, silence hangs in the air – everyone is too embarrassed to even discuss the issue. Until one member of the commission speaks out, and the unique historical chance to remove this grotesque piece of Stalinist legislation is lost.

A major Soviet newspaper breaks the ‘news’ that the American military created AIDS and is spreading it around the world. International newspapers pick up the story, reproducing Soviet falsehoods. American officials responsible for fighting Soviet propaganda realize that Soviet articles are basing their false claims on an incorrect article in an American gay magazine, New York Native. They decide to embarrass Soviet officials.

Key to Manchester’s redevelopment from the 1990s onwards has been its status as a city of ‘culture’. But what is culture, exactly? In this chapter, Andy Spinoza explains how the city’s leaders worked with Tony Wilson and others to capitalise on Manchester’s music scene, turning a reputation for partying and pop into an international cultural draw. A key element of this strategy was Manchester International Festival, which launched in 2007. Boasting world-famous headliners such as Björk and Damon Albarn, MIF has also featured an array of performance artists and avant-garde productions, prompting the New York Times to call it ‘possibly the most progressive arts festival in the world’. Spinoza argues that MIF now plays the role that Granada Television once did, as a local institution with the financial and reputational heft to bring the big beasts of art and ideas together.

This chapter takes a closer look at the University of Manchester’s relationship with the rest of the city. Andy Spinoza opens on the figure of Mark Kermode, a well-known film critic and one-time City Life van driver, who in 2010 was considered as a candidate for chancellor of the university. The position ultimately went to property developer Tom Bloxham, who in 2016 was succeeded by the poet Lemn Sissay. Casting back his mind to the 1980s, Spinoza recalls the extreme militancy of the Manchester student union, as well as the incredible contribution that the university and its students made to British culture, from alternative comedy to music. Today, the university remains at the heart of the city.

A Scottish journalist based in Moscow, Harry Whyte, disis one day that his lover Ivan has disappeared. Later he learns from Ivan’s sister that he has been captured by Stalin’s secret police, who typically come at night – in the dark – and people vanish. Harry is perplexed – he suspects that the reason for Ivan’s detention may be his homosexuality, but reminds himself that USSR has no official sodomy laws. Fearfully (and perhaps naively) Harry dares to go to the very headquarters of the secret police himself to disi what has happened. He then writes to Stalin in the hope that the dictator will release his lover – thus drawing unwanted attention to himself from the highest authorities in the land.

In this introductory chapter, Andy Spinoza considers the dramatic transformation that Manchester has undergone since his arrival in 1979. In the late 1970s it seemed the city was sliding into the dustbin of history, but forty years later it is thriving. Skyscrapers are springing up across the landscape, and the population is growing faster than in any other UK city. The city’s leaders have presided over a remarkable urban revival, though their approach has its share of critics. Spinoza links the revival to the opening of the Haçienda nightclub in May 1982. More than a place to get drunk, find lovers, take drugs, dance and see bands, the Haçienda raised questions about what a city was, who it was for and in what ways it could change. Spinoza asks: could a nightclub really have been the catalyst for today’s Manchester?

Beginning with the ‘Stalker affair’ of 1987, Andy Spinoza describes how he and two friends, Ed Glinert and Chris Paul, established the alternative magazine City Life. Despite a lack of experience and some early setbacks, including a misjudged first issue, the magazine managed to pick up advertising support from the Haçienda via New Order manager Rob Gretton. It also benefitted from the help of Manchester photographer Kevin Cummins, who offered to take i photos for free. Within a few years, the magazine had carved out a place for itself, and by the late 1980s it was employing fifteen people on a co-op basis, inspired by the founders’ left-wing politics.

Digging deeper into Manchester’s regeneration in the 1990s and 2000s, Andy Spinoza recounts the conflict between Manchester City Council – allied with Mick Hucknall – and the property developer John Whittaker, owner of Peel Holdings. Whittaker had taken control of the Manchester Ship Canal Company in 1993 and was eager to construct a retail mall in Trafford. Manchester City Council opposed him. Years of legal challenges saw the matter go to the House of Lords before it was finally decided in Whittaker’s favour in 1996. Hucknall took a stand when he refused to perform at the opening of the Trafford Centre branch of Selfridge’s in 1998, but in vain. The mall was an immediate success. An even bigger conflict was to come ten years later, with a project to introduce congestion charges in the city centre, tied to £1.5bn in government transport funding. Spinoza’s company provided PR for the Yes campaign, but found itself running into trouble when some promotional case studies were revealed to be fictitious.

In the late 1980s, former punk-rocker Mick Hucknall became a sensation with his pop group Simply Red, which sold tens of millions of albums across the world. But his role in the regeneration of Manchester is less well known. In this chapter, Andy Spinoza recounts the outspoken Labour-supporter and diehard United fan’s rise to fame – including an early gig put on by City Life magazine, which became perhaps the only promoter to lose money on the band – and the subsequent investments he and his management made throughout the city. After securing a block in Chinatown, Hucknall teamed up with the company Hale Leisure to open the bar-restaurant Barca in a railway arch in Castlefield. Hucknall also played a role in the opening of the Malmaison hotel in March 1998, for which Spinoza’s newly formed company Spin Media did the PR.

In this chapter, Andy Spinoza takes a closer look at Manchester’s devolution and what has come after. The announcement in 2014 was followed by a flood of funds into the city, despite the apparent conflict between a Conservative government and Labour council. The city region was given control of transport, planning, housing and economic growth, plus a £500m budget for further education and skills training. Despite the departure of long-standing chief executive Howard Bernstein, Manchester became even more of a draw for developers, including the former Manchester United player Gary Neville. But there are plenty of critics of the path the city’s development has taken, from activist group Manchester Shield to architecture writer Owen Hatherley.

Grigorii Kravtsov, a theatrical director in his late forties, is on tour in the Soviet city of Vologda. On his last day he visits a local bathhouse, where he meets a young man called Vasilii Oshurkov. They give each other a backrub and Vasilii invites Grigorii to have a drink on a ship docked nearby, where he works. They drink vodka and Grigorii loses consciousness. Several hours later, he wakes up in the grass with a police officer standing over him, and his nightmare begins.

When the news about AIDS reaches the Soviet virologist Rem Petrov, he determines to alert the Soviet public about it, by publishing an article in a major Soviet newspaper. To his surprise, authorities will not allow him to do so. After repeatedly pestering medical authorities, he is finally permitted to write an article, but is asked to make it less alarmist and more critical of the West. At meetings with doctors and high-ranking medical officials, Petrov also attempts to raise the issue of AIDS only to receive harsh rebukes from his superiors. His colleagues and superiors also assure him that AIDS is not going to affect the USSR. Little do they know that the disease is already actively proliferating on Soviet soil.