Grand Theft Auto
The ROMANOV Archive rewinds the clock to 1997 to explore Cold War nods and Slavic archetypes hiding in plain sight in the original Grand Theft Auto.
Before Liberty City and Los Santos, Rockstar Games introduced players to a pixelated San Andreas—home to “Soviet Hill,” a parody of San Francisco’s Russian Hill infused with a backstory about hippie raids, Cold War kitsch, and tongue-in-cheek authoritarianism. Add to that the mysterious, red-clad protagonist Kivlov, and you have the blueprint for Rockstar’s early Russian references.
This small article uncovers how the very first GTA laid the foundation for decades of Russian criminal stereotypes, Soviet humor, and post-Soviet worldbuilding—long before GTA IV’s Niko Bellic. Dive into the humble, 2D beginnings of a franchise that would later shape global perceptions of Russian émigrés and Eastern Bloc archetypes in a much bigger scale.