Pop and Politics in Late Soviet Society
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Volume 8 / Issue 25-26 / December 2018 Pop and Politics in Late Soviet Society Guest Editors: Peter Collmer and Carmen Scheide Online Open Access Journal of the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe University of St. Gallen URL: www.gce.unisg.ch, www.euxeinos.ch ISSN 2296-0708 Center for Governance and Last Update 17 December 2018 LANDIS & GYR Culture in Europe STIFTUNG Table of Contents Editorial by Carmen Scheide.............................................................................................................3 Fighting Western Fashion in the Soviet Union: The Komsomol, Westernized Youth, and the Cultural Cold War in the Mid-1950s by Gleb Tsipursky.............................................................................................................11 Living vnye: The example of Bulat Okudzhava’s and Vladimir Vysotskii’s avtorskaia pesnia by Danijela Lugarić Vukas............................................................................................... Soviet Port Cities and Consumerism in the 1970s and ‘80s by Irina Mukhina...............................................................................................................32 Limits of Westernization during Cultural Détente in Provincial Society of Soviet Ukraine: A View from Below by Sergei I. Zhuk...............................................................................................................42 Watching Television and Emotional Commitment in the Late Soviet Union by Kirsten Bönker.............................................................................................................61 Soviet Television and Popular Mass Culture in the 1960s by Kristian Feigelson........................................................................................................72 Seventeen Moments of Spring, a Soviet James Bond Series? Oicial Discourse, Folklore, and Cold War Culture in Late Socialism by Isabelle de Keghel........................................................................................................82 Soviet West: Estonian estrada in the Soviet Union by Aimar Ventsel...............................................................................................................94 ”etween E and U “lfred Schnitke, Popular Culture and Serious Music in Late Soviet Socialism (1968–1982) by Boris Belge..................................................................................................................107 Ways of Life at a Crossroads. Aksënov’s Ostrov Krym (Island of Crimea) by Tatjana Hofmann.......................................................................................................115 Pop and Politics in Late Soviet Society. Final remarks by Peter Collmer..............................................................................................................133 Euxeinos, Vol. 8, No. 25-26 / 2018 2 Editorial opular culture is a multifaceted, global for reproducing both sound and images. The Pphenomenon and has become a new issue of popular culture also raises questions research ield in the last decade.1 The term of consumer habits, medialization and popular culture can have many diferent entertainment culture. Popular culture relects meanings, but it does imply a certain temporal concepts of order, paterns of interaction and context irst and foremost, it refers to the shifts in mass culture through the media, musical and artistic output of American consumer goods or cultural transfer. From Editorial and British society from the 1950s on, which this point of view, it is possible to analyse rapidly spread to diferent regions of the world processes of negotiation or loyalties between – including the “Eastern bloc” – through a state and society – as well as cultural practices process of cultural transfer. It is associated – that point to hegemonic concepts, distinction with such atributes as freedom or subversion, or integration. accessible to broad sections of the population, The irst oicial Soviet Rock festival took place and ofers lifestyles that can be adopted or in March 1980 in Tbilissi, the capital of the adapted informally and without commitment Georgian SSR (Vesennye ritmy, Tbilisi-80). The and which therefore – at least to some extent winner of the festival’s competition was the – remain beyond the reach of political control. group Mashina Vremeni (The Time Machine) The articles in this volume do ask how Soviet from Leningrad. The journalist Artem Troitsky society did change from the late 1950s on, when wrote about the event: the state at times retreated to a laissez-faire position and so allowed new areas of cultural “The songs performed by The Time Machine are activity to emerge. Popular culture embraces neither wild nor soapy along the lines of ‘Why did here (urban) songs, dances, light reading you stand me up? The group abhors ampЧiied, pulp iction, the entertainment stage such heavy, metallic style of playing (one wonders as cabaret and musicals), cinema, television, whether the loudness is there to compensate for radio, sports, leisure activities, fashion (such as lack of talent?) (p. 65) [...] jeans and trainers, as well as hairstyles), styles But songs with political and social messages have of behavior, gestures, emulative postures always been central to The Time Machine. e.g. of cinema stars, speech paterns, jokes,The group invites its audience to look closer at the narrative styles, mass graphics etc. Thus, world around them, at themselves, at their friends. popular culture has a much stronger link with In praising noble, good things and deeds, they urge the everyday experiences of ordinary people Чisteners to ight eviЧ and anything that interferes than is the case with what might be considered with the people’s happiness. (p. 66)”2 culture in an elitist sense. And a global phenomenon such as “Beatlemania” would Troitskys article was irst published in the not have been possible without the technology Soviet magazine Klub I khudozhestvennaia 1 Handbuch Popkultur, eds.. Thomas Hecken, Mar- cus Kleiner, Stutgart J.”. Mezler, “ compa- 2 Winner of the national pop festival award in Tbi- nion to popular culture, ed. Gary Burns, Chichester, lissi 1980, group Time Machine (Mashina Vremeni West Sussex, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2016, Hochkultur with frontman Andrei Makarevich). Artem Troits- für das Volk? Literatur, Kunst und Musik in der Sowje- ky, “New Leader on the Soviet Pop Scene”, Sputnik tunion aus kulturgeschichtlicher Perspektive, eds. Igor 8, 1981, pp. 62-66. (Originally published in Klub I V. Narskij, Jчrn Reterath, M(nchen De Gruyter Ol- khudozhestvennaia samodeiatelnost‘, here p. 66. [Ori- denbourg, 2018. ginal translation from Sputnik.] Euxeinos, Vol. 8, No. 25-26 / 2018 3 Editorial wildness and the whole style was criticized and slightly tolerated, which tells the reader that there existed another understanding of culture. The short quotes give an idea how pop culture was oicially regarded in the late Soviet Union before Perestroika, where culture was part of state politics and seen as a top down process. According to Marxist-Leninist ideology there existed two diferent, antagonistic understandings of culture. In the Soviet encyclopedia of 1973 this distinction was explained. First a bourgeois understanding of culture was explained, which had due to the Soviet perspective a bad impact on youth and elites as it was nihilistic, a counter-culture and liked to resist authorities.4 On the other hand, the Marxist deinition of culture regarded it as a mirror for the human development. Figure 1: “New Leader on the Soviet Rock The target was the creation of a new man Scene. “rticle writen by “rtem Troitsky in Sputnik, August 1980, reporting about the (formirovanie novogo cheloveka)5 with high Tbilisi festival. educational standards, mores, good behavior and wide knowledge. In the context of the samodeiatelnost’, later translated into English 1980 festival, a dissolution of this polarized and published for a foreign audience in Sputnik, understanding of culture gets visible, even Digest of the Soviet Press. The author wrote important books about Soviet pop culture,3 though the critique tries to rely on still deined normative standards. The festival itself was and what is interesting: he was himself one of marginalized and took place without a broader the organizers of the Tbilissi festival. audience. ”ut oicial cultural institutions had We can assume that there were oicial frames at least to accept the wish of young people and how to write about such a unique event. So other members of the Soviet society for pop when reading Troitsky’s article, the audience and rock culture. Thus Tbilissi 1980 can be got to know not only news in the ield of regarded as a turning point in Soviet cultural Soviet mass culture, but also oicial values, politics, even though changes took place in a transmited by party or state institutions and grassroot manner long before.6 checked by censors before geting published. Already in the late Stalin period, in the years Troitsky wrote about the band, its members like after the Second World War, the phenomenon Andrei Makarevich and their music, but how he did it says a lot about oicial norms in the 4 Bol’shaia sovetskaia encyklopedia, Moscow: Sovets- kaia Encyklopedia 1973, 3. ed., t. 13, p. 595. late Brezhnev period: implicitly the loudness, 5 Ibid., p. 596, column 1775. 6 Gleb Tsipursky, Socialist Fun: Youth, Consumption, and State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Cold War 3 Artemy Troitsky, Tusovka: who’s who in the new Soviet Union, 1945-1970,