I think the real appeal to Sovietwave comes from the disillusionment many of us feel in a Post Capitalist society. America won, but at what cost? Mankind, by and large, cannot seem to unite behind anything positive anymore. America is divided by willful ignorance and a belief that facts aren't as important as feelings, the former Soviet states are in a constant state of infighting, China is to concerned with economic growth to worry about anything else, and the EU seems to be wrestling with constant political upheaval. We look back on the achievements in science we made in the past and wonder where it all went wrong. We put men on the moon, harnessed the atom for positive uses, created massive technological achievements in a span of a few short decades, and were poised to reach for the stars. Now, none of that seems true anymore. People are obsessed with self created celebrity. People no longer believe in science and scientists. Political infighting is more important than progress. Yes, Capitalism won, but it broke us as a species. We need something new to unite us and move us forward beyond concepts of just accumulating wealth and infamy.
It's as if almost the entire humanity forgot what makes us humans in the first place; almost everyone is pursuing just money, society has turned utterly individualist, just a tiny percent of humanity is interested in pursuing scientific and engineering innovations that can push humanity as an whole to the future, but we can't unite ourselves yet, sadly we're too busy with greed and politics.
@@austinjohnson4551 The only thing that ensures your future is the willingness of your people to hold your government to account. Nothing else. The regime will keep enriching itself so long as the people it governs are willing to accept it.
It won't now nor will it ever exist, soviets and russia aren't capable of achieving anything major. Communism also does not work and a great example is every god damn communist country ever
@@KLETwave Im pretty sure the professor is saying this would be a good project if a student submited this in their course not that they would upload anything.
I think the nostalgia is amplified by the suffering caused by collapse of the USSR, many Russians hoped for a better future under western style Capitalism but what they received under Yelstin was humiliation and suffering-- child mortality reached frightening levels which kick-started another demographic crisis, poverty and starvation reached new highs. This feeling of betrayal may also be a factor in why this nostalgia is increasing.
@@MetaKnight964 B r u h ! I am not even talking about Communism, this comment was about post-soviet communism Russia. Russia's transition from USSR to Russia wasn't a soft one, it was a f--in nightmare... entire country was on sale and you can say that it was metaphorically raped by western corporations and governments like US. Russia in the 90s was a place of despair. Yeltsin multiple times betrayed Russia for his power.
@@MetaKnight964 Bulgaria has been on a decline since 1989, the year when communism ended in the country. Look up some stats on export, wealth, happiness, army, population, gpd etc.
I think it's the nostalgia for a future that never came. Promises of setting foot onto new planets, of automation not being used to harm workers, but liberate them, of boundless opportunity and pushing the limits of science and technology. Of a utopia that was so often promised, but ultimately never came. Capitalism promised utopia with plentiful products, white picket fences, and enough land and money for us all. Communism promised a scientific revolution, everyone's needs met, an end to all scarcity. But the Soviets and Chinese could never truly live up to their ideologies, and America's infinite wealth never made it into the people's hands. The planet looks more like a hellscape than a paradise, and we're still plagued by our old problems--war, famine, disease, poverty--that we can't even focus on the mounting climate crisis, the surveillance states, the erosion of digital privacy, the rise of systems and subroutines that can kill careers, not save them. The world of tomorrow never came, and one can't help but feel a sad nostalgia looking back on the days when people believed it would. Sovietwave is a eulogy for the future we were promised.
Am sorry but that is just retar,ded, Soviet was never communist becouse it does not work, Capitalism has many flaws but its the best system we have. Solving all of the worlds problem will never have a simple solution, Its crazy that people could ever blame capitalism for not solving them, Spoiler alert nothing can ever fix it, Maby in the future but right now theres nothing humans can do to truly solve these problem other than all dying
You are the type of person youtube needs again. Not another trend seeker, cookie cutter, hungry for likes and subscribers. You carry the spirit of the old internet, of doing something, researching something, creating something because you didn't understand it at first but had that urge to explore, to delve deeper. Please continue and let these words be proof that you are reaching people all around the globe, from Singapore to Switzerland.
Thanks a lot, comments and feedback in general helps so much when you're just starting out. (Not only for the algorithm. I don't care that much about likes, but it's nice when more people get to see what I create).
@@Nightshade_goblin Well, this is certainly a very good video, confirming that my feeling is shared by others. Sovietwave is nostalgic to me, especially the Robot's outro theme as I remember it from my childhood, as it was a great song to me, whom could not even spell remix when I first heard it. Now I may not be Russian, or even Slavic by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a great explanation of why I reminisce for something I have found contrary to my beliefs. Thanks for the analysis, from the Southern tip of Africa. Have a wonderful day, and if you'd excuse me, I'll be watching another video in your archive.
@@Nightshade_goblin While this kind of content is not widely appreciated (or even discovered), I find it so much more valuable. I'm happy that likeminded people still exist on the platform!
You know what really fucking gets me? We sent a human into outer space, beyond the Earth, for the first time in our history - and it wasn't a monarch, a banker, or an oil billionaire, it wasn't a Rothschild and it wasn't a Rockefeller - it was the humble working-class son of a bricklayer and a milkmaid.
Because he was expendable. Rockets were not safe. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't supposed to be the first one. If people died in rocket explosion before he got to the space. No monarch or billionaire would want to go on such an unsafe suicidal mission. Also in Soviet Union monarchs were gotten rid of and it wasn't possible to become a billionaire in socialism. So they wouldn't be able to send one even if they wanted to.
This is a dumb statement because it took hundreds, if not thousands, possibly even the effort of an entire population to make space travel possible. Astronauts are important, but they didn't do it alone.
SFW - Neil Armstrong’s father was a civil servant and his ancestors were refugees from the Irish famine. Let’s not forget the millions of humble working class sons that “you” starved to death during collectivisation (your own imposed famine), although I doubt you’ll be looking to take credit for that somehow.
@@markofsaltburn Why do you even mention Neil Armstrong? He wasn't the first person in outer space. And why do you use "you" as reference to the people who caused famine? T Lowry most likely meant "we" as the mankind. Logical connections in your statement are non existent. If you think Neil Armstrong was the first person in outer space and by "we" you don't want to talk about the entire human race then the "we" would mean USA citizens who did not cause famine. Well at least not in their homeland.
I will try to give my partial point of view. I was born in 1990 in Bulgaria. In 1990 the USSR still existed by Bulgaria rejected communism a year prior in 1989. Bulgaria was never part of the USSR but our relations were so close the media has come to call Bulgaria "The sixteenth state in shadow". What followed was the same as in every other post-communist country. The rampant decomposition of every single industry and state apparatus by oligarchs and corrupt politicians serving foreign interests. By 1995 Bulgaria already looked like a post apocalyptic wasteland. It is all I've ever known. 32 years later Bulgaria still looks like this. Seeing the promise of former glory, optimistic murals, things which were obviously planned with aesthetics in mind decay, be taken over by nature or repurposed into somewhat usable modern form does prompt your imagination to take flight, to imagine the unreachable utopia those imaginary scenes represent. Sovietwave is that for me. It is built on the sine waves of those thoughts. It's beauty but distant and reverberated, distorted by the "wow and flutter" of time as if playing through a long forgotten but still somehow functioning speaker echoing through the canyons of pre-fabricated panel tenement blocks. I've noticed something however. My parents do listen to music similar to the different wave genres. However Sovietwave does not evoke the same emotions in them as it does in me. Perhaps the fact that they have seen the world in non-decaying state it doesn't click for them in the slightest. This leads me to believe is that Sovietwave is built on a promise born in our fantasies for something we haven't experienced or seen. A true nostalgia for a future that never was.
I am from Czech Republic, former Czechoslovakia. My country was also very close with USSR although not part of it. I would not want to live in totalitarian society, but the future communists focused on was a very nicely pictured utopia, and I feel very nostalgic listening to sovietwave. What played Huge part in this for me is the fact that I was born in area were a lot of housing was built in social-realism style in the 50s. It is really nice. The buildings have paintings of workers on it, some houses evoke Renaissance-ish features like columns and portals. The style was developed because the communists wanted a palace like living for everybody. And my grandparents lived in a city founded for miners in the 50s where the whole architecture shouts utopia. There is a lot of old neon sings above shops and the mall here is called "Budoucnost" which means future. We have a lot of shopping centres called Budoucnost here.... And I used to play on old playgrounds my parents used to play too.... And I played with their toys and read old books... And everything seemed so interesting, totally normal yet so unreal at the same time.... But my parents don't seem to understand this nostalgia. They lived in the actual time of USSR and Russians did a lot of bad things to us, also the regime here was strict... So I understand but my parents sometimes talk about nice things that are no more... It is sad that we cannot just keep the good from the past.... Learn and be better... After the regime fell here, everybody was euphoric but... After some years, after the reality striked whe we realized bad people took the opportunity and stole what we built before..... Everyone is just frustrated and angry...
@@danielavaskova1633 im from lithuania, we were one of 15 ussr states, i was born during collapse of ussr, and i have similar experience, only that our buildings are mostly 60s 70s 80s built, that we even live today renovated :) my parents and grandparents however are pretty fond of those times, not just cause of nostalgia of youth but they can compare life back then and today, how it was stable, equal and simple, unlike anything what we experience today, chaos, prices tripling in last decade, wages barely went up, constant threat of russia and oligarch of idiotic putin russia era, economic crisis every decade... no unity or equality at all... yeah we are bittersweet memories too first during stalin era some people exiled to gulags in siberia, then in 90s people died during collapse of ussr, still with all then like you had brutal uprising in 50s its different era from 60s 70s 80s, i bet even your family remember it as pretty cool times i have insane nostalgia to those decade even tho i never seen them, only in old movies, documentaries that we have from those times and parents memories. and from doing my own research on history, since im history nerd. ussr had very diferent eras with lenin, then stalin, then calm 60s-80s then absolute madness in early 90s. and those should not be mixed into one
If I ever hear someone say 'slaps' irl here in the UK, they will be getting one. Use timeless words, not trendy guff. YUGH such douchechills reading that pathetic sheep-bleating trendhop.
Q: Which is more useful - newspapers or television? A: Newspapers, of course. : "You can't wipe your ass with a TV" - a reference to the shortage of toilet paper in USSR, which forced people to use newspapers instead.
Sovietwave just generally feels like the theme for the beginning of the 2020s, a time of uncertainty and confusion, just like the post soviet republics were after the dissolution of the USSR.
Soviet wave depresses me. The genuine hopes and dreams of so many to build a better society, the striving of so many toward progress. Now it has all been taken away from them, and these lands have fallen so far.
It goes a layer deeper imo. It's a callback to a dream to build a better society, but all the imagery was hollow even before it became old. All these massive buildings were "fake" even when they were first built. There is no real dream society to be nostalgic for, because those buildings were put up by people tied to nostalgia themselves and trying to build a society on long dead dreams. Just my 2 cents, probably not coherent
Great job, comrade! But... - those Khrushchov and Brezhnev style blocks are not only in Soviet Union and not only collapsing. For example in Poland and East Germany they are well maintained and modernized, same in Yugoslavia, - those "gopniks" exist under different names in every former communist country except Belarus, they have nothing to do with Putin. They exist in Poland, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania etc.
Probably no need for a "but" and you could drop the "not only in Soviet Union" if you aren't expanding out to countries that weren't part of the Soviet Union... examples outside ex Soviet countries would be nice though. I am a bit of a fan of Brutalist architecture as a historical artefact
@@asmith1ofmany Yes, brutalist architecture can be found anywhere, but having a half of a city brutalist, 1/3 historical and the rest made out of modern architecture not maching thier surroundings is quite characteristic.
Even though I am a western european adolescent born years after the fall of the soviet union I can't help but feel a strange sense of nostalgia when listening to sovietwave. Not a nostalgia for a time I didn't live in or a world I don't remember. But a nostalgia for a future. A future that was silently promised to our generation, the promise of a better tomorrow. A future to believe in, in which everything is possible. For me the imagery of space so often linked to the music represents that future, where even the harshest frontier can be conquered with science and ingenuity. A future that seems so far away these days.
it was a future promised to us, our parents, and grandparents. it was a future this world has taken from us as our society becomes ever more corrupted. it was a future we may never have. a nostalgia for a thing we lost... yet never had.
@@penskepc2374 I don't disagree, but I think you miss the point. It's not a nostalgia for the soviet union, it nostalgia for the future it promised. Although I know the soviet union was not the paradise it portrayed itself as being, I can't help but long for a future where we could make such a paradise a reality. I also want to add that neo-liberalism has done the same, in that it promised though market forces we would all live better lives than our parents and grandparents, but here we are with declining standards of living and ecological and geopolitical crises on the horizon. The point I am trying to make is that for me the appeal in sovietwave is that is gives music to that feeling of longing for a future that was promised, but never materialized.
In Russia we sometimes call the material achievements of Soviet era like buildings, constructions and machines as "The remnants of the past great civilization"
Its this memory of a utopia that slowly crumbled apart into a shell of its older self, ruins of what used to be still laying there reminding the people of the beautiful past they once had and how it fell apart
I grew up in Nicaragua, and I still remember reading Misha and using Soviet-era technology like small projectors to read small slides that contained stories. Sovietwave feels like all that at the same time, feeding from nostalgia for what it was and what it could have been. Similar to a soccer player who missed to play a final and his team lost.
was nicarague connected to ussr in any way? cause its a bit strange that country so far away feels so nostalgic for it, im from former ussr state so its obvious for me, buy you are unique :)
@@NostalgicMem0ries During the 1980's-1990's there was an economical blockade from USA to Nicaragua due to the Sandinistas (openly communists back then) were in charge. USSR was very close to both Cuba and Nicaragua in the 80's.
@@memus3852 oh i see now, i knew about cuba it was ussr friend for so long and usa really treated them badly, guess it was similar you you guys, im gonna need to read some about those sandinistas to understand it more, i just glimsed and it looks that party is still in power today? is nicaragua more socialist/communist like china/cuba today or capitalist like western countries?
@@memus3852 damn, thats sad ;\ many countries cant control socialism in right way, china and yugoslavia were closest that really flourished during their prime, tbh china is dominating with while being socialist :o
The part of the video that talks about the space race reminded me of Georgy Martynov's book "Callisto". This is a sci-fi novel that describes how aliens arrived in the USSR, how they managed to establish contact with them and how one person was able to fly with them to their planet. While reading this book, you are immersed in dreams of exploring deep space in hopes of meeting something new for the sake of a bright future. I have a printed version, and the illustrations on the cover and inside the book draw you even more into a sci-fi fantasy with a slight note of nostalgia. I do not know if literature can be part of the Sovietwave, but I recommend reading Callisto if you want to feel something similar as from Soviet posters about space flights
also try "Pilot Pirx" by LEM. It depicts a very beautiful, bright but also interesting and sometimes dangerous future, but a very common man and relatable protagonist. It's been my favourite book since I was 10.
Nostalgia for Modernism, the promise of a better world for our children and Humanity in general. Post-modernism stole that promise away, and replaced it with soulless cynicism. It turns out that we need a sense of promise and hope for the future in order to survive as human beings.
USSR and Russia should have gone on with Stalinist neo-classical architecture, which after all was chosen over avant-garde architecture because the common people voted for it when they were submitted alternative projects in museums : it represented the proof that their own Russian village architecture was compatible with topmost technology, and to most intellectuals the proof that Russia could outdo Paris in magnificence.
Yeah, but how the hell do you fund enough stalinist architecture to house a devastated nation whose industrial and economic capability was just blown up by the krauts?
@@aarosundvall Especially when the Boss was more focused on investing in atomic weapons and military equipment over general infrastructure and (non-capitalist) consumer products.
I disagree. The Khrushchyovka, their successor projects, and the similar projects in other socialist countries allowed the Soviet Union to mass-produce affordable housing on such an immense scale that only China's "ghost cities" come close to replicating. These countries were building society in a factory. So many people who'd only lived in shacks and poor village living conditions this was the first time they had more than one door. It was the first time they had a toilet. It was the first time they had continuous access to electricity. Remember the Soviets were building a modern society, a modern republic, a multinational republic out of a backwards semi-feudal empire. These buildings marked a massive improvement in the quality of life of everyday people. The basic concrete design allowing them to be made cheaply and fast. I think that any centering of aesthetics in that conversation is an attempt to disguise the fact the Khrushchyovka and Brezhnevkas were by far among the most ambitious and successful affordable housing projects in modern history despite their faults.
@@rusalkin Based purely on his own paranoid treachery; after all, *he* would certainly attack if the positions were reversed. In truth, the U.S. Democrats were quite sympathetic, and perfectly willing to let him build a socialist utopia and "grow out" of the whole totalitarian phase. His own spies told him as much, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it.
Thank the algorythm for showing me this video. I have long awaited a video like this that takes the genre apart. I love the music so much (as I grew up in a country of the former eastern block I was exposed a lot to the 'what we could have had')
You put everything so perfectly. Always been fascinated by the Soviet aesthetic throughout the decades. It makes me feel similar to the “futuristic asthetic” of America in the 1960s.. made for a future that never quite came to fruition the way everyone imagined it would. We are obviously struggling with similar issues that you brought up in the US. “Just trying to make sense of a world drifting off into the absurd…” speaks to how many Americans have felt for the past several years (if not longer). Things that were once never thought possible have happened. We are a fractured nation. Thank you for the thought provoking content. Subbed.
I used to think it was nostalgia but realized it was the loss of the future I thought I’d see. The future people dreamed of in the 80s was a neon lit world full of discovery and invention. Big dreams with a synth soundtrack to set the tone.
Four dogs -- Mexican, American, Polish, Russian -- are discussing their lives. The Mexican dog says, "the servants used to leave meat out for me, but now I have to bark for it." The American dog says, "you have servants in Mexico?" The Polish dog says, "they feed you meat?" The Russian dog says, "they let you bark?"
Man! I really love your video since this perfectly sums up anything. Personally, I have listened to retro synth music for a decade or so when I accidentally stumbled upon those Sovietwave videos just 2 years ago. Being born during the late gasps of the Eastern Bloc myself, my whole perspective on retro synth music changed instantly. Touched by nostalgia for these visions and sounds, I had the urge to contribute to this beautiful scene. We leave for a parallel universe once we press play, a better world we can escape to. Thank you for this beautiful video! Peace goes out to anyone who feels that peaceful nostalgia 🖤 мир вам
Oh yes. I was born in socialist Hungary, in '83 and I love soviet wawe. The 80s and still the 90s were very socialist in Hungary (factories, panel flat blocks, cars, music, culture, etc). A pre-internet era. Soviet Wave brings you back.
I think the real feeling behind soviet-wave is the dream. Say what you will about the Geo-political situation, and the probably crushing reality of living in that time, but those low points were out shone by a large, glorious dream, and the actual drive to get it done. The space race and cold war in general was a great time in human achievement and capability, and each time we pushed the boundary, we only made the dream bigger and better. Contrast that with today. While we may be living in the most comfortable time in all of human history, there is a lot not to like, and there is very little in the way of a big dream we can all hope for. Governments have bread out innovation through bureaucracy, the world is becoming more and more fragmented despite all the great tools we have that try and bring it together, many of the monuments and achievements we have built, during the space race and otherwise, are crumbling and forgotten, and ultimately the lack of two equally matched yet opposed superpowers has lead to innovation being a luxury, not a need. While the world is a better place, there is no glorious dream, no spectacle of innovation to outshine all the flaws of today.
ive seen people say that only tankies like sovietwave, i think thats not the case, as you said many of the buildings used for these videos arent pictured when in their full glory, but when they are already old and decaying, its clear that sovietwave isnt just saying ''yeah remember the soviet union, perfect society innit?'' to me its obvious that the message is that while obviously flawed we do feel nostalgia, and that means there must also have been some good, something worth remembering with nostalgia, and that i think is the utopic ideal and optimisim, the idea of a future were we have all the basics covered up and we are already exploring space not as a dick measuring contest as was the space race during the cold war, but just out of curiosity because we are humans and when our basic needs are covered we like to explore and expand our knowledje
As 21-year-old who grew up in Kiev and now has a #postsovenok photos for wallpaper, I want to say that at at least some percentage of people, myself included, genuenly like USSR architecture. Part of it has to do with familiarity, part of is just our version of vaporwave/post-punk aesthetic, and part of it is, welll, the sheer beauty and grandure of it all. The library you've shown, the exhabition center, the unis where FATM and TOP shot their music videos are architectural landmarks to me, just as much, if not more-so, then all those old churches.
Also, Brutalism is neat! Just the whole “form follows function” philosophy in general was drilled into me starting pretty young, and I fuck with it! But goodness does that add an extra layer of oomph to decaying brutalist structures. If no thought was put into form beyond function, what’s left when that function can’t be served? With a lot of the vaporwave aesthetic, there’s this feeling of something comfortable made uncomfortable through abandonment and decay. Brutalist structures, however, feel so far from human they almost feel more natural abandoned. Without even the synthesized approximation of natural comfort, they seem uninhabitable just by appearance, even if fully functional. I mean, who could survive it, it’s brutal! This is the part where everyone seems to be making their sweeping generalizations, so here’s mine: if you’re so concerned with people ignoring scientists, maybe consider communication less brutal! Sometimes, for something to work to its fullest potential, it shouldn’t look so dang determined to be abandoned! But iunno, I just really like cement.
Well done. Soviet history and relics have always fascinated me so much, even though I'm a 24 year old from the U.S. with little connection to these times. I'd love to travel around the former U.S.S.R. and see things myself if I ever can!
Sovietwave come from Soviets pioneering electronic music, they used it in movies before anyone and many considered them as the founders. Their old electronic music mixed with newer mix is what makes it Sovietwave and technically should be Russianwve since all of the original music was done only in Russia.
@@Workingatm How or why more important? The electronic music and movies they were in were all Russian, not Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Georgian etc.
Amazing video! You captured my reasons for liking the aesthetic and music year perfectly. Tho I feel like a key part of the nostalgia, at least on my part, is a longing for what could have been. Even as I research the atrocities and oppression of the USSR, I find myself listening to this music and feeling that longing for an impossible world that could have been. But also good inspiring space music make brain happy
well im person who lived in ussr times a bit, my family has massive history, so for us nostalgia hits 100x bigger, and i would say after destalinization in early 60s life got really decent, never heard my grandparents or parents complain, maybe one product deficit here and there but thats all, mostly they talk about equality, stability, simple life, guaranteed and free things like healthcare, school/univercity, job and even free apartements. prices were ultra low too. i get foreigners usually think about ussr as stalin or ww2 times chaos , madness and brutality, or newer generations thing modern russia and putin insanity represents it... while its not 60s 70s 80s were amazing times, in some ways its was even better than in west with all race wars that didint ended even today, drugs in 70s and especially 80s, vietnam war/nuclear war hysteria in 60s 70s, here in ussr we didnt cared or actually didnt knew about those issues, we lived life, sadly our future got robbed by capitalism and now world is becoming close and closer similar to early 20th century, with worldwide epidemics, wars and economic crisies that become more and more often
In the late 90s -2015 I visited Poland very often but to 2012 it had such an different atmosphere in some places especially in Warsaw there was a level with normal Imbisses kiosk/ stores and restaurants also an pop-up Market under the railway platform. It was a corridor which had stairs to each platform this popup markets sell from hygiene products, magazines, books, flashlights, bakery
I’m from America but soviet wave is hard af. I just feel that sense too because capitalism doesn’t favor everyone here too, I mean duh. It’s great to know i can feel that within our common consciousness
"My world is dust now, And all I loved is dead. Oh, let me trust now In what my master said: 'There is a sweetness in every woe.' It must be so. It must be so. The dawn will find me Alone in some strange land. But men are kindly; They'll give a helping hand. So said my master, and he must know. It must be so. It must be so. My master told me That men are loving-kind; Yet now behold me, III-used and sad of mind. Men must have kindness I cannot see. It must be me. It must be me. My master told me The world is warm and good; It deals more coldly Than I had dreamt it would. There must be sunlight I cannot see. It must be me. It must be me." - Leonard Bernstein's Candide
It's a nostalgia for optimism about the future. And the contradiction between the loss of something one never had or experienced and something that is nonetheless essential and immanent. As a millennial it resonates with me because a lot of men like myself were never ever hopeful about the future, personally or socially. We can empathize with the death of Soviet futures because we never had a future either. We were stillborn, and some of us may die stillborn. Waiting for something but not knowing what because that emotional urge never found a socially shared expression.
14:23 regarding the lost space race or anyone stating the US landed on the moon just because that's what they learned in school or media... Yup, they landed on it at Hollywood studios when Stanley Kubrick taped it all and mysteriously died shortly after he came out on that... Another funny point is, that the orginal tapes from the moon landing got destroyed by water years later. I mean would you leave those tapes of such importance just laying around at some unsafe place waiting for them getting destroyed or stolen? We've learned in school that they've been up there but after starting my own research many years later, I now highly doubt it. The Soviets have been by far leading in this entire race and the US just couldn't stand the fact losing against that hated enemy. I'm not saying I'm 100% right on that but I am absolutely not convinced at all that these hollywoodesque ridiculous shots from the moon landing by Mr. Kubrik were from up above. So telling the world that the Soviets lost the space race was a brilliant move by the Americans since it led to demoralization and was one of the key factors Soviet scientists and the communist party lost track on further achievements. Anyway, that was just a thought of mine, what I meant by saying it, don't ever believe anything you hear on the media without researching it. There's always two sides to every story, sometimes three :) Off to feel some anemoia!!! 👽
I was very young and only had glimpsed on USSR in it's glory before it felt apart - the feeling of better future was there, present and real. Now it's distant memory, a fairy tale for everyone else.
This is awesome. I know it was a lot of work but I hope you make more content like it. There's a lot more culture and music out there that deserves your analysis.
I always interpret SovietWave as doubly tragic, both the hardship of the generational stunting that happened because of both the First World War, the Russian Civil War, and the Second World War having literally stolen the future from the Soviet Union in the form of their youth; and still to this day their sacrifice during the Second World War is so eager to be forgotten/ignored. As well as the loss of the future the Soviet Union aspired to achieve in the hopes of inspiring further workers revolutions and proving that the working class is working towards a brighter future and a wide horizon. But with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the horizon seems closed, Capitalist Realism is now blanketing us with a dreaded depression and a feeling that the future is closed to us, to all, SovietWave reflects the despair of the now dead end that capitalist triumph has inflicted, and the echoing whisper of the dream of a future that the Soviet Union attempted to inspire in the world as a whole. 🥀
How high were you when you wrote this statement? The loss of youth and potential of the soviet union? That whole thing was a blackhole of individualism
Sovietwave I feel like needs an antithesis. Something like solar punk but which focuses on feelings of regrowth and progress. Progress is only lost to us when we keep going in circles, and refuse to force history forward.
There is an "anti-thesis" and it's unfortunatelly anarcho-capitalism. It's direct oposite of "the future we were hoping for", it's "the hell, we deep down know, we'll live in"
what an excellent essay. i dont really have anything to add, but my personal experience. sovjet wave does what music does best: express feelings, that dont fit into words. i grew up in 80s western germany, close enough to the border, that my parents were close friends with families in the GDR, we visited on occasion. some of the strongest memories of that time were grand murals, depicting workers and scientists and athletes and astronauts and space stations ... and brutalist architecture, that really impressed me as a child. and that felt oddly foreign and compelling back then, and inexpocably comfortable to me to this day. contrasting with the ever looming prospect of thermonuclear annihilation being just a thing that has always been there, to me as a child. 40 years later, i still cant really put those feelings into words
This is one of the best video essays I have seen in a long time. Not drawn out, or overly meta-textual,not trying to shoehorn in tangential talking points. Just pure discussion and fascination of a specific subject. I love this 💚
I was half expecting you to bring it up, but this comes up in philosophy as well, the concept of “hauntology” of lost futures, you expressed the concept in this video, that the future that was supposed to be was lost, and now, we are essentially dealing with societal symptoms like that, theres vids on it, let me get them.
Heres some vids on it ua-cam.com/video/gFyaNG9xbEU/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/TJr0NwXWb6Q/v-deo.html And this vid has hauntology as an element, i just really like it and feel amiss if i dont include it ua-cam.com/video/cdW7Cp0iV0A/v-deo.html
Yeah, hauntology is really interesting. Sadly I just stumbled over the topic recently and couldn't include it in the vid. But "Ghosts of my life" by Mark Fisher and "Non places" by Marc Augé are on my lists of books I wanna read this year (though the latter falls more into the category of liminal space). I really appreciate that you took the time to seek out and share relevant content for others to enjoy :3 Edit: I just checked the links and Fishers work is one of them xD Quality content
Because Socialism gave the people, who were the engins of the society, a human face and let them have dreams for a better future for all of man kind. I'm native black South African, the U.S.S.R. gave us the hopes we needed, even in our most critical time, to fight Apartheid reactionary forces. As our Nation looks into the dark abyss of our present day and future, the Marxist-Leninist spirit is our eternaly burning torch to salvation!
For me it is the optimism in a communist society, a society that while flawed never looked back and always moved forward. I don't like statists, their methods are flawed, but I can't help but feel this fleeting notion that there was something there worth saving. It's like something you know must end, and you know the end will be tragic, but you can't help but try to hold on for as long as possible.
I made a " sovietwave " song a year or so ago... It's kinda cool to think its an actual genre. I just made it because I thought the ads I used were interesting. Not for any deeper philosophical reason, but it's cool to learn about! Awesome video
I feel like this channel might be the first channel I know of to genuinely appeal to my interests. You always make high quality content, which is entirely contradictory with your sub count. It feels unfair that the one channel that has the ability to hit the sweet spot falls on deaf ears, or just doesn't fall on any ears. I genuinely hope that this channel prospers in the future, so that way more people can experience this. It's pretty weird that you manage to make videos that convey the message of different kinds of music nearly flawlessly. The genres you cover aren't exactly sad, but the nostalgia they bring is sharp and painful, a reminder of how happy everyone was then. The emphasis placed on the past makes you compare it to now, and you notice how everything seems to have gotten less enjoyable. It manages to show the past experiences of everyone who listens to it; it's personalized, even though the songs are the same.
This aesthetic hits me hard...I live in Romania, in kind of a small city and the buildings are still like this. My home is in the center of the city, so we have newer buildings here, but there are zones more distanced from the center that have exclusively old buildings...the sad part is that they are mostly abandoned. Another sad thing is that you can see abandoned factories, that were workplaces for a lot of people back then, for most of our grandparents. So it's like these types of things slowly die, like they have served their purpose, but they still did not finish their mission [Sorry for bad grammar]
I dont think the "spacerace" was lost, as it was the spacerace and not the moonrace. The ussr did so many things first. America was the one who set the moon as its goal, but the ussr is still the only country to have landed probes on venus, also it was first to space, first animal in space, first man space, first spacewalk, first object to land on another body, etc. I think that the fact that the U.S. did something isnt the main factor, I think its the fact that we (the ussr and post-ussr states) stopped that matters. For example, within the Ru-speaking community I hear stuff like "we used to produce X or Y" and even if they complain that the soviet X or Y wasn't as good as another western model, they could still be proud that it was theirs. In the same way that in the U.S., people buy american cars even though everyone I know, even owners of said american cars, admit they are of lower quality than their japanese counterparts. Or, ofcourse, I can tell you that people where i live, in the Rust belt of the U.S., yearn for the past similarly to how people of the ussr sometimes do. There are definitely things that RU leads the west in, for example Ru is the only country in the world capable of recycling nuclear waste into nuclear fuel (yes its as OP as it sounds, only 3% mass loss per ~5 year cycle), and for other things being second best isnt shameful. Youre still ahead of hundreds of countries. So, to recap, the fact that someone else did something isnt what makes people sad, its the fact that they stopped doing it. (I am Ukr/Ru, live in the U.S. because we could see current events coming a mile away)
Thanks for this great video. I think Sovietwave represents a very strange blend of nostalgia for the old and trying to rediscover what it means to be Russian. The soviets hated Russian identity and tried to exterminate it wherever they could and rewrite history with their own version of soviet identity, as something that had just always been. Innocent Russians got arrested for just being too Russian sometimes, therefore a possible threat to the great revolution, possible Czar sympathizers or even Western sympathizers. So now you have generations of modern Russians that don't seem to know what being Russian means or even how to do it. So they try to make it up as they go along and fail, and fall back into trying to remember what it was like before.
First satellite, first man in space, first man in outer space, first woman in space, first space station. All of this done by USSR and all this have great importance to this day and is still useful. What gave landing on the moon to humanity? But USA won.. okay
He says somewhat inaccurately that the USSR failed to put a man on the moon, but what would have been more accurate would be to say that they "re-allocated funds and decided not to bother after the USA got there first." A lot of Soviet scientists thought it was a real shame because it was entirely within their capability. I also think it's a shame because it kind of revealed the Cold War propaganda contest as being more important than the scientific achievement and even if it was just about propaganda, getting their second at least shows you could do it... Anyway, the funding got re-allocated to the MIR space station and the rest is history. It is annoying that people assume that there was something magic about the moon that the Soviets couldn't for some reason handle lol.
Safely transporting a person from the earth to the moon was much more challenging than repetitively launching something into space with modified "military missiles".
@@robrechwithoutzaza7992 that was decades ago, and where is profit? Is there are moonstations? Military stations? Science stations? or what? I am talking about things that matters till this days and will be matters in the future, things that paved the way
@@EkaterinaTesla Are you asking for profit? Well, that's obvious. Thanks to the successful Apollo mission, completely new technologies have developed and this was the beginning of exploring other planets. Today, because of this, several powers are sending their robots to other distant planets to study their surface. I don't want to throw away the Soviet successes in space, but they weren't as sophisticated and challenging at all as landing on the moon. By the way, I am a former citizen of one of the Ostblock countries, and everything the Soviets did in space had only a propaganda purpose. It did not bring any positive to the people, only pride in Gagarin. These were very bitter milestones for us. We could watch communist propaganda all day on television and watch that whatever was launched into space again, but they kept us in concrete cages, forbade us to think freely and rejoice in life, erased our history, destroyed our country, everything that was for people beautiful and beautiful, they destroyed it and made us mummies. I wish no one anything we had to experience. Today, even the American homeless has more freedom, liberty and wealth than our entire middle class had during communism.
neat video, but I lose braincells every time someone mixes up synth/retrowave with vaporwave. vaporwave is that macintosh plus windows 95 early internet vibe with the slowed down music and marble statues on the airy pink wallpapers with the checkerboard floors, what you were talking about in the beginning of this video with the 80s music and neon wireframe landscapes is called retrowave.
This is so good and well done especially for someone with 95 subs. I love Soviet wave and pretty much found it the same way you did. Thanks for making this video and keep it up! Just going to sneak in a sub real quick
Lately I've been viewing too many videos which underestimate my intelligence and so it was very pleasant to explore the concepts in this particular video which instead vastly overestimated my intelligence.
i don't know how it work on foreigners, it sounds to them like a variation of synthwave. I don't know how non ussr citizen can feel wibes of lost socialism system and it expectations for communism. Sovietwave is a combination of lost hopes on bright cosmic future.
Q: What's the difference between a capitalist fairy tale and a Marxist fairy tale? A: Capitalist fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time, there was....". Marxist fairy tale begins, "Some day, there will be...."
As the pinned comment says, it probably has to do disilusionment with capitalism, but I kind of want to add something to that. I think in many ways the world is becomming "post-soviet". Essentially we are now suffeeing the consewuences of capitalism and more exactly neoliberalism. Such a situation was experienced by Eastern Europe in the 90s , wich kind of shaped the post-soviet society, and now the world as whole, or at least the western world is experiencing it as well. Wich kind of makes one miss those soviet times, even if one never experienced them.
A Soviet Cosmonat sitting in a small space capsule. The lights have already gone out, as the battery starts to die out. This small capsule is in a far odysse into the dark abyss of the unknown. The Cosmonaut transmits his final Radio signals to earth, the last being: "We still have a future, don't we?" The battery finally dies and the small egg shaped craft dissolves in the pitch black darkness of bottom less space.
It's like 80's synthwave embodies an 80's that never happened (I was there) it embodies the fake vision (Gagarin, space and all that) of the soviets that in reality was about bread queues and gulags. It just sounds great. Don't knock the soviet style panel housing. I've lived in one in Hungary. It was excellent, like a vertical street. It's about the people that live there not the architecture.
@@mikeyorkav4039 Better fed in what sense? Nutrition itself? Because the weight of Americans says everything about how much food they consume - and obesity has been a growing problem in this country for over 50 years. What about the Russians themselves who tell you of a gulag? What about the various slavs in the former Soviet states that absolutely hate everything resembling Communism because their ancestors lived in absolute poverty? Crushing of the Budapest rebellion despite the fact it was organized by socialists, they just didn't pander to Soviet doctrine, Soviet doctrine being exclusively Soviet in nature and nothing else, it held no political nature of internationalism & actual socialism. Usage of tanks & heavy armor on civilians - crushing of the dissent in Warsaw prior to Poland splitting off from the Curtain? Absolute state of the post-Soviet Russian countryside that left in all clarity what the Soviets had given to Russians as inheritance? Quite frankly you have zero idea what you're fucking talking about, because you're not from Eastern Europe - I'm Polish, and you're Human trash for defending red fascism, because that's all Soviet bullshit was: red fascism. So, in short, fuck you & do some research, and stop deepthroating dead Soviet boots that aren't ever coming back.
@@solar9610 absolute poverty? Lol. Everyone was fed, educated, had a home, job, infastructure, etc. They lost all that when they were tricked into free market western bullshit and the only things leeping russia or any soviet state afloat today is the remnants of the union...
@@solar9610 lol, i love that a pole is simping for america and the west in general when they were the ones who inspired and supplied the nazi fucks who were going to eradicate your entire nation.
In my opinion, Sovietware and the nostalgia for the Soviet past (mostly by people who never experienced it) is like a snake in a terrarium. It does not pose a danger, for it is contained, so we look it closely with curiosity. We can even make jokes with it. We all are happy that nothing Soviet threatens us anymore (like those ugly, cold building aesthetics), so we look at them with a curious nostalgia. A safe "what if" set of thoughts.
10:30 I can compare my old russian panelka to german middle class housing that I live in currently. To be honest, those Panelka's just look ugly on the outside, but flats are not that small in square meters, a little bit short ceilings like 2.5 meters, always warm in winters, much warmer than german flats, and if you renovate them in time they are very comfortable places to live.
The soviets won the space race, it's the western focussing on putting a man on the moon that has made people think otherwise. Though this is a pretty silly way to look at it.
Maybe I've got this wrong but for me, sovietwave isn't about a reminder of a glorious past or a desire for a future that never happened its upbeat synthy style mixed with its hyper nationalistic or nihilistic imagery (in the constant glorification of USSR in propaganda and also in scenes such as you discussed with the shadow of soviet architectural symbols of power) creates a poignant flavour of contradictions for me. As I interpret it, sovietwave (as it is produced in the context of the post-soviet world) is a realisation of a promise that was broken while it was still being made - that the world that was promised to the soviet citizen in their schooling and in the propaganda was never there; a facade for a world of forced deportations, killings and, yes, disappearances. Sovietwave always struck me as, in its sombre tune, hindsight in a collective realisation that the soviet world that its populace believed existed never did, all that beautiful art and culture were trying to mimic a world that wasn't there. In essence, sovietwave is like ripping off the bandaid. I like your last line "no matter what generation we are born in, we all stay dreamers" - to me sovietwave is that answer to the "good old days" perspective. That they're not real. We keep dreaming of whatever utopia looks like within the only contexts we've been given. Remembering that those that were in charge lied, and never got us there. But I expect my interpretation is different to many people.
14:06 did the US win the space race? I mean, yes, they landed people on the Mood, meanwhile Soviets lqnded first unmaned spacecraft on the Moon, made firat orbit around the Mood, firat fliby of Venus, first picture of the dark side of the Moon...
It's all about framing. The notion of "winning" itself implies this competitive mechanism true socialism has never striven for. It's only in the light of our late/post-capitalist mindset that we categorize the world around us into objectives, quotas, winning, losing. "Progress" was never about winning. Neither was the future. I think that's part of what makes the music connect with so many people nowadays - this awakening from an illusion of a capitalist utopia
I think the real appeal to Sovietwave comes from the disillusionment many of us feel in a Post Capitalist society. America won, but at what cost? Mankind, by and large, cannot seem to unite behind anything positive anymore. America is divided by willful ignorance and a belief that facts aren't as important as feelings, the former Soviet states are in a constant state of infighting, China is to concerned with economic growth to worry about anything else, and the EU seems to be wrestling with constant political upheaval. We look back on the achievements in science we made in the past and wonder where it all went wrong. We put men on the moon, harnessed the atom for positive uses, created massive technological achievements in a span of a few short decades, and were poised to reach for the stars.
Now, none of that seems true anymore. People are obsessed with self created celebrity. People no longer believe in science and scientists. Political infighting is more important than progress. Yes, Capitalism won, but it broke us as a species. We need something new to unite us and move us forward beyond concepts of just accumulating wealth and infamy.
It's as if almost the entire humanity forgot what makes us humans in the first place; almost everyone is pursuing just money, society has turned utterly individualist, just a tiny percent of humanity is interested in pursuing scientific and engineering innovations that can push humanity as an whole to the future, but we can't unite ourselves yet, sadly we're too busy with greed and politics.
this is a good take
"Soviet states" isn't a thing, that's like calling most of Asia "Mongol states" because they were once apart of the Mongol empire.
1984
You mean post cold war? We still live in capitalism lol
Sovietwave is basiclly "the future that naver came" the nostalgia for the soviet space optimisim which dreams that never came true
top 10 pro\anti communist puppet regimes that enriched the lives of their people:
@@austinjohnson4551 what?
@@austinjohnson4551 The only thing that ensures your future is the willingness of your people to hold your government to account. Nothing else.
The regime will keep enriching itself so long as the people it governs are willing to accept it.
well ig it could become soon sometime, but it should've existed way longer ago
It won't now nor will it ever exist, soviets and russia aren't capable of achieving anything major. Communism also does not work and a great example is every god damn communist country ever
I'm a professor who deals with Cold War era culture and media. This would be a very good project in my course.
Please make it happen and upload it on UA-cam. I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd love to see it 🙂
@@KLETwave Im pretty sure the professor is saying this would be a good project if a student submited this in their course not that they would upload anything.
@@a_bone_in_the_ocean2276 agreed
Would have loved to take courses like that, professor.
If you offer that course in an online format I’m definitely going to be interested.
I think the nostalgia is amplified by the suffering caused by collapse of the USSR, many Russians hoped for a better future under western style Capitalism but what they received under Yelstin was humiliation and suffering-- child mortality reached frightening levels which kick-started another demographic crisis, poverty and starvation reached new highs.
This feeling of betrayal may also be a factor in why this nostalgia is increasing.
Wrong, communism increased suffering, learn some history.
@@MetaKnight964 B r u h !
I am not even talking about Communism, this comment was about post-soviet communism Russia.
Russia's transition from USSR to Russia wasn't a soft one, it was a f--in nightmare... entire country was on sale and you can say that it was metaphorically raped by western corporations and governments like US.
Russia in the 90s was a place of despair.
Yeltsin multiple times betrayed Russia for his power.
@@MetaKnight964 you are disconnected from reality
@@MetaKnight964 Bulgaria has been on a decline since 1989, the year when communism ended in the country. Look up some stats on export, wealth, happiness, army, population, gpd etc.
Q: How do you deal with mice in the Kremlin?
A: Put up a sign saying "collective farm". Then half the mice will starve, and the rest will run away.
I think it's the nostalgia for a future that never came. Promises of setting foot onto new planets, of automation not being used to harm workers, but liberate them, of boundless opportunity and pushing the limits of science and technology. Of a utopia that was so often promised, but ultimately never came. Capitalism promised utopia with plentiful products, white picket fences, and enough land and money for us all. Communism promised a scientific revolution, everyone's needs met, an end to all scarcity. But the Soviets and Chinese could never truly live up to their ideologies, and America's infinite wealth never made it into the people's hands. The planet looks more like a hellscape than a paradise, and we're still plagued by our old problems--war, famine, disease, poverty--that we can't even focus on the mounting climate crisis, the surveillance states, the erosion of digital privacy, the rise of systems and subroutines that can kill careers, not save them. The world of tomorrow never came, and one can't help but feel a sad nostalgia looking back on the days when people believed it would. Sovietwave is a eulogy for the future we were promised.
Am sorry but that is just retar,ded, Soviet was never communist becouse it does not work, Capitalism has many flaws but its the best system we have. Solving all of the worlds problem will never have a simple solution, Its crazy that people could ever blame capitalism for not solving them, Spoiler alert nothing can ever fix it, Maby in the future but right now theres nothing humans can do to truly solve these problem other than all dying
You are the type of person youtube needs again. Not another trend seeker, cookie cutter, hungry for likes and subscribers. You carry the spirit of the old internet, of doing something, researching something, creating something because you didn't understand it at first but had that urge to explore, to delve deeper. Please continue and let these words be proof that you are reaching people all around the globe, from Singapore to Switzerland.
Thanks a lot, comments and feedback in general helps so much when you're just starting out. (Not only for the algorithm. I don't care that much about likes, but it's nice when more people get to see what I create).
I want to research and do something like that too!
@@Nightshade_goblin Well, this is certainly a very good video, confirming that my feeling is shared by others. Sovietwave is nostalgic to me, especially the Robot's outro theme as I remember it from my childhood, as it was a great song to me, whom could not even spell remix when I first heard it. Now I may not be Russian, or even Slavic by any stretch of the imagination, but this is a great explanation of why I reminisce for something I have found contrary to my beliefs. Thanks for the analysis, from the Southern tip of Africa. Have a wonderful day, and if you'd excuse me, I'll be watching another video in your archive.
@@Nightshade_goblin While this kind of content is not widely appreciated (or even discovered), I find it so much more valuable. I'm happy that likeminded people still exist on the platform!
@@Nightshade_goblin Can you tell me please where can I find the music starting at 4:35?
You know what really fucking gets me? We sent a human into outer space, beyond the Earth, for the first time in our history - and it wasn't a monarch, a banker, or an oil billionaire, it wasn't a Rothschild and it wasn't a Rockefeller - it was the humble working-class son of a bricklayer and a milkmaid.
Because he was expendable. Rockets were not safe. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't supposed to be the first one. If people died in rocket explosion before he got to the space. No monarch or billionaire would want to go on such an unsafe suicidal mission. Also in Soviet Union monarchs were gotten rid of and it wasn't possible to become a billionaire in socialism. So they wouldn't be able to send one even if they wanted to.
and nowadays jeb bozo gets to go to space after making his employees piss in plastic bottles
This is a dumb statement because it took hundreds, if not thousands, possibly even the effort of an entire population to make space travel possible. Astronauts are important, but they didn't do it alone.
SFW - Neil Armstrong’s father was a civil servant and his ancestors were refugees from the Irish famine. Let’s not forget the millions of humble working class sons that “you” starved to death during collectivisation (your own imposed famine), although I doubt you’ll be looking to take credit for that somehow.
@@markofsaltburn Why do you even mention Neil Armstrong? He wasn't the first person in outer space. And why do you use "you" as reference to the people who caused famine? T Lowry most likely meant "we" as the mankind. Logical connections in your statement are non existent. If you think Neil Armstrong was the first person in outer space and by "we" you don't want to talk about the entire human race then the "we" would mean USA citizens who did not cause famine. Well at least not in their homeland.
I will try to give my partial point of view. I was born in 1990 in Bulgaria. In 1990 the USSR still existed by Bulgaria rejected communism a year prior in 1989. Bulgaria was never part of the USSR but our relations were so close the media has come to call Bulgaria "The sixteenth state in shadow". What followed was the same as in every other post-communist country. The rampant decomposition of every single industry and state apparatus by oligarchs and corrupt politicians serving foreign interests. By 1995 Bulgaria already looked like a post apocalyptic wasteland. It is all I've ever known. 32 years later Bulgaria still looks like this. Seeing the promise of former glory, optimistic murals, things which were obviously planned with aesthetics in mind decay, be taken over by nature or repurposed into somewhat usable modern form does prompt your imagination to take flight, to imagine the unreachable utopia those imaginary scenes represent. Sovietwave is that for me. It is built on the sine waves of those thoughts. It's beauty but distant and reverberated, distorted by the "wow and flutter" of time as if playing through a long forgotten but still somehow functioning speaker echoing through the canyons of pre-fabricated panel tenement blocks. I've noticed something however. My parents do listen to music similar to the different wave genres. However Sovietwave does not evoke the same emotions in them as it does in me. Perhaps the fact that they have seen the world in non-decaying state it doesn't click for them in the slightest. This leads me to believe is that Sovietwave is built on a promise born in our fantasies for something we haven't experienced or seen. A true nostalgia for a future that never was.
I am from Czech Republic, former Czechoslovakia. My country was also very close with USSR although not part of it. I would not want to live in totalitarian society, but the future communists focused on was a very nicely pictured utopia, and I feel very nostalgic listening to sovietwave. What played Huge part in this for me is the fact that I was born in area were a lot of housing was built in social-realism style in the 50s. It is really nice. The buildings have paintings of workers on it, some houses evoke Renaissance-ish features like columns and portals. The style was developed because the communists wanted a palace like living for everybody. And my grandparents lived in a city founded for miners in the 50s where the whole architecture shouts utopia. There is a lot of old neon sings above shops and the mall here is called "Budoucnost" which means future. We have a lot of shopping centres called Budoucnost here.... And I used to play on old playgrounds my parents used to play too.... And I played with their toys and read old books... And everything seemed so interesting, totally normal yet so unreal at the same time.... But my parents don't seem to understand this nostalgia. They lived in the actual time of USSR and Russians did a lot of bad things to us, also the regime here was strict... So I understand but my parents sometimes talk about nice things that are no more... It is sad that we cannot just keep the good from the past.... Learn and be better... After the regime fell here, everybody was euphoric but... After some years, after the reality striked whe we realized bad people took the opportunity and stole what we built before..... Everyone is just frustrated and angry...
@@danielavaskova1633 im from lithuania, we were one of 15 ussr states, i was born during collapse of ussr, and i have similar experience, only that our buildings are mostly 60s 70s 80s built, that we even live today renovated :) my parents and grandparents however are pretty fond of those times, not just cause of nostalgia of youth but they can compare life back then and today, how it was stable, equal and simple, unlike anything what we experience today, chaos, prices tripling in last decade, wages barely went up, constant threat of russia and oligarch of idiotic putin russia era, economic crisis every decade... no unity or equality at all... yeah we are bittersweet memories too first during stalin era some people exiled to gulags in siberia, then in 90s people died during collapse of ussr, still with all then like you had brutal uprising in 50s its different era from 60s 70s 80s, i bet even your family remember it as pretty cool times
i have insane nostalgia to those decade even tho i never seen them, only in old movies, documentaries that we have from those times and parents memories. and from doing my own research on history, since im history nerd. ussr had very diferent eras with lenin, then stalin, then calm 60s-80s then absolute madness in early 90s. and those should not be mixed into one
Whether you liked the USSR or not, you have to admit that the Soviet aesthetic slaps.
Dictatorships often have the best aesthetics.
@@aarosundvall idk all those gulags and they could only build grey rectangles.
@@quyiter well, obviously the things the people live in are gray rectangles but the government offices have to look nice
No doubt it have its vibe, but bruh, who liked the USSR?
If I ever hear someone say 'slaps' irl here in the UK, they will be getting one.
Use timeless words, not trendy guff. YUGH such douchechills reading that pathetic sheep-bleating trendhop.
I fell so hard into the "waves", especially sovietwave, during the pandemic. It has really helped
Coming to terms with reality really sets you free.
Q: Which is more useful - newspapers or television?
A: Newspapers, of course. : "You can't wipe your ass with a TV" - a reference to the shortage of toilet paper in USSR, which forced people to use newspapers instead.
"Into the 'waves'"
There's something really beautiful about that
@@Methuselah5 thank you.
Sovietwave just generally feels like the theme for the beginning of the 2020s, a time of uncertainty and confusion, just like the post soviet republics were after the dissolution of the USSR.
Soviet wave depresses me. The genuine hopes and dreams of so many to build a better society, the striving of so many toward progress. Now it has all been taken away from them, and these lands have fallen so far.
It goes a layer deeper imo. It's a callback to a dream to build a better society, but all the imagery was hollow even before it became old. All these massive buildings were "fake" even when they were first built. There is no real dream society to be nostalgic for, because those buildings were put up by people tied to nostalgia themselves and trying to build a society on long dead dreams. Just my 2 cents, probably not coherent
@@sevensicilies That was very poetic
Hecking Soviet Union was so based! Just ignore the gulags my comrade!
@@ryan.1990 bruh, what are you on
@@ryan.1990 fucking hell, I love the gulags, why would I ignore them?
Great job, comrade! But...
- those Khrushchov and Brezhnev style blocks are not only in Soviet Union and not only collapsing. For example in Poland and East Germany they are well maintained and modernized, same in Yugoslavia,
- those "gopniks" exist under different names in every former communist country except Belarus, they have nothing to do with Putin. They exist in Poland, Serbia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania etc.
you can also find them or simmilar building in countries like finland, france and uk.
@@Virsho The buildings in the UK are different, but the broken people in the face of economic recession aren't. Ah, adidas 💕
Probably no need for a "but" and you could drop the "not only in Soviet Union" if you aren't expanding out to countries that weren't part of the Soviet Union... examples outside ex Soviet countries would be nice though. I am a bit of a fan of Brutalist architecture as a historical artefact
There are some brutalist buildings in Mexico too
@@asmith1ofmany Yes, brutalist architecture can be found anywhere, but having a half of a city brutalist, 1/3 historical and the rest made out of modern architecture not maching thier surroundings is quite characteristic.
Even though I am a western european adolescent born years after the fall of the soviet union I can't help but feel a strange sense of nostalgia when listening to sovietwave. Not a nostalgia for a time I didn't live in or a world I don't remember. But a nostalgia for a future. A future that was silently promised to our generation, the promise of a better tomorrow. A future to believe in, in which everything is possible. For me the imagery of space so often linked to the music represents that future, where even the harshest frontier can be conquered with science and ingenuity. A future that seems so far away these days.
it was a future promised to us, our parents, and grandparents. it was a future this world has taken from us as our society becomes ever more corrupted. it was a future we may never have. a nostalgia for a thing we lost... yet never had.
you experienced the Soviet Union in short tv reels and sound bites basically like a movie or show, it's not weird at all.
@@CosmonautCutiepie yeah, I'd love to be starving too, bro 👎
@@penskepc2374 I don't disagree, but I think you miss the point. It's not a nostalgia for the soviet union, it nostalgia for the future it promised. Although I know the soviet union was not the paradise it portrayed itself as being, I can't help but long for a future where we could make such a paradise a reality. I also want to add that neo-liberalism has done the same, in that it promised though market forces we would all live better lives than our parents and grandparents, but here we are with declining standards of living and ecological and geopolitical crises on the horizon. The point I am trying to make is that for me the appeal in sovietwave is that is gives music to that feeling of longing for a future that was promised, but never materialized.
Beautifully said.
In Russia we sometimes call the material achievements of Soviet era like buildings, constructions and machines as "The remnants of the past great civilization"
Its this memory of a utopia that slowly crumbled apart into a shell of its older self, ruins of what used to be still laying there reminding the people of the beautiful past they once had and how it fell apart
The past in the USSR was worse than the present for almost everyone in Eastern Europe
@@My_Old_YT_Account on the contrary comrade. Many videos were Russians fondly remember the union and their achievements.
@@djriqky9581 Russia was really the only one to benefit from the USSR in Eastern Europe
@@My_Old_YT_Account there are citizens who look back at it fondly in the former soviet territories as well
@@djriqky9581 Again, very little of them are from the Eastern European parts of the USSR that aren't Russia
I grew up in Nicaragua, and I still remember reading Misha and using Soviet-era technology like small projectors to read small slides that contained stories. Sovietwave feels like all that at the same time, feeding from nostalgia for what it was and what it could have been. Similar to a soccer player who missed to play a final and his team lost.
was nicarague connected to ussr in any way? cause its a bit strange that country so far away feels so nostalgic for it, im from former ussr state so its obvious for me, buy you are unique :)
@@NostalgicMem0ries During the 1980's-1990's there was an economical blockade from USA to Nicaragua due to the Sandinistas (openly communists back then) were in charge. USSR was very close to both Cuba and Nicaragua in the 80's.
@@memus3852 oh i see now, i knew about cuba it was ussr friend for so long and usa really treated them badly, guess it was similar you you guys, im gonna need to read some about those sandinistas to understand it more, i just glimsed and it looks that party is still in power today? is nicaragua more socialist/communist like china/cuba today or capitalist like western countries?
@@NostalgicMem0ries Socialists just on the name. It's more like a mix between a monarchy and a violent mafia nowady
@@memus3852 damn, thats sad ;\ many countries cant control socialism in right way, china and yugoslavia were closest that really flourished during their prime, tbh china is dominating with while being socialist :o
The part of the video that talks about the space race reminded me of Georgy Martynov's book "Callisto". This is a sci-fi novel that describes how aliens arrived in the USSR, how they managed to establish contact with them and how one person was able to fly with them to their planet. While reading this book, you are immersed in dreams of exploring deep space in hopes of meeting something new for the sake of a bright future. I have a printed version, and the illustrations on the cover and inside the book draw you even more into a sci-fi fantasy with a slight note of nostalgia. I do not know if literature can be part of the Sovietwave, but I recommend reading Callisto if you want to feel something similar as from Soviet posters about space flights
also try "Pilot Pirx" by LEM. It depicts a very beautiful, bright but also interesting and sometimes dangerous future, but a very common man and relatable protagonist. It's been my favourite book since I was 10.
Nostalgia for Modernism, the promise of a better world for our children and Humanity in general. Post-modernism stole that promise away, and replaced it with soulless cynicism. It turns out that we need a sense of promise and hope for the future in order to survive as human beings.
Check out Jreg's video on postpostmodernism
USSR and Russia should have gone on with Stalinist neo-classical architecture, which after all was chosen over avant-garde architecture because the common people voted for it when they were submitted alternative projects in museums : it represented the proof that their own Russian village architecture was compatible with topmost technology, and to most intellectuals the proof that Russia could outdo Paris in magnificence.
Yeah, but how the hell do you fund enough stalinist architecture to house a devastated nation whose industrial and economic capability was just blown up by the krauts?
@@aarosundvall Especially when the Boss was more focused on investing in atomic weapons and military equipment over general infrastructure and (non-capitalist) consumer products.
I disagree.
The Khrushchyovka, their successor projects, and the similar projects in other socialist countries allowed the Soviet Union to mass-produce affordable housing on such an immense scale that only China's "ghost cities" come close to replicating. These countries were building society in a factory.
So many people who'd only lived in shacks and poor village living conditions this was the first time they had more than one door. It was the first time they had a toilet. It was the first time they had continuous access to electricity. Remember the Soviets were building a modern society, a modern republic, a multinational republic out of a backwards semi-feudal empire.
These buildings marked a massive improvement in the quality of life of everyday people. The basic concrete design allowing them to be made cheaply and fast.
I think that any centering of aesthetics in that conversation is an attempt to disguise the fact the Khrushchyovka and Brezhnevkas were by far among the most ambitious and successful affordable housing projects in modern history despite their faults.
@@ostiariusalpha Boss was preparing to be nuked by the US
@@rusalkin Based purely on his own paranoid treachery; after all, *he* would certainly attack if the positions were reversed. In truth, the U.S. Democrats were quite sympathetic, and perfectly willing to let him build a socialist utopia and "grow out" of the whole totalitarian phase. His own spies told him as much, but he couldn't bring himself to believe it.
Thank the algorythm for showing me this video. I have long awaited a video like this that takes the genre apart. I love the music so much (as I grew up in a country of the former eastern block I was exposed a lot to the 'what we could have had')
Thank you for this! I love sovietwave so much and I've waited for someone to talk about it.
You put everything so perfectly. Always been fascinated by the Soviet aesthetic throughout the decades. It makes me feel similar to the “futuristic asthetic” of America in the 1960s.. made for a future that never quite came to fruition the way everyone imagined it would.
We are obviously struggling with similar issues that you brought up in the US. “Just trying to make sense of a world drifting off into the absurd…” speaks to how many Americans have felt for the past several years (if not longer). Things that were once never thought possible have happened. We are a fractured nation.
Thank you for the thought provoking content. Subbed.
you mean raygun gothic or googie?
I used to think it was nostalgia but realized it was the loss of the future I thought I’d see.
The future people dreamed of in the 80s was a neon lit world full of discovery and invention. Big dreams with a synth soundtrack to set the tone.
Yess!! Finally someone's putting Sovietwave in the spotlight! I appreciate you :)
Four dogs -- Mexican, American, Polish, Russian -- are discussing their lives. The Mexican dog says, "the servants used to leave meat out for me, but now I have to bark for it." The American dog says, "you have servants in Mexico?" The Polish dog says, "they feed you meat?" The Russian dog says, "they let you bark?"
This is a high quality work! Sovietwave (and synthwave in general) is so underrated. And you just got 1 more like and a new sub.
Man! I really love your video since this perfectly sums up anything. Personally, I have listened to retro synth music for a decade or so when I accidentally stumbled upon those Sovietwave videos just 2 years ago. Being born during the late gasps of the Eastern Bloc myself, my whole perspective on retro synth music changed instantly. Touched by nostalgia for these visions and sounds, I had the urge to contribute to this beautiful scene. We leave for a parallel universe once we press play, a better world we can escape to. Thank you for this beautiful video! Peace goes out to anyone who feels that peaceful nostalgia 🖤 мир вам
Thx for sharing your story клет, I already heard your music on DLAZ music's channel, it's so beautiful! Thank you! Keep going
Замечательная советская волна. Спасибо клет
Oh yes. I was born in socialist Hungary, in '83 and I love soviet wawe. The 80s and still the 90s were very socialist in Hungary (factories, panel flat blocks, cars, music, culture, etc). A pre-internet era. Soviet Wave brings you back.
I think the real feeling behind soviet-wave is the dream. Say what you will about the Geo-political situation, and the probably crushing reality of living in that time, but those low points were out shone by a large, glorious dream, and the actual drive to get it done. The space race and cold war in general was a great time in human achievement and capability, and each time we pushed the boundary, we only made the dream bigger and better.
Contrast that with today. While we may be living in the most comfortable time in all of human history, there is a lot not to like, and there is very little in the way of a big dream we can all hope for. Governments have bread out innovation through bureaucracy, the world is becoming more and more fragmented despite all the great tools we have that try and bring it together, many of the monuments and achievements we have built, during the space race and otherwise, are crumbling and forgotten, and ultimately the lack of two equally matched yet opposed superpowers has lead to innovation being a luxury, not a need. While the world is a better place, there is no glorious dream, no spectacle of innovation to outshine all the flaws of today.
ive seen people say that only tankies like sovietwave, i think thats not the case, as you said many of the buildings used for these videos arent pictured when in their full glory, but when they are already old and decaying, its clear that sovietwave isnt just saying ''yeah remember the soviet union, perfect society innit?'' to me its obvious that the message is that while obviously flawed we do feel nostalgia, and that means there must also have been some good, something worth remembering with nostalgia, and that i think is the utopic ideal and optimisim, the idea of a future were we have all the basics covered up and we are already exploring space not as a dick measuring contest as was the space race during the cold war, but just out of curiosity because we are humans and when our basic needs are covered we like to explore and expand our knowledje
As 21-year-old who grew up in Kiev and now has a #postsovenok photos for wallpaper, I want to say that at at least some percentage of people, myself included, genuenly like USSR architecture. Part of it has to do with familiarity, part of is just our version of vaporwave/post-punk aesthetic, and part of it is, welll, the sheer beauty and grandure of it all. The library you've shown, the exhabition center, the unis where FATM and TOP shot their music videos are architectural landmarks to me, just as much, if not more-so, then all those old churches.
Also, Brutalism is neat! Just the whole “form follows function” philosophy in general was drilled into me starting pretty young, and I fuck with it! But goodness does that add an extra layer of oomph to decaying brutalist structures. If no thought was put into form beyond function, what’s left when that function can’t be served? With a lot of the vaporwave aesthetic, there’s this feeling of something comfortable made uncomfortable through abandonment and decay. Brutalist structures, however, feel so far from human they almost feel more natural abandoned. Without even the synthesized approximation of natural comfort, they seem uninhabitable just by appearance, even if fully functional. I mean, who could survive it, it’s brutal!
This is the part where everyone seems to be making their sweeping generalizations, so here’s mine: if you’re so concerned with people ignoring scientists, maybe consider communication less brutal! Sometimes, for something to work to its fullest potential, it shouldn’t look so dang determined to be abandoned!
But iunno, I just really like cement.
I used to live in Mongolia in the first 6 years of my life, me and my family lived in soviet era buildings and this hits close to home
Ive always wanted to see
Mongolia..fascinating!
Well done. Soviet history and relics have always fascinated me so much, even though I'm a 24 year old from the U.S. with little connection to these times. I'd love to travel around the former U.S.S.R. and see things myself if I ever can!
Sovietwave come from Soviets pioneering electronic music, they used it in movies before anyone and many considered them as the founders.
Their old electronic music mixed with newer mix is what makes it Sovietwave and technically should be Russianwve since all of the original music was done only in Russia.
Shouldn't be russianwave because it was the Soviet Union then, that was more important than being in the Russian SFSR
@@Workingatm How or why more important?
The electronic music and movies they were in were all Russian, not Belarusian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Georgian etc.
Amazing video! You captured my reasons for liking the aesthetic and music year perfectly.
Tho I feel like a key part of the nostalgia, at least on my part, is a longing for what could have been.
Even as I research the atrocities and oppression of the USSR, I find myself listening to this music and feeling that longing for an impossible world that could have been.
But also good inspiring space music make brain happy
well im person who lived in ussr times a bit, my family has massive history, so for us nostalgia hits 100x bigger, and i would say after destalinization in early 60s life got really decent, never heard my grandparents or parents complain, maybe one product deficit here and there but thats all, mostly they talk about equality, stability, simple life, guaranteed and free things like healthcare, school/univercity, job and even free apartements. prices were ultra low too. i get foreigners usually think about ussr as stalin or ww2 times chaos , madness and brutality, or newer generations thing modern russia and putin insanity represents it... while its not 60s 70s 80s were amazing times, in some ways its was even better than in west with all race wars that didint ended even today, drugs in 70s and especially 80s, vietnam war/nuclear war hysteria in 60s 70s, here in ussr we didnt cared or actually didnt knew about those issues, we lived life, sadly our future got robbed by capitalism and now world is becoming close and closer similar to early 20th century, with worldwide epidemics, wars and economic crisies that become more and more often
In the late 90s -2015 I visited Poland very often but to 2012 it had such an different atmosphere in some places especially in Warsaw there was a level with normal Imbisses kiosk/ stores and restaurants also an pop-up Market under the railway platform. It was a corridor which had stairs to each platform this popup markets sell from hygiene products, magazines, books, flashlights, bakery
I’m from America but soviet wave is hard af. I just feel that sense too because capitalism doesn’t favor everyone here too, I mean duh. It’s great to know i can feel that within our common consciousness
"My world is dust now,
And all I loved is dead.
Oh, let me trust now
In what my master said:
'There is a sweetness in every woe.'
It must be so. It must be so.
The dawn will find me
Alone in some strange land.
But men are kindly;
They'll give a helping hand.
So said my master, and he must know.
It must be so. It must be so.
My master told me
That men are loving-kind;
Yet now behold me,
III-used and sad of mind.
Men must have kindness
I cannot see.
It must be me. It must be me.
My master told me
The world is warm and good;
It deals more coldly
Than I had dreamt it would.
There must be sunlight I cannot see.
It must be me.
It must be me."
- Leonard Bernstein's Candide
It's a nostalgia for optimism about the future. And the contradiction between the loss of something one never had or experienced and something that is nonetheless essential and immanent.
As a millennial it resonates with me because a lot of men like myself were never ever hopeful about the future, personally or socially. We can empathize with the death of Soviet futures because we never had a future either. We were stillborn, and some of us may die stillborn. Waiting for something but not knowing what because that emotional urge never found a socially shared expression.
14:23 regarding the lost space race or anyone stating the US landed on the moon just because that's what they learned in school or media...
Yup, they landed on it at Hollywood studios when Stanley Kubrick taped it all and mysteriously died shortly after he came out on that... Another funny point is, that the orginal tapes from the moon landing got destroyed by water years later. I mean would you leave those tapes of such importance just laying around at some unsafe place waiting for them getting destroyed or stolen? We've learned in school that they've been up there but after starting my own research many years later, I now highly doubt it. The Soviets have been by far leading in this entire race and the US just couldn't stand the fact losing against that hated enemy. I'm not saying I'm 100% right on that but I am absolutely not convinced at all that these hollywoodesque ridiculous shots from the moon landing by Mr. Kubrik were from up above.
So telling the world that the Soviets lost the space race was a brilliant move by the Americans since it led to demoralization and was one of the key factors Soviet scientists and the communist party lost track on further achievements.
Anyway, that was just a thought of mine, what I meant by saying it, don't ever believe anything you hear on the media without researching it. There's always two sides to every story, sometimes three :)
Off to feel some anemoia!!! 👽
I was very young and only had glimpsed on USSR in it's glory before it felt apart - the feeling of better future was there, present and real. Now it's distant memory, a fairy tale for everyone else.
There some that carry that upbeat reality today, like Soviet rock bank Secret: ua-cam.com/video/gsMD7Rv04vw/v-deo.html
This is awesome. I know it was a lot of work but I hope you make more content like it. There's a lot more culture and music out there that deserves your analysis.
I always interpret SovietWave as doubly tragic, both the hardship of the generational stunting that happened because of both the First World War, the Russian Civil War, and the Second World War having literally stolen the future from the Soviet Union in the form of their youth; and still to this day their sacrifice during the Second World War is so eager to be forgotten/ignored. As well as the loss of the future the Soviet Union aspired to achieve in the hopes of inspiring further workers revolutions and proving that the working class is working towards a brighter future and a wide horizon. But with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the horizon seems closed, Capitalist Realism is now blanketing us with a dreaded depression and a feeling that the future is closed to us, to all, SovietWave reflects the despair of the now dead end that capitalist triumph has inflicted, and the echoing whisper of the dream of a future that the Soviet Union attempted to inspire in the world as a whole. 🥀
How high were you when you wrote this statement? The loss of youth and potential of the soviet union? That whole thing was a blackhole of individualism
@@dibbadyda1728 good, individualism is just isolation. Everyone should have an identity, but you can never be away from the collective.
Sovietwave I feel like needs an antithesis. Something like solar punk but which focuses on feelings of regrowth and progress. Progress is only lost to us when we keep going in circles, and refuse to force history forward.
There is an "anti-thesis" and it's unfortunatelly anarcho-capitalism. It's direct oposite of "the future we were hoping for", it's "the hell, we deep down know, we'll live in"
@@twojstarypijany3182 anаrcho-capitalism isn't a music genre dude, also we're not moving towards it you sсhizo
You should check out NATOwave
@@tristenpettyjohn No
@@tristenpettyjohn NATO is shit
this amazing quality for a channel with only 100 subs deserves my upvote. well done
what an excellent essay. i dont really have anything to add, but my personal experience.
sovjet wave does what music does best: express feelings, that dont fit into words.
i grew up in 80s western germany, close enough to the border, that my parents were close friends with families in the GDR, we visited on occasion. some of the strongest memories of that time were grand murals, depicting workers and scientists and athletes and astronauts and space stations ... and brutalist architecture, that really impressed me as a child. and that felt oddly foreign and compelling back then, and inexpocably comfortable to me to this day. contrasting with the ever looming prospect of thermonuclear annihilation being just a thing that has always been there, to me as a child.
40 years later, i still cant really put those feelings into words
there's also the B.A.C.U (Bureau for Art & Urban Research) at Bucharest, who tries to conserve/ save soviet buildings in Eastern and Central Europe
This is one of the best video essays I have seen in a long time. Not drawn out, or overly meta-textual,not trying to shoehorn in tangential talking points. Just pure discussion and fascination of a specific subject. I love this 💚
How is this video so obscure? It explains everything very well.
Hey algorithm, boost it, 800 views is unacceptable.
I was half expecting you to bring it up, but this comes up in philosophy as well, the concept of “hauntology” of lost futures, you expressed the concept in this video, that the future that was supposed to be was lost, and now, we are essentially dealing with societal symptoms like that, theres vids on it, let me get them.
Heres some vids on it
ua-cam.com/video/gFyaNG9xbEU/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/TJr0NwXWb6Q/v-deo.html
And this vid has hauntology as an element, i just really like it and feel amiss if i dont include it
ua-cam.com/video/cdW7Cp0iV0A/v-deo.html
Yeah, hauntology is really interesting. Sadly I just stumbled over the topic recently and couldn't include it in the vid. But "Ghosts of my life" by Mark Fisher and "Non places" by Marc Augé are on my lists of books I wanna read this year (though the latter falls more into the category of liminal space).
I really appreciate that you took the time to seek out and share relevant content for others to enjoy :3
Edit: I just checked the links and Fishers work is one of them xD
Quality content
Because Socialism gave the people, who were the engins of the society, a human face and let them have dreams for a better future for all of man kind.
I'm native black South African, the U.S.S.R. gave us the hopes we needed, even in our most critical time, to fight Apartheid reactionary forces.
As our Nation looks into the dark abyss of our present day and future, the Marxist-Leninist spirit is our eternaly burning torch to salvation!
I found vaporwave from a video on minidisc, and the algorithm showed me Sovietwave. I love it.
For me it is the optimism in a communist society, a society that while flawed never looked back and always moved forward. I don't like statists, their methods are flawed, but I can't help but feel this fleeting notion that there was something there worth saving. It's like something you know must end, and you know the end will be tragic, but you can't help but try to hold on for as long as possible.
Great video. I was surprised to see that this was your first video essay. You earned yourself a sub.
I made a " sovietwave " song a year or so ago... It's kinda cool to think its an actual genre. I just made it because I thought the ads I used were interesting. Not for any deeper philosophical reason, but it's cool to learn about! Awesome video
I was born in the Soviet union. I agree with all your words
This video will blow up one day!
How does this only have 310 views holy crap that should be a criminal offence?
Soviet Synth helped me through COVID lockdowns. I love Brutalist architecture, reminds me of my college campus in Milwaukee
I feel like this channel might be the first channel I know of to genuinely appeal to my interests. You always make high quality content, which is entirely contradictory with your sub count. It feels unfair that the one channel that has the ability to hit the sweet spot falls on deaf ears, or just doesn't fall on any ears. I genuinely hope that this channel prospers in the future, so that way more people can experience this. It's pretty weird that you manage to make videos that convey the message of different kinds of music nearly flawlessly. The genres you cover aren't exactly sad, but the nostalgia they bring is sharp and painful, a reminder of how happy everyone was then. The emphasis placed on the past makes you compare it to now, and you notice how everything seems to have gotten less enjoyable. It manages to show the past experiences of everyone who listens to it; it's personalized, even though the songs are the same.
This aesthetic hits me hard...I live in Romania, in kind of a small city and the buildings are still like this. My home is in the center of the city, so we have newer buildings here, but there are zones more distanced from the center that have exclusively old buildings...the sad part is that they are mostly abandoned. Another sad thing is that you can see abandoned factories, that were workplaces for a lot of people back then, for most of our grandparents.
So it's like these types of things slowly die, like they have served their purpose, but they still did not finish their mission
[Sorry for bad grammar]
Greatly calming, lowkey, informative channel. Thank you.
I feel like this thing is about to blow up thanks to the algorithm
I dont think the "spacerace" was lost, as it was the spacerace and not the moonrace.
The ussr did so many things first. America was the one who set the moon as its goal, but the ussr is still the only country to have landed probes on venus, also it was first to space, first animal in space, first man space, first spacewalk, first object to land on another body, etc.
I think that the fact that the U.S. did something isnt the main factor, I think its the fact that we (the ussr and post-ussr states) stopped that matters. For example, within the Ru-speaking community I hear stuff like "we used to produce X or Y" and even if they complain that the soviet X or Y wasn't as good as another western model, they could still be proud that it was theirs. In the same way that in the U.S., people buy american cars even though everyone I know, even owners of said american cars, admit they are of lower quality than their japanese counterparts. Or, ofcourse, I can tell you that people where i live, in the Rust belt of the U.S., yearn for the past similarly to how people of the ussr sometimes do.
There are definitely things that RU leads the west in, for example Ru is the only country in the world capable of recycling nuclear waste into nuclear fuel (yes its as OP as it sounds, only 3% mass loss per ~5 year cycle), and for other things being second best isnt shameful. Youre still ahead of hundreds of countries.
So, to recap, the fact that someone else did something isnt what makes people sad, its the fact that they stopped doing it.
(I am Ukr/Ru, live in the U.S. because we could see current events coming a mile away)
Thanks for this great video. I think Sovietwave represents a very strange blend of nostalgia for the old and trying to rediscover what it means to be Russian. The soviets hated Russian identity and tried to exterminate it wherever they could and rewrite history with their own version of soviet identity, as something that had just always been. Innocent Russians got arrested for just being too Russian sometimes, therefore a possible threat to the great revolution, possible Czar sympathizers or even Western sympathizers. So now you have generations of modern Russians that don't seem to know what being Russian means or even how to do it. So they try to make it up as they go along and fail, and fall back into trying to remember what it was like before.
First satellite, first man in space, first man in outer space, first woman in space, first space station. All of this done by USSR and all this have great importance to this day and is still useful. What gave landing on the moon to humanity? But USA won.. okay
He says somewhat inaccurately that the USSR failed to put a man on the moon, but what would have been more accurate would be to say that they "re-allocated funds and decided not to bother after the USA got there first." A lot of Soviet scientists thought it was a real shame because it was entirely within their capability. I also think it's a shame because it kind of revealed the Cold War propaganda contest as being more important than the scientific achievement and even if it was just about propaganda, getting their second at least shows you could do it... Anyway, the funding got re-allocated to the MIR space station and the rest is history. It is annoying that people assume that there was something magic about the moon that the Soviets couldn't for some reason handle lol.
Safely transporting a person from the earth to the moon was much more challenging than repetitively launching something into space with modified "military missiles".
@@robrechwithoutzaza7992 that was decades ago, and where is profit? Is there are moonstations? Military stations? Science stations? or what? I am talking about things that matters till this days and will be matters in the future, things that paved the way
@@EkaterinaTesla Are you asking for profit? Well, that's obvious. Thanks to the successful Apollo mission, completely new technologies have developed and this was the beginning of exploring other planets. Today, because of this, several powers are sending their robots to other distant planets to study their surface. I don't want to throw away the Soviet successes in space, but they weren't as sophisticated and challenging at all as landing on the moon.
By the way, I am a former citizen of one of the Ostblock countries, and everything the Soviets did in space had only a propaganda purpose. It did not bring any positive to the people, only pride in Gagarin. These were very bitter milestones for us. We could watch communist propaganda all day on television and watch that whatever was launched into space again, but they kept us in concrete cages, forbade us to think freely and rejoice in life, erased our history, destroyed our country, everything that was for people beautiful and beautiful, they destroyed it and made us mummies. I wish no one anything we had to experience. Today, even the American homeless has more freedom, liberty and wealth than our entire middle class had during communism.
@@robrechwithoutzaza7992 I get you. Don`t write to me anymore. Please and thank you.
neat video, but I lose braincells every time someone mixes up synth/retrowave with vaporwave. vaporwave is that macintosh plus windows 95 early internet vibe with the slowed down music and marble statues on the airy pink wallpapers with the checkerboard floors, what you were talking about in the beginning of this video with the 80s music and neon wireframe landscapes is called retrowave.
Let the algorithm bless you, please keep creating content
This is so good and well done especially for someone with 95 subs. I love Soviet wave and pretty much found it the same way you did. Thanks for making this video and keep it up! Just going to sneak in a sub real quick
what is said in the intro could come direct out of my soul
That weird moment when you recognize immediately both the building and the event depicted, without any "research".
Lately I've been viewing too many videos which underestimate my intelligence and so it was very pleasant to explore the concepts in this particular video which instead vastly overestimated my intelligence.
i don't know how it work on foreigners, it sounds to them like a variation of synthwave.
I don't know how non ussr citizen can feel wibes of lost socialism system and it expectations for communism.
Sovietwave is a combination of lost hopes on bright cosmic future.
A year and three quarters later, and this channel has over 15,000 subscribers? I'm amazed!
the most melancholic words in any language: "if only it could have been"
It causes me to be aware how fragile our own society and dreams and expectations are.
The best video on the topic I suppose
Q: What's the difference between a capitalist fairy tale and a Marxist fairy tale?
A: Capitalist fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time, there was....". Marxist fairy tale begins, "Some day, there will be...."
when you follow this throught sci-fi is marxist
3:41 - whoaaa... anemoic meta-wave-inception haecceity. I'm tripping balls on this etymology. This video some good shit, dude.
As the pinned comment says, it probably has to do disilusionment with capitalism, but I kind of want to add something to that. I think in many ways the world is becomming "post-soviet". Essentially we are now suffeeing the consewuences of capitalism and more exactly neoliberalism. Such a situation was experienced by Eastern Europe in the 90s , wich kind of shaped the post-soviet society, and now the world as whole, or at least the western world is experiencing it as well. Wich kind of makes one miss those soviet times, even if one never experienced them.
Anemoia!!! Oh my gosh, what a word! That's like ... most of my nostalgia!
Thank you for making this video!
I'm so happy to have found this video !!
Tysm
Surprisingly good video essay
I wish to see a soviet future...
What an interesting video. You certainly deserve many more views. Many thanks.
your voice is so calming
The UA-cam algorithm brought me to you. And so I subscribed.
We still have a future, don’t we?
A Soviet Cosmonat sitting in a small space capsule. The lights have already gone out, as the battery starts to die out.
This small capsule is in a far odysse into the dark abyss of the unknown.
The Cosmonaut transmits his final Radio signals to earth, the last being:
"We still have a future, don't we?"
The battery finally dies and the small egg shaped craft dissolves in the pitch black darkness of bottom less space.
@@lutho7693 that is how it feels, yes.
It's like 80's synthwave embodies an 80's that never happened (I was there) it embodies the fake vision (Gagarin, space and all that) of the soviets that in reality was about bread queues and gulags. It just sounds great.
Don't knock the soviet style panel housing. I've lived in one in Hungary. It was excellent, like a vertical street. It's about the people that live there not the architecture.
Gulags didnt exist after the mid 50s...and the soviet people were better fed than americans according to cia documentation.
@@mikeyorkav4039 Better fed in what sense? Nutrition itself? Because the weight of Americans says everything about how much food they consume - and obesity has been a growing problem in this country for over 50 years. What about the Russians themselves who tell you of a gulag? What about the various slavs in the former Soviet states that absolutely hate everything resembling Communism because their ancestors lived in absolute poverty?
Crushing of the Budapest rebellion despite the fact it was organized by socialists, they just didn't pander to Soviet doctrine, Soviet doctrine being exclusively Soviet in nature and nothing else, it held no political nature of internationalism & actual socialism. Usage of tanks & heavy armor on civilians - crushing of the dissent in Warsaw prior to Poland splitting off from the Curtain?
Absolute state of the post-Soviet Russian countryside that left in all clarity what the Soviets had given to Russians as inheritance?
Quite frankly you have zero idea what you're fucking talking about, because you're not from Eastern Europe - I'm Polish, and you're Human trash for defending red fascism, because that's all Soviet bullshit was: red fascism.
So, in short, fuck you & do some research, and stop deepthroating dead Soviet boots that aren't ever coming back.
@@solar9610 absolute poverty? Lol. Everyone was fed, educated, had a home, job, infastructure, etc. They lost all that when they were tricked into free market western bullshit and the only things leeping russia or any soviet state afloat today is the remnants of the union...
@@solar9610 americans are fat because they dont consume real food...just empty carbs and sugar
@@solar9610 lol, i love that a pole is simping for america and the west in general when they were the ones who inspired and supplied the nazi fucks who were going to eradicate your entire nation.
Things were just better designed back in the day, that's it
In my opinion, Sovietware and the nostalgia for the Soviet past (mostly by people who never experienced it) is like a snake in a terrarium. It does not pose a danger, for it is contained, so we look it closely with curiosity. We can even make jokes with it.
We all are happy that nothing Soviet threatens us anymore (like those ugly, cold building aesthetics), so we look at them with a curious nostalgia. A safe "what if" set of thoughts.
10:30 I can compare my old russian panelka to german middle class housing that I live in currently.
To be honest, those Panelka's just look ugly on the outside, but flats are not that small in square meters, a little bit short ceilings like 2.5 meters, always warm in winters, much warmer than german flats, and if you renovate them in time they are very comfortable places to live.
The soviets won the space race, it's the western focussing on putting a man on the moon that has made people think otherwise.
Though this is a pretty silly way to look at it.
This is the first I'm hearing about Sovietwave but I'll be sure check it out.
I think Soviets are tied in the space race. They have more achievements than the US.
Humanity was the real winner of the space race
@@Melonist And also the loser, because it came to an end, we have not achieved what we truly could.
more like won, US only did one thing, and that was put a man on moon, which seems quite, sad considering soviets landed on venus with a machine
@@Melonist true
I grew up in a brutalist soviet-style city . I actually love brutalism style of architecture
Very interesting essay, congratulations.
Maybe I've got this wrong but for me, sovietwave isn't about a reminder of a glorious past or a desire for a future that never happened its upbeat synthy style mixed with its hyper nationalistic or nihilistic imagery (in the constant glorification of USSR in propaganda and also in scenes such as you discussed with the shadow of soviet architectural symbols of power) creates a poignant flavour of contradictions for me. As I interpret it, sovietwave (as it is produced in the context of the post-soviet world) is a realisation of a promise that was broken while it was still being made - that the world that was promised to the soviet citizen in their schooling and in the propaganda was never there; a facade for a world of forced deportations, killings and, yes, disappearances. Sovietwave always struck me as, in its sombre tune, hindsight in a collective realisation that the soviet world that its populace believed existed never did, all that beautiful art and culture were trying to mimic a world that wasn't there. In essence, sovietwave is like ripping off the bandaid. I like your last line "no matter what generation we are born in, we all stay dreamers" - to me sovietwave is that answer to the "good old days" perspective. That they're not real. We keep dreaming of whatever utopia looks like within the only contexts we've been given. Remembering that those that were in charge lied, and never got us there. But I expect my interpretation is different to many people.
When i think about soviet brutalist architecture i think about bald and bankrupt vloging in some suburb of kazan.
14:06 did the US win the space race?
I mean, yes, they landed people on the Mood, meanwhile Soviets lqnded first unmaned spacecraft on the Moon, made firat orbit around the Mood, firat fliby of Venus, first picture of the dark side of the Moon...
It's all about framing. The notion of "winning" itself implies this competitive mechanism true socialism has never striven for. It's only in the light of our late/post-capitalist mindset that we categorize the world around us into objectives, quotas, winning, losing. "Progress" was never about winning. Neither was the future. I think that's part of what makes the music connect with so many people nowadays - this awakening from an illusion of a capitalist utopia