Russian youth rebelled by embracing capitalistic values, American youth rebelled by embracing communist values. But everyone wanted to look like Elvis!
American youth embraced communist values? What were those? Do you mean that they supported such radical ideas as *gasp* allowing people to date across racial barriers?
@@mewmimo8465Oh? What do you call the hippies in Berkeley? Or the left-wing or communist-leaning terrorist groups of the time like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground? They were certainly not espousing capitalist ideology.
My mother studied Geography and in the course of her studies they traveled from Yugoslavia to the USSR several times (period of the late seventies) She told me how before going on train, all the students put on two or three jeans, one over the other and stuffed the pockets with chewing gum, and then when they arrive at their destination within the USSR, usually somewhere in Russia, they would literally sell the jean's and gums in a second, as soon as they got off the train, at the train station - and for that they received so much money that they could easily pay off their trip and the pocket money needed there. 😅 Obviously, the bans had the opposite effect on the youth, and Yugoslavia did that part incomparably better than other socialist and communist countries - freedoms were incomparably greater...
That's correct, you could buy music by Western artists in Yugoslavia, they didnt have such strict censorship as elsewhere, yet Yugoslavia was also Socialist.
I remember reading about the youth culture in Czechoslovakia from 1930s to the early 1950s called „Potápky“ which means "grebe birds in Czech, who were young men that frequented swing and jazz clubs and generally tried the emulate the style of young people in the United States and the United Kingdom, that were persecuted by the Nazis in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as anti-state elements. Funnily enough, they were also despised by the communists after the war with Rudé právo writing around the year 1946: "The only thing we could congratulate the fascists is the eradication of the Grebe birds. Sadly this plague on our society is returning, so we must eradicate them in the same way as during the war." Then, after the communists took power in 1948, these people were again persecuted by the state. This kinda caused that the Czechoslovak counter-culture in the early years of communist rule was basically the emulation of late 1930s western youth culture.
And later, in the 60s and 70s, there were the "Máničky". Meanwhile, in Poland, we had the "bikiniarze" and later basically an equivalent of every single one subculture present in the West. I hope this channel will continue to explore the western-influenced youth culture behind the Iron Curtain without limiting itself to just the USSR.
@@qZbGmYjS4QusYqv5 not all of it. Especially Gruppa Krovi and Boina. Khocu Peremen is still a screwy song out there. Putin will die, but Tsoi still lives. Even if it's only a few of his songs. Have hope. We know what the songs mean. That little rat doesn't.
@@joanmoriarity8738I think in the USSR, it had, apart from ideology, also a lot to do with an aging party leadership who were disconnected from the times. In early Soviet history, the 1920s, artists had pretty much the freedom to create what they liked, as time moved on, the leadership became increasingly cultural conservative
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Communist ideology started off with the idea that communism would be the natural progression and that the working class would willingly participate without being forced to. But whenever it got too much out of hand for the Soviet government they did enforce it. Then of course with Stalin it started to become much more forceful
@@Paciat you need some level of intelligence to come to that solution despite everyone around you thinking otherwise. It's easy to say it's obvious when you live in a world where it's normal to do that
@@tomlxyz Thats why politicians have advisors. But Kruschev is known for doing the wrong thing. Listening to a mob of people rather than intelligent advisors. And that is what communism was about. Thats why I think it was dumb.
For anyone interested, there’s a movie about this subculture of the same name (Stilyagi). It’s about the son of a Soviet diplomat who gets caught up in the ‘movement’ and wants to go to America and meet some ‘American Dandys’ firsthand. Apparently it’s something of a cult film within Russia.
There were so many Beatles puns in there at the end lol. I look forward to a future video about them and the USSR! Thank you very much for this one! God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
Great video, really enjoyed it. Ironically of the Stilyagi has been born and raised in the West they would have rebelled by joining the communist party 😊😊. Groovy man!
Soviet teen circa 1970(after drinking):Did you ever stop and think that maybe we're the real means of production man? Other teen(also drunk):That's real deep man.
I had a good collection of X-Ray samizdat records. I had the Beatles, the Monkees, the Partridge Family (!), and others - plus a bunch of Finnish, Roumanian, and Israeli ones (they didn't really try to stop the Monkees or the Patridge Family, since they were "almost wholesome", but you still had to slip the border guards on the train wodka or bubble gum or Hard Currency for them to look the other way). Once you had a decent collection, you got picky - the most sought-after "records" had skulls, ribs, or pelvises. Hands were big, too. You only traded for ones with OTHER bones if the music was super hard to get. Thanks to my mum's family being in the US, Israel, and Argentina AND her brother being a retired Red Army Colonel & BIG makher in the local Party of our city, AND my dad being the son of Italian Communists who had family in Jugoslavija & Italia, I admit I had a LOT more access to Western music than most. I loved going to see my family in Jugoslavija because the shops there were BURSTING with things unheard of in the USSR - and you could easily get Western records (I wish I'd been able to take my collection of awesome Jugoslav records with me when we got out of the USSR, to this day I love that rock music). We'd also get records by trading with visiting foreign kids when we were at Pioneer & Komsomol camps/trips/meetings - Roumanian rock was highly sought after because it was so amazing to us. Anyhow - sometimes we'd get a visit from the local Militia asking to look at our bedroom - everyone in town knew we had western contacts so we were easy prey BUT with my uncle's position they had to go gently. We'd leave out some of the X-ray "records" and they'd confiscate them (one of my best friends was the son of a Militia captain, he almost always wound up having the records that they'd "confiscated and destroyed" LOL Luckily my buddy would always make it up to me by letting me use their telephone or getting a slice or 2 of Doctorskaya from his mum who worked in a Gastronom). Sorry, rambling here, this brought back a lot of memories. THANKS!
Other countries of the bloc, such as Poland or Czechoslovakia, had much more liberal regimes and wider access to Western goods and culture so that this phenomenon was much more colorful and common there.
Not at first I think? I remember reading about people that had to smuggle in records of Western artists into Poland, as they were not allowed there. But I think, certainly in the GDR, but probably in Czechoslovakia too, these things were allowed eventually and they even began releasing albums from western artists themselves as they couldnt prevent the illegal trade any longer. But this began only like midway 1970s
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Even in 1950s few privileged people were going to the West on business trips, bringing back goods to trade them for some extra cash back home or simply just as gifts for relatives. It was not unusual for these people to be given shopping lists and money by others who could not go. A lot of these goods was brought in by sailors as Poland had considerable merchant navy back then. And later on, in 1970s there were also state currency shops where Western goods were available for US dollars or other currencies. Mind you, Rolling Stones played in Warsaw in 1967. Paul Anka, Charles Aznavour and few others also visited Poland in 1960s. It was not all as closed off as it may seem.
@@thatguyswavomeer mmm that's interesting, thanks for commenting. I visited the GDR-museum in Berlin, and there was also talk about the black market. But the government couldn't really do anything about it, so they sort of let it be. But yeah, it's a mistake to think about these countries having all the same policy on everything. There were quite some differences between them
A good movie released in Russia about the Stylyagi in the 2000s was released in the US under the title "Hipsters" The music is very retro and clips can be found on UA-cam
There is also a movie about this, called Stilyagi. I believe it's a Russian movie. I remember in 2015 in my high school in Ukraine we had a whole event themed after the movie.
The East German youths rebelled through a sort of underground punk rock culture. "Burning Down the Haus" bu Tim Mohr is an excellent read about this movement.
Would love to see how this story leads upto the biggest outdoor concert ever in '91 with AC/DC and Metallica 🤘. First time I saw footage of it was on a Pantera video of Domination
It would be the next generation. Not the silents and boomers, but their kids. And those kids will have a new kind of music that would frighten their parents with loud noises of electric guitars and explicitly call for action. Some of the local rock musicians would be seen as political figures, foreign ones as straight out Messiah. The economy would be falling apart, many would starve. 1985 onwards, the government didn't have power to censor anything, so previously censored burgeous, explicit and obscene content would be all around. Millions of young people would crave the forbidden fruit, so it would be the mainstream fashion. While stilyagi would be primarily about nice clothes, the new generation would focus on music and this music would power the destruction of the USSR like a political manifesto.
Thank you for the video! Still remember how I found Mother's and Uncle's old huge tapes where atop of plenum recordings someone put Boney M ) "Today, we gather to... Bahama! Bahama mama!"
People who were able to travel to Leningrad or Tallinn from Finland in Soviet times could party for days by trading some of their luggage. Especially jeans and stockings were in demand.
They also were free of the Stalinist terror apparatus because the soviets tried to liberalize a little in this time. They wouldn’t have dared before 1953 to do this
@@richardbrown892nah. Stilyagi were the guilded youth, who desired for fashion. Gopniks were the poor petticriminals that aspired of prison counter-culture, not those "fashionables".
Another part of this movement was the immense international popularity of the Twist, which began in the USA in 1960. Obviously this was suppressed in the USSR and I read that as the dance fad continued, the government attempted to control it by introducing acceptable Russian dances instead. These flopped. One of them was called the “Slag Heap”.
Could you start posting the sources for your information in the description? I want to do further reading and I like using the sources from videos like these
I’m both delighted and cringing at the burst of puns at the end. Unrelated: Where did you get the satirical comics of the Stilyagi? The art style rocks and I wanted to see more, so is there an archive somewhere?
Me, as Russian, very glad to see the video about Soviet era, which didn't show the USSR as "Evil empire" but tells about the Soviet culture. Even most of young people in Russia don't know the Soviet culture and followed by Western and 1990-th years propaganda. Thank you!
There was a great PBS docu back in the 90's about Soviet block countries going through a love affair with everything from the West. They showed the music & video bootleg industry at the time when VHS was the standard Not sure if its floating around on youtube but I would love to watch it again.
well, even when the communist bloc was still a thing, there were changes happening. Queen played in Hungary in 1986, Billy Joel famously did a few shows in the USSR in 88, I believe, there was the Moscow Metal festival in 89. It was good that these governments started to open up more
I have a photo of my Ukranian granddad when he was a teenager in the late 40's, posing in what would be considered a Stilyagi outfit back then - a trenchcoat and a fedora (film noire style), which would look great on an adult, but on a 15-ish y.o. looks rather awkward. He spent a few years in Berlin right after the war with his family (his dad was an engineer), and then went back home to study in Odesa.
Wow. This is AMAZING. I haven't read a history book since my 4th university dropout, but I think I'd read a secret history of the Soviet Union. I could yammer, but I'll share my top learnin' from this video below. My 'gast is completely FLABBERED to learn of Golden Dog. I'm inclined to think that there has never been anything in the west that's as much PURE UNCUT CRYSTAL PUNK as those people doing that in a place run by "Uncle" Joe Stalin. And I include the existence of DE-VO in my punk accounting. So you fucking KNOW I'm serious. If I had a god, I'd ask it to bless those brave absolute legends.
The Soviets did not have the advertising industry to co-opt youth culture. Instead, officlas, unable to control them, made them into enemies of the state: "Sevodnja on tantsuet Jazz, zavtra rodinu prodast!" ("Today he dances to jazz, tomorrow he betrays the Motherland!")
Idk how much this really happened. I know for a fact there really were lots of punk rockers in Moscow and Estonia in the 1980s。 But I suspect this stilyagi thing is mostly marketing hype, sort of like the doctors plot but with fashion.
Western music and fashion was allowed in the ussr from the late 50s to the 80s take my dad for example when he was growing up in the ussr in 60s 70s he used to listen to the Beatles which was popular back in the ussr 60 70s don't forget stuff like Levi jeans those stuff were hard to get unless if you went to a flea market or connections you knew from the west western fashion and music is still popular to this day in Russia hip hop and rap for example leggings pencil skirts mini skirts in regular and leather form don't clothes like baggy pants sport shoes like Nike and Adidas are popular still are don't forget sport track suits I heard they were back popular in the 80s 90s they still are wonder if hip hop fashion is popular in Russia talking about gold chains and t shirts caps with dollar signs and money on it we got these in the USA talking about hip hop fashion
two minutes in you say, "first things first" - dude! That is so not first! You're super adorable and the subject is super interesting, but I'm not watching more of this, cus the pacing is soo slow I just can't! 🐌🐌🐌
When people lived in caves and wore leopard skins, I have no doubt that teenagers wore their leopard skins upside down or wore lion skins instead to show how everyone rebellious, cool and different that they were.
Fascinating look at how things went on behind the Curtain. I think I'll try to replicate a Stylagi. I do have a question/ask for clarification; at 10:20, you mention that people thought the Stylagi were corrupting "Kultunost"... what is this? I'm seeing it as a reference to Stalinistic thought and government, but aside from that I'm not finding what it MEANS/
Kulturnost. Kultura is culture, including culture of behaviour. Kulturnost may be translated as "culturedness"? Public cultural awareness and proper conduction. Those fashionable youngsters probably didn't follow the etiquette appropriate in Soviet Union which included showing respect to the older people. They also probably violated the jeans ban. Other examples of violating kulturnost is littering, swearing, eating with hands (as opposed to using cutlery. Many western finger foods would be a violation of this thing).
@@Shinzon23yes. Kulturnost also involves general cultural education, such as knowledge of academical art, visiting theatres, museums, etc., as well as awareness of national cultures of primarily various Soviet etnnicities, reading good books the more the better. Not the worst value to have if you asked me.
It was a wonderful narration video about that phenomenon that occurred in the USSR during the Cold War years... that phenomenon that was noticed in the USSR. It's always occurring in totalitarian regimes... because family of political, economic, and religious elites are regarding themselves, and their classes are superiors over theirs inferiors populations .. similar to capitalized highly, oligarchs families...
So one thing on 08:45 - the idea that a subculture movement was more to seem cool than political is really the essence of “counterculture” in the west as well. This is explored in a fantastic book called “The Rebel Sell” (Joe Heath and Andrew Potter) that came out in the mid-2000s. Essentially there is no such thing as “co-opting” counterculture because both advertisers and the hipsters themselves are pursuing the same thing - distinction. (If you put it through an evolutionary lens, it’s essentially status-seeking that ultimately gets you laid). No matter how “political” they think they’re being. It’s the same reason activists take radical and obviously stupid positions on college campuses or social media now (“North Korea is actually good”, or “living in the US is worse than living in Iran” or whatever), because it makes them stand out, seem important, etc.
I have several colleagues at work who come from East Germany, they like to talk about their youth. It was easier to get Western music there. People were busy recording from the West German radio programme and a colleague of mine always wanted his great-aunt in West Germany to send him blank cassettes. She then smuggled (I think it wasn't quite legal?) the cassettes into the country when she visited East Germany. 😅 The Russian soldiers also always tried to get hold of Western music and brought the albums and cassettes back to the USSR. 🤭I was born in 1988, I don't know the Iron Curtain anymore and I always find the stories mega exciting.
I am curious about the "Khippi movement" in the USSR mirroring the hippies in the West... another thought... the "European Rainbow Gathering" in 1998 was held in western Russia but have heard no information on that other than young people dancing in a meadow while the Russian army observed from the tree line...
Hippi style was there, but more of a fashion, then a movement of nomads in vans. No vans owned by private people and no right not to work or not to go to the army. It was just another crazy youth fashion.
@@sivaratnamasabaratnam8946 1998 was a different case (not soviet) but generally everyone was busy with survival that day. Also: Soviets encouraged people to camp with tents as leisure, during holidays. Tourism with tents was a national sport back in the 60s and 70s. Bard music was popular back in the day amoung tourists, it would be played live and sang along. Allthough having similar phylosophy such as being one with nature and gathering outside, It doesn't "look" hippie in term of fashion though, more like "rough it" tourists with boots, big baggy backpacks and windproof jackets.
@@pauloakwood9208 thanks for the head's up. And no, it's not an insult, it's reality. Between 1933 and 1974 we were under a fascist dictatorship. Learn history.
@@jlvfr You were under an authoritarian government for sure. But please don't insult the memory of those who suffered and died under real fascist by equating your experience to theirs.
@@pauloakwood9208 wtf are you talking about?! Salazar & co were fascists; good budies of Hitler and Mussolini. Just because they didn't use the word didn't make them so. And what does this have to do with other people? I was just making the point that totalitarian governments don't like this from countries that are democracies.
I've always found it ironic that red-scare conservative capitalists and white-scare conservative stalinists had the same basic fear that culturally rebellious youth were an ideological threat. It's smart in a way - repurpose the older generation's fear of the novel to bolster ideological normativity, but then in the long run it has the negative effect of making the ruling ideology seem stiff, old fashioned, and excessively traditional.
Sometimes, the suggestions of the young are not worth implementing. Other times, they spot genuine room for improvement. The problem with the latter case is all the "that's how we have always done it!" And potential for personal interests in keeping the bad status quo.
Yes. The volunteer militia he mentioned totally made me think of this. I feel like in some alternate universe universe America we have a militia like oath keepers but they are hardcore stalinist militias.
Similarly in USA during 1940s there was "Zoot Suit" movement which was mostly Latin males that wore long pants and shirts and caused paranoid problem which was crushed by authorities.
Part of the problem with zoot suits during World War II in the USA was that fabric / clothing was rationed and using excessive amounts of cloth to make very long jackets or excessively wide pants was against government regulations. This being considered unpatriotic was the excuse gangs of military men used to attack and abuse Hispanic and Black young men dressed in zoot suits during the war.
I remember in about 1984-1986 cassette recorders became accessible in Russia, we, boys, were copying western music like Italo Disco. Then in 1989 first video cassette recorders appeared in Russia and the same copying happened with the US movies. That basically destroyed the Soviet culture, because Soviet music and movies simply could not compete, when it came to technical effects.
Russian youth rebelled by embracing capitalistic values, American youth rebelled by embracing communist values. But everyone wanted to look like Elvis!
Except the american ones didn't. Wish they did
American youth embraced communist values? What were those? Do you mean that they supported such radical ideas as *gasp* allowing people to date across racial barriers?
@@mewmimo8465Oh? What do you call the hippies in Berkeley? Or the left-wing or communist-leaning terrorist groups of the time like the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Weather Underground? They were certainly not espousing capitalist ideology.
@mewmimo8465 ok commie. Maybe the ruskies could use another stooge. Don't let the door hit ya homie.
@@mewmimo8465 Wish what? That they had looked like Elvis? Or embraced totalitarian control over every aspect of the lives of their fellow countrymen ?
I once read that the Soviets collapsed because of three things:
Jeans, The Beatles, and Coca Cola
My mother studied Geography and in the course of her studies they traveled from Yugoslavia to the USSR several times (period of the late seventies)
She told me how before going on train, all the students put on two or three jeans, one over the other and stuffed the pockets with chewing gum, and then when they arrive at their destination within the USSR, usually somewhere in Russia, they would literally sell the jean's and gums in a second, as soon as they got off the train, at the train station - and for that they received so much money that they could easily pay off their trip and the pocket money needed there. 😅
Obviously, the bans had the opposite effect on the youth, and Yugoslavia did that part incomparably better than other socialist and communist countries - freedoms were incomparably greater...
Yep. When living in West Germany I was advised to wear several pairs of jeans if visiting the East.
"Forbidden fruit is sweet".
very interesting...thanks for posting...:)
That's correct, you could buy music by Western artists in Yugoslavia, they didnt have such strict censorship as elsewhere, yet Yugoslavia was also Socialist.
I remember reading about the youth culture in Czechoslovakia from 1930s to the early 1950s called „Potápky“ which means "grebe birds in Czech, who were young men that frequented swing and jazz clubs and generally tried the emulate the style of young people in the United States and the United Kingdom, that were persecuted by the Nazis in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as anti-state elements. Funnily enough, they were also despised by the communists after the war with Rudé právo writing around the year 1946: "The only thing we could congratulate the fascists is the eradication of the Grebe birds. Sadly this plague on our society is returning, so we must eradicate them in the same way as during the war." Then, after the communists took power in 1948, these people were again persecuted by the state. This kinda caused that the Czechoslovak counter-culture in the early years of communist rule was basically the emulation of late 1930s western youth culture.
YEP! BLOODY TEENAGERS ARE THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.
And later, in the 60s and 70s, there were the "Máničky". Meanwhile, in Poland, we had the "bikiniarze" and later basically an equivalent of every single one subculture present in the West. I hope this channel will continue to explore the western-influenced youth culture behind the Iron Curtain without limiting itself to just the USSR.
Word "potápka" is czech name for grebe bird.
@@jirikajzar3247 Děkuji za doplnění informací. Pravda, dává to i větší smysl.
I really hope you'll make a video about Viktor Tsoi and Kino one day
Yes!
Hopefully so, Tsoi is a legend
I got into Kino and Soviet era rock because of Metro Exodus.
TSOI LIVES!!!!
Sadly, Tsoi music now is coopted by Putin's regime
@@qZbGmYjS4QusYqv5 not all of it. Especially Gruppa Krovi and Boina. Khocu Peremen is still a screwy song out there.
Putin will die, but Tsoi still lives. Even if it's only a few of his songs. Have hope. We know what the songs mean. That little rat doesn't.
So there was a period where the Soviet Union literally had a fashion police.
And they _still_ couldn’t stamp out their target.
It needed a discipline police. All of this unacceptable.
@@VinnyUnionAgreed. We need a police force to punish the disciplinarians, and protect the people's right to have fun.
@@joanmoriarity8738I think in the USSR, it had, apart from ideology, also a lot to do with an aging party leadership who were disconnected from the times. In early Soviet history, the 1920s, artists had pretty much the freedom to create what they liked, as time moved on, the leadership became increasingly cultural conservative
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Communist ideology started off with the idea that communism would be the natural progression and that the working class would willingly participate without being forced to. But whenever it got too much out of hand for the Soviet government they did enforce it. Then of course with Stalin it started to become much more forceful
What Kruschev said was smart. Saved cloth, and why not sell what the people want rather than go through the black market
Kruschev is a very smart man, he could improve life
Its not that Kruschev was smart, its that communism was dumb.
Prohibition rarely works
@@Paciat you need some level of intelligence to come to that solution despite everyone around you thinking otherwise. It's easy to say it's obvious when you live in a world where it's normal to do that
@@tomlxyz Thats why politicians have advisors. But Kruschev is known for doing the wrong thing. Listening to a mob of people rather than intelligent advisors. And that is what communism was about. Thats why I think it was dumb.
For anyone interested, there’s a movie about this subculture of the same name (Stilyagi). It’s about the son of a Soviet diplomat who gets caught up in the ‘movement’ and wants to go to America and meet some ‘American Dandys’ firsthand. Apparently it’s something of a cult film within Russia.
often packaged under name hipsters
It’s a great film. Making such a film in Russia these days would not be possible anymore.
It’s truly a relic of the Putin Thaw.
A cult film within Russia? No, it`s not. Just another antisoviet cr@p.
I love that movie. "Moulin Russkiy"
As someone from Iran, I see so many similarities between these two isolated countries
Rebellious Soviet youth using English loan words as slang is basically an inverted version of Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange
Stalinist Poland also had something similar. Here they were called "bikiniarze"
I was about to comment that! 😁
There were so many Beatles puns in there at the end lol. I look forward to a future video about them and the USSR! Thank you very much for this one!
God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)
Great video, really enjoyed it. Ironically of the Stilyagi has been born and raised in the West they would have rebelled by joining the communist party 😊😊. Groovy man!
Soviet teen circa 1970(after drinking):Did you ever stop and think that maybe we're the real means of production man?
Other teen(also drunk):That's real deep man.
I had a good collection of X-Ray samizdat records. I had the Beatles, the Monkees, the Partridge Family (!), and others - plus a bunch of Finnish, Roumanian, and Israeli ones (they didn't really try to stop the Monkees or the Patridge Family, since they were "almost wholesome", but you still had to slip the border guards on the train wodka or bubble gum or Hard Currency for them to look the other way). Once you had a decent collection, you got picky - the most sought-after "records" had skulls, ribs, or pelvises. Hands were big, too. You only traded for ones with OTHER bones if the music was super hard to get. Thanks to my mum's family being in the US, Israel, and Argentina AND her brother being a retired Red Army Colonel & BIG makher in the local Party of our city, AND my dad being the son of Italian Communists who had family in Jugoslavija & Italia, I admit I had a LOT more access to Western music than most. I loved going to see my family in Jugoslavija because the shops there were BURSTING with things unheard of in the USSR - and you could easily get Western records (I wish I'd been able to take my collection of awesome Jugoslav records with me when we got out of the USSR, to this day I love that rock music). We'd also get records by trading with visiting foreign kids when we were at Pioneer & Komsomol camps/trips/meetings - Roumanian rock was highly sought after because it was so amazing to us. Anyhow - sometimes we'd get a visit from the local Militia asking to look at our bedroom - everyone in town knew we had western contacts so we were easy prey BUT with my uncle's position they had to go gently. We'd leave out some of the X-ray "records" and they'd confiscate them (one of my best friends was the son of a Militia captain, he almost always wound up having the records that they'd "confiscated and destroyed" LOL Luckily my buddy would always make it up to me by letting me use their telephone or getting a slice or 2 of Doctorskaya from his mum who worked in a Gastronom). Sorry, rambling here, this brought back a lot of memories. THANKS!
Both informative and entertaining. Well done on a great documentary.
My uncle went to study in the USSR and he would bribe his professors for better grades with jeans and Western cigarettes.
Other countries of the bloc, such as Poland or Czechoslovakia, had much more liberal regimes and wider access to Western goods and culture so that this phenomenon was much more colorful and common there.
Are there any sources on this?
@@dylanrodrigues tbh it's common knowledge in Easter Europe.
Not at first I think? I remember reading about people that had to smuggle in records of Western artists into Poland, as they were not allowed there. But I think, certainly in the GDR, but probably in Czechoslovakia too, these things were allowed eventually and they even began releasing albums from western artists themselves as they couldnt prevent the illegal trade any longer. But this began only like midway 1970s
@@raymondhartmeijer9300 Even in 1950s few privileged people were going to the West on business trips, bringing back goods to trade them for some extra cash back home or simply just as gifts for relatives. It was not unusual for these people to be given shopping lists and money by others who could not go. A lot of these goods was brought in by sailors as Poland had considerable merchant navy back then. And later on, in 1970s there were also state currency shops where Western goods were available for US dollars or other currencies.
Mind you, Rolling Stones played in Warsaw in 1967. Paul Anka, Charles Aznavour and few others also visited Poland in 1960s. It was not all as closed off as it may seem.
@@thatguyswavomeer mmm that's interesting, thanks for commenting. I visited the GDR-museum in Berlin, and there was also talk about the black market. But the government couldn't really do anything about it, so they sort of let it be. But yeah, it's a mistake to think about these countries having all the same policy on everything. There were quite some differences between them
A good movie released in Russia about the Stylyagi in the 2000s was released in the US under the title "Hipsters" The music is very retro and clips can be found on UA-cam
Party on Comrades! 😅
Hi there, Channel.
This video is really great. Amazing. Very interesting topic. Outstanding report.
Greetings from Córdoba, Argentina
There is also a movie about this, called Stilyagi. I believe it's a Russian movie. I remember in 2015 in my high school in Ukraine we had a whole event themed after the movie.
The East German youths rebelled through a sort of underground punk rock culture.
"Burning Down the Haus" bu Tim Mohr is an excellent read about this movement.
Would love to see how this story leads upto the biggest outdoor concert ever in '91 with AC/DC and Metallica 🤘. First time I saw footage of it was on a Pantera video of Domination
It would be the next generation. Not the silents and boomers, but their kids. And those kids will have a new kind of music that would frighten their parents with loud noises of electric guitars and explicitly call for action. Some of the local rock musicians would be seen as political figures, foreign ones as straight out Messiah.
The economy would be falling apart, many would starve. 1985 onwards, the government didn't have power to censor anything, so previously censored burgeous, explicit and obscene content would be all around. Millions of young people would crave the forbidden fruit, so it would be the mainstream fashion.
While stilyagi would be primarily about nice clothes, the new generation would focus on music and this music would power the destruction of the USSR like a political manifesto.
That breakdown at the end of Domination was crazy. People walked for 4 days on foot to get to that show.
Thank you for the video!
Still remember how I found Mother's and Uncle's old huge tapes where atop of plenum recordings someone put Boney M )
"Today, we gather to... Bahama! Bahama mama!"
Ra Ra Rasputin!
People who were able to travel to Leningrad or Tallinn from Finland in Soviet times could party for days by trading some of their luggage. Especially jeans and stockings were in demand.
Those darn gum chewers always looking to overthrow the government. 🤣🤣🤣
Very good video! Looking forward to the one on the Leningrad Rock club!
I like your pfp
They also were free of the Stalinist terror apparatus because the soviets tried to liberalize a little in this time. They wouldn’t have dared before 1953 to do this
Rebel by destroying the bell button!
They couldnt have chewinf gum in the USSR?
Man i knew my elementary school was authoritarian
The records recorded on X-Ray film is one of the most metal things I have ever seen.
My grandpa used to listen to the Voice of America and managed to get a pair of jeans somehow in 1960's
I imagine an elderly ex-Stilyagi complaining about gopniks in their Addidas tracksuits as being hoodlums.
I wonder did Gopniks found inspiration from the Stilyagis.
@@richardbrown892there might be in the sense of rebellinf by getting western clothing.
@@richardbrown892nah.
Stilyagi were the guilded youth, who desired for fashion.
Gopniks were the poor petticriminals that aspired of prison counter-culture, not those "fashionables".
Gopniks and hard bass, perfect duo
Never heard about using x-ray prints to make vinyl records! That's based. xD
The first place l saw the use of the term stylagi was actually in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Another part of this movement was the immense international popularity of the Twist, which began in the USA in 1960. Obviously this was suppressed in the USSR and I read that as the dance fad continued, the government attempted to control it by introducing acceptable Russian dances instead. These flopped. One of them was called the “Slag Heap”.
I love the x ray records, holy shit that's awesome
Could you start posting the sources for your information in the description? I want to do further reading and I like using the sources from videos like these
I’m both delighted and cringing at the burst of puns at the end.
Unrelated: Where did you get the satirical comics of the Stilyagi? The art style rocks and I wanted to see more, so is there an archive somewhere?
The more I know about Khrushchev the more I like him. A monster, but interesting
He was on top so he was one of the few man in the USSR that could state his opinion freely.
He killed less people than the average american president
@@kollo3457You got any data to back that up?
Me, as Russian, very glad to see the video about Soviet era, which didn't show the USSR as "Evil empire" but tells about the Soviet culture. Even most of young people in Russia don't know the Soviet culture and followed by Western and 1990-th years propaganda. Thank you!
Fast forward 70 years from the heyday of the Stilyagi....nothing much has changed.
WE BLAMIN WESTERN PROPAGANDA AGAIN WITH THIS ONE🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥💯💯💯
There was a great PBS docu back in the 90's about Soviet block countries going through a love affair with everything from the West. They showed the music & video bootleg industry at the time when VHS was the standard Not sure if its floating around on youtube but I would love to watch it again.
well, even when the communist bloc was still a thing, there were changes happening. Queen played in Hungary in 1986, Billy Joel famously did a few shows in the USSR in 88, I believe, there was the Moscow Metal festival in 89.
It was good that these governments started to open up more
"Weren't exactly a counter-culture movement, because they didnt seek to actively oppose ofical authority..." never change russia, never change
"come together on the long and winding road and find ourselves back in the USSR" HELP!
Can you make video about pop culture in Yugoslavia
When i get center and Siberia Soviet not Eropa one
basically some links or citations to primary source materials would be good.
🇺🇸
for the next show , he better be dressed as a Stilyagi lmao
I see Mr. Putin was born Oct 7 1952 . . . . . .Hmmmmmm
I have a photo of my Ukranian granddad when he was a teenager in the late 40's, posing in what would be considered a Stilyagi outfit back then - a trenchcoat and a fedora (film noire style), which would look great on an adult, but on a 15-ish y.o. looks rather awkward. He spent a few years in Berlin right after the war with his family (his dad was an engineer), and then went back home to study in Odesa.
Wow.
This is AMAZING. I haven't read a history book since my 4th university dropout, but I think I'd read a secret history of the Soviet Union. I could yammer, but I'll share my top learnin' from this video below.
My 'gast is completely FLABBERED to learn of Golden Dog. I'm inclined to think that there has never been anything in the west that's as much PURE UNCUT CRYSTAL PUNK as those people doing that in a place run by "Uncle" Joe Stalin.
And I include the existence of DE-VO in my punk accounting. So you fucking KNOW I'm serious.
If I had a god, I'd ask it to bless those brave absolute legends.
The Soviets did not have the advertising industry to co-opt youth culture. Instead, officlas, unable to control them, made them into enemies of the state:
"Sevodnja on tantsuet Jazz, zavtra rodinu prodast!" ("Today he dances to jazz, tomorrow he betrays the Motherland!")
Idk how much this really happened. I know for a fact there really were lots of punk rockers in Moscow and Estonia in the 1980s。 But I suspect this stilyagi thing is mostly marketing hype, sort of like the doctors plot but with fashion.
So they had an actual fashion police in the USSR!
"The Gilded Youth" Some pigs are more equal than others.
Beetles and ussr sounds like a cool video topic. Please make
Western music and fashion was allowed in the ussr from the late 50s to the 80s take my dad for example when he was growing up in the ussr in 60s 70s he used to listen to the Beatles which was popular back in the ussr 60 70s don't forget stuff like Levi jeans those stuff were hard to get unless if you went to a flea market or connections you knew from the west western fashion and music is still popular to this day in Russia hip hop and rap for example leggings pencil skirts mini skirts in regular and leather form don't clothes like baggy pants sport shoes like Nike and Adidas are popular still are don't forget sport track suits I heard they were back popular in the 80s 90s they still are wonder if hip hop fashion is popular in Russia talking about gold chains and t shirts caps with dollar signs and money on it we got these in the USA talking about hip hop fashion
I really like how this channel talks about both sides of the Cold War without descending into didactic progandada.
I would recommend you to check the effect of the singer RAPHAEL in the USSR around the 60s
two minutes in you say, "first things first" - dude! That is so not first!
You're super adorable and the subject is super interesting, but I'm not watching more of this, cus the pacing is soo slow I just can't! 🐌🐌🐌
fwiw the movie Stilyagi is a good movie worth watching, though it is at least somewhat unrealistic.
I love this channel!
When exactly did the Gopnik/Gopnitsa subculture come in?
When people lived in caves and wore leopard skins, I have no doubt that teenagers wore their leopard skins upside down or wore lion skins instead to show how everyone rebellious, cool and different that they were.
I would love to watch a movie about these soviet youth. Does such thing exists?
Yes. It's called Стиляги
0:42 - they made it clear that, “we’re not gonna take it, anymore….”
Fascinating look at how things went on behind the Curtain. I think I'll try to replicate a Stylagi. I do have a question/ask for clarification; at 10:20, you mention that people thought the Stylagi were corrupting "Kultunost"... what is this? I'm seeing it as a reference to Stalinistic thought and government, but aside from that I'm not finding what it MEANS/
Kulturnost.
Kultura is culture, including culture of behaviour. Kulturnost may be translated as "culturedness"? Public cultural awareness and proper conduction.
Those fashionable youngsters probably didn't follow the etiquette appropriate in Soviet Union which included showing respect to the older people. They also probably violated the jeans ban.
Other examples of violating kulturnost is littering, swearing, eating with hands (as opposed to using cutlery. Many western finger foods would be a violation of this thing).
@@annasolovyeva1013 ah, so it was a typo.
@@Shinzon23yes.
Kulturnost also involves general cultural education, such as knowledge of academical art, visiting theatres, museums, etc., as well as awareness of national cultures of primarily various Soviet etnnicities, reading good books the more the better. Not the worst value to have if you asked me.
@annasolovyeva1013 You think the soviets would want people to *not* read,so they weren't educated and would rely on the state for guidance
The outro made up of Beatles song titles was one of the cheesiest things I've ever heard!
It was a wonderful narration video about that phenomenon that occurred in the USSR during the Cold War years... that phenomenon that was noticed in the USSR. It's always occurring in totalitarian regimes... because family of political, economic, and religious elites are regarding themselves, and their classes are superiors over theirs inferiors populations .. similar to capitalized highly, oligarchs families...
I like the irony of the communists who fight destroy capitalism end up becoming a political class: The Party Class.
The USSR was literally destroyed in order for the elite to live better than ordinary workers. The highest paid job in the USSR is a miner.
They listened to rock and roll music and wanted to dance
Channel: life of boris
Clip title adidas
Lol I liked your ending
"Nothing says 'effete capitalist parasite' like a pack of Chiclets."
There is a movie entitled 'Stilyagi' on youtube. It's a polished Russian production, something like "Grease" but in the USSR.
So one thing on 08:45 - the idea that a subculture movement was more to seem cool than political is really the essence of “counterculture” in the west as well. This is explored in a fantastic book called “The Rebel Sell” (Joe Heath and Andrew Potter) that came out in the mid-2000s. Essentially there is no such thing as “co-opting” counterculture because both advertisers and the hipsters themselves are pursuing the same thing - distinction. (If you put it through an evolutionary lens, it’s essentially status-seeking that ultimately gets you laid). No matter how “political” they think they’re being.
It’s the same reason activists take radical and obviously stupid positions on college campuses or social media now (“North Korea is actually good”, or “living in the US is worse than living in Iran” or whatever), because it makes them stand out, seem important, etc.
UGH! ITS NOT A PHASE COMMISSAR!
I have several colleagues at work who come from East Germany, they like to talk about their youth. It was easier to get Western music there. People were busy recording from the West German radio programme and a colleague of mine always wanted his great-aunt in West Germany to send him blank cassettes. She then smuggled (I think it wasn't quite legal?) the cassettes into the country when she visited East Germany. 😅 The Russian soldiers also always tried to get hold of Western music and brought the albums and cassettes back to the USSR. 🤭I was born in 1988, I don't know the Iron Curtain anymore and I always find the stories mega exciting.
Do a video on Rock and Roll in the USSR
That's a beautiful quote about The Beatles. Music is the weapon of peace ✌️
Todays youth does not rebel
I am curious about the "Khippi movement" in the USSR mirroring the hippies in the West... another thought... the "European Rainbow Gathering" in 1998 was held in western Russia but have heard no information on that other than young people dancing in a meadow while the Russian army observed from the tree line...
Hippi style was there, but more of a fashion, then a movement of nomads in vans. No vans owned by private people and no right not to work or not to go to the army. It was just another crazy youth fashion.
@annasolovyeva1013 He was just a rainbow boy uttered his eagerness to booster it!😀
@@sivaratnamasabaratnam8946 1998 was a different case (not soviet) but generally everyone was busy with survival that day.
Also: Soviets encouraged people to camp with tents as leisure, during holidays. Tourism with tents was a national sport back in the 60s and 70s. Bard music was popular back in the day amoung tourists, it would be played live and sang along. Allthough having similar phylosophy such as being one with nature and gathering outside, It doesn't "look" hippie in term of fashion though, more like "rough it" tourists with boots, big baggy backpacks and windproof jackets.
Another popular subculture of 90-00s related to hippies are Tolkienists.
Basically: Tolikien fan LARPing hippies.
Interesting!
Stealargi kick ass.
Cool is a culture.
Fun fact: the facist government in Portugal also hated US fashion and music...
If you are going to insult a country comrade. Learn to spell first.
@@pauloakwood9208 thanks for the head's up. And no, it's not an insult, it's reality. Between 1933 and 1974 we were under a fascist dictatorship. Learn history.
@@jlvfr You were under an authoritarian government for sure. But please don't insult the memory of those who suffered and died under real fascist by equating your experience to theirs.
@@pauloakwood9208 wtf are you talking about?! Salazar & co were fascists; good budies of Hitler and Mussolini. Just because they didn't use the word didn't make them so. And what does this have to do with other people? I was just making the point that totalitarian governments don't like this from countries that are democracies.
@@jlvfr LMFAO!
Soviet Hipsters😂
On a note, do you think it would be worth making a video on the Youth Festival you mentioned?
I've always found it ironic that red-scare conservative capitalists and white-scare conservative stalinists had the same basic fear that culturally rebellious youth were an ideological threat. It's smart in a way - repurpose the older generation's fear of the novel to bolster ideological normativity, but then in the long run it has the negative effect of making the ruling ideology seem stiff, old fashioned, and excessively traditional.
the red scare was justified
Sometimes, the suggestions of the young are not worth implementing. Other times, they spot genuine room for improvement. The problem with the latter case is all the "that's how we have always done it!" And potential for personal interests in keeping the bad status quo.
@@kittycatwithinternetaccess2356Nope
@@fantuswitt9063Yes, it was. The Soviets had spies everywhere, even in the Manhattan Project
Yes. The volunteer militia he mentioned totally made me think of this. I feel like in some alternate universe universe America we have a militia like oath keepers but they are hardcore stalinist militias.
Those albums on X-ray prints was such an epic idea.
"Records on ribs", eh? Getting close to spooky season.
GREAT STUFF
Similarly in USA during 1940s there was "Zoot Suit" movement which was mostly Latin males that wore long pants and shirts and caused paranoid problem which was crushed by authorities.
There was also a Zoot suit movement in France and in Quebec back then.
Part of the problem with zoot suits during World War II in the USA was that fabric / clothing was rationed and using excessive amounts of cloth to make very long jackets or excessively wide pants was against government regulations. This being considered unpatriotic was the excuse gangs of military men used to attack and abuse Hispanic and Black young men dressed in zoot suits during the war.
I remember in about 1984-1986 cassette recorders became accessible in Russia, we, boys, were copying western music like Italo Disco. Then in 1989 first video cassette recorders appeared in Russia and the same copying happened with the US movies. That basically destroyed the Soviet culture, because Soviet music and movies simply could not compete, when it came to technical effects.
nice
How we put music into X-rays?
That bone music looks hard af
Shoes for Industry, Komrade
I really like this man's channel.