The Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960–1985
Related Topics: Communism, Russia and Eurasia, Ukraine
How did rock music and other products of Western culture come to pervade youth culture in Brezhnev-era Dniepropetrovsk, a Ukrainian city essentially closed to outsiders and heavily policed by the KGB? In Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, Sergei I. Zhuk assesses the impact of Westernization on the city's youth, examining the degree to which the consumption of Western music, movies, and literature ultimately challenged the ideological control maintained by state officials. One among many of his stories is how the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar led Dniepropetrovsk's young people to embrace not just one, but two Soviet taboos: rock music and Christianity.
This book is the first historical study—in any language—of the everyday lives of Soviet urban youth during the Brezhnev era. A longtime student and resident of Dniepropetrovsk, Zhuk began research for this project in the 1990s. Weaving together diaries, interviews, oral histories, and KGB and party archival documents, he provides a vivid account of how Soviet cultural repression and unrest during the Brezhnev period laid the groundwork for a resurgent Ukrainian nationalism in the 1980s. In so doing, he demonstrates the influence of Western cultural consumption on the formation of a post-Soviet national identity.
What People are Saying
"Sergei Zhuk's illumination of youth culture in a provincial and closed Ukrainian city draws on a fascinating breadth of sources—archival documents, diaries, oral histories, and KGB intelligence. Zhuk shows how, despite the efforts of ideological officials and the paranoia of the KGB, the Soviet state fought a losing battle of accommodation and compromise against Western cultural influences. These influences, however, served to bolster as much as undermine Soviet ideology. Zhuk reconfigures Brezhnev-era society to reveal a more contradictory and multifaceted history than one usually encounters."—Kate Brown, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Chapter List
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Back in the USSR—The "Glory Days" of Late Socialism, Fascination with the West, Identities, and Scholar
1 The Closed Rocket City of Dniepropetrovsk
Part I. The "Beating" 1960s: From the Khrushchev Thaw to the Brezhnev Doctrine
2 Anti-Soviet Crimes, Poetry, and Problematic Nationalism,1960–1968
3 The Campaign against the Novel Sobor and the End of the National Literary Revival
4 The First Wave of Music from the West: The Consumption of Jazz
5 Beatlemania, Shocking Blue, and the Ukrainian Cossacks
6 Sources of Rock Music Consumption
Part II. The Hard-Rocking 1970s: The Beginning of Mass Westernization
7 Western Adventure Stories and Ukrainian Historical Novels: Problems of the Homogenization of Soviet Culture
8 Crimes from the West: Westerns, the Mafia, and Crime Films
9 Idiocy and Historical Romance from the West: Comedy and Historical Films
10 The Democratization of Rock Music Consumption
11 Popular Religiosity in the Dniepropetrovsk Region: Cultural Consumption and Religion
Part III. The "Disco Era," Antipunk Campaigns, and Komsomol Business
12 Taming Pop Music Consumption: From "Tantsploshchadka" to Discotheque
13 The Komsomol Magazine Rovesnik and the Ideology of Pop Music Consumption
14 Antipunk Campaigns, Antifascist Hysteria, and Human Rights Problems, 1982–1984
15 Tourism, Cultural Consumption, and Komsomol Business
Conclusion: "Between Moscow and L'viv"—The Closed City as an Ideological Failure of Late Socialism
Appendix: The Methodology for the Interviews
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
