Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (62 page)

The
stiliagi’
s decision to dress, dance, and talk in a manner which explicitly associated them with the despised Cold War enemy might be considered an act of anti-Soviet subversion. They drew on the iconography of America, in part, because it was the target of official opprobrium.
^{186
In that sense, the celebration of all things Western and American was a}

^{181
Mem. Aksenov,}
Melancholy Baby,
13.

^{182
Mem. Kosternia,}
Diary of Nina Kosterina
100; A. Gorsuch, ‘Flappers and Fox- trotters: Soviet Youth in the “Roaring Twenties”’,
The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and
East European Studies, 1102 (1994).

^{183
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 283, l. 105.}

^{184
Mem. Kozlov suggests that there were some who invoked British, Italian, or Social}
Democratic styles but this was certainly much less common: Kozlov,
Kozel
, 82–3.

^{185
Mem. Aksenov,}
Melancholy Baby
, 12; Fu¨rst, ‘The Importance of Being Stylish’, 224; Edele, ‘Strange Young Men’, 38–9.

^{186
J. Hough,}
Russia and the West: Gorbachev and the Politics of Reform
(London, 1990), 28.

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
203

direct challenge to the language and categories of the official press. Aksenov
described his
stiliaga
experience in these terms: ‘When you think about it the
stiliagi
were the first dissenters.’ He claims that they were caught up in the ‘romance of counterrevolution’.
^{187
Valentin Tikhonenko shared that}
assessment, describing his
stiliaga
lifestyle in the later 1950s as a ‘sharp political protest’.
¹⁸⁸

However, there may be an element of romantic post-rationalization
in both Aksenov’s and Tikhonenko’s assessments. Their lifestyles did not necessarily put them outside of the Soviet habitat, but rather on a continuum with many other Soviet young people who enjoyed Ameri- can movies or jazz, without dressing as
stiliagi
. If enjoying foreign cultural media was resistance, then almost all Soviet youths were resis- tors. Many
stiliagi
only ‘styled’ at the weekend and lived as conventional Soviet citizens the rest of the time. Not many of them took the definitive step of changing their hairstyle on a permanent basis.
^{189
Natan Leites}
recalled that his appreciation for jazz in the 1950s did not undermine his sense of affiliation to the Soviet state: ‘The music was attractive. I was a pretty “red” person, or pink. At any rate I believed in socialism.’
¹⁹⁰

The
stiliagi
lifestyle was largely a social, rather than political state- ment. Out of 20,000 case summaries in the state procuracy files from 1945–53, the term ‘style’ only appears twice; jazz appears once. The Moscow circle described above are the only group of
stiliagi
in the entire collection, and their prosecution may well have been launched in connection with the attempts by some members to find employment at the US Embassy.
^191
Stiliagi
were more likely to be confronted in the street by regular Soviet citizens than the police.
^{192
Valentin Tikhonenko}
claims that the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and
militsia
related to them as ‘naughty children’. They did not ‘beat people for having thin trousers’.
^{193
Boris Pustyntsev’s description of his run-ins with the local}
Komsomol, who patrolled the streets cutting the hair of
stiliagi
, sound more like youthful inter-gang violence than political protest.
¹⁹⁴

^{187
Mem. Aksenov,}
Melancholy Baby,
18–19.

^{188
Mem. Guk, ‘}
Tarzan
v svoem otechestve’.

^{189
Mem. Kozlov,}
Kozel
, 81.

^{190
Mem. Chernov, ‘Klub Kvadrat: Dzhaz Shmaz i normalnye lyudi’,}
Pchela,
11 (St Petersburg: October-November 1997).

^{191
Proc. GARF f. R8131, op. 31a, d. 19091.}

^{192
Troitsky,}
Back in the USSR,
3.

^{193
Guk, ‘}
Tarzan
v svoem otechestve’.

^{194
F. Kaplan, ‘Soprotivlenie na nevskom prospekte’,}
Pchela
, 11 (St Petersburg, 1997).

204
Being Soviet

The
stiliagi
inverted societal conventions primarily in order to assert their distinctiveness from other Soviet citizens.
^{195
Their invocation of}
American style and public self-parading expressed their disdain for the conventionality of their peers, rather than a renunciation of the values of

the Soviet system. Aksenov described the experience as a ‘great carnival’,
Valentin Tikhonenko claimed that the ‘primary issue was spectacle’, and Kozlov claims that the main purpose was to show how different you were from the rest of the population.
^{196
His father disapproved of his}
lifestyle but was also prepared to buy some of the clothes he wore; dances such as ‘foxtrots and tangos were not quite banned but not recommended’.
^{197
The centrality of social rather than political com-}
ment is also demonstrated by the emergence of new subcultures in the early 1950s, as the
stiliagi
became increasingly ‘mainstream’. The ‘Shtatniki’, whose name derived from the Russian for United States, were a newly exclusive group who attempted to recapture the counter- cultural spirit of the early
stiliagi
.
^{198
When the rock movement arrived}
in the 1960s, the
stiliagi
became cliche
^{´
d and outmoded.
199
The Soviet}
rock movement was a ‘visceral rather than political experience’ and, in the same way, the
stiliagi
were communicating primarily with their

peers rather than making political statements about Soviet power.
²⁰⁰

If there was a political element to the
stiliagi
lifestyle it was in the assertion that their conduct was not political. They enjoyed American style, music, and dance without stepping outside of the Soviet habitat. It is tempting to argue that their behaviour was a struggle over the boundaries between public and private.
^{201
Some of my interview}
respondents, both
stiliagi
and non-
stiliagi
remembered post-war events in these terms.

^{195
On the place of shopping and clothing within identity construction see:}

1. Tomlinson, ed.,
   Consumption, Identity, and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the
   Packaging of Pleasure (London, 1990).
   

   ^{196
   Mem. Aksenov,}
   Melancholy Baby,
   17; Guk, ‘
   Tarzan
   v svoem otechestve’; Kozlov,
   

   Kozel
   , 76–84.
   

   ^{197
   Mem. Kozlov,}
   Kozel
   , 70, 80–1.
   

   ^{198
   Mem. Ibid. 82–3; Fu¨rst ‘Importance of Being Stylish’, 218.}
   

   ^{199
   Troitsky,}
   Back in the USSR
   , 12–13; Ryback,
   Rock Around the Bloc: A History of
   Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Oxford, 1990).
   

   ^{200
   Ryback,}
   Rock Around the Bloc
   , 34.
   

^{201
On the challenges of using the ‘public’ ‘private’ dichotomy within Soviet history}
see: M. Garcelon, ‘The Shadow of the Leviathan: Public and Private in Communist and Post-Communist Society’, in J. Weintraub and K. Kumar, eds.,
Public and Private in
Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy (Chicago, 1997), 303–31.

Subversive Styles? 1945–53
205

It was totally stupid. An instrument cannot be bad; it can only be played
badly.
²⁰²

It was idiocy . . . Only here in Russia did they try to tell people what music they
were allowed to dance to.
²⁰³

Music and dancing was my space and nobody can take it away from you.
²⁰⁴

However, the parading nature of the
stiliagi
lifestyle suggests that their behaviour would be better described as a contest over the boundaries of Sovietness. They were not retreating from the view of Soviet power into private space. Instead they visibly asserted that the definition of what could and could not be Soviet should be broad enough to embrace their lifestyle.

SOVIET MENTALIT E´ DURING THE EARLY COLD WAR: FOREIGN CHIC

^{AND FOREIGN QUALITY}

Post-war cultural and scientific disengagement from the Western world
did not remove America and the West from the symbolic arena of Soviet life. On the contrary, America, in particular, was discussed more often and with greater vigour in the Soviet press once it became an object of denunciation in the post-war years. American characters became arche- typal negative types in Soviet movies at the same time as Soviet citizens were being isolated from real Americans themselves. Western and American culture became more, rather than less, important within the symbolic and cultural world of late-Stalinism.

The appeal of capitalist-made movies, music, clothes, and cars
reflected to some degree the scarcity of these resources in the post- war Stalin-era. However, by physically isolating its population from capitalist culture, the Soviet regime contributed to its exotic associa- tions. Wartime contact with Anglo-American servicemen and mass media had reinforced pre-existing ideas about the glamorous nature of the Western world. These associations did not simply evaporate in the face of the new version of Official Soviet Identity. For some indivi- duals this resulted in little more than simply enthusiasm for foreign

^{202
Int. Igor Pavlovich, Moscow, August 2005.}

^{203
Int. Svetlana Ivanovna, Moscow, July 2004.}

^{204
Int. Kira Pavlovna, Moscow, August 2005.}

206
Being Soviet

movies. Others, in the comparative isolation of the post-1947 USSR,
seized on any means they could in order to associate themselves with the glamorous capitalist West. The
stiliagi
’s Tarzan hairstyles asserted the glamorous exclusivity and distinctiveness of both the individual and their social group. America became a marker for exoticism, despite, or maybe because of, the limited information they actually had about it.
²⁰⁵