Yurchak
argues in Suspending the Political: Late
Soviet Artistic experiments on the Margins of the State that Soviet youth
during the Soviet Union were not particularly interested in politics. They were
neither for or against the system and did not bother to engage in it. They’d
rather engaged in escapist activities, such as listening to rock music.
Ironically enough, the Soviet authorities also engaged in rock music, but not
for escapist reasons.
It would seem logical that since
Soviet rock music did not engage with politics, that the Soviet politicians
would not engage with or censor rock music. It simply had
nothing to fear, since rock music was more concerned with the human condition
and issues faced throughout history, not only or necessarily in their own
context. Furthermore, people of that milieu thought of themselves as being
inherently different from ordinary Soviet people. This could be because rock music was
an import from the West, and therefore they unknowingly identified themselves
with those ideas. However, these could be just the reasons
Soviet authorities intervened in rock music and went as far as censoring it.
One
of the measures they took was subsidizing the group Happy Guys, which was intended to be a group with positive messages
about the Soviet Union and with a presentable appearance (Ramet & Zamascikov). It is possible that through
this, the Soviet authorities tried to engage the a-political youth in the
Soviet Union and make them more aware of the benefits of their society. In this
way, the youth should not feel the need to escape and listen to Western ideas. This
promotion of political bands above ‘real’ rock bands could be seen as
censorship, since the Soviet authorities made a political issue which was in
the first place not intended to be political.
However, in the end it would not matter how many
regulations the authorities took against this genre - they even went so far as
to prohibiting it – rock music still enjoyed enormous popularity.
Sources:
Ramet, Pedro,
and Sergei Zamascikov. "The Soviet rock scene." The Journal of Popular Culture 24.1 (1990): 149-174. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1990.00149.x/abstract
Yurchak, Alexei. "Suspending the Political: Late Soviet Artistic Experiments on the Margins of the State." Poetics Today 29.4 (2008): 713-733.
You state that Rock music was also an escape for the Soviet Youth and I was wondering if that philosophy has any ties to the mit'ki movement? As they were also trying to stay out of the political spheres completely. You also speak of that "rock music was more concerned with the human condition and issues faced throughout history, not only or necessarily in their own context" however you seem to skip over the tremendous influence rock music had and it's role as a form of public opinion. You then argue that the Soviet regime made it a political issue. However, since it had such a tremendous influence on the mindset and ideas of the youth in the Soviet Union, I would argue that it was already politicized from the beginning. "[t]he social and psychological impact of rock on youth is tremendous - just as is the devotion to it. This inevitably makes rock lyrics a special form of public opinion" (Zaitsev, Buser, Linnik 13).
ReplyDeleteI haven't made it very clear in my blogpost, but yes, rock music was politicized the moment it was introduced in the Soviet Union. Soviet authorities did not allow the state record company Melodiya to record rock bands or even distribute that kind of music for example. I think they made it a political issue because it was a Western export. However, Gorbachev was more open minded about rock ‘n roll. It can even be said that he was sympathetic towards this genre when looking at the extent of liberalization in official policies towards it (Ramet & Zamascikov 165).
DeleteTo be fair, I don't know if mit'ki has any ties to the Soviet rock scene. The only strong link I can think of is that they both arose in Leningrad. However, I think that while mit'ki tried to distance themselves from society almost completely, the rock group scene was more seeking for a temporary escape.