Russia's Youth and its Culture

Russia's Youth and its Culture
Author: Hilary Pilkington
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134876432

Since the political whirlwinds of the mid-1980s and the fall of communism in 1991, Russia has undergone dramatic social change, much of which has escaped the attention of Western media. In her new book, Hilary Pilkington applies the methods of cultural studies research to the study of Russian youth. She does this by `deconstructing' the social discourses within which Russian youth has been constructed and by providing an alternative reading of youth cultural activity, based on an ethnographic study of Moscow youth culture at the end of the 1980s. The book also charts the passage of western youth cultural studies in the twentieth century and suggests some new ways forward in the light of the Russian experience. Hilary Pilkington traces the cultural themes of youth culture in the Anglo-American tradition and within the Soviet Union, before examining the impact of perestroika on the media and its ramifications for the discussion of youth. The book ends with a study of young people in Moscow and youth cultural groups; the product of field work and interviews in the city.

Looking West?

Looking West?
Author: Hilary Pilkington
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2002
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0271021861

Russian youth culture has been a subject of great interest to researchers since 1991, but most studies to date have failed to consider the global context. Looking West? engages theories of cultural globalization to chart how post-Soviet Russia&’s opening up to the West has been reflected in the cultural practices of its young people. Visitors to Russia&’s cities often interpret the presence of designer clothes shops, Internet caf&és, and a vibrant club scene as evidence of the &"Westernization&" of Russian youth. As Looking West? shows, however, the younger generation has adopted a &"pick and mix&" strategy with regard to Western cultural commodities that reflects a receptiveness to the global alongside a precious guarding of the local. The authors show us how young people perceive Russia to be positioned in current global flows of cultural exchange, what their sense of Russia&’s place in the new global order is, and how they manage to &"live with the West&" on a daily basis. Looking West? represents an important landmark in Russian-Western collaborative research. Hilary Pilkington and Elena Omel&’chenko have been at the heart of an eight-year collaboration between the University of Birmingham (U.K.) and Ul&’ianovsk State University (Russia). This book was written by Pilkington and Omel&’chenko with the team of researchers on the project&—Moya Flynn, Ul&’iana Bliudina, and Elena Starkova.

Russian Culture in the Age of Globalization

Russian Culture in the Age of Globalization
Author: Vlad Strukov
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2018-12-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317235584

This book brings together scholars from across a variety of disciplines who use different methodologies to interrogate the changing nature of Russian culture in the twenty-first century. The book considers a wide range of cultural forms that have been instrumental in globalizing Russia. These include literature, art, music, film, media, the internet, sport, urban spaces, and the Russian language. The book pays special attention to the processes by which cultural producers negotiate between Russian government and global cultural capital. It focuses on the issues of canon, identity, soft power and cultural exchange. The book provides a conceptual framework for analyzing Russia as a transnational entity and its contemporary culture in the globalized world.

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc
Author: William Jay Risch
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-12-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0739178237

Youth and Rock in the Soviet Bloc explores the rise of youth as consumers of popular culture and the globalization of popular music in Russia and Eastern Europe. This collection of essays challenges assumptions that Communist leaders and Western-influenced youth cultures were inimically hostile to one another. While initially banning Western cultural trends like jazz and rock-and-roll, Communist leaders accommodated elements of rock and pop music to develop their own socialist popular music. They promoted organized forms of leisure to turn young people away from excesses of style perceived to be Western. Popular song and officially sponsored rock and pop bands formed a socialist beat that young people listened and danced to. Young people attracted to the music and subcultures of the capitalist West still shared the values and behaviors of their peers in Communist youth organizations. Despite problems providing youth with consumer goods, leaders of Soviet bloc states fostered a socialist alternative to the modernity the capitalist West promised. Underground rock musicians thus shared assumptions about culture that Communist leaders had instilled. Still, competing with influences from the capitalist West had its limits. State-sponsored rock festivals and rock bands encouraged a spirit of rebellion among young people. Official perceptions of what constituted culture limited options for accommodating rock and pop music and Western youth cultures. Youth countercultures that originated in the capitalist West, like hippies and punks, challenged the legitimacy of Communist youth organizations and their sponsors. Government media and police organs wound up creating oppositional identities among youth gangs. Failing to provide enough Western cultural goods to provincial cities helped fuel resentment over the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, and encourage support for breakaway nationalist movements that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Despite the Cold War, in both the Soviet bloc and in the capitalist West, political elites responded to perceived threats posed by youth cultures and music in similar manners. Young people participated in a global youth culture while expressing their own local views of the world.

Russian Culture

Russian Culture
Author: Margaret Mead
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781571812308

This volume brings together two classic works on the culture of the Russian people which have been long out of print. Gorer's Great Russian Culture and Mead's Soviet Attitudes towards Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character were among the first attempts by anthropologists to analyze Russian society. They were influential both for several generations of anthropologists and in shaping American governmental attitudes toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War period. Additionally they offer fascinating insights into the early anthropological use of psychological data to analyze cultural patterns. Read as part of the history of the anthropology of complex contemporary societies, they are as fascinating for their more questionable conclusions as for their accurate characterizations of Russian life.

Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities

Cultural Diversity in Russian Cities
Author: Cordula Gdaniec
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2010
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781845456658

Cultural diversity---the multitude of different lifestyles that are not necessarily based on ethnic culture---is a catchphrase increasingly used in place of multiculturalism and in conjunction with globalization. Even though it is often used as a slogan it does capture a widespread phenomenon that cities must contend with in dealing with their increasingly diverse populations. The contributors examine how Russian cities are responding and through case studies from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, and Sochi explore the ways in which different cultures are inscribed into urban spaces, when and where they are present in public space, and where and how they carve out their private spaces. Through its unique exploration of the Russian example, this volume addresses the implications of the fragmented urban landscape on cultural practices and discourses, ethnicity, lifestyles and subcultures, and economic practices, and in doing so provides important insights applicable to a global context. --Book Jacket.

Socialist Fun

Socialist Fun
Author: Gleb Tsipursky
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2016-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822981254

Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture. The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands of clubs where young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device. Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin's paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community—all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad.

Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia

Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2018-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004366679

In Cultural and Political Imaginaries in Putin’s Russia scholars scrutinise developments in official symbolical, cultural and social policies as well as the contradictory trajectories of important cultural, social and intellectual trends in Russian society after the year 2000. Engaging experts on Russia from several academic fields, the book offers case studies on the vicissitudes of cultural policies, political ideologies and imperial visions, on memory politics on the grassroot as well as official levels, and on the links between political and national imaginaries and popular culture in fields as diverse as fashion design and pro-natalist advertising. Contributors are Niklas Bernsand, Lena Jonson, Ekaterina Kalinina, Natalija Majsova, Olga Malinova, Alena Minchenia, Elena Morenkova-Perrier, Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, Andrei Rogatchevski, Tomas Sniegon, Igor Torbakov, Barbara Törnquist-Plewa, and Yuliya Yurchuk.

Russian Children's Literature and Culture

Russian Children's Literature and Culture
Author: Marina Balina
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2013-02-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1135865566

Soviet literature in general and Soviet children’s literature in particular have often been labeled by Western and post-Soviet Russian scholars and critics as propaganda. Below the surface, however, Soviet children’s literature and culture allowed its creators greater experimental and creative freedom than did the socialist realist culture for adults. This volume explores the importance of children’s culture, from literature to comics to theater to film, in the formation of Soviet social identity and in connection with broader Russian culture, history, and society.

Food in Russian History and Culture

Food in Russian History and Culture
Author: Musya Glants
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 1997-08-22
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 9780253211064

This Collection of Original Essays gives surprising insights into what foodways reveal about Russia's history and culture from Kievan times to the present. A wide array of sources - including chronicles, diaries, letters, police records, poems, novels, folklore, paintings, and cookbooks - help to interpret the moral and spiritual role of food in Russian culture. Stovelore in Russian folklife, fasting in Russian peasant culture, food as power in Dostoevsky's fiction, Tolstoy and vegetarianism, restaurants in early Soviet Russia, Soviet cookery and cookbooks, and food as art in Soviet paintings are among the topics discussed in this appealing volume.