‘Looking West?
Youth and cultural globalisation in post-Soviet Russia’
Presented to panel on
‘Youth in contemporary Russia’
BASEES Conference, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge,
27-29 March 1999
This is unpublished work in progress, please do not cite without permission of the
author
Hilary Pilkington
CREES
The University of Birmingham
52 Pritchatts Rd
Edgbaston
BIRMINGHAM
B15 2TT
‘Looking West?
Youth and cultural globalisation in post-Soviet Russia’1[1]
Identity formation occurs within communities but in the late
twentieth century the factors that shape identities increasingly
transcend the boundaries of locale. (Liechty 1995: 167)
Talk of ‘globalising’ processes which shape our economy, society and
everyday cultural interactions has become commonplace in the west in the last
decade of the twentieth century. This talk - especially of cultural globalisation
- is frequently discussed at the macro, theoretical level only, however, and the
relationships between individual, community, national and global identities are
rarely discussed in their full complexity. This paper argues that this failure, in
part at least, is embedded in the occidentalist nature of theories of cultural
globalisation themselves consolidated by limited empirical research rooted in
(‘peripheral’) locale as opposed to (western) centre. This paper attempts to
redress that balance. The first section of the paper addresses the general
problems raised by applying cultural globalisation theory to the particular case
of Russia. The second section draws on fieldwork conducted in three Russian
cities between September 1997 and April 1998 to explore what actually
happens to global cultural products in the everyday cultural practice of young,
1[1]
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the CREES Annual
Conference, Cumberland Lodge, Great Windsor Park, June 1998.
urban, provincial Russians. On the basis of this empirical research, the third
section addresses the question of cultural globalisation directly by analysing
how young people adopting different youth cultural strategies perceive and use
cultural products from ‘the west’ and what this might tell us about where they
see Russia as placed within, or indeed outside, current global cultural
networks.
Cultural globalisation: Structure, power and agency
Even before Russian reality is permitted to sully western theory, attempting to
operationalise contemporary globalisation theory in the study of non-western
youth cultural practice casts doubt on the universality of two aspects of that
theory: the centre to periphery model of cultural exchange which underpins it;
and the agency, often unconsciously, attributed to youth in globalisation
processes.
Cores and peripheries
Although cultural globalisation is a process, it also has a structure. This
structure is generally described in terms of the relationship between
centres/cores and peripheries; a relationship premised not on functionality but
on power. At best, globalisation is assumed to come about via a lopsided
process of cultural exchange between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ (Hannerz 1991).
At worst, globalisation is posited as consisting of a one-way flow of
commoditised culture from core to periphery whose end result is world-wide
cultural homogenisation. In its latter (political economy or modernist) guise
cultural globalisation might be more crudely termed ‘Western cultural
imperialism’ or ‘Americanisation’. In its former (post-structuralist)
manifestation, globalisation theory suggests that greater cultural interaction at
the global level, on the contrary, could lead to greater toleration of diversity
and the release of local differences. In this interpretation globalisation -
accompanied by localisation - might in fact counteract the homogenising
tendencies of nation-statism which have driven the search for coherent cultural
identities over the last two centuries (Featherstone 1995: 89).
Models of global cultural ‘homogenisation’ and of ‘diversification’
are, in practice, little more than ideal types and theorists of cultural
globalisation who retain a connection to ‘the field’ have sought more sensitive
ways of conceptualising the outcome of ‘one-way’ cultural exchange. The
most resonant of these theoretical resolutions are cultural ‘hybridization’ (Hall
1990: 234; Bhabha (ed.) 1990; Clifford and Marcus (eds)1986) and
‘maturation’ or ‘creolization’ (Hannerz 1992: 264). The concepts of
creolization and hybridization envisage a process whereby the periphery
receives but reshapes the metropolitan culture to its own specifications
thereby allowing for a model of cultural exchange in which the ‘periphery’
shows culturally differentiated responses to the western version of modernity
being exported without ignoring the actuality of the power relations involved
in (especially economic) globalisation.
Despite this apparent resolution, the core/periphery model of cultural
exchange remains problematic. In practice ‘reworkings’ of contemporary
western cultural messages are not spontaneous but already filtered through
state level ideology and the experiences, memories, imaginations and fantasies
that accumulate individually and collectively. The subjective positioning of a
particular nation state within the world order is thus central to making cultural
sense of globalisation processes.2[2] In the case of Russia this subjective
positioning is highly complex since past experience, memories and
imaginations associated with cultural isolationism and ‘most developed
country’ ideology,3[3] are now challenged by conflicting messages of rapid
and ‘catch up’ entry into global markets and communications networks. At the
same time the political collapse of the USSR makes the promotion of a
distinct, coherent, post-imperial but ascendant Russian national identity high
on the government’s list of priorities.
In studying actual cultural practice of young people on ‘the periphery’
therefore, it is essential that we recognise that they are not naive day-trippers
to a western wonderland but approach western cultural messages through
layers of imaginations and fantasies, especially in relation to their images of
‘the west’. The failure to recognise or study this fantasy level of cultural
globalisation stems from globalisation theory’s inherent occicentrism. While
2[2]
This is, rather surprisingly, ignored by most theorists of cultural
globalisation. Liechty’s study of youth experience in Kathmandu is a rare
exception (Liechty 1995).
3[3]
I use this term in direct contrast to Liechty’s characterisation of Nepalese
national identity as forged around a notion of ‘least developed country’
(Liechty 1995: 168).
the west is just beginning to perceive the impacts of ‘globalisation’, the ‘west’
has been present (physically and symbolically) for those outside ‘the core’ for
much longer (King 1995: 123; Morely and Robins 1995: 217-8).
The core-periphery model of global cultural exchange is further
problematised in the case of Russia in that the latter’s large domestic market
for cultural products - together with her diaspora in the ‘near abroad’ and, to a
lesser extent, beyond - allows Russia to export as well as import culture. In
effect Russia is simultaneously both core and periphery. Moreover, the sheer
size and geographic placement of the country, together with past policies of
controlled modernisation and movement have created well-defined, internal
notions of centre and periphery, having concrete manifestation in different
levels of access and response to global cultural flows. Indeed, Russia’s entry
to ‘the west’ may take a variety of forms: consumer commodity flows come
primarily not from the west but from the east (clothes bought by young people
come mainly China and Turkey, for example ) whilst global flows in what
Appadurai refers to as the ideoscape (Appadurai 1990: 308) come from
America and, to a lesser extent, Europe.
It was one of the aims of the empirical project described below,4[4]
therefore, to explore whether the inclusion of the subjective level (what we
have called ‘images of the west’) in the study of the contemporary cultural
4[4]
The fieldwork referred to in this paper was undertaken as part of the
project ‘Looking West? Reception and resistance to images of the west among
Russian youth’ under the joint management of the author and Dr Elena
Omel’chenko of Ul’ianovsk State University with the financial support of the
Leverhulme Trust. We are grateful to the trust for its support of our work.
practice of Russian youth can sharpen our understanding of concrete processes
of cultural ‘hybridization’.
Globalisation and agency: A special role for youth?
It is worth at least noting here that, despite widespread socio-cultural
stereotypes about the relationship between youth, modernity and progress,5[5]
young people are not essentially and necessarily more receptive to
globalisation processes. Our expectation of young people’s ‘receptivity’ to
global culture stems from the positioning of youth in late-industrial societies
as consumers of precisely that part of culture which is most strongly
associated with the trans-national flow of cultural commodities, that is popular
culture (Hannerz 1992: 239). The stereotype is reinforced by a perceived
generation gap in some areas of social and cultural experience, especially
media and IT familiarity. In reality, however, there is a frequent lack of natural
fit between youth and agency for cultural change. In fact, on the contrary,
ethnographic studies suggest that youth can adopt culturally conservative
practices (Caputo 1995; James 1995; Pilkington 1996). Moreover, while
globalisation theory provides an alternative to attributing a ‘marginal’
(whether that margin be interpreted as socially vulnerable or culturally
progressive) position to youth in specific (national) cultures, at the same time
we cannot detach youth cultural practice from the discursive positioning of
youth in a particular community. The range of cultural situations and
5[5]
This association exists in both western and Soviet paradigms of
modernity.
exchanges on offer to young people in different social localities varies and
both this actuality, and the awareness of it, will shape the cultural practice
adopted by young people.
An essentialised view of youth as situated at the leading edge of a new
stage of modernity will bring only self-satisfied confirmations of a global
youth culture; for we will recognise only that which we are looking for. In
contrast, a genuine cross-cultural study of youth cultural practice affords an
excellent opportunity to chart the reworkings of global messages at a local
level and thus contribute to attempts to understand better the relationship
between production, text, reading and lived culture in the cultural process.
Russian youth cultural practice: The impact of cultural globalisation
The empirical project from which the data presented below is taken was
designed to work simultaneously at two levels. Firstly it seeks to map,
compare and contrast reception and resistance to western cultural products
(texts, images, cultural commodities) being accessed by young people in both
the capital and provincial cities in Russia. Secondly, it explores youth cultural
practice, that is how cultural products and messages originating in the west are
reworked into the everyday cultural practice of Russian youth. It is this second
level of the work that is addressed in this paper.6[6]
6[6]
Although the research employed a triangular method of data gathering -
using an interview based survey, focus groups and in-depth interviews - the
material drawn on here comes primarily from the latter. Ethnographic
interviews were conducted with young people aged 15-25, accessed at a range
of sites: schools, dvory, clubs and courses for young people, cafes, discos and
well-known sites for hanging out. These sites were chosen using local
informant knowledge and with regard to gaining a cross-section of youth
Mapping youth cultural worlds
Figures 1 ,
constitute a preliminary attempt to give visual shape to how
young people in the three cities of our fieldwork (Moscow, Samara and
Ul’ianovsk) talk about the cultural worlds they inhabit.7[7] Although the
main focus of the project is the spatial variation in contemporary youth
cultural practice, there are a number of general definitional issues which merit
a preliminary note.
Neformaly and tusovki
There has been a fundamental shift in the meaning of the signifier neformaly
in the last decade due to the changes which have ensued from the sudden
including both those active on the youth ‘subcultural’ scene and those who
spent their free time at more organised sports or leisure activities or at home or
in the dvor. The activities in which the young people were involved were
observed, at the time of interview and before or afterwards. Interviews were
taped (except in one case at the request of the respondent) and ethnographic
notes recorded. Repeat interviews were conducted with about one third of
respondents. A total of forty-one young people were interviewed in this way in
Ul’ianovsk during September and October 1997, twenty-two in Moscow in
January 1998 and thirty-seven in Samara in April 1998. In addition a number
of expert interviews were conducted with DJs, young journalists, club
promoters and organisers in each of the three cities.
7[7]
Respondents were specifically asked about their leisure time activities,
their friends and the places they hung out rather than their work and family
lives. The diagrams thus represent not all of the cultural space they inhabit, but
that part which is relatively uncontrolled by the social institutions which
usually shape young people’s lives (school, college, family, work place).
dismantling of barriers to the import of cultural commodities (material and
ideological) from the west since 1991. The term ‘neformaly’ was originally a
label rather than a term of authentic self-identification - since it was invented
precisely by the formal structures (political institutions, media etc.) to describe
those with whom they had lost touch - but it was quickly adopted by those on
the youth cultural scene and thus subsequently acquired authenticity. Today
the division between formaly and neformaly is no longer meaningful, although
the term neformaly does retain significance.
In smaller provincial cities, such as Ul’ianovsk, the youth cultural
world remains bifurcated between neformaly and anti-neformaly, where the
latter are not formaly, but gopniki,8[8] or territorial gang formations. Indeed,
the tusovka9[9] (central to Moscow and St Petersburg ‘informal’
communication) was never the dominant mode of interaction in Ul’ianovsk;
the city conformed rather to the Volga model of territorial gang formation of
which the ‘Kazan’ phenomenon’ is the most widely publicised (Pilkington
1994: 141-60; Omel’chenko 1996). Even today, although it is possible to
locate tusovki in central cafes and on central squares in Ul’ianovsk,
respondents repeatedly referred to the absence of the range of styles and
movements they knew to exist in other cities. There is rather a single, central
8[8]
‘Gopniki’ is a term widely used by young people to refer to provincial (or
capital peripheral) ‘louts’ who gather around the courtyard of their blocks of
flats, close to their school or in the basements of one of their houses and
whose hostility towards ‘alternative’ (tusovka) youth often brings them into
physical conflict with them.
9[9]
Tusovki are centrally located, style-based youth cultural formations. Their
members are not necessarily from privileged backgrounds but their claiming
of space in the centre of cities certainly signifies an upwardly-oriented strategy
and desire to leave the territorial gang formations of the periphery.
tusovka composed of hippies, punks, heavy metal fans and rock musicians
who may be collectively referred to as neformaly (see Figure 1). In Samara, a
larger but nonetheless provincial Volga city, individual, style-based tusovki
are distinct but there is recognition of a commonality between neformaly (see
Figure 2). In Moscow, in contrast, individual tusovki are significantly more
established and independent of one another (hence the depiction of individual
groups outside rather than inside the neformaly box in Figure 3) and there is
much wider reference to differentiation, even, conflicts between neformaly
groups (for example between rappers and ravers) than elsewhere.
Gopniki
Gopniki (also known as gopa and gopota) are increasingly difficult to define.
This is partly because the term is completely non-authentic; it is used by those
in centrally-based tusovki of those who make their lives on the street difficult.
It is not used, and often not even recognised, by those who are labelled as
gopniki by others. While in Ul’ianovsk gopniki remain the significant ‘other’
to neformaly, in the larger cities of Samara and Moscow gopniki no longer
make their presence felt in the way they did in the late 1980s and early
1990s.10[10] Some gopniki have been incorporated into more widely
accessible forms of popular youth culture (such as the rave scene, see
10[10]
Even in Ul’ianovsk there has been a recent decline in internecine
warfare between gruppirovki based on territorial affiliation. This is attributed
by some to more effective action by the police, by others to the greater use of
drugs by gopniki which, in contrast to alcohol use which often incited conflict,
has a mellowing effect.
below),11[11] but their gradual demise is largely attributable to economic
change. The peculiar nature of the Russian market has meant that the black
market operators of the late Soviet period have merged with the gopniki to
produce new figures on the youth cultural scene: byki, bandity, brigady, novie
russkie and britogolovie12[12] (see Figures 1, 2 and 3). The terms bandity and
brigady are particularly common in Ul’ianovsk where respondents see a direct
age progression out of gopniki into brigady and bandity and almost always
equate the latter with ‘new Russians’. In Moscow and Samara this is not the
case. In Samara, for example, the term ‘new Russians’ was used very rarely as
respondents talked rather about ‘bogatie’ in a much more value-neutral way.
In attempting to give structure to the amorphous youth cultural scene,
however, it is important not to label all non-neformaly as gopniki (as tusovka
respondents tend themselves to do). There are very many young people in
Russian cities who spend most of their time in the dvor or in friendship groups
who have no interest in a particular genre of music or style and prefer to listen
to pop music (usually a mixture of Russian and western) and/or are engaged
in more or less organised sports or other leisure activities. These young people
cannot be labelled ‘gopniki’ unless they have a strong anti-neformaly
orientation and are thus included as separate entities in the diagrams.
11[11]
‘Byki’, however, are not depicted as overlapping with the dance/club
scene (see Figure 3) as, although they frequent expensive night-clubs, their
use of them is not related to any interest in dance music.
12[12]
This term is used like ‘lysie’ to signify tough, small-time racketeers or
other ‘businessmen’ but is also used by those on the neformaly scene as a
direct translation of ‘skinheads’ in the western sense.
Clubbers and the dance scene
The major new addition to the youth cultural scene since 1991 are those
associated with the dance or club scene: ‘ravers’ (reivera), ‘clubbers’
(klabera), ‘progressives’ (progressivy), ‘acid heads’ (kislotniki), and ‘freaks’
(friki). Usage of these terms varies between cities and types of youth and in
Moscow, in particular, there are additional sub-categories related to those who
follow specific kinds of music, for example, jungle (dzhunglisty), or hard-core
(khardkorshchiki). The emergence of a plethora of venues for young people to
meet, dance, drink and have fun has significantly changed the youth cultural
maps of Russian cities and, for this reason, it is the dance/club scene upon
which the rest of this paper focuses.13[13]
Dance music/ the club scene
If the tusovki of the late 1980s and early 1990s hung out in city squares, metro
stations and parks, then today’s followers of the latest music trends have been
(partially at least) displaced into the controlled environments of night-clubs.
While it is tempting to see the arrival of clubs in Russia as evidence of the
direct import of a commercialised, corporatised, western youth culture, the
spatial stratification of the club scene and the localised uses of the music
13[13]
Strictly speaking the rap and hip-hop movements have also become
established since my fieldwork in 1991 (Pilkington 1994) and in part overlap
with the dance and club scene whilst retaining also a distinct identity as ‘street
cultures’. They have never become as popular as rave or rock across the youth
scene as a whole, however.
which is played there suggests a more complex reworking of dance music in
urban provincial Russia than one might expect.
The club scene is most developed in Moscow where clubs, as in the
west, cater for a range of musical tastes and scenes; from expensive, but
mainstream, progressive house mixed with pop (Utopia, Metelitsa), designer
and trendy (Titanik, Master) to lesser known youth-oriented clubs where the
music (jungle, drum and bass, gabba, hardcore, trance) is harder (Plasma,
Luch (formerly Ptiuch), Les ).14[14] Young promoters use these clubs -
especially in the early evening (until 11pm) - to put on their own particular
sets, make their names and give their particular tusovki a base. There is also a
vibrant ‘alternative’ scene in Moscow. Clubs such as Krizis Zhenra, Vermel’,
4 komnati, Ne bei kopytom, and, increasingly, Propaganda, pride themselves
on providing a space for live bands to play and a relaxed, unthreatening, even
semi-intelligentsia atmosphere. The gay and western ex-pat scenes also have
particular homes; the former at Shans, Chameleon, Kino Imperiia and,
increasingly, Liuch, the latter at the infamous Canadian-owned Golodnaia
Utka and the more expensive Mankheten Ekspress. Flier and face control
systems are well-established and many clubs are free or have minimal
entrance charges unless there is a special event taking place.
In Samara the club scene has developed rapidly over the last eighteen
months (when the first clubs opened). There are currently two youth-oriented
14[14]
The club scene is of course rapidly changing and clubs open and close
temporarily and permanently constantly. The individual clubs referred to here
related to the situation in Moscow in January 1998, Samara in April 1998 and
Ul’ianovsk in September-October 1997.
clubs - Aladdin and Tornado - which charge from $1-$5 entrance fee when
there is a visiting DJ from Moscow or St Petersburg.15[15] There are four
expensive central clubs for new Russians with money (Mankheten, Dzhungli,
Eqvator and, the latest addition, Aisberg) which charge $10-$15 for entrance
at weekends, although these clubs do stage live gigs which attract youth and
on cheap midweek nights a youth crowd may gather. There are also a number
of more peripheral clubs drawing specific crowds (e.g. Sandra and Panter)
and local ‘houses of culture’ across the city hold discos at weekends.
In Ul’ianovsk it is hard to talk of a ‘club’ scene as such although there
are around twenty DJs in the city dividing up work in the six clubs/discos
(Sensatsiia, DK Chkalova, KT ‘Pioner’, U Ivanova, Pilot, Sev Klub) and
developing their own ‘alternative’ projects usually on specific nights at these
venues. The distinction between clubs and discos is significant; the term
klabera (see Figure 2), for example, was not used in Ul’ianovsk. The failure of
a club culture to develop in Ul’ianovsk - despite the wide popularity of ‘rave’
music - is explained by three factors:
•
Physical environment.
The buildings currently being used for the dance scene in Ul’ianovsk are old
‘houses of culture’ or ‘youth palaces’, constructed to Soviet dimensions and
far more suited to their current daytime use (for example children’s ballet
classes) than their weekend, evening use as discos. There is no possibility
of housing different types of music (for example ambient or trance) in
15[15]
All clubs in Samara also operate special rates for students via a ‘student
disco card’ scheme.
different rooms and bar areas are limited and often unpleasant. The large
halls mean minimal interaction with the DJ and too much space to ‘lose
yourself’ in the mass. A greater self-awareness (consciousness) in dance
practice results, reinforced by the ubiquitous mirrors, towards which
dancers gravitate to check out their movements. The less commercial clubs
in Samara share some of these problems; Tornado is housed in a
refurbished cinema and Aladdin is situated within the much larger DK
Zvezda. Nevertheless they are refurbished and now have exclusive use as
clubs.
•
Political/economic climate
In Ul’ianovsk there is significant resistance on the part of the local
administration to private enterprise which makes it difficult to gain the
permission necessary to open clubs. In addition a plethora of local
administrative ‘norms’ mean that discos are only allowed to stay open
until 11pm and that teenagers under 16 years of age are not allowed on the
street after 9pm (unless accompanied by an adult).16[16]
•
Socio-cultural climate
The extreme conservatism in economic reform and highly paternalistic social
policy in Ul’ianovsk has minimised the differentiation in income and social
stratification which has overtaken many of Russia’s large cities. Consequently
there is a general perception that the prime users of clubs and discos are
16[16]
In Autumn 1997 we found that even those discos and clubs which were
surviving were under threat from a new directive from the regional governor
which sought to return the buildings to their original usage.
bandity rather than ‘normal’ youth which deters the latter. In contrast, young
people in Samara are more likely to aspire to having ‘proper’ clubs (on a par
with Moscow) and, although respondents clearly distinguish between those
who go to night-clubs because they have money rather than when they have
money, they tend to characterise them scornfully as ‘diadinki i tetinki s
bolshimi puzami’ rather than as threatening individuals spending ill-gotten
gains.
‘Clubbers’ and ‘ravers’: one music, two narratives
Undoubtedly the dance (rave)17[17] scene has saturated the Russian youth
cultural scene unlike any previous youth cultural trend from the west. Given
the almost complete lack of vinyl culture in Russia prior to 1991 and the
ongoing technical lag (in Ul’ianovsk DJs do not even have turntables to work
from), it is also more directly derivative than most of its predecessors. ‘Rave’
has been adopted in its post-subcultural (commercialised) form and although
two well-publicised open-air rave events take place annually (one in St
Petersburg and one in Crimea) these are well marketed, corporate affairs and
very far from the original rave scene. There are still only a handful of Russian
dance music labels (all based in Moscow or St Petersburg) and very few
17[17]
Rave, as understood in the UK, is a global dance party; the music comes
from a mix of Acid House from Chicago, techno from Detroit and garage from
New York but took off in Britain as an attempt to recreate a Mediterranean
(Ibiza) holiday experience (Rietveld 1993: 41). Rave (reiv) in the Russian
sense is a generic term for a range of electronically created music styles
ranging from progressive house and hip hop to hardcore techno, jungle and
trance. It is a club-based scene which has been around in Moscow and St
Petersburg since the early 1990s but arrived in provincial cities from 1996.
musicians create their own compositions as opposed to producing
compilations for release on compact disc or tape.
This is all rather predictable; what is interesting about rave in Russia
are the different ways in which it has been appropriated and worked into
existing youth cultural strategies. ‘Rave’ in urban, provincial Russia has two
distinct narratives and in the process of unravelling them it becomes clear that
rave culture acts not as alternative to, but within pre-existing Russian youth
cultural practices.
The clubbers’ story: Rave as tusovka
The tusovka narrative of rave is centred not on ‘rave music’ but club life; it is,
to quote a 19 year old male clubber from Samara, ‘a way of life’, ‘a whole
youth culture’ [237]18[18]. It centres on those who work in clubs (DJs,
promoters, club dancers) and those around them. Club-going is often
combined with active, creative or money-making activity such as DJing,
dancing,19[19] flier distribution or promotion. Proximity to the core of the
tusovka thus allows ‘access’ to cultural events central to tusovka life, just as it
did in the 1980s. Indeed current club prices make this function of the tusovka
even more important, as one 16 year old female clubber from Moscow
explained:
18[18]
Respondents are identified by the codes assigned to them for analytic
purposes.
19[19]
A number of respondents performed regular slots in clubs designed to
provide visual stimulation as well as encourage dancing from the floor.
... in the Teatral’naia tusovka20[20] every
second person is a DJ, every third is a promotor,
those who organise [the parties/club nghts] and
every second [sic] is a dancer. This means you
can get in free practically anywhere you want to.
[54]
The clubbers’ narrative of rave is based on who you know (the
tusovka) but also what you know; being up on the latest developments in the
electronic music scene and ahead of the ‘mainstream’ is central to tusovka
hierarchy. In contrast to the ‘neformaly’, however, there is relatively little
internal differentiation within the scene along, for example, musical lines. In
Moscow those who preferred jungle and hardcore techno were singled out,
but, in general, clubbers like to think of themselves as above petty divisions
and identify simply as ‘progressivy’ or ‘prodvinutie’, opposing this to
unenlightened ‘locals’ who ‘listen to pop’.
In line with tusovka strategy, these young people are drawn to ‘the
centre’. Even if the clubs preferred are not located in the centre of the city (as
for instance with the smaller alternative clubs in Moscow), then the tusovka
gathers centrally (for example, at Teatral’naia metro station) before going on
to the club. For clubbers in the provinces, Moscow and St Petersburg are the
20[20]
This refers to the tusovka meeting place at metro station Teatral’naia in
Moscow; a practice also continued from the early tusovki of the 1980s.
tangible centre,21[21] while those in Moscow make trips to the west
(especially London, Amsterdam and Germany) to gather records, equipment,
clothes and ideas. Fliers and posters promoting club nights draw on ideas from
Moscow and western clubs and often use the English language in pure and
russified form. Much club slang is of English derivation (friki, flaer, chil-aut)
and DJs adopt names often with reference to the west, for example, DJ E, DJ
Baks, DJ Slem, DJ Jemp. Despite this centripetal pull, however, only in
Ul’ianovsk did young people characterise their own city as impeding their
cultural practice, declaring the city to be ‘provincial’, ‘backward’,
‘unprogressive’, ‘conservative’, ‘red’ and ‘inhibited’ (zakompleksovanii). In
sharp contrast, Samara was described as enjoying the perfect combination of
the buzz of a large city and the friendly, caring atmosphere of a provincial
town; almost all respondents in Samara said they would be happy to spend the
rest of their lives in the city. In Moscow, moreover, it appeared a matter of
pride to insist that there was no lag in dance culture between Moscow and the
rest of Europe. One 17 year old who was organising his own jungle nights
stated:
With regard to England, for example, in jungle
culture we don’t lag behind at all, we have
everything that is in England, all the records, we
order them from England...our friends bring
them...[60]
21[21]
As one respondent in Samara noted, ‘I try to live like in Moscow’ [237].
For
tusovka clubbers style is an individual matter with no strict rules.
Most attention is paid to footwear and the battle between lovers of Grinders
and Doctor Martens is already well-established. Creating your own image is
important and there are discernible styles amongst clubbers (unisex style, body
piercing and the extravagant club creations of the ‘friki’) but most tusovka
clubbers adopt a comfortable dress style which mixes (often second hand)
designer labels with clothes borrowed or bought in local shops or
markets.22[22] Unlike neformaly, respondents from the club scene did not
report conflicts arising with other youth as a result of their style; one male
respondent in Samara did note that he had had questions about his ‘sexual
orientation’ because of his unisex style of dress, but appeared not at all
unnerved by this.
The dance scene does differ from the tusovki of the 1980s, however.
Internal communication within the group is more exclusively focused on
dance and music than many earlier tusovki and thus sites of tusovki are
established in a more goal-oriented manner.23[23] The new economic
circumstances of Russia mean that those on the club scene are likely to fuse
their ’fun’ with some form of income generation (main or supplementary) and
thus the activity takes on a different meaning. The siting of youth cultural
activity in clubs, where spaces are often strictly controlled by security
22[22]
The skill of second-hand buying is already well-developed in Moscow
and Samara and the clothes come mainly from Europe, especially Germany as
‘humanitarian aid’ according to those who engage in second-hand buying. The
art of shop-lifting expensive club gear was reported only in Moscow.
23[23]
Clubs are chosen on the basis of who and what is likely to be playing on
a particular night.
personnel, money and cultural capital, also has a significant impact on the
mode of communication which takes place.24[24] Nevertheless, for the
section of club-users described here, dance music is used broadly within a
tusovka youth cultural strategy. Specific ‘sets’ of people still gather in
particular places: regulars at the Aladdin club in Samara talk of a regular
tusovka there of around fifteen, rising to thirty or more on big nights; and the
Teatral’naia tusovka in Moscow brings together fifteen to twenty people even
on weekdays through the winter, while in the summer usually around fifty and
sometimes up to 100 gather. These sets are highly fluid, however, and change
rapidly, especially with age. The sites of tusovki are also frequently changed;
if in the 1980s this was a result of being ‘moved on’ by the police or hassled
off your territory by other groups (gopniki),25[25] then for clubbers it is
usually due to the sudden closure of a club following drugs-related conflicts
with the administration, racketeers or police.26[26] Perhaps most
24[24]
The interaction of space and power on the club scene deserves more
focused study. Access to clubs is controlled by ticket prices and, in Moscow,
by cultural capital systematised via flier and face control systems. In almost all
clubs there are so-called ‘VIP rooms’ or spaces to which access is controlled
via payment, although some of those who work in the club may be allowed to
use these perks. Drink prices also effectively work to exclude young people
from bar areas and most young clubbers sit in the armchairs or on stage areas
around the dance floor when they are not dancing rather than use the bar
seating which is viewed as the territory of ‘diadinki s den’gami’. Most striking
of all to the western eye is the high profile of - often uniformed - security at
clubs, the presence of elaborate metal detecting equipment and the thorough
searching of bags and strict controls on what can be brought into clubs. It is
one of those paradoxes of Russian life, however, that it is in those clubs where
security is apparently tightest that drugs are most commonly seen in use.
25[25]
Interestingly, however, the tusovka at Teatral’naia metro station in
Moscow had been hassled off a former meeting place on Pushkinskaia by a
rap tusovka in the summer of 1997.
26[26]
Drug and alcohol use is viewed as an individual choice and among
clubbers there is no evident peer pressure to do as others. Emphasis is also
significantly, in summer, when those young people still studying can devote
themselves wholly to having a good time, the night-clubs empty as people
hang out and dance in the parks and squares on the banks of the Volga.
The ravers’ story: Volga style
The second narrative of rave is a self-consciously peripheral one. It is the
narrative of the majority of young people in provincial Russia whose access
to the global dance party comes via television and radio, video clips and,
mainly pirated, cassette recordings. In their narrative ‘rave’ is not a global
dance party but a music genre. ‘Rave’ essentially means any electronically
created dance music, although particularly popular are commercial variants of
house and techno, primarily produced in Germany, but crossing over with
Soviet pop (for example in the group Ruki vverkh). Whilst it would be easy to
follow tusovka respondents in writing off such ‘ravers’ as culturally
impoverished and essentially uninteresting, in fact the way in which non-
tusovka youth27[27] rework rave into their everyday cultural practice to
reinforce their difference from both neformaly and dance scene tusovka youth
placed on control; drinking and drug-taking, respondents insist, ‘depends on
your mood’ that is, it is not a habit or a way of life. MDMA (ecstasy) is not as
widespread as in Western Europe, probably because of its high street cost; in
Samara, in April 1998, this was 200 roubles ($20) for one tablet as compared
to 50 roubles ($50) for two doses of a snortable form of heroine. Anti-
depressants, however, are used (Prozac, if you can afford it, local variants if
not). Drug use among young people in Russia varies widely both regionally
and socially and the above relates to the tusovka side of the club scene in
Samara only.
27[27]
In some instances, but not all, these people might be identified as gopnik
or anti-neformaly youth.
provides a fascinating illustration of how the same global cultural
commodities can be mobilised within very different, localised, youth cultural
strategies. The discussion below focuses on two aspects of the cultural practice
of the Volga ravers: music use; and style.
Music
For the ‘Volga raver’ music, or knowledge about it, is not an end in itself for
music taste is not a valid stratifier on the non-tusovka youth scene. Non-
tusovka ravers do not make friends on the basis of common musical interests
and are not embarrassed that they do not know the names of tracks they listen
to, still less the origins of the music. They are able to define their music tastes
via the labels of ‘rave’ or ‘house’ but they are most likely to buy cassettes of
‘super dance hits’ released by the local tv/radio company and do not recount
favourite genres, ‘mixes’, or DJs. Above all rave is liked because it is ‘fast’, it
is ‘lively’ and you can dance to it, as this 15 year old lad in Ul’ianovsk, whose
main leisure time activity was kick-boxing, explained:
The rhythm, you see, it’s good to dance to of
course. You can use your legs, not like the
neformaly. If you put their music on, they go
crazy, they don’t know what to do... But with
this, it is easy to dance, you see... and if a person
is drunk or high, they can still dance... [3]
Most importantly, however, rave music and attendance at discos is a
backdrop to other activities (meeting friends, drinking, smoking dope and
picking up girls/lads). In particular central discos provide an opportunity to
meet people of the opposite sex from outside the district and slow tracks for
paired dancing are the most popular part of any set.
In Moscow the flier and face-control system effectively segregates
tusovka and non-tusovka users of dance music. In Samara and Ul’ianovsk the
situation appears to be one of silent stand-off, couched in a rhetoric of mutual
scorn. In Samara, non-tusovka ravers tend to frequent weekend discos in local
Dom Kultury rather than the central clubs, although they also appear at clubs
like Tornado on Monday nights when entrance prices are minimal. In
Ul’ianovsk the non-tusovka element is dominant at almost all club/disco
venues and they impose their own dress code and territorial practice.28[28]
Style
In contrast to the self-consciously individualistic and ‘alternative’ styles
adopted by tusovka clubbers, Volga ravers collectively adopt a highly
conservative dress style. Characteristic are black jeans, ‘Olympic’ tracksuit
tops (olimpiiki) and tracksuit bottoms for lads, while the girls sport make-up
and lacquered fringes and a ‘market’ style of dress; the olimpiika is exchanged
for a smart shirt and the trainers for shoes when going out to a disco.
Although, to a certain extent, young people in provincial Russia are
dependent upon what the shuttle-traders bring from Moscow, Poland or
28[28]
At the disco at DK Chkalova, for example, our group of four female
researchers was hassled off a table by a group of lads who wanted to seat
‘their’ girls; an unopened bottle of vodka and plates of sliced lemon and salted
peanuts were placed firmly on our table, when we did not take the ‘hint’, we
were instructed more directly to ‘clear off’.
Turkey, the ‘lack of individuality’ or ‘herd mentality’, as it was referred to by
one Samara respondent [215], is more than a result of external factors.
Respondents in both Ul’ianovsk and Samara expressed a strong resistance to
‘standing out’ through style (a tusovka strategy) whilst maintaining their own
strict dress code. This code is built around principles of:
•
fashionability (where fashion is understood as what is being sold at the
market) but not ‘standing out’. One 16 year old female respondent in
Ul’ianovsk explained how she dressed thus:
comfortably, attractively and preferably not to
stand out too much... long skirts, a cardigan,
with a v-neck, I could wear a dress of course and
heels...[7]
•
Smartness and ‘best clothes’. Volga ravers adorn tracksuits for
everyday wear but jeans and shirts for going out; commenting on
pictures and photos of club scenes in Moscow and the west, such
respondents expressed disbelief that people could go out to a disco
in a T-shirt. Girls also ‘dress up’ to go out, a style referred to as
dressing smartly (‘strogo’).
•
Short hair. Despite complaints that teachers and other adults falsely
interpreted their predilection for short hair as a sign they belonged to some
organised crime gang, short hair cuts remain the key signifier of anti-
neformaly identity for young men. Many tusovka respondents in
Ul’ianovsk still recount recent confrontations with gopniki due to the
length or style of their hair or their own decisions to have it cut in order to
avoid such confrontations.
‘Rave’ is, therefore, not a minority subcultural phenomenon in Russia
but a mass cultural form; in all three cities of our study ‘rave’ was identified as
the most popular music currently among young people. Indeed it has become
so popular in provincial Russia that local neformaly equate ‘reivera’ with
gopniki and while this side of the dance scene may not be pushing back the
boundaries of style, it tells us much about the everyday ‘reworking’ of
western cultural products in youth cultural practice.
Global messages, local interpretations
Charting the concrete ways in which western cultural commodities are
appropriated and ‘re-worked’ by Russian youth has suggested that, far from
uniting young people around a set of globally homogenised cultural values, the
adoption of rave music has served to highlight an ongoing chasm between
distinct youth cultural strategies demarcated by the young people’s own life
horizons and, in this sense, their position in the spatial hierarchy.
Those I have called the ‘Volga ravers’ adopt youth cultural strategies
rooted in the periphery, from where the centre of Ul’ianovsk may be barely
visible, let alone beyond. Despite their consumption of western cultural
products such as rave music, such respondents find it difficult to imagine ‘the
west’, and the horizons of their own lives are severely restricted. One 16 year
old female respondent, who said she had never travelled outside Ul’ianovsk
region, encapsulates the roots of peripheral youth strategies when she explains
the differences she imagines between western youth and herself:
[western young people] are busier, they are more
focused. At a certain stage in life they already
know what they will be, what occupation they
will have, where they will study, what they will
need in the future... but we take what we can
get... where Mum can get us in... [7].
Despite this, the concrete manifestations of cultural globalisation -
such as rave music - are not ‘resisted’ as alien or subordinating cultural forms
but worked into a long-standing Russian youth cultural strategy based on
cultural conservatism and territorialism. The object of ‘resistance’ for the
‘Volga ravers’ is not any abstract notion of western cultural imperialism,
therefore, but their old enemy - the neformaly. One 15 year old anti-neformal
in Ul’ianovsk, who enjoyed rave music, summed up the antipathy still felt
towards these ‘aliens’ within:
They [neformaly] have their own language. If
you’re a Russian, I think, if a person is Russian,
then he should speak Russian, like any normal
person. But they, I don’t know, they pile on all
these [imitates the widely used neformaly sign
using index and little finger]... Well, people
normally greet you with a handshake, but they
greet each other like, I don’t know, you can’t
make head nor tail of it...29[29] [3]
The object of resistance for peripheral urban youth, therefore, is not
‘the west’, the ‘core’, or specific western cultural forms but those other young
people who position themselves symbolically at the ‘centre’. The objects of
this animosity - those young provincial Russians who adopt a tusovka identity
- tend to be more acutely aware of the global differentiation in opportunities
for young people and perceive a clear hierarchy of access to global cultural
products. As three teenage breakdancers from Ul’ianovsk made clear, the
distance between Russia and the West is only half the problem, to this must be
added the cultural lag between Moscow and provinces:
Everything is fully developed there [the west].
Here, of course we are ten or fifteen years
behind...If you look at Moscow you could even
compare it with England. There you could even
say they are at the European level, like the west.
They have good clubs generally. But, if you
compare Ul’ianovsk with Europe, it would be...
well, you just can’t compare them... they are
worlds apart... [34, 35, 36]
29[29]
The sense of exclusion felt at the different greeting ritual of the
neformaly is significant; Russian young men have a distinct greeting ritual and
to reject this is un-Russian and unmasculine.
The sense of cultural isolation or peripheralisation is most pronounced
among provincial respondents, and particularly Ul’ianovsk youth whose
frequent use of the phrase ‘to chto doshlo do nas’ when describing the media
and cultural commodities available to them illustrates their awareness of the
structure of global cultural exchange and where they are positioned by it.
However, Muscovites were not immune to subscribing to the belief that
Russians are reduced to ‘consuming’ what is produced elsewhere as this 16
year old catering student and roller skater suggests:
I think that in principle we [in Russia] could
[do] something so that we set the example, but
by the time things get to us, usually people are
already inventing something else... I think we
are just a bit behind. [53]
Ironically,
articulated
resistances to global cultural forms come
primarily from the (apparently westernising) tusovki or neformaly. Indeed the
more contact with the west respondents have, the more critical they prove to
be. This is how one 22 year old Muscovite and former hippy who had
travelled to the west a number of times interpreted the arrival of clubs in
Moscow:
They [discos] are appearing in Russia not
because we need them but they are being planted
from above because it is money... There is an
Americanisation taking place here, it’s the same
with advertising in foreign languages. There are
foreign goods coming in, being dumped on us
and, whether we like it or not, we are becoming
Americanised... [57]
Indeed, the growing popularity of western dance music has led
neformaly to refine their identity, claiming a kind of new authenticity for their
‘alternative’ style rooted in appeals to real, creative musical forms (as opposed
to commercially driven popular music) and to the need for cultural forms
appropriate to contemporary Russian culture. Electronic music is thus
frequently declared to be ‘without meaning’ or too ‘aggressive’ for Russia, as
one 16 year old grunge fan from Samara termed it [206]. Perhaps most striking
is the suggestion that although (western) dance music is good for the ‘body’ it
leaves the (Russian) ‘soul’ unsatisfied. This is how a 19 year old neformal
rock fan in Ul’ianovsk explained why he did not like rave:
I can understand rave of course. But it doesn’t
really grab me. The words have no meaning...
For the soul, for example, I still prefer Russian
[bands] - ‘Corrosion’ maybe. Maybe they play
worse. But they play from the soul...[32]
Remarkably, this is a feeling shared by tusovka-style clubbers who admitted
that when they got home after the club they preferred to listen to Russian rock
or alternative bands (such as Mummi Troll) or Splin) rather than techno.
What is fascinating about the diverse pronouncements of respondents
concerning how they viewed the west in general, and the mass of western
cultural products now saturating Russia in particular, is the complexity of their
thoughts about how Russia receives and absorbs or resists western cultural
products, irrespective (although not independent) of social background.30[30]
Whilst it is difficult to reduce diverse individual attitudes to a single
‘position’, the following two statements from young people with very different
social backgrounds indicates some of the common ground:
So much comes from there [the west] but
movement in the other direction is difficult. But
maybe that is for the best. Because our culture is
fundamentally Russian [rossiiskaia] but there...
it is understandable that the Beatles spread
round the whole world straight away, it is
something all people share not something purely
English. [51]
I don’t think they [Russian rap and Russian
rave] are different at all except that the Russians
speak in Russian and the others in their own
languages. But they aren’t different at all, it
seems to me... I don’t agree that everything
comes from the west. People take what they
30[30]
Young people, just as the older generation, quite often complain that
‘youth today’ takes everything from the west, but go on to explain their own -
more sophisticated - approach to what they adopt.
like... It doesn’t matter whether it is west or
east... They take it from them, ‘nick it’ off them
as they say and do it themselves, for
themselves... [53]
The commonality of these statements - the first by a 24 year old postgraduate
student, the second by a 16 year old technical college student - lies in the
belief that western cultural commodities are somehow culturally neutral (can
be shared by all, have no content in their form) supplemented by the
conviction that Russianness, on the contrary, is not for sharing. Whilst, to a
certain extent, this might be explained by the greater knowledge of and
emotional affection the respondents will have for their ‘own’ culture, there
may be some significance here for thinking about whether ‘hybridization’ or
‘creolization’ adequately expresses the cultural processes taking place in the
reworking of global cultural forms by Russian youth.
‘Creolization’ and ‘hybridization’ focus on the outcomes of interaction
between indigenous and alien material cultural forms and while these concepts
have great value in describing processes which have taken place over a long
period of time and which are manifest in crafted cultural forms (language,
music genre), they capture little of the contemporary meanings and conflicts
tied to current reworkings of often relatively transient cultural products. What
is interesting about young people in urban provincial Russia, and perhaps
elsewhere on the ‘periphery’, is that they feel no need to create Russian rave,
they are quite happy to take the clubs and the drugs and the fun in their
original western form, while remaining confident that that which is ‘Russian’
is preserved. Since the latter is largely spiritual rather than material culture,
what is ‘theirs’ is safe from ‘creolization’. Enjoying the (limited) material
pleasures of the west without relinquishing Russian spirituality is part of
everyday cultural practice among young Russians and, arguably, not a
response to globalisation but a skill which has been practised by Russians for
centuries. How this is expressed in concrete cultural practice can be no better
articulated than in the words of a 16 year old clubber from Moscow:
You must dance to it [techno, trance etc.]... to
just listen to it on a tape, it is somehow soulless.
Although I do like to clean up to it. At home I
switch on some trance and it’s really good. I
used to like to [hoover] to hard-core but my
neighbour would bang [on the wall]... the [club]
culture is really about this, about going to the
night clubs, because many of those who go to
the clubs don’t listen to this music at home at
all.... I listen to pop at home...Our [Russian] pop
is simple music and has just what is missing
from this [techno] music - words. Our pop has
words you can listen to. Some song by
Ivanushki, an intimate one which maybe reflects
what you are thinking about or suffering at that
moment. It’s not that I like it, I wouldn’t buy the
cassette and listen to it for days, but ...[54]
Conclusion
Youth are undoubtedly caught between the global and the local (Liechty 1995:
9). Young people in provincial Russia enter the world of trans-national
commodity culture via an array of media sources and their right and need to
be part of this global space is reinforced by a state ideology of progress and
the weight of authenticity attached to the west because of Russia’s recent
history of cultural isolation. Rave music has entered the youth cultural world
in Ul’ianovsk via the media in a way no previous western music could. The
uses and meanings attached to it, however, are mediated by existing youth
cultural strategies which facilitate the formation of locally workable class,
ethnic, gender and sexual identities. Our understanding of contemporary
Russian youth cultural practice, therefore, must be rooted - despite
globalisation - in social structures of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality
and - because of globalisation - in space. Placement within the structure of
global cultural exchange will have a significant impact upon access points to
‘global’ cultural products and thus upon ways in which they are ‘reworked’ in
everyday cultural practice.
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