Stilyagi

LODZ, 03.01.21

Stilyagi: The First Youth Subculture in the Soviet Union

Anastasiya CharnushynaYouth Subcultures & Popular Music

Structure

Norms & models

Who are Stilyagi?

Term "Stilyaga"

Fashion, music, lifestyle

Who participated?

Historical context

Attitudes of society & Gov.

Ideology

Political context

Extinction & Importance

Social context

Values

WHO ARE STILYAGI?

• The first youth subculture in the Soviet Union (late 40's-early 60's)

• Nonconformism & adherence to the American lifestyle

• Indifference to political issues

• "Protest" against the stereotypes of behavior & uniformity accepted in Soviet society

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Why couldn't there be any subcultures in the Soviet culture of the Stalin era?

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

WHY DID STILYAGI APPEAR

1945

1942-43

Late 40's -

Early 60's

American films appeared in the USSR - "Tarzan" & "Serenade of the Sun Valley

"Stilyagi" subculture lifetime

Soviet national football team visited England

1947

1991

1945

The end of the

The return to the USSR of several thousand "white" emigrants from France.

Soviet soldiers brought Western trophies of music gramophone records with jazz, not sold in the USSR1945 - the trophy German cinema, "The Girl of My Dreams"

"Cold War"

The "Cold War" began

POLITICAL CONTEXT

THE "COLD WAR"

• Stilyagi, an openly “pro-Western”, “bourgeois” style subculture appeared almost simultaneously with the beginning of the “cold war”.

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, the iron curtain stretched across the continent."

On March 5, 1946, W. Churchill delivers his famous speech, which is considered as the beginning of the Cold War.

SOCIAL CONTEXT

• In the pre-war period (before 1941), a new historical community was formed - the Soviet people ("Soviet Puritanism")

• However, the Second World War destroyed this community to an extent.

• Mass uniformity & standards no longer met the vital needs of the younger generation (minority)

EMERGENCE OF THE TERM

"STILYAGA"

• The term was first used in 1949 in D. Belyaev's satirical essay "Stilyaga".
• Stilyagi did not apply this term to themselves.

WHAT SOCIAL GROUPS

BECAME STILYAGI

1. Elite culture (1949 - 1955): the young people from "good" families, "golden youth." 2. Youth counterculture (1956 - 1962): new opposite to the usual values. Stilyagi appeared all over the country, & among the working youth too.

REFERENTS

IDEOLOGY

• Establishing a new type of existence for the urban youth

• Imitation of the "American" lifestyle

• A social protest, not a political one

• An escapist subculture, & dissonance with the Soviet morality

REFERENTS

VALUES

• The state - a father
• Social justice & Equality
• Order & Collectivism
• Asceticism
• Labor enthusiasm
• Family

• Self-expression
• Freedom
• Individuality
• Rest & holidays
• Pleasure
• Friends

SOVIET PEOPLE

STILYAGI

REFERENTS

NORMS & BEHAVIOUR MODELS

• Walks along the "Broadway"
• Parties in apartments
• Lstened to jazz
• Danced in "style"
• Wore bright foreign clothes
• Special "free" walking

• Work or study
• Komsomol meetings
• Starting a family
• Dancing in the club
• Playing sports
• Standard clothes

SOVIET PEOPLE

STILYAGI

REFERENTS

FASHION INSPIRATION

REFERENTS

FASHION

REFERENTS

FASHION

REFERENTS

FASHION

REFERENTS

HAIRSTYLE

MUSIC & DANCING

Jazz was a main source of inspiration "Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Track twenty nine, Boy, you can give me a shine"

MUSIC & DANCING

• Boogie - Woogie

• "Atomic", "Canadian" or "Triple Hamburg" dancing styles
• Dancing on the "bones"

MANNERS, ACTIVITIES, SLANG

• “Stilyagi expressed themselves as refined people, deliberately mannered.

• Their new gestures: the head was thrown back, arrogant a look from top to bottom at others, a special "broken" gait - testified to being Bohemian. "

• Demonstrate costumes & walking on the "Brod" - "Broadway."

ATTITUDES OF GOVERNMENT & SOCIETY

• Since the 50s, stilyagi have been constantly harassed by the government.

• “Today he plays jazz, and tomorrow he will sell his homeland”;

“A stilyaga is a potential enemy With a stranger's morality and scantyAt the Komsomol fly of a stilyaga Let them redo and give up! "

FADING OF THE SUBCULTURE

• The movement almost died out by the mid-1960s.

• The phenomenon became so widespread and the subculture has “diffused” into the popular culture

• "Thaw" period - legalization of many previously forbidden foreign attributes

IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBCULTURE

Stilyagi has served as an indicator of the need for change in the society.

Questions

• What culture served as an inspiration for stilyagi?

• How their norms & values differed from those of the Soviet people?

• What has been the main factor, that contributed to the extinction of the subculture?

Bibliography

• https://mybook.ru/author/vladimir-kozlov-4/stilyagi/read/
• https://diletant.media/articles/26699480/
• https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/stilyagi-kak-fenomen-otechestvennoy-poslevoennoy-mody
• https://kulturologia.ru/blogs/200615/24953/

Thanks for your attention!