Russian youth rebelled by embracing capitalistic values, American youth rebelled by embracing communist values. But everyone wanted to look like Elvis!

My mother studied Geography and in the course of her studies they traveled from Yugoslavia to the USSR several times (period of the late seventies) She told me how before going on train, all the students put on two or three jeans, one over the other and stuffed the pockets with chewing gum, and then when they arrive at their destination within the USSR, usually somewhere in Russia, they would literally sell the jean's and gums in a second, as soon as they got off the train, at the train station - and for that they received so much money that they could easily pay off their trip and the pocket money needed there. 😅 Obviously, the bans had the opposite effect on the youth, and Yugoslavia did that part incomparably better than other socialist and communist countries - freedoms were incomparably greater...

For anyone interested, there’s a movie about this subculture of the same name (Stilyagi). It’s about the son of a Soviet diplomat who gets caught up in the ‘movement’ and wants to go to America and meet some ‘American Dandys’ firsthand. Apparently it’s something of a cult film within Russia.

I remember reading about the youth culture in Czechoslovakia from 1930s to the early 1950s called „Potápky“ which means "grebe birds in Czech, who were young men that frequented swing and jazz clubs and generally tried the emulate the style of young people in the United States and the United Kingdom, that were persecuted by the Nazis in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia as anti-state elements. Funnily enough, they were also despised by the communists after the war with Rudé právo writing around the year 1946: "The only thing we could congratulate the fascists is the eradication of the Grebe birds. Sadly this plague on our society is returning, so we must eradicate them in the same way as during the war." Then, after the communists took power in 1948, these people were again persecuted by the state. This kinda caused that the Czechoslovak counter-culture in the early years of communist rule was basically the emulation of late 1930s western youth culture.

What Kruschev said was smart. Saved cloth, and why not sell what the people want rather than go through the black market

So there was a period where the Soviet Union literally had a fashion police.

I really hope you'll make a video about Viktor Tsoi and Kino one day

As someone from Iran, I see so many similarities between these two isolated countries

Rebellious Soviet youth using English loan words as slang is basically an inverted version of Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange

Both informative and entertaining. Well done on a great documentary.

There were so many Beatles puns in there at the end lol. I look forward to a future video about them and the USSR! Thank you very much for this one! God be with you out there everybody. ✝️ :)

Hi there, Channel. This video is really great. Amazing. Very interesting topic. Outstanding report. Greetings from Córdoba, Argentina

The records recorded on X-Ray film is one of the most metal things I have ever seen.

A good movie released in Russia about the Stylyagi in the 2000s was released in the US under the title "Hipsters" The music is very retro and clips can be found on KZfaq

I had a good collection of X-Ray samizdat records. I had the Beatles, the Monkees, the Partridge Family (!), and others - plus a bunch of Finnish, Roumanian, and Israeli ones (they didn't really try to stop the Monkees or the Patridge Family, since they were "almost wholesome", but you still had to slip the border guards on the train wodka or bubble gum or Hard Currency for them to look the other way). Once you had a decent collection, you got picky - the most sought-after "records" had skulls, ribs, or pelvises. Hands were big, too. You only traded for ones with OTHER bones if the music was super hard to get. Thanks to my mum's family being in the US, Israel, and Argentina AND her brother being a retired Red Army Colonel & BIG makher in the local Party of our city, AND my dad being the son of Italian Communists who had family in Jugoslavija & Italia, I admit I had a LOT more access to Western music than most. I loved going to see my family in Jugoslavija because the shops there were BURSTING with things unheard of in the USSR - and you could easily get Western records (I wish I'd been able to take my collection of awesome Jugoslav records with me when we got out of the USSR, to this day I love that rock music). We'd also get records by trading with visiting foreign kids when we were at Pioneer & Komsomol camps/trips/meetings - Roumanian rock was highly sought after because it was so amazing to us. Anyhow - sometimes we'd get a visit from the local Militia asking to look at our bedroom - everyone in town knew we had western contacts so we were easy prey BUT with my uncle's position they had to go gently. We'd leave out some of the X-ray "records" and they'd confiscate them (one of my best friends was the son of a Militia captain, he almost always wound up having the records that they'd "confiscated and destroyed" LOL Luckily my buddy would always make it up to me by letting me use their telephone or getting a slice or 2 of Doctorskaya from his mum who worked in a Gastronom). Sorry, rambling here, this brought back a lot of memories. THANKS!

Soviet teen circa 1970(after drinking):Did you ever stop and think that maybe we're the real means of production man? Other teen(also drunk):That's real deep man.

Very good video! Looking forward to the one on the Leningrad Rock club!

That last line about the Beatles was one of the best reference filled puns I've ever heard from this channel 😂

Other countries of the bloc, such as Poland or Czechoslovakia, had much more liberal regimes and wider access to Western goods and culture so that this phenomenon was much more colorful and common there.

The East German youths rebelled through a sort of underground punk rock culture. "Burning Down the Haus" bu Tim Mohr is an excellent read about this movement.

Stalinist Poland also had something similar. Here they were called "bikiniarze"

This is fascinating.

The first place l saw the use of the term stylagi was actually in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

I love this channel!

There is also a movie about this, called Stilyagi. I believe it's a Russian movie. I remember in 2015 in my high school in Ukraine we had a whole event themed after the movie.

I really like this man's channel.

GREAT STUFF

Me, as Russian, very glad to see the video about Soviet era, which didn't show the USSR as "Evil empire" but tells about the Soviet culture. Even most of young people in Russia don't know the Soviet culture and followed by Western and 1990-th years propaganda. Thank you!

I’m both delighted and cringing at the burst of puns at the end. Unrelated: Where did you get the satirical comics of the Stilyagi? The art style rocks and I wanted to see more, so is there an archive somewhere?

Great video, really enjoyed it. Ironically of the Stilyagi has been born and raised in the West they would have rebelled by joining the communist party 😊😊. Groovy man!

For the algorithm great channel

People who were able to travel to Leningrad or Tallinn from Finland in Soviet times could party for days by trading some of their luggage. Especially jeans and stockings were in demand.

Interesting!

I love the x ray records, holy shit that's awesome

Word up, fab video. Really dig your stuff, keep it cool yo

Would love to see how this story leads upto the biggest outdoor concert ever in '91 with AC/DC and Metallica 🤘. First time I saw footage of it was on a Pantera video of Domination

Could you start posting the sources for your information in the description? I want to do further reading and I like using the sources from videos like these

Thank you for the video! Still remember how I found Mother's and Uncle's old huge tapes where atop of plenum recordings someone put Boney M ) "Today, we gather to... Bahama! Bahama mama!"

Party on Comrades! 😅

My uncle went to study in the USSR and he would bribe his professors for better grades with jeans and Western cigarettes.

Those albums on X-ray prints was such an epic idea.

basically some links or citations to primary source materials would be good.

There was a great PBS docu back in the 90's about Soviet block countries going through a love affair with everything from the West. They showed the music & video bootleg industry at the time when VHS was the standard Not sure if its floating around on youtube but I would love to watch it again.

On a note, do you think it would be worth making a video on the Youth Festival you mentioned?

Rebel by destroying the bell button!

nice

There is a movie entitled 'Stilyagi' on youtube. It's a polished Russian production, something like "Grease" but in the USSR.

Beetles and ussr sounds like a cool video topic. Please make

The more I know about Khrushchev the more I like him. A monster, but interesting

It was a wonderful narration video about that phenomenon that occurred in the USSR during the Cold War years... that phenomenon that was noticed in the USSR. It's always occurring in totalitarian regimes... because family of political, economic, and religious elites are regarding themselves, and their classes are superiors over theirs inferiors populations .. similar to capitalized highly, oligarchs families...

My grandpa used to listen to the Voice of America and managed to get a pair of jeans somehow in 1960's

I imagine an elderly ex-Stilyagi complaining about gopniks in their Addidas tracksuits as being hoodlums.

Fascinating look at how things went on behind the Curtain. I think I'll try to replicate a Stylagi. I do have a question/ask for clarification; at 10:20, you mention that people thought the Stylagi were corrupting "Kultunost"... what is this? I'm seeing it as a reference to Stalinistic thought and government, but aside from that I'm not finding what it MEANS/

Never heard about using x-ray prints to make vinyl records! That's based. xD

Damn these people were chill

That bone music looks hard af

Lol I liked your ending

Another part of this movement was the immense international popularity of the Twist, which began in the USA in 1960. Obviously this was suppressed in the USSR and I read that as the dance fad continued, the government attempted to control it by introducing acceptable Russian dances instead. These flopped. One of them was called the “Slag Heap”.

They also were free of the Stalinist terror apparatus because the soviets tried to liberalize a little in this time. They wouldn’t have dared before 1953 to do this

I would recommend you to check the effect of the singer RAPHAEL in the USSR around the 60s

Can you make video about pop culture in Yugoslavia

I have several colleagues at work who come from East Germany, they like to talk about their youth. It was easier to get Western music there. People were busy recording from the West German radio programme and a colleague of mine always wanted his great-aunt in West Germany to send him blank cassettes. She then smuggled (I think it wasn't quite legal?) the cassettes into the country when she visited East Germany. 😅 The Russian soldiers also always tried to get hold of Western music and brought the albums and cassettes back to the USSR. 🤭I was born in 1988, I don't know the Iron Curtain anymore and I always find the stories mega exciting.

"Records on ribs", eh? Getting close to spooky season.

I would love to watch a movie about these soviet youth. Does such thing exists?

That's a beautiful quote about The Beatles. Music is the weapon of peace ✌️

Excellent episode as always. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

for the next show , he better be dressed as a Stilyagi lmao

Idk how much this really happened. I know for a fact there really were lots of punk rockers in Moscow and Estonia in the 1980s。 But I suspect this stilyagi thing is mostly marketing hype, sort of like the doctors plot but with fashion.

How we put music into X-rays?

When exactly did the Gopnik/Gopnitsa subculture come in?

Wow. This is AMAZING. I haven't read a history book since my 4th university dropout, but I think I'd read a secret history of the Soviet Union. I could yammer, but I'll share my top learnin' from this video below. My 'gast is completely FLABBERED to learn of Golden Dog. I'm inclined to think that there has never been anything in the west that's as much PURE UNCUT CRYSTAL PUNK as those people doing that in a place run by "Uncle" Joe Stalin. And I include the existence of DE-VO in my punk accounting. So you fucking KNOW I'm serious. If I had a god, I'd ask it to bless those brave absolute legends.

When people lived in caves and wore leopard skins, I have no doubt that teenagers wore their leopard skins upside down or wore lion skins instead to show how everyone rebellious, cool and different that they were.

I am curious about the "Khippi movement" in the USSR mirroring the hippies in the West... another thought... the "European Rainbow Gathering" in 1998 was held in western Russia but have heard no information on that other than young people dancing in a meadow while the Russian army observed from the tree line...

I have a photo of my Ukranian granddad when he was a teenager in the late 40's, posing in what would be considered a Stilyagi outfit back then - a trenchcoat and a fedora (film noire style), which would look great on an adult, but on a 15-ish y.o. looks rather awkward. He spent a few years in Berlin right after the war with his family (his dad was an engineer), and then went back home to study in Odesa.

13:23 - must have been a slow corn day

fwiw the movie Stilyagi is a good movie worth watching, though it is at least somewhat unrealistic.

The Soviets did not have the advertising industry to co-opt youth culture. Instead, officlas, unable to control them, made them into enemies of the state: "Sevodnja on tantsuet Jazz, zavtra rodinu prodast!" ("Today he dances to jazz, tomorrow he betrays the Motherland!")

two minutes in you say, "first things first" - dude! That is so not first! You're super adorable and the subject is super interesting, but I'm not watching more of this, cus the pacing is soo slow I just can't! 🐌🐌🐌

"come together on the long and winding road and find ourselves back in the USSR" HELP!

Western music and fashion was allowed in the ussr from the late 50s to the 80s take my dad for example when he was growing up in the ussr in 60s 70s he used to listen to the Beatles which was popular back in the ussr 60 70s don't forget stuff like Levi jeans those stuff were hard to get unless if you went to a flea market or connections you knew from the west western fashion and music is still popular to this day in Russia hip hop and rap for example leggings pencil skirts mini skirts in regular and leather form don't clothes like baggy pants sport shoes like Nike and Adidas are popular still are don't forget sport track suits I heard they were back popular in the 80s 90s they still are wonder if hip hop fashion is popular in Russia talking about gold chains and t shirts caps with dollar signs and money on it we got these in the USA talking about hip hop fashion

So they had an actual fashion police in the USSR!

Stealargi kick ass.

"The Gilded Youth" Some pigs are more equal than others.

4:53 those are UK Teddy Boys, not Stilyagi.

They listened to rock and roll music and wanted to dance

So one thing on 08:45 - the idea that a subculture movement was more to seem cool than political is really the essence of “counterculture” in the west as well. This is explored in a fantastic book called “The Rebel Sell” (Joe Heath and Andrew Potter) that came out in the mid-2000s. Essentially there is no such thing as “co-opting” counterculture because both advertisers and the hipsters themselves are pursuing the same thing - distinction. (If you put it through an evolutionary lens, it’s essentially status-seeking that ultimately gets you laid). No matter how “political” they think they’re being. It’s the same reason activists take radical and obviously stupid positions on college campuses or social media now (“North Korea is actually good”, or “living in the US is worse than living in Iran” or whatever), because it makes them stand out, seem important, etc.

Shoes for Industry, Komrade

Cool is a culture.

🇺🇸

Similarly in USA during 1940s there was "Zoot Suit" movement which was mostly Latin males that wore long pants and shirts and caused paranoid problem which was crushed by authorities.

Hope you'll talk about how the success of French action comedy "Fantomas" lead to widespread criminality in the USSR. It's worth a read.

The irony of the lyrics Beatles song, "back in the USSR, you don't know how lucky your are..."

When i get center and Siberia Soviet not Eropa one

The outro made up of Beatles song titles was one of the cheesiest things I've ever heard!

I once read that the Soviets collapsed because of three things: Jeans, The Beatles, and Coca Cola

I see Mr. Putin was born Oct 7 1952 . . . . . .Hmmmmmm

I remember in about 1984-1986 cassette recorders became accessible in Russia, we, boys, were copying western music like Italo Disco. Then in 1989 first video cassette recorders appeared in Russia and the same copying happened with the US movies. That basically destroyed the Soviet culture, because Soviet music and movies simply could not compete, when it came to technical effects.

"Nothing says 'effete capitalist parasite' like a pack of Chiclets."

They couldnt have chewinf gum in the USSR? Man i knew my elementary school was authoritarian

13:35. Truly one of Krushchev's more scathing remarks. This outburst would mark the start of the War on Style within the USSR, and is widely considered one of the first steps towards the collapse of the Union, as fashionistas left the union in a massive brain drain.