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I spent my childhood in a depressing region of Russia in late 90s - early 00s, where the word "subculture" didn't even exist and every street kid was "gopnik" by default even if they didn't consider themselves as such. To me this "aesthetics" was strongly associated with rough life when street gangs, poverty, opioid crisis and random acts of violence were prevalent and part of everyday life. Seeing this trend becoming so popular in the West, albeit ironic, was absolutely bizarre and a bit cringy tbh.

So are we just gonna pretend that Russian Hard Bass doesn't go hard?😭

The most hilarious part of this for me, as a citizen of Russia who grew up in that time, is the fact that "gopnik subculture" was basically dead and extinct by 2012, the same goes for hardbass (nobody actually called it that back in the day, it was "pump") the last time I've seen people listening to it unironically was 2005-06. It was the Western memes, what basically resurrected it in 2014 and created a subculture, that never actually existed as is.

Loved the vid, altough as the native Russian citizen, who lived through 00's criticism I have a bit of points to correct. For example - Hardbass, despite it being associated with gopniks nowadays, was nowhere to be found at the time. It was in fact "blatnyak" (from Russian criminal jargon "blatnoy" - pronounced like "blat-noj" - roughly "respectable criminal"), which was a mix of chanson and author's song mainly focused on life of crime, philosophy and, bizzarely, religion (offtop: fun fact, around 80% of post-Soviet countries' criminals consider themselves orthodox) and our own kind of gangsta rap, which became popular around 2003-2004. They were widespread among the whole post-Soviet space, because most of these kids were children of criminals which served their sentence or at least grew up in the Soviet Union, so saying that they were entirely Russian thing is not really fair - there were plenty of gopniks in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, for example. Russia is just the biggest of them all. And, well, gopniks were not a subculture, they were more like a lifestyle. Like, in the place where I grew up, you was gopnik by default and had a chance to evolve into something else if you had enough willpower or was unlucky enough to not became a part of any social group. Gopnik is not about style, or music, or whatever. Gopnik is about petty crime, "ponyatiya" (which means "terms", as in "termin" - pronounced like "pawn-ja-tea-ja" - which was a sort of unwritten codex of rules among post-Soviet criminals which they pretty strictly obeyed), and street life. They were mostly uneducated, had little to no parental care (if they had parents at all - mind you, it was 90's-00's we are talking about, it was a really rough time out there) and came from a really poor conditions

As a Russian I was hoping for you to cover gopniks after the chavs video. At least in Moscow they are far less common than they were in the mid 2000s. But I believe they are big outside of big cities. Teens nowadays are much more influenced by western culture, but there are a lot of places where everything western is hated and gopniks represent the "true and cool" Russian youth. But I regularly see a lot of people in their 30s or 40s dressed like gopniks. And also they behave like them

About Adidas culture: as a Russian, i think you made it kinda more complicated as it is IRL. During 90s there was no chance that some gopniks could afford themselves original adi clothes. So they went to one of the street markets, where there were lots of striped sport cloths (basically poormade adidas copies). They were cheap, affordable. And so that is how it started :D

The "Slav squat" is something that people all over the world do. It's an apparently comfortable position to assume in a place where there is nowhere to sit. It's also called the "Asian squat" because you see tons of people in the far East doing it for the exact same reason. If you don't do it regularly then you probably aren't flexible enough to just give it a go and not stress your knees, but if it's something that you do daily then it's supposedly comfortable.

This video taught me that Moscow is pronounced as "Mockba". Thank you for accurate information.

In Brazil Adidas and Nike were quite expensive due to taxes and poor wages. So it was fashionable and a status symbol. I was quite shocked when I came to Japan and saw how affordable they were. Still I wore them everywhere because they look good and are quite comfortable until a japanese friend told me that to japanese ppl those kinda of clothes are specific for sports and that if you wear them everywhere it gives the impression that your wardrobe is poor 😭

Hard bass was linked to gopniks only ironically. I didn't know any gopnik who would listen to this at the time. The gopniks I know listened to prison songs (Blatnyak), pop songs and generic EDM. Maaaybe low quality russian rap. And yes, the big gopnik wave happened not so long after gopnik hard bass meme was born. Also, the winter hat of choice was a short beanie (worn on top of the head when just hanging around or walking around drunk). Thanks for the video, Jimmy!

I lived in the nineties in a small town in Siberia. No one was called gopnik in my environment, only a normal kid or a man and a sucker. It was only after moving to a big city to study, after I joined the dnb club subculture in the early 2000s, that it became clear to me that everyone I used to know was a gopnik, and I myself was like that.

@3:54 i see what you did there, EATING SEEEEEEDS IS A PASS TIME ACTIVITYYYYYYY

As a famous Russian poet once said: Tri poloski, tri-po tri poloski. hard bass tusovki, adidas krossovki.

As a person born and raised in a provincial Russian town, I spent all my childhood and youth amidst the gopniks constantly being one of their potential victims 😅 I would say that our gopniks have never been organized and have never formed something like a subcultural movement. They were just a product of total poverty and depression after the fall of Soviet Union. People lost their jobs because factories were stopped and closed. Those who were working for government run enterprises in the education and health care systems managed to keep their positions but had not being paid for months. Police forces and army were deeply corrupted so they can not control the streets. So, "gopnik" was just the convenient word for designation of those uneducated and uncultured hooligans and small criminals who flooded the streets in the situation when there were no police control. Interestingly, Adidas sportswear was really percieved as prestigious those days but common people mostly just went to the local bazaar and bought cheap tracksuits and shoes imported from Turkey, China or Vietnam. I personally had never been in the branded clothing store till I reached eighteen and went to Moscow 😅 So, gopniks are not memebers of a subculture like skinheads, goths or emo-kids. They were almost "normies" of those tough times on post-Soviet territory.

The 'Gopnik quiff' is a hairstyle that has been around for decades in Ireland among the countries working class and traveller kids, it's a very old haircut that was popular among the Celts and, no doubt among others as well like the Vikings of old (isn't t all viking related stuff old? Apart for films and documentaries about them of course). Skinhead girls also had a version of the hairstyle, mostly seen the late 1970s & early 1980s.

Very funny and very true - I lived in Russia in the 1990s and some of my very first friends were Gopniks - the local lads where I was living at the time. We had some laughs - they even taught me to sit like - like well, a Gopnik as well as the history of sitting as such. They were all teenagers and good guys!

The core of gopniks is not about look, it is about crime activity. It's "honorable" to steal mobile or money on streets. The verb is "гопнуть" - to gopnut' or gopnoot', last syllable is u, don't know how to transliterate it properly. I remember a case with a master class of senior gopnicks taught gopnick-juniors how to approach a person to frighten them and make successful steal. Our group were bigger and master-class was not very successful.

As a Russian, I've always considered gopniks as a social class, not a subculture. They simply were dirt poor, disenfranchised people and/or petty criminals who likely grew up in "unfavourable circumstances", to put it mildly (gangs, prison, violence, neglectful families, no education, etc). It wasn't about esthetics. The fact that there are people in the West who love the esthetics is a bit weird to me lol Btw, gopniks never listened to hardbass (which actually originated in the UK! It was called donk/hard bounce/pumping house/...). This genre just ended up being associated with the gopnik "esthetics" because the music sounded oldschool and very late 90s-early 2000's. In Russia, this genre is considered as a joke rather than something serious. Some hardbass producers aren't even Russian speakers...

I have met one Australian person in my life. He was a friend of my brother's who was here visiting America. Happened to meet him at the beach. He said I looked like a beach bogan. I had never heard the term before, and naively thought it was some harmless Aussie slang. I'm just now learning I was insulted to my face.

Now, that was a good video, nice research and such good info of a subject a knew nothing about, thank you.

As a Russian I can say this video 's reality/internet memes ratio is around 60/40. The hard bass connection is for sure just a meme. They usually listen to the Russian criminal music and to "gopnik boom bap"

It's kinda funny how the universal sign of low class is sports brands. (Also, Shame on you for not mentioning Boris beyond that little clip. I feel like he really is the one who spread the fascination of gopniks to the west.)

Cool analysis. If you have the chance to, try to dig into the Legea-Givova tracksuit Italian subculture. You may find it interesting

Love your videos bro, been watching all of them. My fav is king Robbo's one so far

First time I came across this urban tribe was 2006. In Japan this culture made huge success back then and it was widely adapted in japanese mangas. Street villains always hangout like gopniks to this day.

Just found your channel! Very cool content. You should make a video about the subculture of street workout. It's an interesting one with American scene vs Eastern European scene.

Ha-ha!Fair play to you man!I lived through that life myself and so funny to remember that ridiculous "style "😎 GOPNIK-it means just ONE person, GOPNIKI-bunch of them....,the commitment of crime called -GOP-STOP💪👊👏👎 ADIDAS was on top of the game. ....but leather shoes with that tracksuit looked so ridiculous 😂😆 Never forget that time! Thanks for the video 👍Good luck ☝

I believe the popularity of gopnik on the internet was closely tied to the video game STALKER, which sort of introduced the post soviet slavic subculture to the internet.

Similar thing we have in Poland, we just call them dudes differently: "Dresiarz" instead of "Gopnik". The name comes from their sporty wear, which in Polish is called "Dres". These outfits should be preferably also made by Adidas or, eventually, by Nike (shoes, of course, as well). Usually one can hear from them "Szefie, dasz 5 zloty na piwko?" (Boss, can you give me 5 zloty for a beer?) and "Masz problem?" (Do you have a problem?), least of them usually followed by "Chcesz wpierdol?" or "Wyjebać ci? (both "Do you wanna a beating?"). Yep, surely different countries, but similar cultures.

I lived in Minsk (Belarus) in the drug addict-proletarian region in the 90s. Our youth is a bench next to the entrance, guitars, seeds, beer and vodka, girls. We were gopniks. Nobody had money for Adidas. If there was money, then they were spent on vodka :) Now I'm a respectable businessman, but my past is still great :) By the way, now we don't have gopniks at all, that is, absolutely.

My first encounter with J the G. Love it! By the way, Jimmy, your Russian pronunciation is quite good. Well done!

Yup, in Romania every sport shoe was called an Addidas, like a noun

It's Moskva, not Mockba. It's hard to recognize Cyrillic when all the letters also exist in the Latin alphabet, though the tiny upper-case B should've been a bit of a give away

1:38 u aint fooling me with that brown spot on the p i know u animated that separately

Does anyone know that first song at 7:42 I’ve been looking for that song for a little bit over 5 years now. Also great video, I seriously didn’t know Gopnik’s would seriously just wear Adidas to jail and that’s where it got sparked further down the road.

Just wanted to clarify that the shoes weren’t called mockba lol Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet which is different from the Latin one it’s called the Moskva but the translation was correct

In Australia nowadays the closest thing to "gopnik" might actually be the "Eshay". Urban public housing, expensive sports fashion, glamorisation of street crime etc. Meanwhile bogans are probably closer to modern "rednecks". More associated with outer suburbs and regional areas than urban centers. And many "bogans" are now "cashed up bogans" since the mining boom. Aussie muscle cars and utes (as well as several spare parts donors in the front yard) were always standard bogan status symbol, but now a cashed up bogan might be running a heavily modified 150K Toyota Landcruiser dualcab ute around town, a far cry from a poor houso kid looking for an identity.

03:50 hey that's an Orlando Pirates jacket, a very popular football team here in South Africa

Bro said "vodker" and then proceeded to attempt to sell us some doo doo ear buds lol.

We here in Germany too have a "subculture" thats very similar to the Gobnik, the Assi. Assi is an abbreviation of Asozial (antisocial, but thats a changed meaning as originally Assi was short for Assistent) and is used for a certain type of person, who coincidentaly likes to wear track suits, often features small time criminal and overall bad behaviour and has a tendency for drinking too much beer or hard alcohol. If you have ever seen one, you will know who I am talking about. You can also find similar versions in other european nations, with some cultural differences in how they act and appear in detail, but there is a striking resemblence in major poinsts, like the antisocial behaviour, alcohol, and track suits. Kind of like evil clones from paralel dimensions, but its only evil clones all the way down.

Eastern Europe here, we got Gopnik's when I was kid. They didn't wear hats, or special haircut, and I don't know what kind of music they listen as there was no phones back then. They did squat, but I believe it's just because it's hard on legs to stand all day on one spot waiting for prey. They did eat seeds, but it's because they where just extremely cheap and good way to make yourself busy, because most important - these guys were poor, basically that was how they make their living

I have ex-military friends that always ask me to stand up when I squat like this, they say I look like an afghan. Very good video, kept my attention and that is hard to do believe me.

In Poland we have a very similar group to the Gopnik, they are called "dresy" (sweatpants) and the main difference is less uniform clothes and listening to Polish rap instead of hard bass

At a flea market some time in the 90s I saw some knock offs called "addidums". One side had 4 stripes and other side had 2.

One more thing: I can't recall hearing hard bass at any point of my life in Russia during 90-s and 2000-s. Gopnics have listened and still do listen almost exclusively chanson, blatnyak, rap and Soviet pop music from 80-90. I went to a lot of raves in my city and neighboring cities and yeas they were some gopnics but they were like a very tiny minorities.

This episide cracked me up :D Tracksuit and long pointy shoes. Absolutely genius hahahaha

Comment section is very informative. Thank you all - from Canada

What a wholesome gopnik love video. It wasnt fun being mugged by one of them tho.

Another look into a subculture I didn’t know existed yet you make it so interesting.

Since u mentioned the Hardbass thing i think it's high time to make something about the Gabber subculture in The Netherlands with the very distinctive Gabber Hardcore music

My favorite Gopnik is Boris, from "Life of Boris". Great Videos to include cooking. Worth watching. He introduced to Hardbass and Ladas.

The sunflower seeds thing is also a common thing amoung other eastern european countries like Lithuania. I have a good friend from the and when i went on holiday there with him, how and when to eat sunflower seeds was one of the cultural things i was taught haha

Hahahah so funny that you included KUKU$, a Croatian Hip Hop group. Not really related to the topic, but they did make the song "Real Slavs", so it makes sense that you used footage :D

The sweat suit was also seen in the horror film outpost with ray Stevenson, the best punisher, the guide on the team was in sweat suit, he did get knocked off, he was using a Kalashnikov

many Western people, when portraying gopniks or talking about them, miss one important detail - this is the length of the hair and hairstyle. a gopnik will never wear long hair or a stylish hairstyle. in fact, in the 90s, one of the main reasons for the gopniks to attack was precisely the length of the hair. The gopniks were very homophobic and in their stereotypical view, a man with long hair allegedly looked like a woman and therefore was gay. for this reason, the main enemies of the gopniks were all sorts of metalheads, punks, hipsters, and so on. therefore, if you cosplay a gopnik, always cut your hair under 0.3

Ahh.. Shufitinsky’s Taganka and Black BMW songs come to my mind.. topped with a golden necklace..

6:10 Do not pronounce it Mock Ba, its pronounced Moskva holy fuck. those are not english characters. lol

In America the "Slav squat" has been called the "prison pose" since at least the 1970's that I'm aware of.

great content. thanks

Hey man, cheers for a great video. Just to clarify; one of the theories is that the term "Gopnik" loosely translates as a petty thief, or an adherent to "gop-stop" counterculture (basically beating random people up to pinch their phones, money, cigarettes and so on). Like the chavs in the UK, gopniks all but disappeared by the early 2010s, especially after "Rapper Syava", a random DJ who parodied Gopniks so successfully that they thought he was one of them and played his music. Once he was exposed as a major troll, it made gopniks the laughing stock of the country. They've now been replaced by "Gopsters"; working class guys who wear original Adidas tracksuits (unlike the dodgy fake ones worn by Gopniks) and listen to depressive urban rap. They're nowhere near as drunk or aggressive as Gopniks and no longer squat or drink beer and eat seeds in the street. Hard Base was pretty much replaced with Drum and Base by the mid 2010s as the gopsters go-to party music.

SUBSCRIBED for sure! Anybody who puts this much effort into research, production and editing deserves support! Best of luck moving forward forward to see what's coming next!

Gopnik has definitely to do with gop-stop which is mugging a usually weaker victim caught by surprise, when a bunch of those jump at them from around the corner (there's even an eponymous name) that is when the victim stops, being put on their heels.

Levenshulme Manchester, they still wear tracky bottoms & pointy shoe's 😂

gopniks even existed in other soviet bloc countries, as in lithuania they're called "Marozai."

This is actually quite fascinating. You should do one on the other subcultures, the Chav's, etc. Edit: I just saw that you did, haha

Weird that you showed members of the IRA as Russian "high end mafia bosses". 6:59

I’m dying 😂😂 These guys are amazing

Kappa еще была, кстати ты ее показал - это для элиты, да :) А на кортах сидеть - ну просто удобней, стулья не везде есть, ты тоже хорошо подметил)

In Poland we had in 1990s (after fall of communism) something quite similar to this subculture - we called them "dresiarze" (read as something like 'dre-sha-je') because of they clothes style. They also wore Adidas-clone clothes, haircuts to zero, drank alcohol, smoke ton of cigarretes, robbing and beating random people. Some of them was asociated with hard-core football/soccer fans (hooligans) and criminal. Using infamous baseball bats were not so rare. Music was also in similar vein - very early polish and american hip-hop, techno and eurodance. They were big problem in bigger cities, poorer districts, we feared of them often. Hopefully about past 2010s it's seems the past, never again.

Glad to see we have so much in common. Not sure what you'd call our Stateside equivalent. (I'd list a few but they're all offensive) Cheap track suits are the planet-wide uniform of shady proles. There's probably a guy selling bootleg phones in Tierra Del Fuego looking like the fraternal twin of a meth dealer in Anchorage.

Loved my anker liberty 3s until the left one decided to no longer recognize the base. Till then they had amazing sound through their app and the BEST noise canceling (I've tried MANY ear buds, IEMs, in ear fuck all)... but... then again dropping it in the tub that one time probably didn't help either. I suppose I need forgiving ear buds, although the liberty 3s had one of the most secure yet comfortable fit. Oh well. Maybe I'll replace them. I'm currently enjoying my galaxy pros with my recent Samsung replacement. Do miss Motorola's head phone jack though... didn't think about that, however I wasn't spoiled for choice at the time either.

No mention of Slav and the LoFi squat party thing? 😊

This is the best KZfaq video I've seen in a long time. I always wondered what that culture of Russians wearing tracksuits was and you explained everything including the squatting so educational and I always wanted to look into this. I'm subscribing

In the early 90's I knew a guy that was paying good money for any old Adidas gear and shipping it to Russia, where it sold for top dollar on the black market. He said the Russian kids used the word Adidasovski, to express that something was cool.

This is a good one - had no idea bout this sub-sub-sub culture. Cheers!

This shit literally changed my life. When the gopnik memes came out, I was fascinated by them, and we all used to joke around with gopnik culture with the boys. And then I found hardbass. Hoooly fuck, when I was really in love with that music was a magical era of my life that I kinda miss. First the old traditional hardbass tracks that you'd hear in memes, then the new wave of hardbass which I loved just aswell (Uamee, Alan Aztec, etc...). I always listened to them. And the channels I watched during that time, LifeOfBoris especialle. It's a shame youtube fucked up his channel for no reason. I've started to get more and more interested in Russian culture, and today, I'm actually learning Russian, and it's going pretty well. I might become a translator later on, I'll see. I wanna learn the other Slavic languages aswell once I'm fluent, but for now my sights are focused on Polish and Dutch.

I've heard of it refered to as the caveman squat. Been around as long as people. It's actually a comfortable and easy way to relax anywhere, without a chair. I use it when i have to work on something close to the ground.

The squat is not uniquely Slav. I’ve seen people across Asia sit like this, from China to the Middle East. Great video ❤

I always new the look of that subculture, but growing up in Texas I never new the term Gopnik. I just thought that was all of Eastern Europe. 😂

Loved the MOCKBO one 😂

Excellent video. A few points though: - You barely touched the crime part. When I was a kid in Kyiv in the 90s I felt uncomfortable walking in poorer neighborhoods alone or with a girlfriend. I could have my pockets emptied, shoes and clothes taken, harassed, or even beaten up for no reason. One of the main reasons why martial art was so popular was to protect from gopniks. - In the 2010s Kyiv became a bit of a hub for commercial and music videos. Some of them rode the trend of gopniks while popularising it even further. - As for the culture itself it remains alive in some areas. In 2014 I met a young guy from a poorer neighborhood in Kyiv and he told me what's life like there. All the bullshit was still alive, like extreme violence for no reason. - Nowadays it seems like some of them are transitioning into more trendy subcultures like raves/drugs, ultras, far-right groups, etc.

"Oh they chew sunflower seeds well that's a good healthy alternative to cigarettes." "They also smoke cigarettes? Oh."

Bit late to the party but for a couple of years we had a "small indoor concert"(?) in the Netherlands called Tri-Poloski. It was like 500 people max. Yes, people were drunk and/or high on various substances but it was such a meme-able party. There were never any fights. Nothing weird happened despite of some people's state of being. I went to like 3 of 4 of those parties. It was great fun. It literally was just a bunch of memers having a good time. Sadly Tri-Poloski stopped existing. I did go to a follow-up-attempt once but it was by far not as fun. I miss Tri-Poloski, it was great fun.

I love how he endorsed earbuds in the video about gopniks while wearing Adidas pants

Jimmy, you got check in on "Ned" culture from Scotland. Ned beats, Buckfast and doing laps in a slammed saxo. The culture has like a nostalgia night called Iamaraver - There was a culture of youtube dj who now do tours. Dj Badboy is the lyrical goat. Do it.

You're not a gopnik unless you've got a dent in front teeth specially for sunflower seeds. It's something that takes a lot of time to develop. Speaking from the experience.

Hey mate I’m Australian and being a bogan isn’t actually frowned upon it’s actually pretty normal our undesirables are called eshays

Dope video, but most from US u see rocking Adidas is from hip hop / Run DMC era

In Quebec Canada we have our own, they're called "BS" it is a derogatory term but not what you think it's initial shorts to "bien être social" which was the ancient name for social security now called: "aide sociale" or social help. Anyway if you see a bunch of baggy pants dude drinking beer on a corner you bet they're gonna ask for a cigarette and properly insult you when you say you don't smoke ...

I'd say this is the best most informative and detailed documentation of Gopniks I've seen so far. Even as a Russian I learned a few things

Track suits including adidas were always prevalent in hip hop culture and sports culture in the 70's through the 80s to even today in the US.

very interesting video but the first two photos of the guys with guns in Adidas tracksuits at 6:59 are of IRA volunteers in Ireland during the troubles, they also loved their Adidas gear

Most Americans are completely unaware of gopniks and chavs, or anything else that goes on in Russia. I only know about them because I watch KZfaq videos like this. This was a well-done video on the topic.

Some also speculate the tracksuit trend originated from former athletes that became mob bodyguards or bouncers in the 90s

Chillin on tha cornah!

I can't believe there wasn't any reference to the Stalker cheeki breeki memes.

Michigan prison is also a freezer especially in the upper peninsula. People do 20 years and look like grey haired teenagers. We refer to the phenomenon as the pickle jar

There is this KZfaqr , Boris ,that guy got me loving the gopnik culture 🔥

Please post your best gopnik tunes!