Open Access‘Soviet Young Man:’ The Personal Diaries and Paradoxical Identities of ‘Youth’ in Provincial Soviet Ukraine during Late Socialism, 1970-1980s
Author(s) -
Sergei I. Zhuk
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of european studies/australian and new zealand journal of european studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1837-2147
pISSN - 1836-1803
DOI - 10.30722/anzjes.vol5.iss2.15137
Subject(s) - ukrainian , scholarship , perspective (graphical) , socialism , political science , gender studies , identity (music) , sociology , social science , communism , law , aesthetics , philosophy , linguistics , artificial intelligence , politics , computer science
Using personal interviews and six diaries of contemporary male authors representing various social groups of urban residents in Soviet Ukraine (two from the cities, and four from towns), written in Russian and Ukrainian, from 1970 to the beginning of the 1980s, this article analyses archival documents and contemporary periodicals and explores the influences of the massive exposure to audio and visual cultural products from the “capitalist West” on the self-construction of identity of Soviet youth from provincial Ukrainian towns. This article seeks to study a concrete development of cultural détente from “the bottom up” perspective, avoiding the Moscow/Leningrad “elitist/conformist” emphasis of recent scholarship.