CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Karpova, Yulia |
|---|---|
| Title | The Stilyagi: Soviet youth (sub)culture of the 1950s and its fashion |
| Summary | The 1950’s in the USSR are characteristic not only by the Cold War, late Stalinism and the hard process of destalinization. This period is also remarkable by the emergence of Soviet youth culture, or, more precisely, “subculture” of so-called stilyagi (literally “style-hunters”). They were urban youth of different class origins, obsessed with Western, mainly American fashion, music and dances. Although stilyagi do not fit the criteria of Western working-class subcultures, they present all the components of “subcultural style,” according to the model of sociologist Michael Brake. Thus, stilyagi elaborated their recognizable dress style, behavioral patterns and argot. Since the first component played especially important role in stilyagi’s self-positioning, in this thesis I focus on their fashion. The socio-cultural meaning of stilyagi’s fashion is often misinterpreted as rebellion against the regime, whereas stilyagi are painted as proto-dissidents. Such an opinion can be found not only in the memoirs, but also in some scholarly works. My aim is to challenge the one-sided vision of stilyagi as anti-Soviet rebels. Therefore this paper considers stilyagi’s fashion not as a phenomenon in itself, but in its social and cultural context. Accordingly, my approach is not a purely art historical investigation, but a multi-sided examination of stilyagi’s “subculture,” including analysis of “moral panic” in the official press, comparison of basic modes within stilyagi’s and mainstream fashions, and comparative analysis of stilyagi phenomenon and a cross-cultural paradigm of dandyism. Such an approach allows explaining the ambiguous position of stilyagi in Soviet social and cultural history: they not only successfully used covert possibilities of 1950s Soviet system, but also influenced mainstream society. Moreover, stilyagi phenomenon can be evaluated as a vivid example of social significance of fashion on the whole. |
| Supervisor | Professor Marsha Siefert, Professor Istvan Rev. |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/karpova_yulia.pdf |
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