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Soviet Youth Today
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17987 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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5 / 1990 |
2,685 Words |
| Author
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Richard Tempest
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Few months ago, walking with a Russian friend down the Arbat - a pedestrian precinct in downtown Moscow that is favorite gathering spot for the city's young - I noticed a group of teenagers leaning against the wall. With their sneakers and stone-washed jeans, they looked no different than students on a college campus in the American Middle West. They wore headphones and brightly colored Sony Walkmans attached to their belts and were clicking their fingers and tapping their feet. I remarked that I found it impressive to see so many personal stereos - then and now among the most sought-after items in Moscow.
"I know these guys," my friend replied. "Their Walkmans don't have any batteries - you can't get them in the shops - so they only pretend they are listening to music." These young people wanted to do what teenagers the world over enjoy doing - to have fun, and show off while having it. But the inefficiency of the Soviet economy forces them to playact.
Conspicuous consumption is one of the most important elements in Western youth culture. In Moscow, this frequently decried practice has become street theater.
Soviet youth culture is almost wholly imported from the West. The Soviet teenager strives to look - and by and large does look - like his Western counterpart. He listens to the same music, enjoys the same hobbies and, above all, similarly asserts his independence from and rejection of adult society.
Soviet youngsters today have the feeling of being part of a worldwide generation. Theirs is the first Russian generation able to look at the world out side the country - and to see that they have more in common with their French or American peers than with their parents and grandparents.
It was under Leonid Brezhnev that the Soviet people were first able to enjoy, indeed indulge themselves in, the simple pleasures of the good life. A family car, a dacha in the country, a black-and-white TV, a refrigerator - all these elements of a consumer society became accessible to a large proportion of the urban population only in the 1960s. (The standard of living in rural areas has consistently lagged behind that of the cities.)
The emergence of a distinctive youth culture in the Soviet Union also dates to the 1960s. At first the youth culture was largely confined to urban dwellers and the elite. Gradually, it spread outward to the provinces and downward to the working class. Today, under Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet youth culture is a truly national phenomenon - but is exists largely in the cities.
Indeed, one can speak of the "graying" of the Soviet countryside, particularly in the European part of the country. The exodus from the countryside has been one of the most important demographic shifts in the Soviet Union. School graduates with qualification and ambitions leave the farms to take skilled jobs in the cities. Blue-collar workers like drivers ad mechanics, as well as such members of the rural intelligentsia as teachers, librarians, and economists, are also abandoning the villages. The people moving from rural to urban areas are mostly in their 20s and early 30s.
It must be emphasized that the Soviet Union is no longer a young
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