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"Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture. The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands of klubs where young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device. Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin's paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community - all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad"--

"Most narratives depict Soviet Cold War cultural activities and youth groups as drab and dreary, militant and politicized. In this study Gleb Tsipursky challenges these stereotypes in a revealing portrayal of Soviet youth and state-sponsored popular culture. The primary local venues for Soviet culture were the tens of thousands of klubs where young people found entertainment, leisure, social life, and romance. Here sports, dance, film, theater, music, lectures, and political meetings became vehicles to disseminate a socialist version of modernity. The Soviet way of life was dutifully presented and perceived as the most progressive and advanced, in an attempt to stave off Western influences. In effect, socialist fun became very serious business. As Tsipursky shows, however, Western culture did infiltrate these activities, particularly at local levels, where participants and organizers deceptively cloaked their offerings to appeal to their own audiences. Thus, Soviet modernity evolved as a complex and multivalent ideological device. Tsipursky provides a fresh and original examination of the Kremlin's paramount effort to shape young lives, consumption, popular culture, and to build an emotional community--all against the backdrop of Cold War struggles to win hearts and minds both at home and abroad"--

The essay explores the implications of a new campaign launched by the Soviet authorities against violent youth behaviour, especially amongst working-class youngsters, after Stalin's death in 1953. Relying largely on official sources from the archives, newspapers and other publications, and also on personal sources such as interviews and memoirs, the study explores what the new campaign reveals about everyday working-class youth violence in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. The new initiative represented part of a broader Thaw-era endeavour to reinvigorate the attempt to construct a socialist version of modernity, specifically by reforming the population's everyday way of life, in a fashion perceived as helping to create model citizens, 'New Soviet People'. The findings contribute to a recent re-evaluation of the Thaw as a time not only of liberalizing reforms, but also of new coercive elements. Further, working-class violence reveals the extent of class differences in the supposedly classless Soviet Union, with working-class youth behaviour departing from the official model of normative conduct, predicated upon middle-class standards. The article focuses on male violence in particular, providing a glimpse of a working-class masculinity that is at variance with the officially prescribed model of socialist masculinity. By showing the frequency of collective violence amongst young workers, the author also questions the official discourse's frequent depictions of collectivism as a panacea for delinquency. Nonetheless, this account does not equate worker violence with conscious opposition to the government. Instead, it positions such behaviour within a wider context of the traditional working-class male youth milieu.

In Russland gibt es wieder Freiwilligenmilizen. Wie zu Sowjetzeiten überwachen sie den öffentlichen Raum, helfen bei der Verbrechensbekämpfung und dienen der sozialen Disziplinierung. Sie werden aber auch zur Unterdrückung politischer Proteste eingesetzt. Verfechter der Milizen betonen, dass sie Jugendlichen die Chance eröffnen, zu vorbildlichen Bürgern zu werden. Die Volkspatrouillen verkörpern eine Form des staatlich geförderten zivilgesellschaftlichen Engagements. Dass sich Hunderttausende junge Menschen freiwillig in diesen Milizen engagieren, zeigt das Ausmaß konformistischen Handelns für das Putin-Regime. Die traditionelle These, dass sich staatliche Organe und zivilgesellschaftliche Organisationen gegenüberstehen, trifft hier nicht zu. Den Befürwortern der Patrouillen ist es aber nicht gelungen, die Freiwilligenmilizen als ein allgemein akzeptiertes Vorbild für Jugendliche durchzusetzen. (Osteuropa (Berlin) / SWP)