Rust, petrol, and post-socialist soundscapes of mobility:

notes on evolution of acoustic profile of privacy

Throughout several years of travelling between institute in Germany and sites of my

ethnographic fieldwork in Moldova and Romania, as well as relatives and friends

dispersed across Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, listening and hearing to and in the

transport became a practice almost too mundane to reflect on. Yet sound I was exposed

and indirectly contributed to by using those vehicles did never entirely dissolve into

unconsciousness with the help of my dictaphone that served also as a player. As the

countries, stations, language areas were passing by kaleidoscopically, the differentials

were strangely detected and reflected by the stable element – several albums in my

player, which I listened to for ages, seeking to retain at least some portable contingency

in my fragmented life.

Another trace was the background on audio records of interviews I made. Unheard

during interviews and field records, audial presence of mobility stood out at the stage of

transcribing and revision of material. So, interview with ticket-seller in Mariupol tram was

buried under the rattle of rusty tramcar on worn-out rails. These occurrences made me

think more about sound dimension of the realms I studied – uneasy post-socialist urban

lives amidst ageing infrastructures. Sound was telling something about the changes;

perception of the sound was changing and telling as well on changing customs of

hearing in post-socialist sonic environment.

This essay focuses on what soundscapes of mobility can tell us about urban

transformations at the outskirts of Europe. Mobility, to my belief, can be thought of as a

sonic display of social change. Post-socialist condition brings together shifts in property

relations and proliferation of digital portable technologies, materialities from different

historical periods – industrial and digital one.

First in this text I will describe post-socialist mobility as a convergence of mobility noise

from individual petrol-driven vehicles and rusting electric vehicles of public transport:

these noises originate from contradicting socio-political realms but contribute together to

amplification of city soundscape. There is a constant process of noise problematization

in post-socialist city which is performed, however, not in regard to absolute sum of

decibels added by mobility but through relative prioritization of different “better” and

“worse” noises. Social actors treat some sounds as less unpleasant than others,

establishing hierarchies of noises and identifying sounds as immoral or legitimate.

Second, I will show that property relations are crucially important for urban practices of

dealing with mobility noise. Change in property relations is one of the most dramatic and

tangible transformations in post-socialist context, whereby it is not only visible one.

Shifts in perceptions and in patterns of problematization of transport noise will be

considered as evidence of re-configurations of private and public. Judit Bodnar and

Virag Molnar described such processes in post-socialist capital city of Budapest on

example of gated communities proliferation1, but this logic of gating and seclusion might

be extended onto other types of urban spaces. Situation of mobility adds challenges to

the description of these processes: while sound itself is a problem for non-critical

cartographic vision of property, moving objects make spatial relations even more elusive

against the eye of a cartographer. Thirdly in this text I will deal with a human-voiced

soundscape of public transport as a scene for emerging nation branding.

Study of post-socialist mobility soundscapes founds itself at the intersection of domains

that only recent began to contact with each other. Urban planners and medics

traditionally have road traffic noise among their concerns dealing, however, mostly or

exclusively with quantitative characteristics2. Social studies of urban sound mention

1 Bodnar, Judit, and Virag Molnar. "Reconfiguring private and public: State, capital and new housing developments in Berlin and Budapest." Urban studies 47.4 (2010): 789-812.2 Seto, Edmund Yet Wah, et al. "Spatial distribution of traffic induced noise exposures in a US city: an analytic tool for assessing the health impacts of urban planning decisions." International journal of health geographics 6.1 (2007): 24.

traffic noise as a keynote sound of city today3 and offer qualitative touch on sound

exposures in the city via transition from “noise pollution” concept to the notion of

soundscape4. Mobility scholars, earlier pre-occupied with feelings of speed and visual

imaginary of mobility cultures, begin to deal with soundscapes mostly in the context of

private vehicles5. Scholars of post-socialism only in few cases deal with the topics of

sensibility – interestingly, in non-European context – and accentuating, among other

issues, connection between socialist deficiency and post-socialist sensorial

excessiveness6. With focus on food, sex, or consumption, these works do not

investigate acoustic aspect of city life after socialism. Neither do so scholars of post-

socialist mobilities, who so far tend to make their way to a regionally contextualized

framework through case studies7. The present text does not pretend to bridge all

mentioned areas of studies, but offers an empirical field that both utilizes their insights

and might develop them. Below I will consider mobility as acoustically intensive

phenomenon, with its meanings deeply informed by cultural factors. Post-socialist

context I am drawing on will help to understand better the sensibilization of property –

Calixto, A, Diniz, F B and Zannin, P H T (2003) The statistical modelling of road traffic noise in an urban setting. Cities 20(1),23–29.3 Adams, Mags, et al. "Sustainable soundscapes: Noise policy and the urban experience." Urban Studies 43.13 (2006): 2385-2398.4 Raimbault, Manon, and Danièle Dubois. "Urban soundscapes: Experiences and knowledge." Cities 22.5 (2005): 339-350.5 Bull, M. (2001) ‘Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Ethnography of AutomobileHabitation’, in D. Miller (ed.) Car Cultures. Oxford: Berg. Bull, M. (2004) ‘Automobility and the Power of Sound’, Theory, Culture & Society21(4/5): 245–60. Bijsterveld, Karin. "Acoustic cocooning: How the car became a place to unwind." The Senses and Society 5.2 (2010): 189-211.Krebs, Stefan. "Towards a Cultural History of Car Sound (s)." Mobility in History: Reviews and Reflections (2011): 151-156.LaBelle, Brandon. "Pump up the bass—Rhythm, cars, and auditory scaffolding." The Senses and Society 3.2 (2008): 187-203.6 Farquhar, Judith. Appetites: Food and sex in post-socialist China. Duke University Press, 2002.Thuan, Nguyen Bich, and Mandy Thomas. "Young women and emergent postsocialist sensibilities in contemporary Vietnam." Asian Studies Review 28.2 (2004): 133-149.7 Burrell, Kathy, and Kathrin Hörschelmann, eds. Mobilities in Socialist and Post-socialist States: Societies on the Move. Springer, 2014.

as a part of general sensibilization of urban life8. Sensibilization – as investing usual

details of life with affective meaning and, within neoliberal context, making them subject

to commoditization – implies that sound and other senses retain their meaning for public

order and that contemporary occularocentric notions of privacy might need a substantial

re-thinking.

noisy soundscape of mobility

Transport is one of the noisiest phenomena in the city, responsible for up to 80 % of

urban noise9. Increase of mobility – due to changes in urban morphology (for instance,

mall-ization at the peripheries), employment patterns, and car ownership rate – is one of

the key transformations happening to post-socialist city. Patterns of commuting,

trajectories, rhythms, new transit modes and their interaction manifest themselves

through hum and buzz; horns and beeps; roaring and rattle; through electronic

announcements and analogue conversations between mobile subjects. Social

theoreticians understand mobility as a new form of contemporary sociality “beyond the

societies” which includes extremely broad range of phenomena, ideas, practices, and

actors10. From another perspective, patterns of mobility realize dominant economic

relations and ideologies: particularly, development of modal composition (that is, which

modes of transit and in which proportions are used) in particular places is deeply

informed by present discourse on public good and private rights, on property, prestige,

and rationality. Acoustical dimension of mobility practices is often not in the focus and

receives attention only as a side-effect of other processes constituting mobility.

8 THIBAUD, Jean-Paul. The sonic composition of the city. In : BULL Michael & Les Back (Eds.) The AuditoryCulture Reader. Amsterdam : Berg Publishers, 2003, pp. 329-341.9 (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/life/project/Projects/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.showFile&rep=file&fil=SMILE_guidelines_noise_en.pdf).10 Sheller, M. and J. Urry (2003) ‘Mobile Transformations of “Public” and “Private”Life’, Theory, Culture & Society 20(3): 115–33. Urry, J. (2000) Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century.London and New York: Routledge.

Post-socialist mobility soundscapes are, thereby, emerging at the intersection of

motorization, libertarian trends in the region, spatial transformations of cities in

transition, and technological change. Also, they bear the impress of material path-

dependency – just like many aspects of life in cities after socialism: while old trams

might share streets with the newer marshrutkas and cars, they all might be using

outworn – and thus increasingly noisy infrastructure, built in Soviet decades.

Percentage shares of noise sources can only partly tell about actual experiences of

urban dwellers – as these experiences are coupled to changes in habits of listening.

More than that, figures on noise referring to entire territories are insufficient, since post-

socialist cities place their inhabitants into increasingly differing (though closely situated)

sonic environments, and mobility contributes to this growth of noise differentials across

the map. Social stratification of exposure to noise is a concern in social study of

soundscape. As Milena Droumeva wrote, silence, which earlier was conceptualized as

common good,11 becomes a privilege of a few for which one has to pay12. One can also

suppose, basing on various historical research that city has been noisy for several

centuries at least, and silence is only recently being commoditized.

https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/constructing-simple-vehicle-sounds--audio-2138

Spatial structures of mobility noise have one more specific feature: producing mobility

noise might be dissembled from hearing it. Although passengers in old trams

manufactured in Soviet times are exposed to noises of rusty vagon, car drivers hear

mostly radio inside of their comfortable vehicles, not hearing hum of avenue and roaring

motors of the car-driving mates. Listening to noise thus can be related to the state of

immobility – being devoid of access to desired regimes of movement: main listeners of

car noise are those who have to wait for a bus or tram at the stop, often during dozens

of minutes. That is to say, if mobility of some finds itself in dialectical relationship with 11 Franklin,Ursula. "Silence and the Notion of the Commons," The Soundscape Newsletter, no. 7, 199412 Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology: 2004 Vol. 5, No. 2. Burbury, B. C.: Simon Fraser University: 23-25.

stasis of others, listening to silence or music in own space of a car might be connected

with experiences of noise for those outside of that space.

Indeed, most sounds originating from practices of mobility can be perceived and

understood as noise, not only in physical, but in sociological sense. In this text noise of

mobility will be read not only directly through acoustic characteristics but through social

relations around audible traces of movement and transportation. Declaring something

noise is the common way to problematize experiences of hearing. Noise, in its turn, is

itself a cultural construct, “a sound out of place”13 rather than some physically

identifiable phenomena in comparison to other sounds. For this approach, notions of

what is noise are culturally diverse and interrelated with other ideas. So through

consideration of which mobility sounds are problematized we can also better

understand the social positions behind socially stratified mobilities. Also I would not

reduce constructed nature of noise to rhetoric only. From a constructionist perspective

not only problematizing but also hearing noise can be approached as the culturally

determined14: human senses are historically changeable, so that human sensorial

reactions on the same audial events might mutate in tune with social context.

Not infrequently, identifying something as noise is a result of negotiation between

several parties. There is a normative framework enabling that negotiation: albeit making

noise might be formally punishable by fine, most legislative acts avoid to give

quantitative characteristics of that noise – instead they prefer to list the commonly used

audible sources of irritation, always with a clause that their use must “result into

nuisance” (повлекшее нарушение покоя)15 to be evaluated. The farther progress of

negotiation, predictably, might be informed by perceptions and evaluations of noise that

13 Bailey, Peter. "Breaking the sound barrier: A historian listens to noise." Body & Society 2.2 (1996): 49-66. P.50

14 Crary J. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 200115 Закон г. Москвы от 12 июля 2002 г. N 42 "О соблюдении покоя граждан и тишины в городе Москве" Paragraph 2. http://base.garant.ru/378789/

are inseparable or, at least, highly influenced by perception of its source. According to

Catherine Guastavino, ideal soundscape contains more human and nature sounds than

sounds of machines16, but situation of mobility often invokes sub-differentiation within

the latter category. Perception of mobility sounds in societies in transition might also be

related to time: particular elements of soundscape become negative signs of pastness,

while some kinds of „contemporary” noise will be even pleasant for particular groups.

Though being an example from another region, sounds of Harley Davidson bikes

roaring made a British research participant quite enthusiastic, when coupled with pop

concert near his residency place17.

So transportation is one of the main reasons why post-socialist cities are getting noisier.

One can hear economic decisions through particular noisy dominants. Re-construction

of tramway line with the use of noise-reducing rubber pad is costly and might be less

effective for political promotion than acquisition of a new tram or erecting a noise barrier

around the highway: new tram will be visible to many including those on the street and

those in their cars, while reducing the noise is noticeable, to the big extent, only by

those living near the tramway line.

private and public transport noises: sound of mobility and the property relations

Below I would like to place three common acoustically intensive situations of post-

socialist mobilities – car alarm ringing, tramway noise, and night street-racing – into a

broader context of privatizational cultural shift.

Along with familiar audial traces of rail transport, there is a growing audial body in post-

socialist city – sounds of private cars. If the skyline destruction, densification, mall-

ization, intensification of surface capacities of the city space are to be named among

16 Guastavino, Catherine. "The ideal urban soundscape: Investigating the sound quality of French cities." Acta Acustica united with Acustica 92.6 (2006): 945-951.17 Adams, Mags, et al. "Sustainable soundscapes: Noise policy and the urban experience." Urban Studies 43.13 (2006): 2385-2398. P. 2393

main visual marks of post-socialist urbanity, than motorization of soundscape can

compare to them in its ubiquity. Growing motorization in post-socialism alone added ca

74 dB with every engine – and rates of car ownership in Eastern Europe have grown by

2 to 4 times between years 1985 and 200418. Additionally, early after Perestroika new or

newly bought private cars often met the mismanaged surfaces of non-asphalted or

bumpy roads. Streets covered sometimes with concrete slabs caused cars to produce a

recognizable clatter when crossing the junction between two. 1990s were reach on

second-hand cars in dubious conditions, so that many tunes originated from machines

themselves – failing to function properly19.

automobiles: soundscape of mobile property Curiously enough, a mobile vehicle

which is actually staying still for 95 % of the time20 – can also be noisy when staying.

One of the key sound traces of car presence in post-Soviet city is an activated car alarm

system. A loud trill, siren, claxon in the middle of the night wakes up local residents or

hinders their falling asleep. Improper settings of forced sensor of alarm system might

cause activation in case of every lightest vibration, be that from a car passing by, dogs

barking, thunderstorm, or activation of alarm system in the nearby standing car.

Sometimes the pre-set sound of alarm system is the same for several cars in one

parking space, so that all owners have to check whose car was affected. Victims of the

noise include those without a car, and a heated debate evokes notions of intrusion,

damage, and responsibility for own property21. Episodes of signal alarm activation

interestingly enough shows how sociality is mediated by sonic waves rather than by

visible borders. In Plato’s Republic a city-state was spatially defined by the vicinity

18 Table 8. Car ownership in select Eastern European countries, 1985–2004. Hirt, Sonia, and Kiril Stanilov. "Revisiting urban planning in the transitional countries." Unpublished regional study prepared for the Global Report on Human Settlements (2009).Somewhat bigger number – 85 dB – is indicated here https://citiquiet.com/all-about-decibels-protect-your-ears/19 Interestingly, noises made by car incented car enthusiasts to develop their vocabulary for speaking about sound http://mycarmakesnoise.com20 Shoup, Donald. 1997. The High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago, IL: Planners Press.21 https://auto.mail.ru/forum/topic/vsju_noch_pod_oknom_oret_signalizacija_v_chej_to_mashine_ne_spjat_6_okrestnyh_domov

within which the orator’s voice was heard22 – this evidence was later employed by

sound scholars to introduce term “acoustic community”; and the neighbors in block

apartment can occasionally constitute such community even despite the rules of

housing estate that protect them from verbal and visual contact with each other. In this

vein, taking sound into account poses new challenges to understanding of privatization

that previously was considered only in visual-territorial dimension. Audio-phenomena re-

shape urban streets and backyards in a different way than we see them on Google

Maps.

The awkward situation of nocturnal car alarm also brings afore temporal dimension of

mobility`s acoustic traces. In different situation of urban life, rhythms of mobility add

temporal dimension to unequal noise vulnerability. People living near the tramway loop

will be aware of hours when tramway line is in operation, and those living near tram

depot will hear them for the longest time within every 24 hour cycle. Some places like

areas near railway stations might be noised by freight traffic at night and passenger

trains in the day. Night noise is a particular public concern and target of severe criticism

in case of public transport. For instance, in Germany it led to prohibition of night flights –

Nachtflugverbot. Neoliberal problematization of noise is often targeting directly night

time23 – as the time when office workers and large company managers are supposed to

be sleeping. Noise of vehicles can also be an expenditure for the sake of public good:

early morning and late evening trams carry people to their workplaces and from their

leisure locations home, correspondingly. But, if tram departure constitutes a singular

acoustic event, sound of one car is not discernible within a constant hum on the

highway or busy avenue. There is a public transit authority, but there is no addressee

for dissatisfaction from flow of private cars, also at night.

22 Schafer 197723 Kusiak, J., ‘Acoustic Gentrification: The Silence of Warsaw’s Sonic Warfare’, in M. Gandy and B. Nilsen (eds.) The Acoustic City, Berlin: Jovis Rosenberg, B. (2013). Shhh! Noisy cities, anti-noise groups and neo-liberal citizenship. Journal of Sociology, 1440783313507493 2014

trams: soundscape of rust Electric trams are heard at post-socialist street along with

private diesel engines of motorization. They were in large amounts inherited from

socialist times when they used to be a sign of urban modernity; but in post-socialist

decades urban electric transport mostly decrepitated, suffering from lack of investment.

When improperly maintained, tram infrastructure indeed can cause serious noise and

vibrations. Making the nearby standing buildings shudder, rusty vehicles on worn-out,

crumpled rails squeak and skid at the rail junctions, intersections and turns. The heavy

vehicle itself may function as resonator for the noise, so that those sitting inside hear

even more noise. Tram soundscape is an audial evidence of how state coordination in

public transit sphere faded away, and the enterprises serving different parts of

infrastructure lost synchronization. The main indicator of “clapped-out” tramcar is the

sound originating from weakly bolted or loosely stacked details, for example, doors

clapping during the ride, vibration of the window-panes, vibration seats badly bolted to

the floor – told me my colleague from Kyiv, a transport fan and expert in his early thirties

who by replying so had unwillingly conceptualized the audibility of disruption.

However, it is not only change in condition of rails, but a change in attitudes that re-

defines audial status of tramway in urban discourse. One of examples of sensitive shift

is a claim that tramways are noisy as such and probably have to be removed due to that

reason. We know that trams start running at 5:30 am and end at 00:30am [...] In the

head various ideas appear – from fantastic ones, like forcing the authorities to move the

tramway line from our street the – to more real ones like to blow-up this rails, hell with it

[...]. Who knows how soon the sensitivity will reduce [...] and we won’t notice the

movement of these beasts under our windows?”24 This pathetic replica displays a

specific range of intonations addressed to the technology which had been there for

several decades already: a fairly Nimbyist tone of wanting the tramways out of “our

24 http://blog.fontanka.ru/posts/163735/ translation by AV

street”, curiosity about how soon the adaptation is going to happen; re-thinking the

technological meaning of tram that becomes “beast” due to its sonic appearance.

Supposedly, such lamentations are rarely if ever sounded by public transit users.

Especially telling here is the case in Ukrainian city of Druzhkivka where a tramway line

to Porcelain Plant was re-introduced in 2013, after the rails had stayed unused for ten

years. Residents of houses located along the line with renewed service were

complaining about terrible noise and asked to set the speed limitation for the trams on

this track section25. Finally, the authorities had to keep to the limitation to 5 km/h. Here

the speed decrease – a disadvantage for passengers – has been set not due to security

requirements but for the sake of someone’s audial comfort. This case shows a collision

between attempts to protect two common goods – mobility and silence – and the

solution privileged those who apparently are not in need of the cheapest and least

prestigious travel mode in Druzhkivka, which is a tramway.

Making the problem of tramway noise resonates with another feature of local context:

the tram is used most of all by older adults. Negotiations on what is noisy can be

connected to ideas that something is done in vain or without necessity – paving the way

for a public dispraise. In my research on mobility of elderly city residents in Ukraine I

faced expressions of dissatisfaction at pensioners going somewhere during rush hour.

Their mobility was thus perceived as senseless noise not only in acoustic terms but also

in contrast to “sound”, “normal” mobilities of the workers and the young.

racers: sonic exhibitionism Such noisy (sub)cultures of (petrol) mobility as night

racers, motorcyclists, car drivers using mighty subwoofers to rock the space around etc.

are relatively new for post-Soviet urban space. Ride without silencer became once

conceived a subcultural sign of, a kind of noisy teenager exhibitionism26. Pragmatically,

25 http://donbass.ua/news/region/2013/10/04/gorozhane-tak-otvykli-ot-tramvaja-chto-teper-on-ih-razdrazhaet.html26 Car crashes and dead end careers: Leisure pursuits of the Finnish subculture of the kortteliralli street racing Heli Vaaranen & Neil Wieloch Nordic Journal of Youth Research 10:1, pp 42-58

roar of street racing is different from “ancillary” noises of car alarm or tramcar that

satisfy everyday needs: it is the willingly amplified sound of a mobility for the sake of

mobility. It is also different in that contacting the racer is quite a problem: not like it is in

case of hapless owner whose car is alarming in the backyard. To add that, in urban

rumors, night racers are described as criminals and/or children of the rich and powerful.

In Rostov-on-Don cornering squeal in the night, though condemned by many, retained

its presence throughout decades. Discourse on traumatic presence of noise may be

competing with discourses of security and even re-frame noise as a positive quality:

“Cars without a silencer and street racers will ride anyway. This way motorcyclists are

better seen and heard, others give them way. Doing so, they increase their safety,

reducing the risk of getting into an accident":27

These examples show not only libertarian mood in fighting against noise but also

perplexity which often prevents angry urbanites from direct action. The challenge might

be also that for engagement into such action some other way of networking is needed –

something beyond contacting co-residents and friends (given that even maintaining

social ties with staircase neighbors had become much less typical in privatization trend

of last decades). In literature more-than-visual concepts of territory in the context of

urban management are only starting to be reflected on. Barry Truax introduces

“acoustic communities” to define any system, no matter the geographical range, within

which acoustic information is exchanged28. Vincent Andrisani employs this concept to

describe acoustic communication in lowly motorized and digitalized post-socialist city of

Havana29. In high apartment blocks of post-Soviet sleeping areas, where the shared use

of spaces is minimized, sound becomes an obstinate reminder of proximity of others.

Not surprising that inter-sensual collisions (for example, those between territories 27 http://www.m24.ru/audios/40094?utm_source=CopyBuf28 Truax, B. (2001). Acoustic Communication (2nd Edition ed.). Westport, CT, USA: AblexPublishing. 29 Andrisani, Vincent. "Aural Ethnography and the Notion of Membership: An Exploration of Listening Culture in Havana." (2012). Accessed at las.arts.ubc.ca

occupied by car and by sound it produces) in post-soviet landscapes result into a

confusing ambiguity: a popular vocabulary for speaking about auditory territories and

properties is just not there yet.

Analytical and governmental challenge of loud car and loud tram thus is in possible

conceptualization of noise as a violation of property rights. Such conceptualization might

be carried by different stake-holders with correspondingly differing outputs. Can

someone’s endeavor to protect the property lead through a noise nuisance to violation

of property rights of the others – those who don’t have their own car but also reside

legally in the neighborhood? If silence can be a part of legitimate property rights, which

conditions can constitute an exception? Should the noise of the property be understood

differently than the noise of activities like moving or partying? Can the presence of noise

in the city be part of social pact without amendments?

portable soundscapes and learning not to hear

Often being unable to influence the aggressive outer soundscape, urban dwellers

develop different tactics in order to resist it and control own sonic experiences. Most

often, they try to unhear the undesired noise with headphones, be they even not

connected to any device: Michael Bull have presented an impressive ethnography of

portable music player and headphones’ use for managing the everyday urban

experiences30. Among other observations, he proposed an idea that headphones are

not simply excluding their user from acoustic surroundings but rather allow to regulate

the degree of inclusion and modify less pleasant situations. So vehicles become

inhabited not only by technical sounds of movement but also containers for portable

soundscapes originating from personal devices of driver and passengers. Portable

gadgets in vehicles can also make public soundscape very musical in a way: filling it

30 Bull, Michael. Sounding out the city: Personal stereos and the management of everyday life. Berg, 2000.

with melodies from walkmans, players, and iphones. For individual sounds of personal

gadgets – not only songs in player, but also ringtones and notifications about incoming

messages – cohere everyday life, but in publicly shared space they might become a

subject of sonic etiquette. Most post-Soviet passengers would be able to recall a loud

talk on the phone in a small space of marshrutka, a haunting ringtone from cellphone

that is unluckily buried somewhere at the bottom of the clutch and hard to reach amidst

a close-bodied crowd. Sodcasting – playing loud music through the trebling

loudspeakers of smartphone in public places31 – is another case from the row, causing

reproaches from older adults. Interestingly, sodcasters in Mariupol were not playing

music during the entire trip from my home in the remote outskirts to the downtown: high-

pitch lo-fi broadcast was “legitimate” only in Livoberizhzhia raion, a peripheral sleeping

area, but not in the city center. That means, both mobile space and static space carried

meaning for youngsters who distinguished the degree to which they could count

different city parts as “their” acoustic territory.

Some discussions around public transit soundscape echo political concerns and

prioritize them over proprietary ones: such as controversy around Russian chanson –

specific genre of Russian-language gangster songs – in marshrutkas in Ukrainian city of

Rivne. It seemed to be no problem when drivers would typically listen to this music

genre which marked asymmetrical semi-privateness of the vehicle – until chanson got

perceived as a marker of threatful Russian culture.

Youth seems to be rarely involved in acoustic communication in public transit, utilizing

time on the move for other occupations and virtual socializing. Unequal degree of

involvement into shared sonic atmosphere of vehicle is illustrative of technological

change. Sodcasters, phone talkers, and chanson fans, as well as vendors with flowers,

socks, or clothes pegs in Bucharest tram, beggars in Rostov bus, and accordion player 31 See more on phenomenon in Marshall W. Treble Culture // The Oxford Handbook of Mobile Music Studies. 2014. Vol. 2. P. 43.

in Katowice tram are all much noticeable for those who do not use headphones to cover

their ears and portable digital gadgets to shift glance at. In contrast to audio-cocooning

tactics of youngsters, for elderly passengers in Donbas cities tramway was a public

space to meet others for a small talk and to listen to them. Here they demonstrated the

skill of unhearing the loudly rattling tram and hearing each other. We apparently

managed to do the same with a tram conductor whom I interviewed at her workplace in

Mariupol. However, a friend of mine, first time in the city, could hardly hear a word in

those vehicles. In one physical space of a tram some people can share an acoustic

public space while others are excluding themselves or limiting own social involvement.

The tension emerges not when one wants not to hear – others or a blasting tram – but

one wants to hear people`s voices against the wall of rusty skirr.

spoken word and branding in post-socialist city

Already in the digital era a new element proliferated across post-Soviet spaces of transit

– pre-recorded human voices. Once only present in subway, today they are in surface

public transport in many cities as well. If earlier the trolleybus driver had to use her own

voice to announce the station, now the function is delegated to digital jingles with pre-

recorded voice, which driver activates by simply pushing the button. Features of that

voice acquired special importance – alone, this unified variant replaced all discordant

diversity voices of drivers announced (or, frequently, decide not to announce) the stop.

The sociological profiling of electronic voices and what they say acquires thus additional

capacities: Nina Power showed how recorded female voices in announcements can be

engaged in maintaining control and soft coercion32.

In Minsk since 2012, surface public transit infrastructure was equipped with automatic

electronic announcements. Significantly for the local context, announcements were in

Belarusian language. First one was the consequent Belarusification of the spoken word 32 Soft coercion, the city, and the recorded female voice in Gandi pp. 23-26

in subway with was a mixture of Belarusian and Russian around millennium. In course

of preparations for 2014 IIHF World Championship electronic announcements were

introduced in buses, trolleybuses, and trams: unlike drivers, who often announced stops

in Russian or trasianka, electronic voice spoke exclusively standard Belarusian. Also

international airport in Minsk added announcements in Belarusian since approximately

2016 – just before the country has introduced five day visa free entry for citizens of ca

80 countries. Though being an official state language along with Russian, Belarusian

had been fairly marginal throughout 15 years of Alexander Lukashenko in power, and

slightly gained the visibility in public space during 2010s. Still, for many public

transportation became the space where they started to hear title language of Belarus

daily; the first city environment to start re-normalization of Belarusian oral speech,

followed later by advertisements in hypermarkets. Interestingly, commercial

advertisements in subway are still made in Russian, in a faster tempo and busier tone,

delicately switching the register and utilizing sound as a resource in economies of

attention.

These acoustic innovations might be considered in the contexts of developing nation (or

nationalist) branding in the era of commercial nationalism in post-socialist Europe33 and

symbolic functionality of transport infrastructure in urban construction. It allows to

hypothesize a re-intensification of the state`s presence in post-socialist city or at least

an endeavor to demonstrate such process through different, not only visual and textual,

means. Other, gloomy, reminiscence here is the use of loudspeakers in public places as

tool of power and propaganda – be that Nazi Germany or, recently, border between

Northern and Southern Korea34. In current Belarusian situation the title language in

vehicles may perform a fairly decorative function – I can recall how a respondent in one

33 Volcic, Zala, and Mark Andrejevic. "Nation branding in the era of commercial nationalism." International Journal of Communication 5 (2011): 21.34 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/22/world/asia/north-korea-attack-on-south-triggered-by-propaganda-loudspeakers.html

of frequent surveys asking Belarusians “Would you like to hear Belarusian language

oftener?” answered “What I hear in public transport is sufficient”. Nevertheless, such

acoustic moves might acquire more decisive meanings in other places across post-

Socialist bloc. Last decades evidenced proliferation of multi-language interface in

transport: absence of translated text can even be perceived as backwardness. The

choice of language combination had a potential for politicizing: in some cities of Eastern

Ukraine stops were for a long time announced in Russian only; while in Riga bilingual

combination of Russian and Latvian announcements ceded to exclusively Latvian

announcements as independency of Latvia was renewed. Altogether, sound

furnishment of transit spaces in stately owned vehicles suggests a field for study on

acoustic dimension of emerging nationalisms in more detail.

Remarkably, hints on nation branding might be concurrent with internationalization of

interface through introduction of English. As Pavel Niakhayeu recalled, such

announcements were “first introduced before the World Hockey Championship in 2014 -

and cancelled soon afterwards. I think these announcements changed the perception of

the city for many people - and many has missed the 'Mind the doors, please!' since.

This winter English was reintroduced - along with the introduction of a 5-day visa-free

travel period for foreigners. Also the central routes buses (#100 at least) now air English

audio-guide comments for passengers - about the notable buildings, places, figures and

events. Present in media and in urban talks Belarusian and English announcement in

subway evoked replicas on appearance of the capital city in front of the tourists; they

worked out a tool of self-alienation, allowing questioning the familiar city as if being in it

for the first time. Along with that, bilingualism of subway interface had a fleur of

Europeanization – a long debated perspective in ambiguous state course.

Conclusions:

Soundscapes of post-socialist cities are contradictory. They reveal gaps between

experiences of different generations existing in post-socialist cities, as well as tensions

between libertarian aspirations of emerging middle class and persistent high

expectations from urban infrastructure. Soundscape of petrol, paradoxically, is a

collective one in some way: if one removes one car from congested avenue, the avenue

won`t become noticeably quieter. Electric layer of mobility soundscape consists of

pieces that are distinctively connected to a particular device and particular sound event.

More than that, all tramways are concentrated in a few tram parks and their owner is

identifiable – not like in case of depersonalized traffic jam (who owns a traffic jam?). Car

noise is growing on the decay of electric mobility: as motorization is enforced by

deterioration of public transit. Both noise varieties – one mediated by diesel engines on

imperfect asphalt and another by rusty vehicles on crooked rails – co-exist in urban

streets, overlapping and competing, and exemplify significance of cultural factors in

dynamics of attention to noise. In a macro-economic context, inaction of state against

petrol mobility and absence of support for electric one in Russian case is accordant to

logic of oil-producing and oil-exporting state; unhindered noise of petrol devices than

becomes the sound of carbon democracy35.

Auditory experiences from post-socialist mobilities are deeply informed by portable

technologies of sound and differ for milieus according to their degree of proficiency in

using them. Some of remarkable transformations in the region owe a lot to a global

context of soundscape change: for example coming and going of ringtone-dominated

soundscape36. Spaces of commuting became arena where these inequalities are

performed: although commuters share the spaces of streets and vehicles, different

groups are exposed to different sound realms, so that shape of a shared territory can

differ from shapes of shared acoustic spaces. Portable technologies can re-configure

35 Mitchell, Timothy. Carbon democracy: Political power in the age of oil. Verso Books, 201136 Gopinath S. Ringtones, or The Auditory Logic of Globalization // First Monday. 2005. Vol. 10. № 12.

significance of noise for different groups: while some can successfully insulate

themselves and consequentially lose interest in combatting noise, others can remain in

minority in their endeavor to problematize it.

Far from being resolved, dialectics of private and public good in mobility soundscapes

recently have to share attention with other sonic elements like language of sonic

interface, or musicality of commuting experience. Hypothesis on sensibilization of

urban life thus is supported by the growing concern about acoustic details. Potential of

mobility as a sonic display of the city is starting to be recognized: so that Minsk, which

has been described as a thoroughly managed visual surface37 probably will also design

its audial envelope. Altogether, developments in post-socialist soundscapes of mobility

are echoing the temporal complexity of cities where contradictions between socialist

past and neo-liberal present do not seem to disappear – instead they reproduce and

prolong the uncertainly or, to put it more positively, the intrigue of post-socialist future.

37 Сарна, А. Я. "Минск–город победившего гламура." (2008).