soviet youth and nep

Soviet Youth and the Politics of Popular Culture during NEPAuthor(s): Anne E. GorsuchReviewed work(s):Source: Social History, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 1992), pp. 189-201Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4286015 .

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Anne E. Gorsuch

Soviet youth and the politics of

popular culture during NEP

According to Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci, a successful ruling class is one that has established its moral and cultural hegemony before actually obtaining power.1 The Bolshevik party did not fulfil this requirement: the political revolution in October 19I7 took place in a country deeply at odds with itself socially, culturally and politically. Although the Civil War solidified the Bolsheviks' political control over the country, the biggest task still lay ahead - that of transforming pre-revolutionary 'bourgeois' culture and social relations into new socialist forms of behaviour and belief. The Bolsheviks recognized the vital importance of this task. The dictatorial, class warfare policies of War Communism were followed by the introduction of the New Economic Policy - an effort to turn away from the military construction of a socialist state towards the educational creation of a new communist society.

One of the most vital areas in this struggle for social transformation was Soviet youth. The younger generation held out great promise as that element of the population which could grow up free from the cultural corruption of pre-revolutionary Russia. They were seen as the guarantor of future social hegemony, in so far as they would be able, or willing, to replicate and even advance the ideology and culture of the Bolshevik party. As Gramsci's observations suggest, however, there were tremendous challenges in trying rapidly to construct new cultural norms and social relations after the political revolution rather than before. Youth had the potential to challenge as well as champion the desired consensus of the Bolsheviks and there remained a deep division between the persistent non-communist customs and behaviour of Soviet youth and the new socialist culture envisioned by the party. This essay is part of a larger project which looks at the challenges of cultural construction in post-revolutionary Russia, particularly as they relate to problems of everyday life among the first generation of Soviet youth.

My research examines a wide variety of youth cultures in Soviet Russia, some of which supported the Bolsheviks, but many of which displayed various degrees of resistance, rebellion and rupture with the dominant Bolshevik culture. My project includes working-class youth cultures, urban and rural communist youth cultures, Soviet flapper and foxtrotter cultures, and delinquent and criminal youth cultures. I also explore gender

* Research support for this article was provided by the International Research and Exchanges Board and the Social Science Research Council. I would like to thank William G. Rosenberg, Geoff Eley, Ronald G. Suny and Judy Wyman for their suggestions and

assistance. ' See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the

Prison Notebooks, eds Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York, I97I), 57-8.



9go Social History VOL. I7: NO. 2

relations and sexual behaviour among members of the younger generation. In this essay, however, I would like to focus on just two areas of popular culture among the urban and non-criminal youth of Soviet Russia - movies and dress - which reveal different if related aspects of the cultural conflict between youth and the Bolsheviks. What did young people like to do with their free time? What kind of movies did they like to watch? What kinds of clothes did they wear? And what does this tell us about the difficulty of creating cultural hegemony?

First, however, I would like to put these questions into a larger context by looking briefly at questions of historiography, and second at Bolshevik conceptions of ideal youth culture. An understanding of the important connections between Soviet social transformation and youth requires a reconceptualization of the problem of party-youth relations during NEP. The classic works by American and Soviet historians on the Soviet Union's younger generation are essentially political histories which describe this generation primarily in institutional terms.2 The only exception is a book by the Soviet historian N. B. Lebina, Rabochaia molodezh' Leningrada. Thud i sotsial'nyi oblik, I92 I-1925, which makes a valiant effort to portray the complexities of youth culture and everyday life in the 1920S, but is limited by Lebina's focus on the working class and on the Komsomol.3 There is nothing in the historiography of the Soviet Union which resembles the more theoretically creative work done on western European youth cultures by authors such as Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Dick Hebdige.4 Their work provides a compelling framework for looking at youth cultures and the problems of juvenile delinquency in the larger context of the struggle for social power and hegemony.

However, by examining the everyday activities of Soviet youth, I seek not only to readdress the problem of party-youth relations, but also to contribute to the emerging field of cultural history. Historians of the New Economic Policy have traditionally focused on the political and economic struggles of the I92os. Scholars such as Stephen Cohen, Alec Nove and Isaac Deutscher have made invaluable contributions to our understanding of the struggles for power and volatile debates over economic policy in this period.5 Soviet

2 See, for example, Ralph Fisher, Patternfor Soviet Youth: A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, i198-1945 (New York, I959); Allen Kassof, The Soviet Youth Program (Cambridge, Mass., i965); A. N. Atsarkin, Pod Bol'she- vitskoe znamia: soizy rabochei molodezhi v Petrograde v. 1917 g. (Leningrad, I958);

Ocherchi istorii Leningradskoi organizatsii. VLKSM (Leningrad, I969); Stanislav A. Pedan, Partiia i Komsomol, 1 91 8-1945 (Lenin- grad, '979)-

3 N. B. Lebina, Rabochaia molodezh' Lenin- grada. Trud i sotsial'nyi oblik, I921-1 925 gg. (Leningrad, I982).

I Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain (1976); Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London and New York, 1979); Stephen Humphries, Hooli- gans orRebels?An Oral History of Working Class Childhood and Youth, 1889-/ 939 (Oxford,

I98I); Paul Willis, Common Culture. Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young (Buckingham, Iggo).

I See, for example, Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution (New York, 1927); Alec Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (I969); and Isaac Deutscher's trilogy on Trotsky, especially The Prophet Armed, r879-1921 (Oxford, I954) and The Prophet Unarmed, 1921-1929 (Oxford, 1959).

This is not meant to de-emphasize the vital importance of the many recent works of social history by historians of the Soviet Union, only to emphasize the relative lack of attention paid to issues of cultural hegemony. One exception to this rule is a recently published collection of articles on NEP culture and society. See Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch and Rich- ard Stites (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP. Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington, 199I).



May 1992 Soviet youth and popular culture

historians are still occupied with these questions as they examine new archival materials and for the first time openly discuss some of the major political debates of the I920S.

However, while these questions are vital for our understanding of NEP, excessive focus on political and economic problems threatens to ignore what may be an even more important and challenging problem - that of establishing social and cultural hegemony after the revolution. In this examination of youth cultures I hope to show how the use of cultural history and the study of problems of everyday life, behaviour and belief contributes to a deeper understanding of the transitional nature of NEP and suggests additional reasons for its ultimate demise.

An essential attribute of Bolshevik ideology in the 192OS was the degree to which they tried to secure and incorporate every aspect of human practice and experience. Entire areas of youths' everyday behaviour, manners, language, dress and sexual relations were taken out of the private realm and became a part of public political discourse. Unlike the period of the Civil War, when a good communist was defined by his revolutionary enthusiasm, or the I930S, when a communist was largely defined by his attitude towards work, in the I920S what was essential was one's everyday behaviour. As Komsomol moralists Dmitriev and Galin wrote, 'We no longer consider only the Komsomol member who works and studies well as a good Komsomolets, but also he who is able to live correctly.'6 The Bolsheviks' preoccupation with every aspect of individual behaviour and belief left little ideological room for alternative forms of expression. As they tried to destroy all forms of 'residual' meaning and value (to use Raymond Williams's terminology) and to extend their penetration of popular culture, areas of everyday experience which in other societies might be largely ignored and/or assigned to the private sphere, were in Soviet society seen as signs of deviance and opposition.7 The politicization of personal, family or even biological issues was particularly obvious in the Bolsheviks' treatment of the younger generation. Much youthful behaviour, which modern-day scholars or psycholo- gists might attribute to adolescent efforts to establish their self-identity, was interpreted by the Bolsheviks as a sign of political 'deviance' or 'hooliganism'.

Rather than trying to establish the party's moral dominance through force, the Bolsheviks largely relied on their ability to create consent through Marxist education and the redirection of leisure activities. Komsomol clubs, including political cells, drama groups and sports groups were to be the major method of erasing all vestiges of a bourgeois lifestyle and values. Through its organizations in factories and schools, the Komsomol agitated against 'hooliganish'-type activities such as drinking, smoking, dancing and religious observance. Although there were great debates over what exactly was meant by 'socialist' forms of everyday life, or 'socialist' morality, it was generally agreed that this did not mean the unenlightened and frivolous 'low' culture associated with the working class in the minds of many Bolshevik intellectuals. In place of 'popular' activities associated with the proletariat, the Komsomol tried to introduce 'rational' activities, such as museum excursions, political cells and agitprop drama groups which were intended to contribute to the improvement of society rather than the simple 'unhealthy' entertainment of the

6 V. Dmitriev and B. Galin, Na putyakh k novomu bytu (Moscow, I927), 68.

7 Raymond Williams, 'Base and superstruc- ture in Marxist cultural theory' in Rethinking

Popular Culture. Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (eds) Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), 412-17.



192 Social History VOL. 17: NO. 2

individual. These efforts were aimed in particular at the large number of unemployed working-class youth who had finished primary school, but had not yet started work or an apprenticeship at a factory school. In I923, there were one million urban youth between the ages of fourteen and seventeen who were without work, and not in school, and were largely abandoned to the entertainment and adventures of the street.8

How successful were these efforts to transform Russian youth culture and create new forms of everyday life? It is clear that many eager and ambitious young men and women enthusiastically committed themselves to the optimistic programmes of the Communist party. By mid-decade, close to half of all proletarian youth nationwide had joined the party's youth organization, the Komsomol, and dreams of a new communist future influenced what kind of life they imagined for themselves, what kinds of jobs they wanted, their attitudes towards entertainment, dress, gender and politics.9 Many, perhaps the majority, of Soviet youth did not fully embrace communism and its ideals, but those who did experienced the revolution and the struggle of Civil War with a great sense of personal involvement and commitment. As one young woman wrote: 'The Soviet republic . . . everything happened before our eyes, filling our childhood and youth. We felt like victors - begging, hungry, but victorious.... Whatever new dangers threatened us, we felt our power, the power of our revolutionary country."0?

However, there were many young people who resisted the serious and sometimes puritanical images of Bolshevik ideology and culture and flocked instead to forms of entertainment and recreation which were opposed to Bolshevik ideals. Western movies and flapper fashions were the focus of alternative popular youth cultures which challenged Bolshevik notions of an organized and disciplined community of youth. Some of these elements of youths' everyday behaviour were a legacy of the pre-revolutionary period, while others reflected the impact of post-war commercial culture from western Europe and the United States. The problem was made more complicated by the mixed messages conveyed by the introduction of NEP. On the one hand, educators and propagandists told young men and women that a good communist should spend his or her time in the Komsomol club, reading books about Lenin and watching movies about the revolution and the Civil War. On the other hand, the same economic necessities which forced the adoption of the NEP allowed 'bourgeois' capitalists and 'bourgeois' culture to continue to function within the Soviet Union. Hollywood movies and pre-revolutionary romance novels were available throughout the 1920S and at times even sponsored by the government's own agencies who needed the revenue generated by these popular forms to support their own nascent efforts. In this environment, complete adherence to Bolshevik models of appropriate communist behaviour and recreation required an extraordinary degree of internal motivation and discipline.

Movies were one of the most popular forms of entertainment among urban youth. As in western Europe and the United States, movie theatres became the new pleasure palaces of the urban population after the First World War. Over 50 per cent of working-class youth surveyed in Kharkov went to the movies at least once every two weeks. In Moscow, over 8o

8 M. M. Kuckerenko, 'Podgotovka kvalifitsi- rovannoi rabochei sily v SSSR (2o-e-pervaia polovina 3o-kh godov)', Voprosii istorii, x (October I985), 23.

9 Biulleten I' vsesoiuznoi konferentsii RLKSM, N. I-5 (Moscow, n.d.), I4.

0 Vera Ketlinskaia, 'Zdravstvui, molodost'!', Novyimir, xi (November 1975), 56, 58.



May 1992 Soviet youth and popular culture I93

per cent of the younger generation went to the movies regularly, preferring it, they told interviewers, to meeting friends or listening to the radio. 1 I

Bolshevik leaders were eager to create revolutionary films which would take advantage of youthful enthusiasm for the movies. They understood the potential power of using popular forms to convey socialist messages. A shortage of money, film and materials largely limited early Soviet film-makers to short agitation films of thirty minutes or less; however, by the late I92os, longer feature films were being produced, including special films for children. Films on the Pioneer and Komsomol organizations, homeless youth and the Civil War were thought to be especially appropriate for youth. Schools and clubs also showed films on problems of everyday life (Abortion) and scientific topics (Electrification, The Port of Murmansk, Ford and Fordism). 12

However, despite efforts to use film as an educational tool, party and Komsomol leaders admitted that 'for the masses, film means entertainment and nothing more'.13 Before the revolution, the most popular films had been romances and 'salon dramas'. 14 After the revolution, 'decadent' movies including adventures, detective stories, dramas and comedies continued to be more popular than even the best Soviet agitprop or avant-garde films. This seems to have been true without regard to class. The favourite films of both working-class and white collar youth were heroic adventure films, especially foreign films with the great silent film stars of that period: Douglas Fairbanks, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Mary Pickford. Ironically, the state film organization, Goskino, only contributed to this situation. The self-financing requirements of NEP forced the Soviet film studios to rely on the income generated by the more popular foreign imports to help develop the domestic film industry. Of all the new films shown in 1926, 1 28

were foreign imports and 105 Soviet productions. S These movies were popular in part because they described a life so different from the

everyday experiences of most Soviet youth. Difficult living conditions, hunger and juvenile unemployment made life challenging for many young people after the revolution and some were drawn therefore to the escapist qualities of western films. They complained that films that described their own lives were too dull. As a fifteen-year-old candidate member of the Komsomol complained, 'I like films about the lives of workers and agitational films least of all. We see all of that in our own lives. I'm sick of it, and at the movies I want to take a break from my everyday life.'"6 Some working-class girls were so inspired by the gracious and easy life of their favourite film stars that they dreamt of becoming the next Mary Pickford. One young schoolgirl described her, and her friend Olga's, fascination with the movies: 'Olga doesn't have a father or a mother, and my father was taken in the October revolution and was killed . . . he was a worker and thus my life

" A. E. Latsis and L. Keilina, Deti i kino (Moscow, 1928), 7-8.

12 ibid., 26-4T; V. Vainshtok and Dm. Yakobson, Kino i molodezh' (Moscow and Leningrad, 1926), 20, 44-50.

13 Tsentral'nyi Arkhiv VLKSM (Kom- somol), f. I, Op. 5, d. 9, I. IO.

'" Richard Taylor, 'The birth of the Soviet cinema' in Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez and

Richard Stites (eds), Bolshevik Culture. Experi- ment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington, I985), 192.

'5 Denise J. Youngblood, 'The fate of Soviet cinema during the Stalin revolution', The Russian Review, ii (April i99i), 153.

16 E. Stanichinskaia-Rozenberg, 'Vliiania kino na shol'nika', Vestnik prosveshcheniia, ii

( 1927), 22.



194 Social History VOL. 17: NO. 2

was difficult. My mother makes i8 rubles a month. [Olga and I] study very hard, because we have in our heads only one thought - to become film stars.'l 7

Adolescents who could afford it were more likely to go to a commercial movie theatre than to see a movie in the neighbourhood factory club as commercial theatres responded to the demand for first-run foreign films in ways that Komsomol clubs often did not.'8 'American films dominate, inundate, glut, overwhelm the Russian motion picture houses today,' wrote a troubled American observer. 'Clara Kimball Young has a theatre devoted solely to her in Moscow. In the Arbat, centre of the workers' quarters of the Russian capital, a new building celebrates the glory of Douglas Fairbanks in electric letters three feet high. . . . It is a bit depressing."9 Some of the fanciest theatres attracted patrons by their well-stocked buffets, and orchestras which serenaded moviegoers with the latest foxtrots and tangos. Many working-class young people could not afford to go to such theatres, where tickets cost as much as one-and-a-half rubles, and instead frequented small inexpensive theatres like the 'Yar' in Leningrad, which did not even have a foyer but made patrons wait out on the street for the next showing.

Youthful moviegoing behaviour presented the Bolsheviks with a dilemma - how to produce movies which were both interesting to youth and ideologically appropriate. In some areas they just gave way to popular demand. A few Soviet commercial studios produced entertaining films for the mass market such as the adventure series, Miss Mend, and crime stories like The Case of the Three Million. Of particular interest, however, were efforts to combine popular forms with political messages in Soviet movies such as the costume drama The Decembrists or the movie The Red Imps, a revolutionary adventure film about the Civil War with adolescent heroes. These adventure films and melodramas shared the heroic, larger-than-life quality of successful Hollywood films, combining popular interest, commercial success and some degree of ideological correctness. They are an example of the ways in which popular culture influenced 'official culture' during the 1920S. The younger generations' persistent interest in their own forms of entertainment forced film-makers to repackage Soviet history and politics in more acceptable and interesting ways.

However, most Komsomol and party representatives remained uncomfortable with what they saw as the contrast between the decadent values advertised in these films and socialist ideology. The conflict was particularly acute for club leaders who were loath to provide the kinds of light entertainment and popular films that many working-class youth wanted. They saw their primary task as educational, and preferred to show serious Soviet films rather than western ones. To their minds Hollywood films, and those Soviet films which sought to imitate the popular features of these films - violence, adventure and sex - not only failed to teach young people about socialist values, but actively encouraged young people to imitate the inappropriate and even hooliganish behaviour of their favourite film stars.

Not everyone agreed that building socialism and watching Hollywood movies were incompatible. In a period when definitions of socialism and socialist behaviour were still

" Latsis and Keilina, op. Cit., 20. Emphasis in original.

18 ibid., I5.

19 Paxton Hibben, 'The movies in Russia',

The Nation, i i November 1925, as cited in Jay Leyda, K1ino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, 3rd edn (Princeton, I983), i85.



May 1992 Soviet youth and popular culture

hotly contested and openly debated, there were a minority of educators and club leaders who argued the impracticality and even undesirability of insisting that ideology and genuine popularity were mutually exclusive. 'Which is better', wrote Komsomol activist A. Mil'chakov, 'to contemplate a semi-deserted club' or to bring youth into the club by giving them the same 'civil rights' to jolly and cheerful activities in the club as they have outside. 'There is only one answer,' said Mil'chakov. 'It is better to let youth have fun in the club under our direction and with our help.'20 Indeed, whether they liked it or not, during the 1920S many clubs were often forced to show popular movies in order to draw youth in to hear lectures on political or industrial topics, or attend meetings. As one young factory woman noted: 'At our club it is very difficult to put together a meeting if there won't be a movie shown afterwards. Sometimes they won't even come to the meeting, but will show up only in time for the movie.'21 In some cases the young people were so anxious for a lecture to end and the movie to begin that they would interrupt the speaker with loud noise, laughter and clapping.22

Almost as important to worried Bolshevik moralists as youths' choice of leisure activities were their dress and appearance. In this period of transition and great cultural confusion, the symbolic language of attire and appearance helped define who was a communist and who was not. Appearance was used as a quick indicator of character and political affiliation. According to Soviet Commissar of Health, N. Semashko, the simple, hygienic dress of the revolutionary should be functional (allowing for the proper regulation of body temperature), neat and clean. He condemned any interest in 'bourgeois' fashion, which he saw as too extravagant, elegant and western.23 Komsomol enthusiasts took a different approach, advocating a kind of severe cultural asceticism which criticized even the most minimal adherence to traditional standards of cleanliness and neatness, such as a necktie or clean blouse, as unrevolutionary. They accused working-class leaders who wore ties of 'careerism' and argued that girls who had long hair were 'undemocratic'.

However, the flurry of fashionable western images from Hollywood movie productions encouraged some young people to forgo the advice of Bolshevik moralists and Komsomol enthusiasts, and imitate the sophisticated dress and dance of the American movie star. 'Young women waste their salaries first of all on movies, and secondly on silk stockings, fashionable skirts, cutting back on everything else, so that they can "look like their screen heroes",' wrote Bolshevik moralist Ivan Bobryshev.24 In contrast to the rough-and-ready young working-class revolutionary who wore a leather jacket, shock boots and a worker's cap, fashion conscious young women and men in Moscow and Leningrad imitated their western counterparts. Women wore bright red lipstick and narrow-toed high-heeled shoes, bobbed their hair and shortened their skirts. Young men wore ties and tight double-breasted jackets.

24) A. Mil'chakov, Komsomol v bor'be za kul'turnyi byt (Moscow and Leningrad, 1927),

30. For a discussion of the conflict in workers' clubs between light entertainment and political goals, see John Hatch, 'The politics of mass culture: workers, communists and proletkul't in the development of workers' clubs, 1921-1925',

Russian History, 2-3 (Summer-Fall I986),

119-48. 21 V. Dmitriev and B. Galin, op. cit., 41. ' Mil'chakov, op. cit., z5. 23 N. Semashko, Iskusstvo odevat'sia (Mos-

cow and Leningrad, 1927), 3. 24 Ivan T. Bobryshev, Melkoburzhuaznye

vliiania sredi molodezhi (Moscow and Lenin- grad, 1928), IO5.



i96 Social History VOL. 17 NO. 2

Much of the urban population's information on the latest styles did not come directly from western Europe but from Russian fashion magazines which provided European images for the Russian reader. Two popular examples were Fashions (Mody) and Fashions of the Season (Mody sezona), both of which were published monthly in Moscow. Mody, which was published between I924 and 1929, had a circulation of close to I4,000.

Mody sezona was even more popular; circulation figures reached 2S,000 copies in 1928.

These numbers are impressive as the magazines were quite expensive - Mody cost one ruble fifty kopeks an issue. That the Bolsheviks criticized much western fashion but permitted Russian fashion magazines to be published is a vivid example of the kinds of cultural conflict which flourished during NEP.

Other than the quality of paper and printing, there was little to differentiate these magazines from equivalent fashion magazines in the west. The modern young flappers shown in Mody sezona wore short dresses that fell just below the knee and close-fitting cloches trimmed with ribbons or rhinestones. As pictured in these pages, the adventurous and independent young woman of the post-war years had a busy social life, and needed the right kind of clothing for every occasion. In summer I928, Mody sezona described 'the kind of dresses that Parisian women take with them when they go to their summer houses', as well as the proper outfits for a game of tennis or a drive in the car. The daring young flapper of the modern era might even take an aeroplane flight, for which she needed a leather aviator's cap and goggles like the ones shown in the spring issue of Mody sezona.25 These magazines evoked dreams of an adventurous and carefree life far removed from the daily burdens of revolutionary Russia. The magazines and the consumer products described within them appealed to the fantasies of the new Soviet consumer. Visible here are the same phenomena which Rosalind Williams describes for turn-of-the-century Europe, where the new magazines, movies and clothing stores forged a link between 'imaginative desires and material ones', between 'dreams and commerce'.26 The question here, of course, is how to understand and interpret the persistence of such desires in the post-revolutionary environment in the Soviet Union.

What kinds of youth were drawn to imitate these 'decadent' western fashions? Some were the wealthy children of private entrepreneurs who were drawn to shop and trade feverishly, knowing that the right to do so was temporary and subject to increasing restrictions. However, while young people in Paris or London could shop in the latest grand magasin, Soviet youths were limited to small privately run stores. While department stores in Europe were flamboyant public spaces, many of the choicest shops in post-revolutionary Russia were to be found in private apartments. As one observer described:

To reach the millinery we left our sleigh one evening in the courtyard of an immense white house which was once the residency of a nobleman. We skirted the corner of the house and at the rear turned into a tiny door. My guide led me up the two dark flights of stairs, and pushed open a door. We literally fell into a lighted corridor, and picked

s Mody sezona, 3-4 (I928), 4, 22; ibid., 5-6 (1928).

" Rosalind H. Williams, 'The dream world of

mass consumption' in Rethinking Popular Cul- ture, op. cit., 203.




our way down between a few broken chairs, an old mattress, a bicycle, and a pile of old hats. The milliner herself answered our knock on one of the doors at the end of the passageway. 27

To the Bolsheviks' consternation, however, many of the young people who were attracted to the western fashions pictured in these magazines and in Hollywood films were not the children of wealthy businessmen, but working-class and even peasant youth who were drawn to the lively, sophisticated qualities of this kind of clothing. While the wealthy children of NEPmen shopped in privately run Moscow stores like 'Paris Fashions', poorer youth used Russian fashion magazines to reproduce the styles of New York and Paris at home with whatever hard-won materials they could find in public markets or Soviet stores. Journals like Home Dressmaker printed clothing patterns 'necessary for every family and every woman'.28 Unable to afford expensive imported items, they bought 'imitation silk stockings, lipstick and Soviet substitutes for Coty products - made by the Chinese'.29 By the late I920S, girls were able to buy Russian lipstick, still considered a 'bourgeois vice', but so popular that it was now produced by a government monopoly.30 Hungry for the fancy goods denied them, they envied the clothing of western visitors. As one visitor described it: 'Girls especially feel the lack of goods intensely. . . . Some have developed an almost pathological desire for the good-quality clothes they have so long been deprived of. I have had them feel feverishly my foreign clothes, hat, frock, sample the material, stroke the silk, almost pull my underwear from under my blouse in their frenzied hunger.'3'

A Russian author described a young Komsomol woman who made sixty-five rubles a month working in a factory, but spent two-thirds of it on 'manicures, cosmetics, silk stockings, and dance parties'.32 Another complained: 'Some Komsomol girls try and make their bodies more beautiful, draping different bows and scarfs around their necks, and striving not to wear boots, like the likes of us, but little half boots with very high heels.'33 Komsomol activists in the Krasnaia Treugol'nika factory argued that there were many

27 Edwin Hare Hullinger, The Reforging of Russia (New York, 1925), 255. On the growth of mass commercial culture in Europe and the United States see, for example, Rosalind H. Williams, Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth Century France (Berkeley, 1982) and Michael Miller, The Ron Marche: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store (Princeton, 1981).

2" Advertisement from the back page of Mody, 7 (1925). See Dorothy Thompson, The New Russia (New York, I928), 46 and Alexander Wicksteed, Life under the Soviets (I 928), 1 2, for a description of young women making their clothing at home. One historian of modern fashion notes that the typical chemise dress of the flapper was easier to reproduce at home than earlier fashions had been because it used so little fabric and was so shapeless; see Elizabeth Ewing, History of Twentieth Century Fashion (1974), 96.

Thompson, op. cit., 46. 30 ibid., 30. In Europe and the United States,

many women had only just started to wear cosmetics before the First World War. Excessive make-up was previously considered a sign of loose morals. By the end of the 1920S cosmetics 'had become the norm rather than the exception, a sign of youth and up-to-dateness, a gauge of modern woman's independence'; see Martin Pumphrey, 'The flapper, the housewife, and the making of modernity', Cultural Studies, ii (May }987), I89. Although its popularity also grew rapidly in the Soviet Union, Bolshevik moralists continued to oppose it, associating it with bourgeois behaviour.

31 Ella Winter, Red Virtue (I933), 48. 32 M. Rafail, Za novogo cheloveka (Lenin-

grad, 1928), 50, 51. 3 Vladimir Kuzmin, 'Pis'mo o novom byte' in

Izrail M. Razin, Komsomolskii byt (Moscow and Leningrad, 1927), 320.



i98 Social History VOL. I7: NO. 2

cases of 'female workers [who] literally starved because they spent all of their wages on silk stockings, make-up, and manicures' while Komsomolskaia Pravda reported that young women in the Vysovskii factory wore 'fashionable' low-cut dresses and 'scanty shoes that pinched their toes'.34

It seems likely that by imitating the clothing and manners of wealthy western Europeans, even as they toiled in the heat and dust of the factory floor, young men and women hoped to appropriate some of the modern independence, chic and sophistication associated with flapper fashions. Much like the movies, silk stockings and red lipstick can be understood as a manifestation of the desire of some young people for easy and enjoyable forms of everyday life. On a deeper level, however, imitation of upper-class clothing can be seen not only as a search for sophistication, but as a devaluation of 'traditional' forms of working-class culture. Contemporary observers noted that many young people did not just try and dress in the latest styles, but made 'an obvious effort to reproduce "aristocratic manners" in everything they did'.35 The newspaper Komsomolskaia Pravda described a young Komsomol member named Boris Kliuev who tried to escape the world of workers by leading a double life - honest Komsomol member by day, young bourgeois dandy by night. 'In the evening after work this Komsomolets can no longer be considered your colleague. You can't call him Boris, but imitating a nasal French accent you must call him "Bob". If you meet him somewhere in the park with a "well-known" lady . . . and start to talk to him about something related to the factory, he will cautiously glance back at the "madam" and without fail change the conversation.936

It seems that fashion conscious factory youth had internalized the message implicit in some commercial culture which suggested that their own forms of dress, behaviour and language were not as good as those of the middle and upper classes. Socially mobile young workers tried to separate themselves from 'proletarian culture' by wearing bourgeois fashions. Clothing was also used by the up-and-coming young Komsomol member to segregate him or herself from the 'masses'. Some Komsomol university students even wore the same peaked cap and jacket as the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in order to distinguish themselves from the mass of 'uncultured' and uneducated youth.37

The interplay between fashion and the drive for upward mobility was also evident in the field of gender relations. Some of the factory girls who wore sexy dresses and skimpy shoes modelled after film stars, refused to go out with working-class boys. 'The young baronesses looked condescendingly at their comrades at work. . . . They moved about in "high society", with the children of specialists . . . NEPmen and so on,' wrote one Bolshevik moralist.38 Some young women still dreamt of marrying young naval officers. This 'vice' was not limited to young women. Komsomol newspapers also complained about Komsomol men who preferred to go out with 'the made-up daughters of NEPmen', rather than the supposedly less attractive, but more communist, Komsomol women.39

Of course, fashion had meaning not only for those who wore it, but for those who watched it being worn. The Bolsheviks saw the Soviet flapper's open identification with

34 Rafail, Za novogo cheloveka, op. cit., 5o-1; Bobryshev, op. cit., 68.

35 ibid., 68. 36 T. Kostrov, 'Kul'tura i meshchantsvo',

Revoliutsiia ikul'tura, 3-4 (1927), 27.

37 G. Grigorov and S. Shkotov, Stari i nov vi byt (Moscow, 1927), 107-8.

"I Bobryshev, op. cit., 68. 39 Kostrov, op. Cit., 27.




bourgeois culture as a threat to the successful socialization of youth. The individualistic qualities of this clothing challenged Bolshevik dreams of communist consensus. They worried that young people were becoming so consumed with the private arena of clothing that they had abandoned all interest in public affairs. 'For some youth the culture of clothing has become more important than any other question,' wrote one worried Komsomol member. 'This youth has created a cult of external splendour.'40 In this sphere, as in many others, the 'private' behaviour of the individual became a part of 'public' political discourse. Style became as much a part of the political landscape as other forms of everyday behaviour.

The Bolsheviks were concerned not just with the political aspects of youths' behaviour. Flapper fashions and wild dancing often appeared immoral and erotic to the older generation, challenging their standards of civilized, sober behaviour. In this respect, Bolshevik moralists had much in common with their European and American counterparts who also worried about the decadent, immoral and erotic behaviour of their youth. American and Bolshevik critics described the decadent behaviour and dress of the flapper in terms that were strikingly similar. An article in the American magazine The New Republic entitled 'Flapper Jane' from 1925 might as well have had the title 'Flapper Zhenia': 'She is frankly, heavily made-up, not to imitate nature, but for an altogether artificial effect - pallor mortis, poisonously scarlet lips, richly ringed eyes - the latter looking not so much debauched (which is the intention) as diabetic . . .'4' I would argue that popular forms of youth culture which diverted from the standards laid down by adults (be they from socialism or capitalism) threatened the established moral as well as cultural hegemony.

In both Europe and the Soviet Union, concern about youth centred on the menace of a dangerously polluted 'alien' culture. American and European moralists worried about the 'barbarian' influences of a black jazz culture, alleging that it 'polluted children, caused illegitimacy and all manner of unspeakable crimes'.42 Similarly, the Bolsheviks attributed much of youths' 'decadent' behaviour to the unhealthy impact of the bourgeoisie. By labelling flapper fashions as petit bourgeois, the Bolsheviks helped create the image of decadent 'other' against which the creation of communist 'self' could be developed and defended. According to Bolshevik moralists and Komsomol leaders, 'real' communist youth were not excessively interested in clothing or cosmetics. If they were, it was assumed that they had been diverted from their 'normal' path and influenced by the bourgeoisie. To do otherwise suggested that communist youth were themselves interested in fashion and external appearance, and in this way not so different from the very youth and youth culture that they were expected to oppose.

A decade after 1917 it was evident that the massive cultural transformation the Bolsheviks had hoped for had yet to take place. Their frustration with what they saw as persistently rebellious youth cultures had larger implications for the fate of the New Economic Policy. NEP and NEPmen were considered particularly at fault for the problems that beset Soviet youth. Although NEP and the legalization of private business

40 ibid. 41 Bruce Bliven, from 9 September I925, as

cited by Elizabeth Stevenson, Babbitts and Bohemians. The American 1920s (New York,

i967), 14I. 42 Richard Maltby (ed.), Dreams for Sale:

Popular Culture in the 20th Century (I989), 72.



200 Social History VOL. 17 :.NO. 2

were introduced by the Bolsheviks in order to rescue a floundering Soviet economy, by the end of the decade party leaders and Komsomol enthusiasts were increasingly worried about the cultural implications of NEP for a younger generation constantly exposed to 'bourgeois' attractions. By I926-7, sociologists and educators were describing an apparent increase in every kind of non-communist behaviour, including not merely flappers and foxtrotters, but more serious forms of 'anti-social' behaviour such as depression and suicide. Some argued that the primary cause was city streets which teemed with traders, beggars, wealthy NEPmen and other manifestations of the mixed economic policies of NEP. Others insisted that the rebellious and hedonistic behaviour of young people could be attributed to the alienation and confusion of a younger generation which had enthusiastically participated in the revolution and Civil War, but was now depressed by the turn to NEP which seemed to them a return to the pre-revolutionary era. 'When it became clear that the revolution is a difficult, bloody, slow affair, with its prosaic aspects', wrote A. K. Voronsky, 'then some people began to waver and doubt, and dispirited moods, disillusionment, downright decadence appeared.'43 It is significant that both of these explanations interpret youths' everyday behaviour in highly political terms, rather than attributing it to familial or biological issues associated with adolescent development and identity.

As we have seen, there were a few Bolshevik and Komsomol leaders who insisted that the solution to problems of 'decadent' behaviour was not to root out bourgeois evils, but to provide more attractive, genuinely popular leisure alternatives for youth. 'The Komsomol organization doesn't understand young-plep1e+-cemplained one Komsomol correspon- dent. 'We haven't worked with youth, but for them.'" These activists argued that the Komsomol should use popular forms of recreation to strengthen work among the masses, in this way attracting more youth and keeping them away from greater evils, such as drinking. Many educators and moralists were, however, uncomfortable with this alternative approach to youth culture which seemed to promise less cultural conformity rather than more. Although most young people who went to an occasional Douglas Fairbanks movie or wore silk stockings probably saw their activities as a simple relief from the difficult realities of life and home rather than as an explicit rejection of Bolshevik culture, many moralists could not tolerate even this degree of deviation from their images of a purposeful youth culture solely devoted to socialist construction. Instead of taking popular interests more into account and allowing for greater diversity, after I928 the Bolsheviks increasingly responded to fears of decadence and anti-social behaviour by limiting the cultural and recreational options open to young people. By 1932, foreign films were no longer being shown in the USSR, and American jazz bands no longer toured the country playing the latest dance tunes.45 Historians have attributed the end of NEP to many factors, including Stalin's struggle for power, political debates among the elite, and economic problems, but growing concern about the lack of cultural hegemony, and the

" As cited in Gordon McVay, E,senin. A Life (Ann Arbor, 1976), 237-8. This is very similar to the American and European notion of the 'lost generation', only it attributes youths"rebellious' behaviour to the disillusionment following the introduction of NEP rather than to the con-

fusion and sense of loss following the First World War.

" Iunyi kommunist, 3-4 (IS February-i March 1922), 35.

45 Youngblood, op. Cit., 157-



May 1992 Soviet youth and popular culture 2oi

persistence of non-communist kinds of behaviour among Soviet youth, must also be taken into account. Impatience with the apparent failure of NEP's gradualist approach to problems of cultural transformation encouraged some people to support the authoritarian policies of the cultural revolution which promised to take a firm hand against non-communist transgressions.

This is not to suggest that the Bolsheviks' gradualist approach during NEP completely failed to penetrate and influence youth culture. Many militant young communists supported Bolshevik ideals of appropriate behaviour and were as outraged as adults by the dancing, moviegoing behaviour of their compatriots. By March 1926, there were approximately I,750,000 young people in the Komsomol, including 6z per cent of working-class youth in Leningrad and 55 per cent in Moscow.46

None the less, instead of the uniform youth culture the Bolsheviks desired, they were confronted by a multiplicity of youth cultures which presented different degrees of rupture, resistance and rebellion, many of which challenged the dominant ideology. This included not only the flappers and moviegoers described here, but the more aggressively rebellious activities of young working-class toughs, homeless youth and hooligans described elsewhere in my research. In the 1920S Komsomol youth remained a small percentage of the total number of available Komsomol-aged youth. Of the approximately 29 million people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-two in the Soviet Union in 1926, only about 6 per cent belonged to the Communist Youth League.47 While the Bolsheviks clearly remained politically dominant, their constant inability to establish their cultural hegemony over the younger generation demonstrates the difficulties of rapid cultural transformation and the limits of the Bolsheviks' social control. The search for socialist transformation and communist hegemony would be a long and difficult one - not something that could be achieved in the single revolutionary moment of October I917, or even in the revolutionary decade following it.

University of Michigan

46 Fisher, op. cit., ii2; Lebina, op. cit., 1O9.

47 Vozrast' i gramotnost' naseleniia SSSR. Vsesoiuznaia perepis' naseleniia 17 dekabria

1926 g. Kratkie svodki (Moscow, I9z8), Vyp. VII, 8.



soviet youth and nep

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