Mark Edele
Strang Young Men in Stalin's Moscow: The Birth and Life of the Stiliagi, 1945-1953
WIKI:
Stilyagi ( "stylish", "style hunter") was a derogatory appellation for the members of a youth
subculture that existed from the late 1940s until the early 1960s in the Soviet Union. Stilyagi were
primarily distinguished by their snappy or fashionable clothing, considered politically incorrect and
contrary to the communist-socialist realities of the time, and fascination with modern music and
fashions.
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The Stiliagi were a product of late Stalinism. This subculture emerged in the years following WW2.
Preconditions for emergence:
1) Young men who had the resources to live a lifestyle based on consumption and leisure
2) A public sphere which was not completely subsumed under the ideological imperativers of the
communist youth program
3) Availability of non-Soviet elements of style and information
Hedonistic - a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification.
Interest in things foreign and the desire to live a version of the good life which did not necessarily
conform to the role expectations promoted by the state
A style developed by sons of the privileged classes of late stalinism
In behavior, lifestyle and dress, the sons of the elite set themselves apart from the sons of lower
status groups of society.
Their self fashioning stressed liesure, westerness, and a distinctive and original stylishness as the
basis of self-representation and self understanding.
Youth of the generation too young to fight in the war were confronted with self assertive veterans for
whom a man was first of all a "frontovik". The younger men could not imitate the core of self-
fashioning of veterans - wartime exploits. What they could imitate was Western clothing, which many
veterans had brought back from the West. They thus imitated the part of the dominant form of
masculinity, which they could imitate - stylish dress - and radicalized it to such an extent that it
became the core of an alternative form of manliness. Sovietness and participation in the war were so
tightly interconnected in the postwar Soviet Union, that lack of the latter was best counteracted by
refusing the former. And in the context of the Cold War this meant embracing "Westerness." In their
struggle to find a positive sense of gendered self in the absence of the defining trait of postwar
masculinity - wartime heroism - would be stiliagi thus logically reached for an imaginary West as a
source of legitimacy and inspiration.
The stiliagi style in the 50s changed, only the tie remained colorful. Trousers became darker and
whiter and narrower imitating an American fashion for lean-fitting clothes.
Aksenov met such a crowd of "Americanophile" sons of Stalinist elite at the above mentioned party.
They stressed openly their "love" of the US and their "hatred" towards the Soviet Union, and no longer
tried to be stylish but to be "American". This meant thick-soled shoes and narrow black trousers,
while the jackets remained broad-shouldered as in the early stiliagi outfit. They smoked Pall Mall and
Camel, and peppered their conversation with English words such as "darling", "baby", and "lets drink."
The stiliagi remade themselves into the "shtatniki" ("United State-niks")
By 1955 Komosol patrols began hunting down stiliagi "hooligans" and other "anti-Soviet elements".
Post war Moscow was a place where the elite and middle class could enjoy themselves. In stalins last
decade Moscow had a night life it had not had since the 1920s and would not see again until the 1990s.
And this night life was an important pre-condition for the emergence of the stiliagi and the
reproduction of their style.
Banning certain types of instruments, banning jazz music, radio-jamming BBC and VOA
"X ray editions", illegal copies of popular Western recordings on discarded xray plates, circulated in
the late 40s and early 50s.
In the end, surveillance and repression of jazz proved incomplete. The regime was "completely unable
to supress the spread or popularity of this sort of music" and the authorities talked about "complete
anarchy" which made distribution of jazz music to dance places possible.
Endless stream of western goods pored into Germany and could easily be brought back into Russia prior
to the Berlin walls construction in 1961
The young men who became stiliagi were too young to remember the fear and threat of the Great Terror.
Thus they were more likely to underestimate the state's potential for brutality and act more freely
than the older generations.
Another reason why the stiliagi emerged was a sense of "return to normalcy" after the deprevations of
war. A worldwide trend of hedonistic lifestyles emerged after the war.
The dynamics of fashion is a process where the elites of society constantly struggles to express
symbolically their difference, while their social inferiors imitate these stylistic innovations.
Men too young to fight in the war found stiligia appealing. The high prestige of frontline experience
put everybody who lacked it at an emotional disadvantage. Students from what can be called the "school
bench generation" were confronted everyday with the self assured behavior of fellow students, who were
but slightly older than they were, and who displayed their status as veterans by wearing their orders
and medals on a daily basis.
The frontovik as the dominant model of masculinity was unobtainable for members of the school bench
generation. They could either live with an inferior status or invent an alternative, non-military form
of manliness.
It is significant that what former stiliagi remember in memoirs and interviews is fear of society, of
confrontations with "average soviet people" not fear of what the state might do.
