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This multidisciplinary collection of essays examines alternative subcultures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the era of late socialism. The contributors analyze how these marginal communities rejected mainstream socialist culture, sought ideological and physical space from the state, and contributed to the demise of the USSR.
List of contents
Introduction: To Drop or Not to Drop?, Juliane Fürst
Part I: Dropping Out in Spirit
Chapter 1: The Biography of a Scandal: Experimenting with Yoga during Romanian Late Socialism, Irina Costache
Chapter 2: The Imaginary Elsewhere of the Hippies in Soviet Estonia, Terje Toomistu
Chapter 3: Art and "Madness": Weapons of the Marginal during Socialism in Eastern Europe, Maria-Alina Asavei
Chapter 4: Student Activists and Yugoslavia's Islamic Revival: Sarajevo, 1970-1975, Madigan Andrea Fichter
Part II: Intellectual Dropping Out
Chapter 5: Reader Questionnaires in Samizdat Journals: Who Owns Aleksandr Blok?, Josephine von Zitzewitz
Chapter 6: The Spirit of Pacifism: Social and Cultural Origins of the Grassroots Peace Movement in the Late Soviet Period, Irina Gordeeva
Chapter 7: Dropping Out of Socialism with the Commodore 64: Polish Youth, Home Computers, and Social Identities, Patryk Wasiak
Part III: Dropping Out in Style
Chapter 8: "We All Live in a Yellow Submarine": Dropping Out in a Leningrad Commune, Juliane Fürst
Chapter 9: Ignoring Dictatorship? Punk Rock, Subculture, and Entanglement in the GDR, Jeff Hayton
Chapter 10: "Under Any Form of Government, I Am Partisan": The Siberian Underground from Anti-Soviet to National-Bolshevist Provocation, Ewgeniy Kasakow
Part IV: Dropping Out Economics
Chapter 11: Living in the Material World: Money in the Soviet Rock Underground, Anna Kan
Chapter 12: Socialism's Empty Promise: Housing Vacancy and Squatting in the German Democratic Republic, Peter Angus Mitchell
Conclusion: Dropping Out of Socialism? A Western Perspective, Joachim Häberlen
About the author
Edited by Juliane Fürst and Josie McLellan - Contributions by Maria-Alina Asavei; Irina Costache; Madigan Andrea Fichter; Juliane Fürst; Irina Gordeeva; Joachim Häberlen; Jeff Hayton; Anna Kan; Ewgeniy Kasakow; Peter Angus Mitchell; Terje Toomistu; Patryk
Summary
This multidisciplinary collection of essays examines alternative subcultures in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the era of late socialism. The contributors analyze how these marginal communities rejected mainstream socialist culture, sought ideological and physical space from the state, and contributed to the demise of the USSR.
