How did rock music and other products of Western culture come to pervade youth culture in Brezhnev-era Dniepropetrovsk, a Ukrainian city essentially closed to outsiders and heavily policed by the KGB? In Rock and Roll in the Rocket City, Sergei I. Zhuk assesses the impact of Westernization on the city's youth, examining the degree to which the consumption of Western music, movies, and literature ultimately challenged the ideological control maintained by state officials. One among many of his stories is how the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar led Dniepropetrovsk's young people to embrace not just one, but two Soviet taboos: rock music and Christianity.This book is the first historical study -- in any language -- of the everyday lives of Soviet urban youth during the Brezhnev era. A native of Dniepropetrovsk, Zhuk began research for this project in the 1990s. Weaving together diaries, interviews, oral histories, and KGB and party archival documents, he provides a vivid account of how Soviet cultural repression and unrest during the Brezhnev period laid the groundwork for a resurgent Ukrainian nationalism in the 1980s. In so doing, he demonstrates the influence of Western cultural consumption on the formation of a post-Soviet national identity.
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Closed Rocket City of Dniepropetrovsk Part I. The ""Beating"" 1960s 2. Anti-Soviet Crimes, Poetry, and Problematic Nationalism, 19601968 3. The Campaign against the Novel Sobor and the End of the National Literary Revival 4. The First Wave of Music from the West 5. Beatlemania, Shocking Blue, and the Ukrainian Cossacks 6. Sources of Rock Music Consumption Part II. The Hard-Rocking 1970s 7. Western Adventure Stories and Ukrainian Historical Novels 8. Crimes from the West 9. Idiocy and Historical Romance from the West 10. The Democratization of Rock Music Consumption 11. Popular Religiosity in the Dniepropetrovsk Region Part III. The ""Disco Era,"" Antipunk Campaigns, andKomsomol Business 12. Taming Pop Music Consumption 13. The Komsomol Magazine Rovesnik and the Ideology of Pop Music Consumption 14. Antipunk Campaigns, Antifascist Hysteria, and Human Rights Problems, 19821984 15. Tourism, Cultural Consumption, and Komsomol Business Conclusion Appendix Notes Selected Bibliography Index
""This book is a rich read that pairs depth of analysis to an accurate measure of anecdote, and which succeeds in keeping a critical distance to a subject that clearly lies close to the personal affection of the author.""
