“Young people fenced themselves off from adults, defending the right to inner life and freedom”

In the last week, the country has become aware of the existence of Ryodan PMCs, manga fans who organize mass brawls in Russian shopping centers. Kommersant asked the newsmakers what subculture they were in their youth.

Maria Arbatova, writer, social activist

– Hippie. I remember this time with pleasure. One of the iconic points for hippies was the monument to Lomonosov at the Faculty of Journalism – it was called “meet me at the barefoot.” Among the hippies, dressed in knitted T-shirts and frayed jeans with wicker baubles on their hands, there was an atmosphere of tolerance and respect for each other. As a ninth grader, I was treated like an adult.

I joined the barefoot company, which considers itself part of the Moscow hippy Sistema. Hippies came to the Arbat communal apartment where I lived, and this flat was called “Masha’s salon from the Arbat.” Hence the pseudonym, which grew out of a click, because the hippies knew each other not by name, but by nicknames.

We talked, listened to music, read poetry, and the neighbors immediately called the police. We didn’t break the law, but the outfit came running, yelling that all of us “dirty hippies” would be taken away for re-education for “wrong clothes.” But among the center hippies there were many children of the nomenklatura who knew how to threaten with a call “to the voice of an enemy”, and this sobered the policemen. Worse was the hippies from the suburbs and other cities, they were taken to the departments and beaten for being “not dressed like that.”

I was well acquainted with the leader of the Moscow hippies Yura Solnyshko (Yuri Burakov), he was already firmly on the needle.

Hippies created in the USSR what is called a network structure: you could go, for example, to Tallinn, say: I am from such and such – and you were settled and loved. Almost everyone who, bypassing drugs, went through the “System” received an excellent school of freedom and socially took place.

Our hippies were fundamentally different from Western ones: we were socialized, studied or worked. As an adult, I ended up in the settlement of Christiania in Copenhagen and saw what was happening there. I would immediately take the children away from those stoned hippies.

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Andrey Bartenev, artist, exhibition curator:

— Of course, in Norilsk I was a dandy and a “bravist” — a big fan of the Bravo group and Zhanna Aguzarova! The inhabitants of Norilsk, people with difficult destinies, were giant admirers of Vladimir Vysotsky. We absorbed his work with mother’s milk, we witnessed the tape battles of his songs, which sounded from the windows of Norilsk houses in the summer.

The texts performed by Aguzarova have become for us a new formation of Vysotsky’s culture. And we prostrated ourselves with admiration before her and the Bravo group. We managed to stand out and assert ourselves, just like them, when we dressed like them and danced in front of the Drama Theater building.

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Igor Sandler, music producer, showman, publisher, radio host and businessman:

“I grew up as a difficult teenager. Somewhere before the age of ten, my mother tied me to the piano so that I could play scales and etudes for hours. He cried, struggled, descended from the balcony along the net into the yard to play football with the boys, and scolded the streets.

He became a diligent student later, having heard the songs of the Beatles “Girl”, “Yesterday” on flexible records, supplements to the magazine “Krugozor”. Then there were the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, other bands. I began to select compositions on the instrument, to master a new culture for me.

By the time I entered the conservatory, I was a complete hippie: long wavy hair, a leather coat, flared jeans. They terrorized me, promised to expel me, I twisted my hair with an elastic band, hid it under my shirt. When asked about ripped jeans, “Don’t you have anything to wear?” replied: “Nothing really.”

I also had another informal hobby. At school, I bought a high-quality picture of the Beatles from a high school student for 30 kopecks, dad re-shot ten photocopies, and I sold them, albeit worse quality, for 15 kopecks, earning 1 ruble 20 kopecks. So I became a member of another group that would now be called businessmen, but then they were called speculators. This was followed by magnetic recordings, vinyl records.

The crown of the business was the purchase of branded keyboard instruments from the Yugoslav performer. It was a detective story, how I left money in his hotel room, then took away the instruments after the concert and, with the help of my friends, ran away from the persecution of the KGB in Saratov. One of those instruments, the clavinet, still lives in my museum.

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Oksana Pushkina, journalist, social activist

– It was not for long and purely for professional purposes. With the advent of Gorbachev, youth movements grew, by the end of the 1980s their number had tripled. Informals were determined by clothes, slang, paraphernalia, manners and other things, with the help of which young people fenced themselves off from adults, defending the right to inner life and freedom.

We, journalists and interns of the youth editorial office of the Leningrad TV, tried to infiltrate the environment of our peers and understand how informals live. We made the appropriate makeup, picked up a wardrobe and went to Nevsky Prospekt. So during the week we wrote a TV chronicle of the life of these associations. Then there was a real “Live broadcast”, which we conducted with Sasha Nevzorov (recognized as a foreign agent.— “b”). There was a strong reaction, and it became obvious that changes in society were inevitable.

But what surprised you? Nobody, except us, journalists, was particularly interested in who these people were, what they live in, what they dream about. The official authorities almost did not notice them – they will go crazy like that. Soon the USSR was gone. And today, when communicating with students, the same thoughts about a lack of understanding of young people and their interests do not leave me.

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Alexander Shprygin, President of the All-Russian Association of Fans:

— I came to the fan movement in 1989, much later than its creation. I went to all the matches in the fan sector, gradually became friends with everyone who was there. We realized that there is a common idea, a goal. And everything that concerned me concerned everyone.

It was a time when Russian football was on the rise and an active force was needed to support it. The creation of a social movement of football fans left a bright mark, one might say, became the meaning of life. Trips to other cities and countries with teams of all levels tempered and educated.

For the development of football in different situations, it was necessary to show strong character traits. If my children decide to follow this path, I will not interfere. I don’t see anything destructive in the movement of any fans, not just football fans. Youth needs to be tempered, matured and educated.

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Alexey Kortnev, leader of the “Accident” group:

– I was not subject to anything: I had nothing to do with hippieism, or with any other movements, even with rockers. It also implies some specific traits – alcoholism, a black leather jacket, long hair, smoking, but I had no inclination for this.

He grew up as a very decent boy from a wealthy Soviet family, at school he was the secretary of the Komsomol committee, and when he became a student at Moscow State University, there was no time left for subculture at all. But since I tried to play myself, then, of course, I looked at rock and roll. He carefully followed how his senior comrades live and present themselves – both BG and Makar (Andrey Makarevich, recognized as a foreign agent.— “b”), and Kostya Kinchev, and “Crematorium”, and “Cinema”. Although what are both BG and Makar rock and roll? They are well-bred, highly educated comrades.

Of course, I visited concerts, including semi-underground ones, where often there was no amplifying equipment, and sometimes even drums. I remember that at a joint concert in the dormitory of Moscow State University “Krematoria” and “Kino”, the drummers of both teams were forced to drum with sticks on chairs covered with leather substitutes and stomp their feet on the floor. It was insane, it was the most incendiary rock ‘n’ roll concert I’ve ever heard.

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Anastasia Kuryokhina, artistic director of the Center for Contemporary Art and the Sergey Kuryokhin Prize (St. Petersburg):

“I didn’t become a hippie or a rocker because I had the freedom wisely provided by my advanced parents. We did not have a generation gap, and my mother even helped in everything in my affairs, while not depriving my younger brother and sister.

I could be on my own: choose my circle of friends, great concerts and parties, come home whenever I want. I felt likeable and educated, studying at school and university.

Friendship with musicians – Grebenshchikov, Tsoi, the Leningrad rock club, rock in general were always there, around me – opened up a new direction of culture for me, but did not stimulate personal ambitions to become a star. Even when she met and married Sergei at a very young age, she dreamed of nothing but living his wife all her life and dying with him on the same day in old age. Joint trips on tour, my opinion about concerts, help in creativity have become family happiness, and not public and social life.

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Sergei Terentiev, founder of the Arteria group, ex-guitarist of the Aria and Kipelov groups:

– Once I was a rocker, and now I play the guitar. Today is rap time. My hobby did not cause me any particular problems, there were no conflicts with the police, I was always law-abiding. The worst thing for others, of course, was long hair, but I still have long hair.

There was very little information then, but it still somehow leaked out. In the late 70s – early 80s it was hard, and in the early 70s, oddly enough, records with foreign performers, which seemed to be banned, were sold. Party people were afraid of rock and roll at that time, and in order to go on tour, it was necessary to hand over the repertoire to the artistic council, where there must have been patriotic songs. Nothing without them.

Group “Direct speech”