Overview

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. This book is the first historical study-in any language-of the everyday lives of Soviet urban youth during the Brezhnev era. A longtime student and resident 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sergei I. Zhuk (Ball State University)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.80cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.658kg
ISBN:  

9781421423142

ISBN 10:   1421423146
Pages:   464
Publication Date:   25 April 2017
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

"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, 1960–1968 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, 1982–1984 15. Tourism, Cultural Consumption, and Komsomol Business Conclusion Appendix Notes Selected Bibliography Index"

Reviews

An invaluable addition to a less researched but culturally transformative period between Khrushchev's 'thaw' and Gorbachev's perestroika. Illustrations, an excellent bibliography, and richly informed footnotes abound. * Choice * Refreshingly new and rich in insights. * Russian Review * There have been worthy studies of rock music in the Soviet Union in the past, but what distinguishes Zhuk's account is the breadth of material he has been able to assemble in documenting the deep roots that the rock culture sunk into the society of 'developed socialism'... Zhuk's innovative book opens up a new field of inquiry, one that raises fundamental questions about what we really know about how the Soviet Union worked. * Transitions Online * [Zhuk] makes his case convincingly in his thoroughly researched and well-organized study of western cultural influences during his youth in his home city. * Russian History * Rock and Roll in the Rocket City is crammed with food for thought and should provoke many productive conversations in the field of Soviet history and beyond. * Slavic Review * Zhuk has written a fascinating insight... The book provides the necessary background for many of the personalities and events that took place in the first two decades of Ukrainian independence. * Ukraine Analyst * Zhuk gives us a fascinating insight into Dnipropetrovsk under Soviet rule and provides a comprehensive background to amny of the personalities and events that took place in the first two decades of Ukrainian independence. Rock and Roll in the Rocket City should be included in every course taught on twentieth-century Ukraine. * Slavonic and East European Review * Zhuk's excellent monograph makes a signal contribution in teasing out the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of official policy toward 'western' cultural influence from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. [This book] should be lauded for taking a major step forward in the study of popular culture in the late Soviet Union. * Journal of Social History * A fascinating and academically important work. -- Robert Hornsby * Europe-Asia Studies * Serious and highly original study, the most complete to date of Western influence in a provincial city of the former Soviet Union. -- Donald J. Raleigh * Journal of Modern History * Sergei I. Zhuk's nuanced study offers a welcome addition to the growing literature on what used to be regarded as an unvariegated era of Soviet history. -- Amy Nelson * American Historical Review * A very important contribution to late-Soviet social and institutional history. * Laboratorium * 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. * European Review of History *

An invaluable addition to a less researched but culturally transformative period between Khrushchev's 'thaw' and Gorbachev's perestroika. Illustrations, an excellent bibliography, and richly informed footnotes abound. Choice Refreshingly new and rich in insights. Russian Review There have been worthy studies of rock music in the Soviet Union in the past, but what distinguishes Zhuk's account is the breadth of material he has been able to assemble in documenting the deep roots that the rock culture sunk into the society of 'developed socialism'... Zhuk's innovative book opens up a new field of inquiry, one that raises fundamental questions about what we really know about how the Soviet Union worked. Transitions Online [Zhuk] makes his case convincingly in his thoroughly researched and well-organized study of western cultural influences during his youth in his home city. Russian History Rock and Roll in the Rocket City is crammed with food for thought and should provoke many productive conversations in the field of Soviet history and beyond. Slavic Review Zhuk has written a fascinating insight... The book provides the necessary background for many of the personalities and events that took place in the first two decades of Ukrainian independence. Ukraine Analyst Zhuk gives us a fascinating insight into Dnipropetrovsk under Soviet rule and provides a comprehensive background to amny of the personalities and events that took place in the first two decades of Ukrainian independence. Rock and Roll in the Rocket City should be included in every course taught on twentieth-century Ukraine. Slavonic and East European Review Zhuk's excellent monograph makes a signal contribution in teasing out the complexities, ambiguities, and contradictions of official policy toward 'western' cultural influence from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. [This book] should be lauded for taking a major step forward in the study of popular culture in the late Soviet Union. Journal of Social History A fascinating and academically important work. -- Robert Hornsby Europe-Asia Studies Serious and highly original study, the most complete to date of Western influence in a provincial city of the former Soviet Union. -- Donald J. Raleigh Journal of Modern History Sergei I. Zhuk's nuanced study offers a welcome addition to the growing literature on what used to be regarded as an unvariegated era of Soviet history. -- Amy Nelson American Historical Review A very important contribution to late-Soviet social and institutional history. Laboratorium 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. European Review of History

Author Information

Sergei I. Zhuk is a professor of history at Ball State University. He is the author of Russia's Lost Reformation: Peasants, Millennialism, and Radical Sects in Southern Russia and Ukraine, 1830-1917. He was a Kennan Institute Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2002-2003.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions