1
Sergei Ivanovich Zhuk (Ball State University)
"Rock and Rolling the Soviet Rocket City": International Tourism, Ideology and
Cultural Consumption in the "Closed" City of Soviet Ukraine: 1964 - 1984
This paper is a part of my research project about cultural consumption and ideology in
the city of Dniepropetrovsk in the Soviet Ukraine during the late socialism before the Gorbachev
reforms. This city was officially closed by the KGB for visits of foreigners in 1959 because
Dniepropetrovsk became a location for one of the biggest missile factories in the Soviet Union.
The most powerful rocket engines for the Soviet military industrial complex were manufactured
in Dniepropetrovsk, which was called by their inhabitants "the rocket city." A tight ideological
and political control was introduced in this city that led to a very conservative, pro-Stalinist and
anti-Western ideological atmosphere, which was very different from more liberal conditions in
the main Soviet capital cities (such as Leningrad and Moscow). Given its "closed" existence
Dniepropetrovsk became a unique Soviet social and cultural laboratory in which various patterns
of late socialism, collided with the new Western cultural influences. Using archival documents,
periodicals, and personal interviews as its historical sources, this paper focuses on how
international tourism contributed to the most popular form of cultural consumption in the Soviet
society - consumption of Western popular music which was officially forbidden, but nevertheless
was widely used for the organization of "socialist leisure." On the eve of perestroika the
"organized" Komsomol tourism became a part of lucrative business, which after 1987 became a
starting point for the business and political careers of many prominent post-Soviet politicians,
such as Yulia Timoshenko, a "heroine" of the Orange Revolution in 2004.
*****
2
Brezhnev's rule in the Soviet Union (1964-82) opened a new chapter in "socialist
consumption." In the 1930s, during Stalin regime, the Communist party and Soviet leadership
had always to think about material consumption under socialism as a measure of their
achievements in "historical struggle" of socialist system with capitalist one. If the communists'
goal was to build a better, more productive and human society than capitalism, Soviet leaders
had to care about different forms of consumption in the USSR and the efficient production of
various consumer goods for the Soviet people, "to satisfy the needs of the builders of
communism."1
Communist society had to prove its superiority in a competition with capitalism.
All Soviet leaders, beginning with Lenin and Stalin, understood this. But nobody, before
Brezhnev, publicly announced and included an idea of "socialist consumption" as the main
official social policy of the communist party and Soviet state. Brezhnev pointed out that the
production of consumer goods had to be the main goal of the entire socialist economy. Both
Stalin and Khrushchev always emphasized an investment in a "production of items which
belonged to a group A" ("heavy industries") as a major priority for both the Soviet state and
people. Since the decisions of the 15th
Congress of the Communist Party in December of 1927,
"the party directives" for each five-year plan had usually begun with an emphasis on this
priority, trying to justify "an intensive development of heavy industry" by a necessity either "to
strengthen the military state defense system" or to "produce more goods for mass consumption."
Only during the 24th
CPSU Congress, in March-April 1971, Leonid Brezhnev changed this
1
See about "Soviet consumption" under Stalin in: Elena Osokina, Za fasadom "stalinskogo izobilia". Raspredelenie
I rynok v snabzhenii naselenia v gody industrializatsii, 1927-1941 (Moscow, 1998); Catriona Kelly and Vadim
Volkov, "Directed Desires. Kulturnost' and Consumption," Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution:
1881-1940, Ed. by C. Kelly and D. Shepherd. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Natalia Lebina,
Povsednevnaia zhizn' sovestskogo goroda. Normy i anomalii. 1920/1930 gody. (St Petersburg, 1999); Sheila
Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999); Jukka Gronow, Caviar with Champagne: Common Luxury and the Ideals of the
Good Life in Stalin's Russia (Oxford: Berg, 2003), esp. pp. 69-86. See also about tourism and consumption during
3
emphasis in the directives for the USSR Ninth five-year plan. Instead of "heavy industry" as
priority number one, the Soviet leadership turned their attention to the "the products of group B"
­ "goods for mass consumption." Therefore, at least in the Soviet official discourse, Brezhnev
introduced "Soviet consumerism" as a legitimate precondition of what Communist ideologists
had been already calling "the developed socialism" since 1967. The Soviet leadership planned
more investment in agriculture, food and "light" industries to satisfy growing demands of Soviet
consumers under developed socialism, which was, according to the new Brezhnev's theory, the
"last stage before the final phase of communist social and economic formation." In February of
1976, the 25th
CPSU Congress still followed this pattern. Soviet leaders still "prioritized" a "fast
growth in the consumer sector."2
During the 1960s and 1970s, Soviet ideologists paid more attention to an organization of
leisure time and so-called "cultural consumption" (reading, watching films, listening to music
etc.) among the Soviet population. Soviet consumers had to be provided not only with consumer
late Stalinism in: Anne E. Gorsuch, "'There's No Place Like Home': Soviet Tourism in Late Socialism," Slavic
Review, (Winter 2003), Vol. 62, No. 4, 760-785.
2
Leonid I. Brezhnev, Report to the 24th
Congress of the CPSU 1971 (Moscow: Progress, 1971), 12-53; idem, Report
to the 25th
Congress of the CPSU 1976 (Moscow: Progress, 1976), 99; Leonid I. Brezhnev, Leninskim kursom
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1972), Vol. 3, 24, 124, 235. See also about consumption and developed socialism in A.
Butenko, "O razvitom sotsialisticheskom obshchestve," Kommunist, 1972, No. 6, 48-58, and J. R. Millar, "The
Little Deal: Brezhnev's Contribution to Acquisitive Socialism," Slavic Review, (Winter 1985), Vol. 44, No. 4, 694-
706. See also a new "revisionist" approach to this problem in: Mark Harrison, "Economic Growth and Slowdown,"
Brezhnev Reconsidered / Edited by Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002), 38-67,
Mark Sandle, "A Triumph of Ideological Hairdressing? Intellectual Life in the Brezhnev Era Reconsidered,"
Brezhnev Reconsidered, 135-164, and Mark Sandle, "Brezhnev and Developed Socialism: The Ideology of Zastoi?"
Brezhnev Reconsidered, 165-187. Compare with the Cold War studies of the Brezhnev era: Developed Socialism in
the Soviet Bloc/ Ed. by J. Seroka and S. Simon. (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1982); D. Kelley, The Politics of
Developed Socialism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986); Soviet Society and Culture/ Ed. by T. L. Thompson and
R. Sheldon. (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1988). Despite the negative treatment of Brezhnev economic policy as
a part of infamous "stagnation", even the typical American textbook in Soviet History for undergraduate students
had to acknowledge this: "Criticizing the USSR's poor economic performance, [Brezhnev] singled out "Group B"
(consumer goods) enterprises. He castigated ministerial-level officials for treating consumer goods as `something
secondary and ancillary.'" See: Woodford McClellan, Russia: The Soviet Period and After (Upper Saddle River, N.
J.: Prentice Hill, 1998 [the 1st
pr. 1986]), 227; see also 224-228. New textbooks in Soviet History usually ignore
Brezhnev period. Compare with a sketchy overview of post-Stalin development in: Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and
Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia: Seventh Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 529ff. Much
better an overview is in: Ronald Grigor Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States
4
goods but also with new services and new ideologically "healthy" goals for consumption.
According to the ideological requirements of the "developed socialism," socialist consumption
had to be different from the capitalist one and excluded notions of profitability and accumulation
of wealth. Soviet ideologists tried to combine traditional Stalinist goals of "rational
consumption" and the "rational use of leisure" with new requirements of the "developed
socialism" theory. In the new interpretation of Soviet consumerism, the Stalinist "noble
objectives of education and cultural growth of Soviet citizens" still dominated the ideological
discourse of the Brezhnev era.3
Soviet tourism had to play an important role in this consumption
­ in satisfying, on the one hand, new demands for leisure time and socialist consumer goods and
services, and in contributing, on the other hand, to a variety and intellectual wealth of "cultural
consumption" by widening cultural horizons of the members of the "developed socialist society."
Before Brezhnev made "Soviet consumerism" a part of the ideology of "developed
socialism," the local Soviet apparatchiks from Dniepropetrovsk had already tried to figure out
what was "socialist consumption" and what were differences between "cultural" and "non-
cultural" consumption. As the first secretary of the regional committee of CPSU in
Dniepropetrovsk, A. Vatchenko, explained to young consumers, Komsomol activists, in January
of 1969, the main essence of the "correct socialist cultural consumption" was the ability of
"young consumers" to give a "correct class evaluation of the pieces of bourgeois arts and music
and avoid non-critical attitudes toward a eulogy of the capitalist way of life."4
In April of 1970,
Z. Soumina, a representative of the city administration in Dniepropetrovsk, elaborated this theme
further: "We are not against consumption. But this should be a cultural consumption. Take a
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 421-446.
3
See about this Anne E. Gorsuch, "'There's No Place Like Home', 781, and Catriona Kelly and Vadim Volkov,
"Directed Desires. Kulturnost' and Consumption," Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881-
1940, Ed. by C. Kelly and D. Shepherd. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 293.
5
look at our city offices of music recording and what our youth is consuming there as `music.'
They are recording the tapes with songs of Vysotsky, music by the Beatles (`bitlov'). Where is
the real cultural consumption here? You can't see that our young people are recording classical
music by Tchaikovsky or Glinka. They still prefer the dances with their boogie-woogie to the
concerts of classical music."5
As we see, the Soviet apparatchiks, who experienced a real
problems of new consuming Soviet society, tried to make a difference between "cultural" (good)
and "non-cultural" (bad) forms of consumption. At the same time, they also understood what
recent scholars of "cultural studies" defined as "cultural consumption" ­ consumption of cultural
products such as books, plays, movies, TV shows and music. Therefore they fused these
meanings together in their discourse ­ 1) the notion of positive consumption, which would lead
to the widening of the cultural horizons of the Soviet consumer (and it should be correct from the
ideological point of view, based on the Marxist theory of class struggle) and 2) the idea of
consumption of various products of culture (literature, music, etc.)6
Tourism, international tourism, in particular, became a very important testing ground for
these notions of "cultural consumption", especially by the end of the Brezhnev era. This kind of
tourism was growing during the period of developed socialism. As early as 1929, under Stalin,
the Soviet government created a special tourist agency, "Intourist" (an abbreviation from two
Russian words "Innostrannyi turist" ­ "Foreign Tourist," or "International Tourist") to serve the
foreign tourists, who visited the USSR. Later on, in 1964, with the transition to the consuming
society of developed socialism, the All-Union Administration for Foreign Tourism introduced
state control over all forms of international tourism. In a few years it changed its name to "the
4
Derzhavnyi arkhiv Dnipropetrovs'koi oblasti (hereafter ­ DADO), f.22, op. 15, d. 252, l. 62.
5
DADO, f. 416, op. 2, d. 1565, ll. 306-307.
6
See a survey of growing literature on cultural consumption in John Storey, Cultural Consumption and Everyday
Life (London: Arnold, 1999).
6
State Committee for Foreign Tourism." This committee established its control over the old
agency, "Intourist," and two new ones: 1) the international youth tourist organization "Sputnik"
(Komsomol travel agency), and 2) the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions' international
travel agency. According to the first historian of Soviet tourism, the number of foreign tourists
who visited the Soviet Union increased from 486,00 in 1956, to 711,000 in 1960, to more than 2
million in 1970, more than 5 million in 1980 and 6 million in 1985. More than 60% of all these
tourists represented countries of the "socialist camp." The number of Soviet tourists who traveled
abroad also grew from 561,000 in 1956 to more than 1,800,000 in 1970 and more than 4,500,000
in 1985.7
On the local level, in Ukraine, domestic tourism was governed by the Republican
Tourism and Excursion Board. As everywhere in the USSR, in the Dniepropetrovsk region of
Ukraine, this form of tourism was the most popular. However, the KGB officials did not
encourage international tourism in this strategically important region and tried to stop any
attempt to develop "active forms of domestic tourism," which would lead to breach of secrecy.8
Despite the KGB's cautious attitude toward tourism in the region, the local administration
followed closely the new party directives about "cultural consumption" and creation of the better
living conditions for Soviet citizens, and promoted forms of the "health oriented" tourism as a
part of the new party's strategy.9
In the region of Dniepropetrovsk a number of tourist facilities
grew during the Brezhnev era. In 1940 the region had only two sanatoria with 70 beds, in 1984
7
G. P. Dolzhenko, Istoria turizma v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii i SSSR (Rostov, 1988), 150. See also Denis J. B.
Shaw, "The Soviet Union," in Tourism and Economic Development in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union/ Ed. by
Derek R. Hall. (London: Belhaven Press, 1999), 137-140. See about tourism and Soviet trade unions in Blair Ruble,
Soviet Trade Unions: Their Development in the 1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
8
See the KGB report on the situation in the region, which was submitted to the Communist party regional
committee on July 4, 1968: DADO, f. 19, op. 52, d. 72, ll. 1-4.
9
See about Soviet classification of tourism and recreation in: Denis J. B. Shaw, "The Soviet Union," in Tourism and
Economic Development in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union/ Ed. by Derek R. Hall. (London: Belhaven Press,
1999), 120-136.
7
there were 33 sanatoria, pensions and tourist hotels with 7,407 beds. (Overall, in the USSR, the
number of these facilities increased from 469 in 1940 to 2,566 in 1988.) If the region of
Dniepropetrovsk had 39,600 summer camps for children with special children's tourist facilities
in 1950, there were more than 142,600 camps with tourist facilities for children in 1984.10
In
1973 the Komsomol tourist organization "Sputnik" in Dniepropetrovsk region used three
facilities to accommodate more than 6 thousand young tourists (mainly secondary school
students) from 160 cities of the Soviet Union, in 1980 this organization used six tourist facilities,
including a fashionable hotel "Dniepropetrovsk", to accommodate more than 36 thousand of the
Soviet tourists, and one modern hotel "Kiev" in Krivoi Rog to accommodate 100 foreign
tourists.11
In the Soviet Ukraine outgoing international tourism was governed by the Trade Union
Republican Board Tourism Department ("Buro ekskursii i puteshestvii" in Russian) and by the
Komsomol organization "Sputnik". Incoming foreign tourists were welcomed by the state
organization "Intourist" (the Ukrainian branch), and "Sputnik." Given the status of
Dniepropetrovsk as "the closed city," foreign tourists were not allowed to visit the city. In fact,
only one industrial city of the province of Dniepropetrovsk, Krivoi Rog, was opened for
foreigners, who were mostly students of the local mining college and represented the socialist
and developing countries. Therefore, the city of Dniepropetrovsk branches of the Trade Union
Tourism Department and "Sputnik" were mainly preoccupied with the local inhabitants of the
region who traveled abroad rather than with foreign tourists. An overwhelming majority of the
local outgoing tourists participated in so-called "cultural international tourism." They bought
10
Tsentral'noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti. Dnepropetrovshchina v tsifrakh. (K 40-letiu
pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine)/Ed. by L. G. Glushkina (Dniepropetrovsk, 1985), 69, 68. Denis J. B. Shaw,
"The Soviet Union," 122.
11
DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 156 (1973-74), l.1, 2, 14; f. 22, op. 26, d. 102 (1979-80), l. 1, 2, 4, 5.
8
special traveling plans (`putiovka" in Russian), usually for a week or two weeks trip abroad.
They visited specially designated places in foreign countries, according to the officially approved
travel itinerary and travel expenses, and they stayed in the hotels strictly designated by the Soviet
tourist authorities. These authorities took care of all travel documents for Soviet tourists ­
foreign passports and visas, and an amount of foreign currency permitted for foreign travel
according to a given travel plan for each tourist. Only few tourists went abroad as "business
tourists" ­ mainly as visiting scholars and scientists who also had their own travel plans, called
in Russian "tvorcheskaia komandirovka" ("creative business trip").12
A majority of Dniepropetrovsk tourists who participated in international travel did this in
groups (34-40 people each) which were closely monitored by the representatives of the Soviet
tourist administration. All these representatives (usually Soviet, trade union, party and
Komsomol apparatchiks) were approved by KGB offices and had to submit their reports about
their groups to both their tourist administration and the KGB immediately after the return of their
tourist group back to Dniepropetrovsk. The first organization, which started "international group
tourism" in the region, was the Dniepropetrovsk trade unions. The local KGB office was
reluctant to permit mass international tourism because of the strategic secretive status of the city-
producer of military rockets. In 1961 the regional council of trade unions planned to send 613
local tourists abroad. But under pressure of the KGB, Dniepropetrovsk trade unions had to limit
this number up to 551.13
In 1966 the regional trade unions sent 1,299 local tourists abroad.14
In
1970 the regional trade unions organized travel abroad for 2,027 people, including 1,930 tourists
who bought their travel plans through "Intourist", 82 workers who were sent by the trade unions
12
See about the origin of all these forms of tourism in Stalin's times in: Anne E. Gorsuch, "'There's No Place Like
Home'," 769-770.
13
DADO, f. 1860, op. 1d., d. 7, l. 1.
14
DADO, f. 1860, op. 1d., d. 62, l. 28.
9
which covered all their travel expenses and 15 people who were taking medical care in medical
centers abroad.15
In 1972 the trade unions sent 3,192 local tourists to various locations in
different countries. Four years later, in 1976, despite all KGB restrictions, 4,931 people traveled
abroad through the trade union travel agency.16
Only in 1972 did the KGB permit new forms of travel abroad - "the youth group
international tourism" for "Sputnik" in the city of Dniepropetrovsk.17
Ideological basis for
supporting Komsomol international tourism in the region came from the Communist party's
directives. As early as 1973 Leonid Brezhnev pointed out that "international connections of
Komsomol, the contacts of Soviet boys and girls with the youth from foreign countries became
the crucial part of the entire Soviet foreign policy."18
Following these directives, tourist
administration sent only the best (ideologically reliable and KGB approved) industrial workers,
engineers, collective farmers and teachers, who "would be able to represent the Soviet politics at
its best." Each group of these tourists had also one or two "non-official" representatives of the
KGB and Komsomol apparatus. Usually one member of this group represented directly the
regional Komsomol committee of Dniepropetrovsk. In 1977, for an example, all 28 group leaders
were the high regional or district Komsomol apparatchiks.19
In 1973 Dniepropetrovsk "Sputnik" organized a visit of 125 foreign tourists (mainly from
Poland and Czechoslovakia) in the city of Krivoi Rog and more than 6 thousand Soviet tourists
from 160 cities of the Soviet Union. At the same time Komsomol tourist organization sent more
than 8 thousand local tourists to other places in the Soviet Union and 430 tourists from the region
15
DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1249, l. 45, 46.
16
DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1533, l. 5.
17
DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-11.
18
Citation is from: DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 156, l. 7.
19
Authors conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993. DADO, f. 22, op. 24, d. 67, ll. 10, 13, 16.
10
to 23 different foreign countries (380 of them traveled abroad the first time in their lives).
According to the data of the regional Communist party committee, during 1973, more than four
thousand tourists from the region of Dniepropetrovsk visited foreign countries. It was only a tiny
fraction (0.1%) of the growing regional population of 3.5 million people.20
In 1974 "Sputnik"
received 131 foreign tourists in the region and sent 13,031 people as domestic tourists and 488 as
international tourists. At the same time 4,167 local tourists went abroad through the trade unions
traveling agency. Besides, Komsomol tourist organization usually sent approximately 300 young
tourists to the international youth camps each year.
A number of young tourists who went abroad increased in the region. In 1975 "Sputnik"
sent 700 local tourists to foreign countries (and 17,300 as domestic tourists), in 1976 ­ 828 as
international tourists (and 16,111 as domestic tourists). In 1977 815 young tourists visited 18
foreign countries. 747 of them (92%) in 22 tourist groups went to the socialist counties, and only
68 (8%) in 5 groups visited capitalist countries.21
Still, an overwhelming majority of local
tourists who went abroad did this through the trade unions. According to "Sputnik" reports, there
were 1,000 local tourists who went abroad in 1979 and 1,245 in 1981. During the same years
trade union tourist agency sent abroad 5242 and 5400 local tourists accordingly. As we see, only
18 per cent of all international tourists from the region used Komsomol travel agency. During the
1980s more than one thousand young tourists from the region on regular basis visited various
foreign countries annually.22
In 1990, the zenith of perestroika, a number of travels abroad
20
DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 4, l. 110. TsSU SSSR: Statisticheskoe upravlenie Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti,
Dnepropetrovskaia oblast' za tri goda deviatoi piatiletki (1971-1973 gody). Kratkii statisticheskii sbornik
(Dnepropetrovsk, 1974), 6.
21
DADO, f. 22, op. 24, d. 67, l. 16.
22
See documents of the Dniepropetrovsk branch of "Sputnik" and the reports of leaders of tourist groups in:
DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-64; f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, ll. 1-42; f. 22, op. 30, d. 85, ll. 1-84. Figures of the
population of Dniepropetrovsk region see in official statistics: Tsentral'noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie
Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti. Dnepropetrovshchina v tsifrakh. (K 40-letiu pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine)/Ed.
by L. G. Glushkina (Dniepropetrovsk, 1985), 10. Numbers of the tourists see in "Sputnik" reports in: DADO, f. 22,
11
reached a peak for the entire history of the region. During this year, 2,130 people visited
capitalist and developing countries on business and as guest scholars or scientists. 5,123 and
23,000 local inhabitants went accordingly to capitalist and socialist counties as tourists.
Therefore, in general, 30,253 tourists from the region of Dniepropetrovsk went abroad that year.
And even then, they still represented less than one per cent of the entire regional population
(0.77% from 3,905,200 people). Even if we add a number of emigrants who left the region for
Israel and USA (7,368 people), an overall amount of those who traveled abroad was still very
small and less than one percent (0.96%).23
From the beginning, international tourism in the "closed" city of Dniepropetrovsk was
directly connected to cultural consumption among a population of the region of Dniepropetrovsk.
Officially, all travelers abroad from the region were qualified as the "cultural tourists." The
recent cultural and sociological studies of tourism always portray "cultural tourists" as those who
"gaze collectively upon certain objects which in some ways stand out or speak to them."24
Yet,
for the Soviet tourists their travel abroad was a unique opportunity not just to "gaze" (or its better
to say "to take a peep") on the certain objects of the "alien" world, but to memorize their own
entire experience of visiting non-Soviet places. Even for Soviet ideologists and loyal subjects of
the Soviet state, a trip abroad was a rare and remarkable occasion when they felt very ambiguous
about "the foreign style of life." On the one hand, given to indoctrination in Communist
op. 19, d. 156 (1973-74), l.1, 2, 14; f. 22, op. 26, d. 102 (1979-80), l. 1, 2, 4, 5; f.22, op. 22, d. 61 (1974), l. 8; op. 22,
d. 403 (1975), l.4ob.; op. 23, d. 86 (1976), l. 4; op. 24, d. 67(1977), l. 10; op. 30, d. 83 (1981), l. 3; op. 32, d. 71
(1982), l. 11; op. 34, d. 73 (1983), l. 14; op. 36, d. 73 (1984), l. 14. A number of the trade unions' tourists came
from: DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1991 (1976), l. 5; d. 2441 (1979), l. 3; d. 2836 (1981), l. 1-206; d. 2837 (1981), l. 1-
201.
23
Ispolkom Dnepropetrovskogo oblsatnogo Soveta narodnykh deputatov, Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskoe razvitie
Dnepropetrovshchiny za 1986-1990 gg. Statisticheskii sbornik (Dnepropetrovsk, 1991), 3, 78.
24
See especially John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 2002).
Citation is from his chapter: John Urry, "The `Consumption' of Tourism," in The Consumption Reader /Ed. by
David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel and Kate M. L. Housiaux (London: Routledge, 2003), 117-121. See also chapter
12
ideology, they were skeptical and critical about everything non-Soviet. On the other, they were
attracted to and stunned by what they lived through during their travel abroad.25
For Soviet
tourists who traveled for their first time abroad, everything looked, smelled, tasted, and sounded
different. As one character of the popular Soviet comedy film of 1968 asked her husband who
just returned from his foreign trip: "Did you taste Coca-Cola? How was it?" The wife was so
anxious to know what the product which official Soviet propaganda always associated with
"Western consumerism" and "Western life" tasted like. She was more interested obviously in a
physical (almost physiological) experience of the travel abroad rather then in the cultural objects
(museums, historical sights etc.), which usually attracted the Western tourists during their
foreign travels.26
Soviet people wanted not just to gaze, but to touch, smell and taste what Western tourists
took for granted and considered as just "ordinary consumer goods" not worthy of tourist
attention (e.g., a can of "Coca-Cola," a pair of "Levi's" jeans etc.) The leaders of tourist groups
from Dniepropetrovsk, which traveled abroad from 1964 to 1984, complained about the same
problem in their official reports. All tourists usually were more interested in visiting shopping
centers and local stores rather than museums and other important objects of "cultural tourism."27
According to former leaders of tourist groups, such as Serhiy Tihipko, Karlo Markov and Natalia
Bocharova, both trade unions' and Komsomol tourist delegations spent more time in the shops
than in museums during their foreign travels in such different countries as Hungary, East
"Consuming Places: Cites and Cultural Tourism" in: Steven Miles and Malcolm Miles, Consuming Cities (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 66-85.
25
Even those Soviet apparatchiks, who used to live in the West, still had these ambiguous feelings about foreign
countries. See an interesting analysis of Stalinist apparatchik's feelings about his trips to Europe in: Michael David-
Fox, "Stalinist Westernizer? Aleksandr Arosev's Literary and Political Depictions of Europe," Slavic Review,
(Winter 2003), No. 62, No. 4, 733-759.
26
I refer to the Soviet movie "The Diamond Arm" (Director: Leonid Gaidai, "Mosfilm," 1968).
27
See complaints about these preferences in official reports: DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1532, l. 11-112 (for 1972).
See also DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-64; f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, ll. 1-42; f. 22, op. 30, d. 85, ll. 1-84.
13
Germany, Egypt or India.28
At the same time, the KGB officers, who were members of those
tourist groups, and sometime even the leaders of these groups themselves, testified that even
supervisors (both formal and informal) of the tourist groups were more interested in material
aspects of consumption of foreign goods and services rather then in cultural and educational
aspects of their travels.29
In contrast to other regions of Ukraine which had a direct supervision by central
Ukrainian administrations from Kiev, given a status of "strategically important military center"
in Dniepropetrovsk, this region had direct supervision from Moscow. This effected many spheres
of life, including tourism. Dniepropetrovsk tourist administration was more flexible and had less
control from Kiev.30
By the end of the 1970s, the local tourist administration developed their
own travel itineraries, which were more attractive to local consumers. During 1974-1982 the
most popular destinations for Dniepropetrovsk tourists (through "Sputnik") were socialist
countries, such as Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland (in
1981 Poland, practically, was closed to the Soviet "cultural tourists" because of "Solidarity"
movement). The most popular tourist travel plans (through Trade Union Tourist Department)
included a "Mediterranean cruise trip on the steam boat from Odessa" and "cultural travels to
Egypt and India."31
28
Author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
Author's conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
29
Author interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991. Author interview of Askold K., a son
of a head of tourist department in Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15,
1993. Author's conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's
conversation with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
30
Author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
Author's conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
31
See both documents: DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-64; f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, ll. 1-42; f. 22, op. 30, d. 85, ll. 1-
84, and personal opinion of the travelers: Author interview of Askold K., a son of a head of tourist department in
Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15, 1993. Author's conversation with
14
Soviet travel agencies took care of the preparation of travel documents (passports and
visas) and currency. An amount of hard currency for individual tourist depended on the country
of destination and duration of the trip. Usually for two weeks of travel in the capitalist or
developing countries one tourist was allowed to exchange (on average) no more than 150 rubles
in Dniepropetrovsk (during a period from 1972 to 1984). For the same duration of trip to
Bulgaria or East Germany, a tourist usually exchanged 10 or 15 rubles maximum. Even in their
official reports, the tourist group leaders complained about "humiliation" of Soviet tourists
abroad when they had no enough hard currency to "behave decently." As A. Kurochkin, a leader
of tourist group which participated in Danube cruise in 1968, complained, "our tourists felt very
constrained in their financial spending when they could not visit a toilet or drink water because
of lack of cash."32
On rare occasions, like the Danube cruise in October of 1978, the Soviet
tourist authority could permit 300 rubles for an individual exchange.33
Of course, many
"enterprising" members of the Soviet elite, who were interested in the foreign consumer goods,
brought their items for "friendly exchange" during their travel. These objects for "friendly
exchange" included everything, from bottles of vodka to Soviet badges. Usually KGB and
custom officers allowed these items to cross the Soviet border.34
In exchange, Dniepropetrovsk tourists could bring more foreign goods home. These
cultural tourists became real "cultural consumers" of the foreign products they had dreamed
Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation with Natalia V. Bocharova,
Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
32
Citation is from: DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1022, l. 114. See also: DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 73, l. 15 (for 1972) and
f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, l. 21 (for 1978); see also a typical report about attempts of the Soviet tourists to bring illegally
extra Soviet currency in ibid., f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, l. 40, or an exchange of Soviet goods into money in ibid., f. 1860,
op. 1d., d.62, l. 31 (for 1966), and f. 22, op. 32, d. 73, l. 85-86 (for 1982).
33
DADO, 1860, op. 1, d. 2278, l. 95.
34
See especially DADO, f. 1860, op. 1, d. 1533, l. 7, 8-9, d. 2637, ll. 26, 27-27ob., and also f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-
64; f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, ll. 1-42; f. 22, op. 30, d. 85, ll. 1-84. Author interview of Askold K., a son of a head of
tourist department in Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15, 1993. Author's
15
about but were not able to get them in the Soviet official stores or black market. Some of these
products, such as foreign music records, became the most desirable object of consumption
among many tourists ­ from the regular members of tourist groups to their leaders. Eventually,
these "cultural tourists" from Dniepropetrovsk contributed to a growing market of Western
popular music which became an important part of cultural consumption in the region.
A relative growth of outgoing international tourism from after 1975, to some extent, was
a result of propagandist efforts of the Soviet government to demonstrate to the world that the
Soviet Union followed literally a section of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe. This section acknowledged that "freer tourism was essential to the
development of cooperation amongst nations."35
When in 1978 the United States began
negotiating tourism agreements with Egypt, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland, these countries
became more attractive for the Soviet tourists as well because of an influx of new Western
tourists from the USA and the new opportunities for consumption there.36
In 1980-1984 because
of the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan, deployment of the Soviet intermediary range missiles in
Europe and "Solidarity" movement in Poland, a destination of tourist groups from the Soviet
Union (including Dniepropetrovsk tourists) changed. An overwhelming majority of organized
international tourists went now not to the developing countries, such as Egypt and India, but to
the relatively stable and loyal socialist countries such as Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria.
Yugoslavia was also very popular among Soviet tourists. However, the local KGB officers and
conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation with
Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
35
Authors conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993. See also David L. Edgell, International
Tourism Policy (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990) 40.
36
Authors conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993. See also David L. Edgell, International
Tourism Policy (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990) 43.
16
Communist ideologists, who loved to travel there, did not want to encourage local tourists to buy
"travel plans" to socialist Yugoslavia, which was not an official member of the Soviet bloc.37
During the 1970s and 1980s, Dniepropetrovsk international tourists usually traveled to
European socialist countries by a train from Kiev. If their destination was Poland or East
Germany, they went through the railway station of Brest (in Byelorussia). If they traveled to
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Yugoslavia they went through the railway station at Chop in
Western Ukraine. Another popular travel plan included a sea trip from Odessa to Bulgaria and
Romania. So called "Mediterranean cruises special travel plans," which included visits of big
ports on the Mediterranean sea, were organized by Trade Unions and were available only for the
experienced tourists who were double checked by the KGB. The KGB office had an "unwritten
rule" for the local international tourists. Nobody was allowed to visit a capitalist or developing
country without previous experience of a travel to socialist countries. If during his/her travel to
socialist country, a tourist did not make ideologically harmful mistakes (buying pornography,
anti-Soviet products, etc.), and he/she demonstrated only loyal behavior of Soviet patriot, the
KGB would permit such a tourist to travel to capitalist countries. Any travel abroad required also
the special recommendation from the certain Komsomol, Communist and Trade Union
organization, where a potential tourist was a member. It usually took at least a couple of months
for the Soviet travel agency to check all documents of the candidate for travel abroad. Even
communist party apparatchiks and Komsomol functionaries used to complain of the long
37
Author interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991. Author interview of Igor T., KGB
officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991. Author interview of Askold K., a son of a head of tourist department in
Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15, 1993. See also David L. Edgell,
International Tourism Policy (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990) 41.
17
bureaucratic procedures of this "security" checking, which usually involved not only a special
KGB officer but also the representatives of administration, party, Komsomol and trade unions.38
The "direct" representatives of trade union and Komsomol administration in the
international tourist groups always used their official trips abroad for their own consumption
(sometimes not very "cultural" consumption at all). On many occasions, as a gesture to their
supervisor, they brought a gift back, as a token of their loyalty from their tourist assignment.39
Usually these "direct" representatives used their "special status" and brought some foreign goods
to Dniepropetrovsk, which were impossible to get in the Soviet Union. An overwhelming
amount of these goods were Western fashionable items ­ jeans, cigarettes, records of popular
music and perfumes. Sometimes these goods included the popular books in Russian, which had
been printed in the Soviet Union and sent to other socialist countries as a part of a cultural
mission in promoting Soviet culture and Russian language among members of the Soviet bloc.
Usually these books, especially adventure novels by Alexander Dumas and Arthur Conan Doyle,
were extremely popular in the 1970s among the Soviet reading audience, but they were missing
from Dniepropetrovsk book stores. Two major publishing houses in Dniepropetrovsk re-printed
the boring collections of Brezhnev's works and other ideological literature of the Communist
party and ignored a growing demand for the more popular and readable books.40
Because of the
ideological paradoxes of the trade policy between members of the Soviet bloc, these books in
Russian language (including Russian classical literature) became available in many socialist
countries, a destination of the travel for many Soviet tourist groups. As a result, many tourists
38
Author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
Author's conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993.
39
Alena Ledeneva gave many examples of these tokens of loyalty in her description of "blat" as "the Soviet system
of personal favors". See Alena V. Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours, 3, 63, 67, 151, 196.
40
Tsentral'noe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie Dnepropetrovskoi oblasti. Dnepropetrovshchina v tsifrakh, 78.
18
used their trips as an opportunity to bring these books from Bulgaria or Hungary, back to
Dniepropetrovsk.41
After the first international tourist groups returned to Dniepropetrovsk, their leaders in
reports to their administration noted the "unhealthy enthusiasm" ("nezdorovyi azhiotazh") of
Dniepropetrovsk tourists for the Western products, especially jeans and music records. After
1974 all groups' leaders complained that a majority of tourists "were preoccupied" with an idea
to find cheap shops with music records of popular musicians. Instead of participation in the
intensive cultural program in Sophia or Budapest, these tourists spent their time in the downtown
part of these cities, looking for music records ("diski").42
Besides information about frequent
cases of drinking among Dniepropetrovsk tourists, the complaints about pop music consumption
were a typical part of the official reports after each tourist trip abroad. In 1978 leaders added new
complaints ­ about cases of buying various music equipment. From 1978 till 1985, all tourist
groups reported about new Western reel-to-reel tape recorders and small audio-cassette players,
and how buying these products became an ultimate goal of the entire travel abroad for many of
these tourists.43
As many contemporaries testified, Komsomol activists and group leaders were
the most active participants in this cultural consumption during their tourist trips. The leaders of
tourist groups not only participated in the shopping sprees together with their co-citizens, they
also tried to use their connections with customs authorities in Chop, Brest or Odessa to get
permission for bringing music equipment to Dniepropetrovsk. Overall, Komsomol activists, who
41
Author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
Author's conversation with Karlo A. Markov, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 12, 1992; Author's conversation
with Natalia V. Bocharova, Dniepropetrovsk University, March 15, 1993. These books were so popular that even
Soviet military officers who were stationed in the socialist countries used to bring them together with pieces of
furniture, jewelry etc to their Soviet homes.
42
See a typical case of exchange of a pack of the Soviet cigarettes into a music records in DADO, f. 22, op. 32, d.
73, l. 85 (for 1982).
43
DADO, f. 22, op. 22, d. 62, ll. 1-64; f. 22, op. 24, d. 141, ll. 1-42; f. 22, op. 30, d. 85, ll. 1-84. See also Alexei
Kozlov, Op. cit., 364, 365 about an amount of new Western music equipment among Ukrainian musicians.
19
made a major part of these tourists, preferred visits to capitalist countries because they were
allowed more currency and had more opportunity to buy various goods there. But by the end of
1970s, they brought more rock albums and music information to Dniepropetrovsk from the
socialist countries rather than from other parts of the world.44
The main reason for this was that
the KGB and Communist ideologists usually considered the information from socialist countries
more "ideologically reliable" than the "direct music information" from the Western countries. As
a result, they permitted Komsomol tourists to bring more "cultural products" (books and music
records) from the countries of the Soviet bloc.45
"After 1980, - said Askold, a young traveler
who used the connections of his mother, a local trade union boss, to get a "travel plan" for his
visit to Hungary in 1981, - Soviet customs rejected only items which were bought in Poland and
did not permit them in Ukraine. But similar items ­ the same music records, which were bought
in Hungary, were allowed in without any problem. For the Soviet customs officers Polish music
markets were ideologically wrong because of anti-Soviet `Solidarity' movement there, but
Hungarian markets and products were OK."46
After 1976 the most popular object of cultural consumption during the tourist trips abroad
was the records with Western popular music. As it turned out, many international tourists had the
lists of music records which had been ordered by the local consumers. These music records were
a part of the very important cultural consumption which affected not only many young
inhabitants of the region of Dniepropetrovsk, but also their Komsomol ideologists. This was the
rock and disco music consumption. Because of the All-Union Komsomol discotheque campaign,
44
See how they provided information about foreign disco clubs and dancing parties in their reports as early as 1972
in: DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 73, ll. 13-14.
45
Author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993. Author
interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991. See also memoirs of the famous Soviet jazz
musician: Alexei Kozlov, Dzhaz, rok i mednye truby (Moscow: EKSMO, 2005), 181, 182-183, 194, 230.
46
Author interview of Askold K., a son of a head of tourist department in Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch,
Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15, 1993.
20
which reached Dniepropetrovsk in 1976, both Komsomol leaders and Komsomol activists
became involved in the organization and supervision of various forms of popular music
consumption. After 1976 the Central Committee of All-Union Komsomol required
Dniepropetrovsk Komsomol leaders to participate actively in the new discotheque movement
which was triggered by the Komsomol of the Baltic republics in 1974-75.47
The main goal was
to keep ideological control over dancing floors where a majority of the Soviet youth spent their
free time. Therefore, local Komsomol leaders, who were responsible for the organization of
leisure time, became participants of a new network of connections and personal relations, which
by 1986 had been called the "discotheque mafia" in Dniepropetrovsk. Suddenly, the loyal young
Komsomol functionaries found themselves in a very ambiguous situation. They had to
communicate with those, who provided dancing parties with the most popular music but whose
ideological preferences were questionable. These people were connected to the black market of
rock music, which had flourished in downtown Dniepropetrovsk since the early 1960s. Because
of a necessity in the "ideologically reliable" music programs for disco clubs, Komsomol
ideologists now depended on music material and information, which was unavailable through the
traditional official sources of information. At the same time, Dniepropetrovsk enthusiasts of rock
music, who became organizers of the first Komsomol discotheques in the city, were able to get
the necessary information through the black market. Thus, non-directly, the Komsomol
ideologists became involved in the new connections, sometimes with very murky and illegal
activities of rock music providers from the "music market," two black market areas that still
47
Yu. Milinteiko, "Pervye shagi diskoteki," Dnepr vechernii, February 26, 1977; B. Ivashura, I. Manevich,
"Ruzhane dariat prazdnik," Dnepr vechernii, March 23, 1977.
21
existed in downtown Dniepropetrovsk despite many efforts of official authorities to arrest dealers
in Western music records.48
At the end of 1976, the first disco club was organized by young enthusiasts of rock music
who worked for the Dniepropetrovsk "secret" rocket-building factory ­ "Yuzhmash." They used
facilities and funds of Komsomol and trade union organizations there. In 1977 this discotheque
became the base for various Komsomol disco clubs in the city. Eventually, on May 15, 1977, the
city Komsomol committee sponsored an opening of the central city discotheque "Melodia"
("melody" ­ in Russian), and hired Valerii Miakotenko, a former manager of the local rock band
and organizer of the "Yuzhmash" disco club, as its main disc jockey. "Melodia" combined music
equipment, dancing hall and local cafeteria in one successful business. This place became a
center not only for all discotheque movement in the region but also for various music business
activities. (Some of these forms involved illegal trading of the Western music records, audio
tapes and music equipment). By July 1978, "Melodia" had controlled all new eleven disco clubs,
which were open now in the city of Dniepropetrovsk.49
Officially, Komsomol apparatchiks and trade union bosses worked together with the
"discotheque activists" from the early beginning of the discotheque movement in 1976.
Moreover, a rapid spread of this movement made this region exemplary for many Soviet
ideologists, who used a case of the Dniepropetrovsk central discotheque as proof of an
ideological success in propaganda of the new forms of socialist leisure for the Soviet youth. The
region of Dniepropetrovsk was praised by the republican Komsomol ideologists in Kiev for "the
efficient organization of disco club movement." On October 18, 1979, the city of
48
During February-July of 1972 the police organized 100 raids and arrested 200 such dealers and confiscated
hundreds of music records and tapes. See DADO, f. 19, op. 60, d. 85, ll. 7, 17.
22
Dniepropetrovsk became a location for the "first All-Ukrainian republican final festival contest
of the discotheque programs."50
The city Komsomol organization of Dniepropetrovsk had
prepared a special report about the achievements of the city disco club "Melodia" before this
festival and summarized major forms and methods of "music entertainment" in the city. In
October this published report was widely circulated among the participants of the All-Union
festival competition. Many guests of the city used this publication as a guide for their "disco club
activities."51
During the first year of its existence, "Melodia" organized 175 "thematic" dancing
parties with special music lectures. More than 60 thousand of young people became regular
participants of these parties.52
In 1979 many apparatchiks who were involved in this movement
were promoted and awarded for "excellent ideological and educational activities among the
regional youth." By the beginning of 1982 there were more than 560 youth clubs with 83
officially registered discotheques in the region of Dniepropetrovsk.53
Despite the Communist
ideologists' criticism of these discotheques' spreading bourgeois mass culture among the local
youth, Komsomol leaders kept their collaboration with activists of the discotheque movement.
To some extent, by the middle of the 1980s Komsomol ideologists and discotheque activists had
mutual interests and became more and more dependent on each other.
As Mikhail Suvorov, who worked in various capacities (from an audio engineer to a disc
jockey) in "Melodia" from 1977 to 1985, recalled, "After 1980, when John Lennon was
assassinated, the central Komsomol administration asked the local Komsomol ideologists to
49
See a story of these relations in: I. Chenous'ko, "Disko-klubu ­ zelionuiu ulitsu," Dnepr vechernii, July 1, 1978;
L. Titarenko, "Tsikavi tsentry vidpochynku," Zoria, August 15, 1978; I. Rodionov, "Vecher v diskoklube,"
Dneprovskaia pravda, January 14, 1979; A. Belkina, "Vechir u dyskotetsi," Prapor iunosti, December 11, 1979.
50
A. Belich, "Diskoteka: ot fakta k priznaniu," Komsomol'skoe znamia, October 20, 1979; A. Belich, "Pervye ­
vse: v Dnepropetrovske podvedeny itogi 1-go respublikanskogo smotra-konkursa diskotechnykh program,"
Komsomol'skoe znamia, October 24, 1979.
51
Zdes' mozhno uznat' mnogo pouchitel'nogo: Iz opyta raboty Denpropetrovskogo molodezhnogo diskokluba
"Melodia." (Dniepropetrovsk, 1979), 1-4.
52
DADO, f. 17, op. 11, d. 1, l. 28.
23
prepare music events about Lennon's songs as an example of progressive anti-capitalist music of
the West in the struggle against war and imperialism. But by this time the Soviet official label
"Melodia" had released only one John Lennon's album "Imagine" and few songs like "Give
Peace A Chance" in a music magazine "Krugozor." Therefore when one Komsomol apparatchik
approached us and requested anti-capitalist songs by Lennon, such as "Power to the People,"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday," or "Woman Is the Nigger of the World", I had to ask `my
connections' from the `music market' to bring me the tapes with Lennon's songs. Another time,
the same apparatchik had to deliver a lecture on the old (of the early 1970s) Soviet ideological
campaign in support of an American Communist, Angela Davis, who was arrested then by US
government. And he needed again a `rare' Lennon's song "Angela" from the album of 1972 -
"Sometime in New York City." The similar situation was repeated, when the Komsomol
ideologists requested from "the discotheque people" tapes with recording of Pete Seeger's, Bob
Dylan's and Joan Baez's songs which became very important items in an official Communist
music ceremony devoted to an international solidarity of workers. When at the end of 1984 the
rumors about the anti-imperialist and anti-American ideas of the Bruce Springsteen's album
"Born in the U.S.A." reached Dniepropetrovsk, the local Komsomol ideologists asked the
organizers of our Komsomol discotheque to include Springsteen's songs in our dancing program.
And again we had to go to the music market and pay for the tapes with Springsteen's album. And
I explained this to our ideological supervisors. But they did not care about our sources. What
they needed was an ideological efficiency and immediate response to the ideological suggestions
of their bosses from Moscow."54
53
DADO, f. 22, op. 32, d. 1, l. 44.
54
Author interview of Mikhail Suvorov, June 1, 1991.
24
This ambiguity in the attitudes of the Komsomol apparatchiks toward the "music
market" was especially evident in the 1980s. Serhiy Tihipko, who since 1984 had worked as
Komsomol apparatchik in Dniepropetrovsk, was an eye-witness of these developments.55
When
he was a student of local college during 1977-1982, Tihipko used to listen to the Western rock
music and knew that some of his rock music tapes reached him through the black market. When
in 1984, he became responsible for Communist propaganda among the youth of Dniepropetrovsk
and dealt with the organization of dancing parties and discotheques he had to face a very serious
problem. How was it possible to organize an "ideologically reliable and politically loyal" mass
event (meropriaitie) based on music and video material which came from "ideologically
unreliable and politically incorrect sources" (as the "music products of the capitalist countries"
that came through the illegal black market)? As Tihipko recalled, some of his Komsomol
colleagues, trying to avoid the Dniepropetrovsk black market, used "Sputnik" as a new venue for
getting music information and products from the socialist countries. They considered these
products as more reliable and correct material for the proper Communist propagandist actions.
These "actions" included an organization of various events during the leisure time for the local
youth. Tihipko's department was responsible for of such "actions" - lectures, "visual agitation,"
special testing of the level of ideological maturity of Komsomol members, and also using
discotheques as a "venue for ideological propaganda."56
Discotheques became a new responsibility of the department of agitation and propaganda
after the death of Brezhnev, when Yurii Andropov, a new Soviet leader, began his campaign of
struggle with corruption in the Communist party and Komsomol. During these years, 1983-84,
55
See Tetiana Honchatova, "Serhiy Tihipko on Sharp Turns," The Ukrainian, 2001, No. 2, 60-65; Ukrains'kyi
Nezalezhnyi Tsentr Politychnykh Doslidzhen'. "Dnipropetrovs'ka sim'ia": Informatsia stanom na 25 lystopada 1996
roku./ Ed. V. Pikhovshek a.o. (Kyiv, 1996), 246-24. Author's interview of Serhiy Tihipko, a director of
"Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
25
according to the Soviet and the Western scholars, the Soviet leadership was concerned "with the
social control of young people, mentally through improved ideological training and physically,
through the greater regulation of their leisure time and activity."57
Andropov emphasized "the
need for discipline and ideological purity." Speaking at the July 1983 Plenum of the Central
Committee of CPSU, Andropov declared the war on "the Western pop music consumption": "It
is intolerable to see the occasional emergence on a wave of popularity of musical bands with
repertoires of a dubious nature."58
He pointed out the danger of an ideological confusion created
by the Western popular music which became the main object of consumption for millions of the
Soviet young people. Andropov reminded the Komsomol that leisure-time activities were "the
battleground for fierce ideological conflict between Communist and bourgeois ideologies."
Andropov suggested the special "counter-propagandist" efforts which would be able to protect
the mentality of the "young builders of the initial stage of developed socialism" from
"distortions, confusion and anti-social patterns of behavior" associated with "Western music of
degeneration."59
As a response to the Andropov's suggestions, in 1983-84 Komsomol introduced
"special counter-propagandist measures" which affected the discotheque movement as well.
Eventually Tihipko became involved in various counter-propagandist activities checking the
"ideological purity and political correctness" of all forms of leisure in the city of
Dniepropetrovsk, including dancing parties and the youth tourism.
In 1984, after Andropov's death, a new Soviet leader, Chernenko, began a new round of
criticism of Komsomol ideological work among the Soviet youth. According to Communist
56
Author's interview of Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
57
Hilary Pilkington, Russia's Youth and Its Culture: A Nation's Constructors and Constructed (London: Routledge,
1994), 79.
58
Citation is from: Paul Easton, "The Rock Music Community," Soviet Youth Culture /Ed. by Jim Riordan
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1989), 56.
59
See especially his theoretical article: Yurii Andropov, "Uchenie Karla Marksa i nekotorye aspekty stoitel'stva
sotsializma v SSSR," Kommunist, 1983, No. 3, No. 9-23. See also his speech in Pravda, 1983, August 16, 1.
26
ideologists, Komsomol failed to "combat new temptations on the youth scene," and "the blind
imitation of Western fashions and lack of interest in politics." Komsomol leadership accepted
this criticism and called "for a mobilization of Komsomol forces to patrol the performances" of
local rock bands and check "the repertoires of Soviet discotheques."60
During the same year, on
July 25, the USSR Ministry of Culture, and on August 22, the USSR Ministry of Higher and
Specialized Education, issued the special orders about "the regulation of activities of vocal-
instrumental groups and improvement of the ideological-artistic standard of their repertoires."
These orders were used now for strengthening an ideological control of the local rock bands and
discotheques all over the Soviet Union.61
A new Soviet legislation now threatened to punish
people who provided thriving music market of Komsomol discotheque movement with music
information. The activities of sound engineers and discotheque activists involved in the mass
production of music recordings came under articles in the Soviet Criminal Code regarding
entrepreneurial activities (Article 153) or the practicing of an illegal trade (article 162).62
On October 1, 1984, the USSR Ministry of Culture issued a list of 68 Western rock bands
and 38 Soviet "unofficial" rock bands whose music was not recommended for playing in public
places within the city limits of Moscow. The list of "forbidden Western bands" included the
favorites of the Soviet youth, such as KISS, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and Pink
Floyd. The list of "ideologically unreliable Soviet bands" included those who were especially
popular among students of high schools and undergraduate college students, such as Aquarium,
60
See about anti-rock music campaign in 1983-84 in: Artemy Troitsky, Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock
in Russia (London: Omnibus Press, 1987), 89-93ff.; Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock
Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 220-222 and Sabrina
Petra Ramet, Sergei Zamascikov, and Robert Bird, "The Soviet Rock Scene," Rocking the State: Rock Music and
Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia / Ed. by Sabrina Petra Ramet (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 190-191.
61
Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc, 220; Paul Easton, "The Rock Music Community," 57.
62
Komsomol'skaya pravda, 1984, April 7. In another issue this newspaper informed their readers that the spread of
rock music in the Soviet Union was the result of "Operation Barbarossa Rock and Roll," a CIA and military
intelligence of NATO plan to undermine the USSR. See Komsomol'skaya pravda, 1984, September 16.
27
Kino and Nautilus Pompilius. As a result, all these bands were officially prohibited for the
cultural consumption of the Soviet youth. By the end of 1984 many regional Komsomol
committees in Ukraine, including one in Dniepropetrovsk, used these "official" and "unofficial"
lists of "forbidden music" in their campaign to purify the "pop music consumption" of
Komsomol members. They wanted to replace the bad "non-cultural" consumption of "bourgeois"
music with good "real cultural" consumption of the "ideologically reliable socialist music." 63
Inspired by the new ideological campaign, Komsomol activists, "moved against
recording studios, discotheques, and underground record networks." As Timothy Ryback wrote,
"the Soviet Union seven thousand discotheques also felt repercussions of the 1984 crackdown.
By 1982, about 90 percent of the music played in Soviet discotheques was of Western origin,
primarily hits by the Bee Gees, Donna Summer, and other disco music groups. The 1984
crackdown banned the playing of all Western groups, including officially promoted bands like
ABBA and Boney M. Disc jockeys caught spinning Western albums received fines. Some
discotheques, deemed to be of a "low artistic" level, were simply closed down. Many
establishments, anxious to appease officials, introduced political and cultural instruction."64
The
same happened in Dniepropetrovsk as well. Many disco clubs were closed in 1984-85. A famous
discotheque at the cultural center of Dniepropetrovsk University was transformed into a "music
lecture club" with a name "Dialogue: Music in Ideological Struggle." Instead of dancing,
students now listened to boring lectures about modern music and important issues of
63
This list was published first time in Komsomol'skaya pravda, 1985, November 10. See the first publications of the
Soviet lists with "forbidden bands" in English in: Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc, 221 and Sabrina
Petra Ramet, Sergei Zamascikov, and Robert Bird, "The Soviet Rock Scene," 191. Alexei Yurchak re-printed
recently the similar list used by Nikolaev regional Komsomol committee (in Ukraine) in January 1985. See his,
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More : The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton University Press, 2005),
213-216.
64
Timothy W. Ryback, Rock Around the Bloc, 221. See also an excellent analysis of the Soviet scholars' and
executives' reaction to the new ideological campaigns of 1984-85 in: Hilary Pilkington, Russia's Youth and Its
Culture, 80-85.
28
international politics. The local ideologists preferred this kind of "cultural" consumption rather
than spontaneous dancing parties to "bourgeois" music, which was difficult to control. Many
talented disc jockeys and music engineers, such as Mikhail Suvorov, left Komsomol
discotheques in 1985-86 and moved to a safe ground of other ideological institutions, far away
from the dangerous restrictions about rock music.65
In 1983-84 the police organized the special raids on locations of the "music market" in
downtown Dniepropetrovsk. They were looking not for black marketers, but for the "anti-Soviet
music products," including music records and audio tapes of KISS and AC/DC songs. Thousands
of original Western records were confiscated and hundreds people were arrested during those
two years. By the beginning of 1985 the police destroyed a thriving music market for growing
rock music consumption in the city. But they were not able to stop this consumption. Disco
clubs, restaurants and bars still existed in the city. The administration of all these places still was
interested in the "fresh" Western popular music. As a result, people in charge of music
entertainment had to find other sources for music information and products to satisfy growing
demands of Dniepropetrovsk consumers. Neighboring cities of Krivoi Rog and Zaporozhie,
which were open for foreigners, became more important locations for obtaining "fresh" music
products for Dniepropetrovsk music consumers. The local Komsomol leaders, who were
responsible for music entertainment, also had to explore the new non-traditional sources of music
products and establish the new connections with the "providers" of new music. International
tourism became the major source of new music information for rock music consumption during
1983-85. In 1972 only 30% of all music records and tapes with the "Western music" came
directly through the channels of international tourism to Dniepropetrovsk music market. By the
65
At Dniepropetrovsk University I became a new head of the music club "Dialogue" in September 1986, when I
started my teaching career there. Author's interview of Serhiy Tihipko, a director of "Privatbank" in
29
end of 1984 more than 80% of all "fresh" Western music reached Dniepropetrovsk music dealers
via local tourists who traveled abroad, including those who used service of Komsomol traveling
agency.66
Many objects of pop music consumption, which were banned in the region, came to
Dniepropetrovsk through the representatives of the ruling Soviet elite, who visited foreign
countries as the members of local tourist groups. According to Mikhail Suvorov and other
discotheque activists, in 1979, the KGB supervisors of local tourists, one from a trip to Hungary,
another from a trip to Poland, brought to Dniepropetrovsk the original rock music albums, which
Communist ideologists banned later, - "Highway to Hell" by AC/DC and "Dynasty" by KISS -
for their own children who were active participants of the music market in the city. Through
these KGB children, tapes of AC/DC and KISS music became available for thousands of rock
music consumers in the region, many months before foreign students brought these albums to
Krivoi Rog, a city, which was opened for foreign tourists.67
During the anti-rock music
campaign the Komsomol apparatchiks who had an opportunity to go abroad, brought new music
records, audio tapes, cassettes, new audio and after 1984 video equipment. According to Mikhail
Suvorov, during the crisis of 1983-84, when the music market was closed by the police, the same
Komsomol apparatchik, who had once asked Suvorov about rare songs by Lennon, brought the
new music records to the central city discotheque. All these records were bought by him in
Hungary when he was a leader of the local tourist group.68
An irony of the situation was that given to the ideological requirements these Komsomol
leaders and activists had to demonstrate how effectively they performed their duties in the
Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993. See also an author interview of Mikhail Suvorov, June 1, 1991.
66
DADO, f. 22, op. 19, d. 2, 143, f. 19, op. 60, d. 85, ll. 9-11 See also an author's interview with Serhiy Tihipko, a
director of "Privatbank" in Dniepropetrovsk, October 12, 1993.
67
Author interview of Mikhail Suvorov, June 1, 1991. Author interview of Vladimir Sadovoi, March 10, 1992. See
also author interview of Aleksandr Gusar, May 4, 1990; Author interview of Vladimir Solodovnik, June 21, 1991.
Author interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991.
68
Author interview of Mikhail Suvorov, June 1, 1991.
30
organization of the youth entertainment. But because of narrowing channels of music
information by the anti-rock campaign, they had to depend more and more on their old
"discotheque movement" network which necessarily involved the old enthusiasts of rock music
who were connected to the black market. In addition, they used also domestic and mainly
international tourism, and especially "Sputnik." This involvement in popular music consumption
produced a very important network of connections for the new Komsomol elite in the region.
After the beginning of the "discotheque movement" in 1976-77, they became active organizers,
supervisors and participants in this system of rock music consumption. By 1985 they had an
access to all major forms of profit and money making which this consumption involved.
Moreover, as the young ideologists of the Soviet state they had a legitimate right to participate in
all these forms. Through their discotheque connections Komsomol leaders started a new type of
entertainment ­ "video salons." The first video recording equipment appeared in
Dniepropetrovsk radio shops in 1983. Any attempt to use VSR and to show foreign films to
make money in private homes was considered a crime, and people who tried to do this were
punished.69
But by the end of 1984 Komsomol activists with their "discotheque friends" started
their initiative to organize an official Komsomol "video business." Only in 1986, during
Gorbachev's perestroika, did the city administration permit the opening of so-called "video
salons" in Dniepropetrovsk.70
Like the discotheque movement, video salons became relatively
lucrative business, and young Komsomol leaders used both their legal connections in tourist
organizations and regional Soviet administration and their non-formal connections with rock
music enthusiasts to succeed in this business. Therefore, since 1976 the new forms of cultural
consumption, especially popular music and video became a means for the creation of new
69
See about police persecution of illegal "video salons" in private homes: L. Gamol'sky, N. Efremenko, V.
Inshakov, Na barrikadakh sovesti: Ocherki, razmyshlenia, interviu (Dniepropetrovsk, 1988), 146-147.
31
managerial and business connections, which would contribute to the post-Soviet political and
business activities of former Komsomol elites.
Another paradox of the ideological campaigns of late socialism was that the lists of the
"forbidden Western musicians," which were widely used by Communist ideologists and
Komsomol activists in their campaign to "purify" the markets of pop music consumption in
Dniepropetrovsk, had not reached the Soviet customs officers and frontier guards before 1985.
As a result, many forbidden items continued to flow into the Dniepropetrovsk music market via
Soviet apparatchiks, who traveled abroad. During the anti-rock campaign in the region of
Dniepropetrovsk international tourism became an important source for feeding music
information the centers of leisure, which still needed the "new music for dancing and fun." Two
main organizations (with their corresponding tourist agencies) ­ Komsomol and Trade Unions ­
were competing for this music information, and for favors of people who controlled the "music
market" of Dniepropetrovsk, the people who were called the "discotheque mafia" by the local
police.71
The functionaries of both organizations, who were in charge of various forms of music
entertainment - from ideological lectures on modern music, dances, "subotniks" (actions of
volunteer labor), concerts, to just informal wedding or birthday parties, - depended on music
information, music equipment etc. By 1985 the practical aspects of these apparatchiks' career (an
importance of success in their office) tied the Dniepropetrovsk "music market" (including the
people from the "discotheque mafia"), international tourism, and Komsomol and Trade Unions'
structures in one important network of business connections.
70
Author interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991.
71
Author interview of Igor T., KGB officer, Dniepropetrovsk, May 15, 1991. Author interview of Askold K., a son
of a head of tourist department in Dniepropetrovsk Trade Unions branch, Dniepropetrovsk University, April 15,
1993.
32
The crisis of 1983-84 created a unique situation, when Soviet apparatchiks who were
responsible for pop music consumption of young people, used all elements of the discotheque
network to survive and succeed. This network included Komsomol functionaries of the regional,
city and district committees responsible for ideological work and entertainment, officials of
travel agencies, trade union apparatchiks, who were in charge of various "travel plans" for both
domestic and international tourism, officials of the palaces of culture, locations of various
activities of leisure and entertainment, and finally the Soviet officials who were in charge of
various diners, café, and restaurants that provided discotheques with room for dances and an
audience with a place to eat and drink. This complicated system of interconnections and mutual
obligations, with elements of personal favors, which was called "blat" in Russian, had begun
many years ago, before 1976. Everybody depended on other participants in this system.72
The
beginning of the discotheque movement in 1976 added to this system a new element - people
from the music market, who provided organizers of leisure time with the necessary music
information and music products for a mass consumption.
******
In the middle of the 1980s, when perestroika created favorable conditions for old
managerial skills of Komsomol activists, this system produced the new activities for cultural
consumption - "video salons" ­ that became a new business, which brought to their organizers
more profits than traditional disco clubs. This new "video business" used the same infrastructure
and network of discotheque movement ­ international tourism, Komsomol activists, trade union
bosses and "discotheque mafia." This network contributed to the business career of two other
72
See on "blat" Alena Ledeneva, Russia's Economy of Favours
33
fans of Western popular music: Yulia Timoshenko and her husband, Alexandr.73
In 1988, they,
using their old connections in the world of Komsomol discothques, opened a public service
enterprise, a video-renting shop in Dniepropetrovsk, which they started with 5,000 of Soviet
rubles they borrowed. The profits made from this first venture were used to open the video
rentals chain. They used the experience of the tourist groups of Komsomol apparatchiks, who
brought the first VCRs in Dniepropetrovsk through travel agency of "Sputnik." The people from
the discotheque movement helped these apparatchiks with the Western video tapes and an
audience, which was ready to consume the new Western products. Former "discotheque people"
tested the new business practices, and they initiated an idea of "video salons" which had already
become the most popular and fashionable form of entertainment in the Soviet capital cities and
Baltic republics after 1984. As a result, during perestroika, both the Komsomol and discotheque
mafia provided infrastructure for these salons in the city. When in 1987, the KGB opened the
city of Dniepropetrovsk for foreigners again, "Yuzhmash," the "rocket factory," imported
thousands of VCRs, using barter agreements with South Korean businessmen. As a regional
Communist party apparatchik, Yulia Timoshenko's father-in-law had an access not only to these
Korean VCRs, but also to local movie theaters, which provided the first mass audience for
"video shows." With these family's connections, using traditional discotheque infrastructure,
Yulia Timoshenko organized the Komsomol cooperative Terminal, which controlled a chain of
video salons with "Yuzhmash" VCRs in 1988.74
73
In 1975, while in school, Yulia Timoshenko wrote in her biography: "I am fond of sports, especially of ping pong,
skating, and also of sport games such as volleyball, basketball. I like music by Bach, Mozart, Strauss. I like also the
modern rock bands such as The Beatles, Manfred Mann Earth Band, Led Zeppelin and others." See: Dmitrii Popov,
Ilia Mil'shtein, Oranzhevaia printsessa. Zagadka Yulii Timoshenko (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Ol'gi Morozovoi, 2006),
55.
74
About Timoshenko's biography in English see: Andrew Wilson, Ukraine's Orange Revolution (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2005), 18-22. See the up-dated biography of Timoshenko in: Dmitrii Popov, Ilia Mil'shtein,
Oranzhevaia printsessa, 52-89.
34
All elements of Timoshenko's "initial" business had been already developed during the
Brezhnev era, when the "cultural consumption of developed socialism" combined the structures
of the Soviet international tourism and ideological efforts of Komsomol activists in one network
of the important business and managerial relations. Without these relations it is impossible to
imagine the development of post-Soviet capitalism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and
Soviet "organized" state tourism in 1991, the representatives of the Komsomol elite from the
Brezhnev era, such as Timoshenko, who used the same Soviet network of connections and
experiences, demonstrated again that a skilful adjustment of this network to a new economic
situation was an important foundation for a success in the post-Soviet business activities.