The Power of Style: Transnational Youth (Sub)Cultures, Socialist Habitats, and the Cold War

Youth style as a twentieth-century transnational project demonstrates the growing interconnectedness of young people all over the world and highlights geographical and political particularities. Focusing on the subcultural youth styles in the Soviet Union, yet with an emphasis on its inter- and transnational contexts, highlights the tensions between, and coexistence and mutual fertilization of, global and local factors in creating “style.” The Soviet lens serves both as an interesting case study and a reminder that there is no such thing as a single, definitive prototype of youth style, but that style is a never-ending negotiation between different intellectual, emotional, and physical forces that incorporate imported and local elements. The history of youth cultural style from the revolution to Perestroika includes Soviet flappers and foxtrotters, the so-called stiliagi, beatniks, hippies, punks, and late-socialist slackers. The unexpected richness and variety of Soviet youth subcultures reveal youth style as a globally interconnected phenomenon with several translations, mutations, and adaptations existing simultaneously.