DOI: 10.36871 / hon.202002014

Authors

O. M. Kirillina
Russian State Specialized Academy of Arts, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract

After Khrushchev's "Thaw" a new type of bohemia was formed in the USSR. Sensing the breath of freedom, many creative people were not ready to return to the borders, which were again clearly marked by the state. Art in the USSR was divided into official and unofficial, underground. Despite the difference in tastes and ideas, the underground was a rather cohesive structure: this was facilitated by the constant threat from the state and the need to feel support in a situation where writers were deprived of readers and objective criticism. Over time, the underground bohemia had its own luminaries, it became possible to publish (samizdat). After the mass emigration of the 1970s, there was a split between those who left the country, and between different generations of the underground. The state loosened its grip, samizdat became fashionable among the intelligentsia. The new bohemia did not seek to engage in a fierce battle with the state, hiding from its pressure in the kitchens of its own apartments and in the back rooms, polemizing with officials, first of all, at the formal level. The real test for the underground was the sharp changes in the country in the late 1980s: not everyone passed the test of time and market.

Keywords

Thaw, sixties, persecution of writers in the press, court against writers, samizdat, tamizdat, third wave of emigration, protest in the kitchen, perestroika