Stites, Chapter 6

Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900
Richard Stites
Chapter 6

The Brezhnev period was stable and for the most part peaceful. "This was the peace of the graveyard: a graveyard of ideas, openness, and free expression" (148). Brezhnev succumbed to stagnation after he reached the apex of power and allowed a huge cult of personality to arise around him, not as sickly as that of Stalin but constricting none the less. Brezhnev and his colleagues delivered impressive results in material growth, full employments, and peace. A second economy of black and gray markets, a dissident intellectual and political underground, and various countercultures arose to parallel the rigid economic, political, and cultural systems. Many retreated into religion, nationalism, cultural preservation, questing for a lost yesterday, and exaltation of the rural way of life in a continuous and growing divergence between urban dynamic and rural nostalgic mentalities.

Soviet people were still reading much more per person than many other nations. The modern crime novel came into its own in the USSR, and science fiction grew in popularity. Rock and roll became popular through the production of rock operas. Cultural authorities could not always distinguish rock from pop and they were reluctant to prohibit rock outright because of its immense popularity. The circus, in all of its soviet glory, remained popular. Brezhnev's daughter married an acrobat twice her age and traveled with the Moscow circus.

Films gradually drifted away form politics, towards the realities of Soviet life and personal destinies. An American sociologist of wrote that movies "generally documented Soviet life better than social scientists" (169). [This could be a paper topic that was less focused on identity!]