Zagranitsa

Zagranitsa (Russian: заграница; IPA: [zəɡrɐˈnʲit͡sə]; lit. “across the border” or “abroad”) refers to the real and imagined borders of an idealized, imaginary West that lays beyond the borders of the Soviet Union during the late Soviet period. The concept of zagranitsa exercised a great amount of influence on Soviet life and culture from the 1950s until the 1980s. It manifested itself in a widespread fascination with Western manufactured goods, films, music, fashion, and ideas.

Alexei Yurchak, in his 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, describes zagranitsa in the late Soviet period as an “imaginary elsewhere” that was “simultaneously knowable and unattainable, tangible and abstract, mundane and exotic”.^[1] The idea of zagranitsa as utopia, at once an aspiration, a negation, and a reflection of the Soviet Union itself, became embedded into Soviet culture and identity.

Once travel to the United States became more accessible with Perestroika, the “imaginary West” lost its mythical connotations, resulting in disappointment and disillusionment. As Svetlana Boym writes of the 1985 hit song “The Last Letter” (also known as “Goodbye Amerika”) by Russian rock group Nautilus Pompilius, bidding farewell to America— that is, “the beloved Amerika of Soviet underground culture… the mythical West of the Russian imagination”—was as painful as bidding farewell to Soviet culture itself and the “utopian fantasy land of one’s youth”.^[2]

Background

According to Maurice Hindus (writing in 1953), the very word zagranitsa had always “exercised a spell” over ordinary Russians, due to the vastness of the country, the enforced isolationism of living in villages, and the restriction of movement under Soviet rule.^[3] For centuries, Russians had been granted glimpses of zagranitsa and the West through the “window" opened by Peter the Great, as well as the reports of the privileged few who were able to go abroad and the rare appearance of aliens that crossed the border into Russia. The majority of the population remained generally closed to foreign influence until World War II. The war brought an influx of Western goods into the Soviet Union due to foreign relief efforts and the Lend-Lease policy enacted in 1941, and the “traditional hunger for knowledge of the mysterious zagranitsa was sharpened”.^[4] Hindus writes:

"Never before had Russians been so conscious of zagranitsa, so close to it, so excited about it, so responsive to it. Never before had zagranitsa descended on them so concretely… Now it was not merely to be wondered at, but, however, indirectly, to be seen, felt, tasted; also criticized, admired, talked and talked about."

Maurice Hindus, Crisis in the Kremlin^[4]

Hindus describes the wonder and excitement with which Russians receive Hindus’s gifts, everyday items from America— tea, coffee, several cans of Spam, a carton of cigarettes, and an electric razor. “’So practical and beautiful,’ a woman exclaimed as she fondled a pack [of cigarettes] and then passed it to the schoolmaster’s wife. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ added the elderly woman. ‘I hate to tear it open.’^[5] The cans that contained Spam would not be thrown away after their contents were consumed, but, rather, they would often be re-used in the kitchen or even as pots for geraniums and other plants. It was partly the good itself but more so its packaging that engendered wonder and admiration, its clear mark of foreignness as an object from an “imaginary elsewhere.” As Yurchak notes, the desire to possess Western goods, and to keep and display empty packaging and bottles even after they were freed of content, reflected the fact that the link to “elsewhere” (represented by the materiality of these objects) mattered more than their tangible utility as “consumable commodities (the actual liquor, beer, or cigarettes)”.^[6] Their unmistakable Western origin was what “endowed them with great power”.^[6]

Responses to Zagranitsa

With the end of the war and the start of the Cold War, officials sought to curb the desire and fascination for the West and zagranitsa, which, according to Soviet Minister of Culture Andrei Zhdanov, was a detriment to the national pride of the USSR. In 1946, Zhdanov asked in an address Leningrad: “Is it for us… to bow low before everything foreign?”^[7] Zhdanov’s campaigns against “rootless Cosmopolitanism” in the early years after the war persecuted progressive composers like Shostakovich and Prokofiev who were deemed too sympathetic to the bourgeois ideologies of the West.

At the same time, however, the government encouraged citizens to learn how to appreciate other forms of foreign culture. For example, learning foreign languages were not only acceptable but also encouraged as a part of the duties of an educated Soviet citizen of the world, especially with the advent of the shortwave radio.^[8] Cultural openness and Internationalism had long been promoted in the Soviet Union, which had been contrasted, in propaganda, against the supposed racism and intolerance of the United States. The shortwave radio was promoted as a cultural tool to shape an internationalist perspective on the world. Although certain radio bands receiving from distant stations— like the CIA-funded Radio Liberty— were always “jammed” or censored by the state, the permitted bands still could receive from stations like the BBC World Service, the Voice of America in English, and Radio France International in French. Thus, although partially censored, shortwave radios, which were promoted by the government, provided “windows to the west” through which Soviet citizens were still able to listen to jazz and rock-and-roll, which were, on the other hand, deemed as “bad” Cosmopolitanism by officials.^[8]

The distinction between “good” Internationalism and “bad” Cosmopolitanism and the line between acceptable and unacceptable practice were often ambiguous and determined on a case-by-case basis, so in general the verdicts on foreign cultural forms and influences were open to interpretation. This ambiguity allowed interest in zagranitsa to continue to be an acceptable part of the everyday pursuits of the Soviet citizen. According to Vassily Aksyonov, the “combination of vague pro-American feelings and an all-out anti-American propaganda campaign caused a certain segment of Soviet society to start leaning unconsciously in the direction of America in matters aesthetic, emotional, and even to some extent ideological.^[9] The 1960s saw a huge increase of interest in foreign languages and philosophies, American literature, and avant-garde jazz as well as a new-found fascination with traveling to exotic “elsewheres,” with increased interest in the “practices of hiking, mountaineering, and going on geological expeditions in the remote nature reserves of Siberia, the Far East, and the North”.^[10]

Zagranitsa as Model

The official ambiguity toward zagranitsa was sustained also by the fact that the West was often held up as a model for Soviet emulation. As Susan Reid notes, during the 1950s, even as the Socialist way of life was proclaimed as the “right” path toward prosperity, “the Soviet Union also entered into competition on terms set by the US… The regime couched its promises of economic growth in terms of ‘catching up with and surpassing America’. In his address at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev stated: “We can learn something. We look at the American exhibition as an exhibition of our own achievements in the near future”.^[11] As Reid notes, “[the exhibition] was an instructive museum of the future from which to glean new processes and technologies on which to build Soviet, socialist prosperity”.^[11] Thus the achievements were held up as a kind of Utopian inspiration for the USSR; the perceived competition with the West was inextricably linked with the goals and aspirations of the Soviet Union itself, whose ultimate goal, Communism, thus became intertwined with Western modes of prosperity and consumerism. Zagranitsa and the West became embedded in the model of Socialist Utopia during the second half of the Soviet period.

Yet it was essential, although perhaps not apparent at the time, that zagranitsa and the West inevitably functioned as a kind of negation of the Soviet Socialist experiment, as it offered an alternative reality of prosperity that was possible without violent world revolution and socialism— and thus was the very antithesis to a Soviet Union founded on Marxism.^[12] The persistent and prominent images of American capitalist prosperity could and would be an important part of Socialism’s undoing.^[13]

Popular Manifestations of Zagranitsa

Music

During the war years, American jazz had become associated with the opening of the second front in 1944 and impending victory over the Nazis.^[14] Army bands that had learned jazz tunes on the front performed them at dance halls in Prague, Krakow, and Leningrad after the war was over.^[14] However, American jazz, deemed “Cosmopolitan,” soon came under attack by the government, despite its roots in the working class. This, according to Yurchak, was representative of the ambiguity and changing standards of what was acceptable and unacceptable, as the integrity of jazz was not determined by class, the usual metric.^[14]

The suspicion of jazz was perhaps not unfounded. As Aksyonov writes, “jazz was America’s secret weapon number one.”^[15] Its influence, especially on Soviet youth, was substantial in fostering pro-Western feeling:

"Every night the Voice of America would beam a two-hour jazz program at the Soviet Union from Tangiers. The snatches of music and bits of information made for a kind of golden glow over the horizon when the sun went down, that is, in the West, the inaccessible but oh so desirable West. How many dreamy Russian boys came to puberty to the strains of Ellington’s “Take the A Train”…We taped the music on antediluvian recorders and played it over and over at semiunderground parties, which often ended in fistfights with Komsomol patrols or even police raids.”

Vassily Aksyonov, In Search of Melancholy Baby^[15]

Although it was publicly criticized, denounced, and listening was made an illicit activity, jazz continued to exist officially in concerts held by state organizations, for example, by Komsomol committees, as long as it was “adapted to fit the Soviet context.”^[16] The success with which jazz had actually been adapted is questionable, however. Even when embedded within Soviet melodies or with words changed, jazz (and rock-and-roll) elicited “overly excited” reactions from young people, engendered by their associations with zagranitsa. These forms could not be completely dissociated from its associations with the West, but they did acquire their own unique meanings and significance for the Soviet generation that grew up listening to them.

Fashion

The desire for zagranitsa also manifested itself in the style movement of the “stilyagi” (plural of “stilyaga,” meaning “stylish”, “style-hunter”) that emerged out of the 1940s. “Stilyagi” were Soviet youths who adopted an aesthetic style inspired by American films shown in Soviet theatres. Their clothes were marked by loud patterns and colors and close-tailored silhouettes.

Often, because the clothes could not be found in Soviet stores, “stilyagi” made their own clothes.^[17] Some American clothes from Lend-Lease could also be found in Soviet secondhand shops. Still others bought their clothing from “fartsovshchiks”, people who dealt in the illegal business of acquiring and selling foreign goods and currency. “Stilyagi” listened to jazz and rock-and-roll, and frequented clubs like Hotel Evropeiskaia in Leningrad, which featured the Yosif Vainshtein orchestra and played American swing melodies.

As Yurchak writes, the “stilyagi” were but a small subculture, and the majority of Soviet Youth looked on “stilyagi” with disdain. The perception of “stilyagi” was that they were shallow and “uneducated loafers” who knew “fashions from all over the world” but not Griboyedov.^[18]

Komsomol members and even the police suppressed gatherings of “stilyagi”. However, the government’s attack on these more extreme manifestations of Western influence left alone those who less conspicuously enjoyed the effects of zagranitsa. Even during the Stalin years, the Soviet citizen had been encouraged to enjoy consumption of personal, what can be called ‘bourgeois’, pleasures like dresses, wristwatches, and lipstick as long as they were not used for the intention of elevating egoism or status, but as a reward for hard work. Thus, only the splashiest aesthetic pursuits of zagranitsa were hindered, while the many Soviet citizens who continued to engage with Western culture in fashion, music, films, and literature in less ostentatious ways escaped criticism.

Disillusionment

The zagranitsa of the late Soviet period was an imaginary, constructed from various pieces of Western culture from films, jazz and rock-and-roll vinyls, and the glossy pages of magazines, the imaginings of a distant “abroad”. Aksyonov describes the perception he had had of America as “impossibly idealized and distorted”.^[19] Partly because zagranitsa was “forbidden fruit”, it had been desired and idealized.

However, when Soviets came into real contact with the West, the result was often surprise and disappointment. In the 1959 American National Exhibition in Moscow, which famously displayed a ‘slice’ of the American way of life in its kitchen exhibition, some Soviet spectators reacted with ambivalence and disappointment:

“We expected that the American exhibition would show something grandiose, some earthly equivalent to Soviet sputniks. But you Americans want to amaze us with the glitter of your kitchen pans and the fashions which do not appeal to us at all.” “And this is one of the greatest nations?? I feel sorry for the Americans, judging by your exhibition. Does your life really consist only of kitchens?”

Susan Reid,"'Our Kitchen Is Just As Good: Soviet Responses to the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959"^[20]

With Perestroika, the United States and the West became more accessible to Soviet citizens and suddenly “it became obvious that the Imaginary West was something very different from the ‘real’ West”.^[21] This realization forced a reevaluation of the late Soviet period and of Soviet identity in general. The theme of disillusionment with the imaginary abroad has been represented in several post-Soviet films, like the 2008 film Stilyagi (or Hipsters in English) directed by Valery Todorovsky and the 1993 film You Are My Only One, directed by Dmitry Astrakhan. ^[22] Lawton notes that theme of realization of zagranitsa as imaginary in these films usually strikes a patriotic note as protagonists learn to choose their real, if imperfect homelands over imagined foreign utopias.

Notes

Bibliography

Aksyonov, Vassily. In Search of Melancholy Baby. New York: Random House, 1987.

Boym, Svetlana. Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1994.

Hindus, Maurice. Crisis in the Kremlin. New York: Doubleday, 1953.

Lawton, Anna. Imaging Russia 2000: Film and Facts. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing, 2004.

Reid, Susan E. “’Our Kitchen is Just as Good’: Soviet Responses to the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1950.” Cold War Modern: Design 1945-1970, edited by David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, pp. 154-161. London: V & A Publishing, 2008.

Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. Press, 2006.