Read How Russia's Post-Soviet Rave Culture Happened

Discover the intricacies of Russia’s post-soviet rave culture.   

Thanks to a number of ex-Eastern bloc and soviet nations revelling in vibrant rave scenes—not to mention the attention gathered by a number of passionate revivalists like fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy—there has been a renewed cultural interest in post-soviet nightlife in recent years. This interest has not only be reserved to cultural creators like musicians and designers, however. Academics and cultural theorists have also begun to prick up their ears to the theoretical importance of this unique period that begin to gestate following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This research has been concretized in a new journal article by Berkeley anthropologist Alexei Yurchak. In Gagarin And The Rave Kids: Transforming Power, Identity, And Aesthetics In The Post-Soviet Nightlife, Yurchak investigates how all-night parties and clubs in St Petersburg and Moscow have become vibrant centers for new social models and ideologies. They have also become a vital aesthetic means to reinterpret old Soviet cultural symbols into new social forms, and come to grips with new historical circumstances.

In the course of his study, Yurchak goes into amazing detail about DJ culture, club life and the values of new club participants. Drawing in a spectacular range of thoughts from the world of music, anthropology and sociology, it’s definitely a must read article for anyone remotely interested in rave music’s centrality to history and social change. You can read and download the article from Yurchak’s personal Academia page, here.

Read more: Discover the history of rave with this massive video archive

Photo courtesy of Gosha Rubchinskiy