‘Soviet Young Man:’ The Personal Diaries and Paradoxical Identities of ‘Youth’ in Provincial Soviet Ukraine during Late Socialism, 1970-1980s

Abstract

Using personal interviews and six diaries of contemporary male authors representing various social groups of urban residents in Soviet Ukraine (two from the cities, and four from towns), written in Russian and Ukrainian, from 1970 to the beginning of the 1980s, this article analyses archival documents and contemporary periodicals and explores the influences of the massive exposure to audio and visual cultural products from the “capitalist West” on the self-construction of identity of Soviet youth from provincial Ukrainian towns. This article seeks to study a concrete development of cultural détente from “the bottom up” perspective, avoiding the Moscow/Leningrad “elitist/conformist” emphasis of recent scholarship.

Keywords

• détente
• diary
• identity
• soviet ukraine
• youth
• westernization