NEW PUBLICATION: Irina Veselova: From Enemy to Potential Ally: Rock Music in the Hegemonial Discourse in the USSR (1975–1986) and Argentina (1976–1983)
Irina Veselova was among the participants of our Potsdam workshop Performing Imagined Communities on Stage: On the Revival of Popular Music and Comedy in East-Central and Eastern Europe, where she presented the paper “To Slip Out of Control, to Step Out and Sing What You See, Not What You’re Allowed”: Rethinking Political Agency in Soviet Rock Movement during Perestroika.
Her new article examines how Soviet and Argentine authorities’ responses to rock music from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s were negotiated in the public sphere. Drawing on archival and published sources as well as interviews with participants in the two rock movements, Veselova identifies common patterns in attempts to regulate, discredit, and appropriate youth culture, while highlighting the limits of authoritarian efforts to control cultural expression under conditions of inconsistent youth policy.