Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2012

In this introductory article, the rationale for considering punk in a particular spatial and temporal setting (post-socialist societies) is outlined. It is argued that such an enterprise is more than a process of filling in the ‘local colour’ of punk studies; the study of punk in places usually considered marginal to its inception and development can disrupt established canons of knowledge in a productive way. In this vein the article considers the relative usefulness of classic understandings of punk (as aesthetic movement and as site of ‘semiotic guerrilla warfare’) in the socialist and post-socialist context and explores key tropes in understandings of punk (punk and politics, authenticity and mimesis, and subcultural and everyday life) in relation to the particular expressions and lived experiences of punk in post-socialist societies. The article also introduces the project on which contributors to this special issue collaborated and the case studies (in Russia, Croatia and eastern Germany) from which the empirical material in the articles is drawn.

At a recent London seminar on punk in post-socialist Eastern Europe, Penny Rimbaud made an unexpected twist to definitions, stating simply that punk ‘isn’t’. He posits punk as the equivalent of an avant-garde movement that, by its very definition,ceases to be avant-garde from the moment its status enters its self-awareness. Although in many ways controversial, Rimbaud’s argument raises a number of interesting perspectives for our reading and understanding of punk in contemporary Russia, and for how Russian bands relate to and define punk, or try to escape established definitions of it. Rimbaud’s paradox that punk isn’t also finds support in certain aspects of punk’s Russian history. This article investigates how a number of contemporary Russian bands relate to genre. Here it finds two main types of relationship:association with a pre-established genre and genre evasion. What purposes do these strategies serve, and ultimately: is punk? If so, is Russian punk?

From its very emergence, there has been a particular connection between the punk and football scenes in the UK whether demonstrated by those in the limelight (Cockney Rejects’ links with West Ham’s Inter City Firm, for example) or simply ordinary young people whose lifestyles and identities were articulated simultaneously through punk and football fandom. Tracing the history of punk scenes in Croatia confirms the significance of these cross-scene connections. In the 1980s football stadia became appropriate(d) places for pogo dancing while punk concerts became home for football fans who joined the dancing adorned with scarves and team colours. In the 1990s, however, the shadow of war fell across football stadia, which became virtually‘no-go’ areas for punks while football fans became unwelcome intruders to punk concerts. The punks’ place on the terraces was taken by skinheads who, by the mid 1990s, had become a visible and aggressive element who engaged in frequent violent clashes with punks. This article, based on research of the punk scene in the cities of Zagreb and Pula, traces the complex and changing connections between punk and football in Croatia over the last three decades.

In the west relations between punk and religion have been rather straightforward. Punk music – understood as a statement of self rule, and ultimate independence – naturally resisted religious restrictions and subordination to God, church or priests. It was thus no surprise that, alongside other institutions of authority, religion became a frequent object of derision within punk rock. This article, however, investigates a peculiar fusion between the ethos of punk protest and the values of Orthodox Christianity in Russian punk rock. It considers, in particular, the Siberian punk scene and explores the aesthetics and ideology of its key figures: Roman Neumoev of Instruktsiia po Vyzhyvaniiu, Egor Letov, the leader of Grazhdanskaia Oborona and Oleg Sudakov aka ‘Manager’ of Rodina.

On a hand-made poster in the ‘HQ’ of the Biker Club in Vorkuta, the three members of the local punk band Mazut loom out of the darkness, their faces comically distorted and framed either side by the words ‘Fucking noise’ and ‘Mutant-morons’. This article traces tropes of ‘mutation’, ‘mutant’ and ‘moron’ within the music, performance and self-identifications of punk scene members drawing on interviews, field notes, audio and visual recordings gathered in autumn 2009 in the city of Vorkuta in Russia’s far North. It explores the ‘mutant’ hero as it appears in facial and bodily gestures, song lyrics and everyday talk on the punk scene. It considers the meanings attached to the practice of ‘mutation’ among scene members as well as the unarticulated role it plays in signalling a boundary crossing between ‘everyday life’, marked by heavy physical and emotional demands of routines of paid employment and family lives, and ‘subcultural life’, as a practice of the enactment of (a consciously temporary) freedom from them.

In this article I discuss how punk has become an instrument manifesting disloyalty to the modern German state and an expression of one’s German Democratic Republic (GDR) origin. I show how punk reflects the perception of an East/West polarization and the popular understanding that Germans of GDR origin are second-rate citizens. Thus, although couched in the anti-state rhetoric of a punk ideology, the behaviour of East German punks, I suggest, reflects attitudes shaped by the experience of the post-socialist transformation, economic restructuring and increasing unemployment. My research demonstrates that the development of youth culture should be viewed within a larger context of general socio-economic processes. According to the theories of CCCS, subcultures are rooted in their parent culture and share the same experiences and social contradictions. Research in East Germany helps to broaden this approach and indicates that youth culture under certain circumstances can also share and reflect the ideologies and norms of a parent culture.