Dropping-Out of Socialism: Alternative Life-Styles in the Socialist Bloc 1960-1990

“退出社会主义”项目是对前苏联集团生活中隐藏的一面的研究。它调查了社会主义制度下的文化和生活方式，这些文化和生活方式从画面中消失了--既从东欧共产主义政权向本国公众和西方描绘的画面中消失，也从历史学家和政治学家研究欧洲过去几十年共产主义的画面中描绘出来。《脱离社会主义》致力于记录和解释社会主义社会边缘的社会现象：流浪汉、嬉皮士、朋克、流浪汉、新一代、流浪汉，以及任何其他决定忽视而不是遵守社会主义官方行为和参与准则的人。当被告知这些文化竟然存在于东欧共产主义政权的专制条件下时，大多数人都表示惊讶。事实上，即使在东欧本身，人们对社会主义下的另一种生活方式和意识形态也知之甚少，许多已知的东西都笼罩在神话和偏见的阴影中。辍学文化不仅受到政权的镇压，还受到广泛的社会谴责。被拒绝进入官方公共领域，受到安全机关的迫害，正直的社会主义公民带着不信任的目光，社会主义下的辍学文化主要活在参与者的记忆中，以及他们在20世纪70年代和80年代全盛时期的摄影和电影证据中。然而，这种记忆正在与参与者一起迅速消失(他们中的许多人由于异常不健康的生活方式而无法活到老年)。因此，我们项目的目标是双重的。首先，我们打算收集关于社会主义晚期反文化的有价值的证据，并将这些证据提供给未来的研究人员和那些对青年和反文化研究感兴趣的人。该项目将依靠口述历史以及特勤局和共产党产生的资料。它的目标是找回由辍学文化私下创作的多种艺术和文字作品，以及寻找由经常有意识地通过自制艺术品塑造自己的团体制作的电影和照片。其次，我们试图通过与其他学科和其他国家的学者进行集中对话，探索社会主义条件下辍学文化的背景和多种解释。主要赠款获得者将对其专业领域中迄今记录不足的辍学文化案例研究进行详细研究，这将使许多新知识载入历史版图。苏联嬉皮士运动的起源、发展和命运到目前为止还只是草图，笼罩在许多传说和误解中。我们对西方反文化思潮在东德的文化和政治影响也知之甚少。然而，该项目的一个同样重要的部分是将这些文化融入其更大的背景：晚期的社会主义社会和制度。与前苏联集团中从事退学文化研究的学者合作，这些学者代表了从艺术史到社会学的各种学科，将为我们的研究提供必要的框架，以提出更广泛的问题：在多大程度上可能退出社会主义？关于主流社会的状况，反主流文化能告诉我们什么？东西方或不同的东欧和苏联社会之间的反文化有何不同？另类生活方式的存在是否促成了共产主义的垮台？

The project 'Dropping out of Socialism' is a study of the hidden side of life in the former Soviet bloc. It investigates those cultures and life-styles under socialism which literally 'dropped out' of the picture - both out of the picture that was portrayed by the Eastern European communist regimes to its own public and the West and the picture that has since been created by historians and political scientists looking at the last decades of communism in Europe. 'Dropping out of Socialism' is devoted to the historical documentation and interpretation of social phenomena on the margins of socialist society: beatniks, hippies, punks, trampers, new-agers, hobos and any other group of people who had decided to ignore rather than comply with the official socialist code of behaviour and participation.Most people express surprise when told that such cultures existed at all under the repressive conditions of the Eastern European communist regimes. Indeed, even in Eastern Europe itself little is known about alternative forms of life-style and ideology under socialism and much that is known is clouded in myth and prejudice. Drop-out cultures suffered not only from repression meted out by the regime but also from widespread social condemnation. Denied access to the official public sphere, persecuted by the security organs and eyed with mistrust by the upright, socialist citizen, drop-out cultures under socialism live on mostly in the memory of its participants and in the photographic and cinematic evidence of their heydays in the 1970s and 80s. Yet this memory is quickly disappearing with its participants (many of whom due to an extraordinarily unhealthy life-style do not live into old age).The aim of our project is thus double-fold. Firstly we intend to collect valuable evidence of and about countercultures under late socialism and make this evidence available to future researchers and those interested in the study of youth- and countercultures. The project will rely on oral history as well as on sources generated by the secret service and the communist parties. It aims to recover the multiple pieces of art and writing that were produced in private by drop-out cultures as well as seek out films and photographs produced by groups who often consciously fashioned themselves through self-produced artefacts. Secondly we seek to explore the context and manifold interpretations of drop-out cultures under socialism by engaging in a concentrated dialogue with scholars from other discipline and other countries. The principal grant holders will engage in detailed research into hitherto under-documented case studies of drop-out cultures in their field of expertise, which will put much new knowledge on the historical map. The origins, development and fate of the Soviet hippie movement is so far only known in sketches and shrouded in much legend and misconceptions. Nor do we know enough about the cultural and political impact of Western countercultural trends in East Germany. Yet an equally important part of the project is the contextualization of these cultures into their larger setting: late socialist societies and systems. Co-operation with scholars engaged in research into drop-out cultures in the former Soviet bloc, representing a variety of disciplines from the history of art to sociology, will provide our research with the necessary framework to ask larger questions: To what extent was it possible to drop out of socialism? What can countercultures tell us about the state of mainstream society? How did countercultures differ in East and West or between the different Eastern European and Soviet societies? Did the existence of alternative life-styles contribute to the down-fall of communism?