Notes from the Zone of Kaif: The Life and Work of Azazello - Hippie, Poet, Drug Addict and Artist

来自凯夫区的笔记：阿扎泽洛的生活和工作-嬉皮士，诗人，吸毒者和艺术家保存，分析和传播苏联非墨守成规的档案阿扎泽洛是一个嬉皮士，诗人和艺术家。他相信改变精神的药物的力量，并为他的和平主义和反对苏联国家付出了许多个月的精神病院。他是一个有成就的反文化服装裁缝，并通过笔记，微型绘画和诗歌热情地记录了他的生活。他是一个真正的后期社会主义地下生物：街头，亚文化，反叛，但无疑是苏联。他是勃列日涅夫的“停滞”及其矛盾后果的产物：一个生动的、平行的地下世界在一个半合法的领域里运作，就在西方记者报道的单调和灰色的同一个莫斯科。阿扎泽罗的世界并不受社会主义规范的指导。这是一个人们寻求kaif的世界--毒品、酒精和志同道合的同龄人群体最能引发一种难以捉摸的非苏联式快乐。2015年初，阿扎泽洛向洛杉矶的文德博物馆捐赠了一大堆文件和笔记本，仔细检查后发现，这些文件和笔记本是一个独特的记录，记录了一个过去和现在都不为普通俄罗斯人所知，也不为大多数学术专家所知的世界。阿扎泽罗不是以日记的形式记录他的生活，而是在36个小笔记本上写下的数百页绘画，笔记，歌曲文本和联系方式，其生产时间从1972年到1993年不等。他还写了数百首诗，这些诗是他按日期和时间写的，主要涉及他的个人生活和在他的圈子里突出的集体情感。这个档案提供了一个世界，通常是很难探索，因此发现很少学术关注一瞥。然而，这个“超越苏联规范之外的世界”无疑是晚期社会主义的一个重要方面，不仅因为它显示了“苏联的边界”，而且因为它的存在成为晚期社会主义的一个重要特征。这个项目的目的是使意义阿扎泽罗的世界和工作，从各种角度和采用一些不同的方法。我们将对整个档案进行数字化，使其可以在双语（俄语/英语）网站上访问，提供带有学术注释的文本和图形，并将其与六名团队成员撰写的同行评议的文章和论文相结合，这些文章和论文将档案及其作者与更广泛的学术辩论和主题联系起来。该团队由四位历史学家和两位文学学者以及两位翻译组成，将把“Azazello档案”置于Azazello的社会和文化环境，其文学传统和灵感，以及其在苏联美学中的根源。“阿扎泽洛档案”将照亮地下莫斯科的一个角落，它只是偶然没有消失在垃圾桶里，就像发生在这么多类似的文件。项目成员将利用他们在亚文化史、持不同政见者写作和自我塑造方面的现有专业知识，突出档案馆如何反映和促进其时间和地点的特殊构成。该项目也将成为推进社会主义后期社会及其遗产研究的重要工具。由于Azazello的作品从20世纪70年代初一直延续到90年代中期，该项目将超越1991年的停顿，不仅探索不墨守成规的生活和文化的本质，而且还探索强大的苏联地下组织在其最初几年的“开放”表现。关于苏联晚期和后苏联时期文化和日常生活的连续性和断裂问题，开辟了一个全新的历史研究领域，它揭示了苏联到底有多“死”这个至关重要的问题。

Notes from the Zone of Kaif: The Life and Work of Azazello - Hippie, Poet, Drug Addict and ArtistPreserving, Analyzing and Disseminating the Archive of a Soviet Non-conformistAzazello was a hippie, poet and artist. He believed in the power of mind-altering drugs and paid for his pacifism and opposition to the Soviet state with many months in psychiatric hospitals. He was an accomplished tailor of counter-cultural clothing and an ardent chronicler of his life through notes, miniature paintings and poetry. He was a true creature of the late socialist underground: streetwise, subcultural, rebellious, and yet unmistakably Soviet. He was a product of Brezhnev's 'stagnation' and its paradoxical consequence: a vivid, parallel underground world operating in a semi-legal sphere in the very same Moscow that was reported to be drab and grey by Western correspondents. Azazello's world was not guided by socialist norms. It was a world of people seeking kaif - an elusive non-Soviet pleasure best induced by drugs, alcohol and a community of like-minded peers.In early 2015 Azazello donated to the Wende Museum in Los Angeles a large pile of papers and notebooks, which on closer inspection turned out to be a unique record of a world that was and remains hidden from view of not only ordinary Russians but also most academic specialists. Azazello chronicled his life not in diary form, but in hundreds and hundreds of pages of painting, notes, song texts and contact details written in thirty-six small notebooks, whose period of production ranged from 1972 to 1993. He also wrote hundreds of poems, which he dated by day and time and which mostly deal with his personal life and collective sentiments prominent in his circle. This archive provides a glimpse into a world that is usually very difficult to explore and has hence found little scholarly attention. Yet this 'world beyond and outside of Soviet norms' was undeniably an important aspect of late socialism, not only because it shows the 'borders of Sovietness', but also because its existence became a significant characteristic of late socialism. This project aims to make sense of Azazello's world and work from a variety of angles and employing a number of different methodologies. We will digitalize the entirety of the archive, make it accessible on a bilingual (Russian/English) website, supply text and graphics with scholarly annotations and frame them with peer-reviewed articles and essays written by the six team members that link the archive and its author to broader academic debates and topics. The team, which consists of four historians and two literary scholars as well as two translators, will place the 'Azazello archive' into the context of Azazello's social and cultural surroundings, its literary tradition and inspiration, and its rootedness in Soviet aesthetics. The 'Azazello archive' will illuminate a corner of underground Moscow, which only by chance did not disappear into a rubbish bin, as has happened to so many similar documents. Project members will employ their existing expertise in the history of subculture(s), dissident writing and self-fashioning to highlight how the archive both reflects and contributes to the special make-up of its time and place. This project will also serve as an important vehicle to advance the study of late socialist society and its legacy. Since Azazello's work stretches from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s the project will take its investigations beyond the 1991 caesura and explore not only what the nature of non-conformist life and culture was, but also how the mighty Soviet underground fared in its first years 'in the open'. The question of continuity and ruptures regarding late Soviet and post-Soviet culture and everyday life opens up an entirely new field of historical investigation, which sheds light on the all-important question of how 'dead' the Soviet Union really is.