Singing the Self: 'Guitar Poetry', Community and Identity in the post-Stalin Period

吉他诗歌兴起于20世纪50年代末的苏联，那是苏联社会去中国化的标志时期。在官方圈子里，对斯大林的谴责促使人们有必要重申苏联信仰的基本原则(如集体主义、党性和热爱祖国)，并特别关注苏联青年的培养。起初，吉他诗歌是一种自发的、由年轻人驱动的消遣方式，受到苏联当局的谨慎青睐，他们认为它是对苏联青年关切的真实表达(如果以一种原始的形式需要专业指导)，并被视为潜在的文化意识形态影响的工具。然而，到了20世纪60年代初，随着个别吟游诗人获得了流行歌星地位，多亏了通过放大镜(自制录音带)传播，歌曲迅速传播，相对不受审查，这种青睐变得糟糕起来。到20世纪60年代末，对吉他诗歌的全面攻击正在进行：个别吟游诗人在媒体上遭到恶毒攻击，音乐会和节日被禁止。到20世纪70年代，这一流派同时被压制(一方面是通过迫害个别吟游诗人，另一方面是通过对整个流派的批判性沉默)和被增选(例如，在电影、电视和戏剧场景中使用吟游诗人的歌曲)。人们早就注意到，大多数吟游诗人和绝大多数歌曲都是非政治性的，而且在整个20世纪70年代及以后，许多吟游诗人公开参与创作生活。然而，与此同时，对吉他诗歌的一种强烈的政治化观点仍然存在；这反映在人们对歌曲歌词直接导致官方敌意增加的理解上(这些歌词被广泛接受为吉他诗歌中意义的特权场所)。这一看似矛盾的情况--大多数歌曲歌词的政治无关性，加上吉他诗歌引发(并继续引发)的充满政治色彩的回应--值得密切关注。本项目试图解决这个重要但迄今被忽视的问题，分析吉他诗歌不仅是一种娱乐手段或殉难的俄罗斯字母的化身，而且是一种交流、自我塑造和社区建设的强大媒介。这个项目的理论框架是以边缘理论为基础的，该理论侧重于“边缘”社会和文化现象的特殊性。这种方法提供了一种方法，将吉他诗歌的混合性(文学和音乐方面的综合)和边缘(它在空间、文化和技术的“灰色地带”中生存和繁荣的能力)视为具有创作潜力和“激进可能性”的场所(胡克斯)；也是对苏联意识形态体系的隐含挑战。分析将围绕吉他诗歌作为一个整体，包括小调和大调吟游诗人，并检查歌曲的表演和文字。文本的作用不会被忽视，并将与语境、传播、表演和接受等问题一起被考虑，这些问题将作为传播和自我塑造过程中的关键要素突出。通过强调而不是淡化吉他诗歌的复杂性和矛盾性，这种跨学科的方法将为吉他诗歌在后斯大林时期的苏联社会中的作用、在个人康复中的重要作用以及在“个人崇拜”垮台后个人人格的塑造提供新的线索。通过聚焦于一种在西方尚未被充分研究的体裁，这个项目将对非规范的俄罗斯文化的研究做出重要贡献。通过借鉴边缘理论，该项目将有助于弥合西方重要批评理论与俄罗斯文化研究之间的差距；它也将对更广泛的流行文化理论研究做出重要贡献。

Guitar poetry arose in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, a period marked by the destalinisation of Soviet society. In official circles, denunciation of Stalin created a need to reaffirm fundamental tenets of Soviet faith (such as collectivism, party-mindedness and love of the motherland), with a particular focus on the upbringing of Soviet youth. Initially a spontaneous and youth-driven pastime, guitar poetry was received with cautious favour by Soviet authorities, who saw it as a genuine expression of the concerns of Soviet youth (if in a raw form requiring professional guidance) and as a potential instrument of cultural-ideological influence. By the early 1960s, however, this favour soured, as individual bards achieved popular stardom and, thanks to dissemination via magnitizdat (home-made tape recordings), songs circulated rapidly and relatively free of censorship. By the late 1960s, a full-scale assault on guitar poetry was underway: individual bards were viciously attacked in the press, and concerts and festivals were banned. By the 1970s the genre was simultaneously suppressed (through persecution of individual bards, on one hand, and critical silence about the genre as a whole, on the other) and co-opted (bards' songs were used in films, on television and in theatrical spectacles, for example). It has long been noted (see Smith 1984) that the majority of bards and the vast majority of songs were apolitical, and also that many bards participated openly in creative life throughout the 1970s and beyond. At the same time, however, a strongly politicised view of guitar poetry persists; and it is reflected in the understanding of increased official hostility as a direct result of songs' lyrics (these being widely accepted as the privileged site of meaning in guitar poetry). This seemingly paradoxical situation--the politically innocuous nature of most songs' lyrics combined with the politically charged response guitar poetry provoked (and continues to provoke)--deserves close scrutiny.The present project seeks to address this important but hitherto neglected issue, analysing guitar poetry not simply as a means of entertainment or an incarnation of martyred Russian letters, but as a powerful medium of communication, self-fashioning and community-building. The theoretical framework for this project is grounded in marginality theory, which focuses on the peculiarities of 'borderline' social and cultural phenomena. This approach offers a way of viewing guitar poetry's hybridity (its synthesis of literary and musical aspects) and its marginality (its ability to survive and thrive in spatial, cultural and technological 'grey areas') as sites of creative potential and of 'radical possibility' (Hooks); and also as implicit challenges to the Soviet ideological system. The analysis will encompass guitar poetry as a whole, taking in minor and major bards and examining songs in performance as well as in text. Though deemphasised, the role of text will not be ignored, and will be considered alongside issues of context, dissemination, performance and reception that will be foregrounded as key elements in the processes of communication and self-fashioning. By underscoring rather than effacing guitar poetry's complexities and contradictions, this interdisciplinary approach will shed new light on guitar poetry's function in Soviet society of the post-Stalin period, on its vital role in the rehabilitation of the individual and in the shaping of individual personalities after the fall of the 'cult of personality'. By focusing on a genre that is as yet understudied in the West, this project will make an important contribution to the study of non-canonical Russian culture. By drawing on marginality theory, the project will help to bridge the gap between an important body of Western critical theory and Russian cultural studies; and it will also represent an important contribution to the theoretical study of popular culture more broadly.